From: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qJ0WUgmTndc

Context: Throughout this transcript, Bhante Vimalaramsi is the speaker unless otherwise indicated.

it's real important to understand that

when you let go of this tension and

tightness in your head right after you

do that right after you relax there's a

moment where your mind is exceptionally

clear very alert and you have a pure

observation of the present moment and

then you take that pure mind and bring

it back to your object of meditation

that's important now the way that I was

taught and the way that probably 95% of

the people in the world are taught to do

meditation your mind is on your object

of meditation that's the same and it

gets distracted that's the same when

you're practicing the way most people

are teaching what happens is they let go

and immediately come back to the object

of meditation and what are they doing

when they do that they're bringing

craving back to their object of

meditation so they're not really having

a pure mind now a lot of people that

come and practice with me have been

practicing with other people first

and most of the time they're practicing

mindfulness of breathing but what I tell

them to do is I don't want you to do

that meditation now I want you to do

loving-kindness and you should hear them

complain oh I get so peaceful and calm

when I do the breathing meditation and I

just kind of shake my

and say yeah yeah yeah yeah but you're

not understanding what the Buddha's

teaching is all about when they get deep

enough in their one-pointed type of

concentration the depth of their

concentration stops hindrances from

arising okay they won't arise and they

say well I have a purified mind now as

long as they have is there Kleenex

around here as long as they have their

good concentration while they're sitting

that's right their mind is purified they

don't have any hindrance arise but when

they lose their concentration and they

go out there what happens to their mind

hindrances come they don't recognize the

hindrance because they haven't worked

with the hindrance and they suffer

greatly this is one of the reasons that

a lot of people will get to a certain

place and then they'll say well this

meditation doesn't work well when I

first started meditating I went to a

meditation center and I met this man

David

he'd been meditating longer than I had

and he'd been doing this meditation very

religiously didn't matter he was just

kind of keep going and three or four

years ago I guess

remember when before he wrote an email

to me because a a mutual friend of ours

had had a heart attack and it-- so i

wrote back to him and I started telling

him that I was practicing a kind of

meditation that agrees more with the

sutas so we went back and forth with a

lot of weighty questions and answers for

a little while and then finally I told

him go to the sati putana suta look at

the instructions and tell me what

tranquilize your bodily formation means

and he went and he looked at it and he

couldn't tell me what it meant now he'd

been practicing for 30 years or more so

I told him I found out what it meant so

I said why don't you try doing some

loving-kindness meditation and I'll send

you the instructions the way I find it

to be most helpful so that I had another

version of that little blue book and I

sent it to him and he came back and he

said well that's not the way that it's

being taught and I said yes I know

but this works so he decided he'd try it

for a little while now because he'd done

so much meditation he had great

concentration

in a short period of time he experienced

a jhana and he wrote back to me and I

could I could tell by the way that he

was writing that his eyes were real big

it was he was surprised so we kept

writing back and forth with all the

philosophical things he was one of the

only people that I'd ever met that had

read the entire tip it Iike yeah he knew

a lot

he didn't understand it very well but he

knew a lot so we would go back back and

forth with quoting different things and

I always came back to the sati putana

suta and the instructions in the sati

putana suta and I said you have to

understand that there is tightness that

you've been ignoring in your head you

haven't seen it there before and now I'm

showing you where it is and I'm showing

you that it's there and I'm saying this

is what the way you recognize craving

simple tension tightness in that you

relax it it's not there whoa now your

mind is clear there's no thoughts that

are going to distract you there's no

unwholesomeness at all

and you bring that mind back to your

object to meditation

so you're purifying your mind when you

do that and then he's finally started to

agree and he asked if I had any talks

that he could listen to so we had a few

talks online so I gave him the the

website and he started listening to the

talks and he started hearing Dhamma like

he had never heard before and it was

plain and it was under understandable

and it was easy after a few months of

doing this he said I'm going to immerse

myself in only listening to your talks

I'm not going to listen to the radio I'm

not going to watch TV and his progress

in meditation was really something

spectacular in a short period of time he

was doing things that he had never

dreamed possible because of letting go

of old commentaries and just using the

sutras as the guide

it's real important to understand that

when you let go of this tension and

tightness in your head right after you

do that right after you relax there's a

moment where your mind is exceptionally

clear very alert and you have a pure

observation of the present moment and

then you take that pure mind and bring

it back to your object of meditation

that's important now the way that I was

taught and the way that probably 95% of

the people in the world are taught to do

meditation your mind is on your object

of meditation that's the same and it

gets distracted that's the same when

you're practicing the way most people

are teaching what happens is they let go

and immediately come back to the object

of meditation and what are they doing

when they do that they're bringing

craving back to their object of

meditation so they're not really having

a pure mind now a lot of people that

come and practice with me have been

practicing with other people first

and most of the time they're practicing

mindfulness of breathing but what I tell

them to do is I don't want you to do

that meditation now I want you to do

loving-kindness and you should hear them

complain oh I get so peaceful and calm

when I do the breathing meditation and I

just kind of shake my

and say yeah yeah yeah yeah but you're

not understanding what the Buddha's

teaching is all about when they get deep

enough in their one-pointed type of

concentration the depth of their

concentration stops hindrances from

arising okay they won't arise and they

say well I have a purified mind now as

long as they have is there Kleenex

around here as long as they have their

good concentration while they're sitting

that's right their mind is purified they

don't have any hindrance arise but when

they lose their concentration and they

go out there what happens to their mind

hindrances come they don't recognize the

hindrance because they haven't worked

with the hindrance and they suffer

greatly this is one of the reasons that

a lot of people will get to a certain

place and then they'll say well this

meditation doesn't work well when I

first started meditating I went to a

meditation center and I met this man

David

he'd been meditating longer than I had

and he'd been doing this meditation very

religiously didn't matter he was just

kind of keep going and three or four

years ago I guess

remember when before he wrote an email

to me because a a mutual friend of ours

had had a heart attack and it-- so i

wrote back to him and I started telling

him that I was practicing a kind of

meditation that agrees more with the

sutas so we went back and forth with a

lot of weighty questions and answers for

a little while and then finally I told

him go to the sati putana suta look at

the instructions and tell me what

tranquilize your bodily formation means

and he went and he looked at it and he

couldn't tell me what it meant now he'd

been practicing for 30 years or more so

I told him I found out what it meant so

I said why don't you try doing some

loving-kindness meditation and I'll send

you the instructions the way I find it

to be most helpful so that I had another

version of that little blue book and I

sent it to him and he came back and he

said well that's not the way that it's

being taught and I said yes I know

but this works so he decided he'd try it

for a little while now because he'd done

so much meditation he had great

concentration

in a short period of time he experienced

a jhana and he wrote back to me and I

could I could tell by the way that he

was writing that his eyes were real big

it was he was surprised so we kept

writing back and forth with all the

philosophical things he was one of the

only people that I'd ever met that had

read the entire tip it Iike yeah he knew

a lot

he didn't understand it very well but he

knew a lot so we would go back back and

forth with quoting different things and

I always came back to the sati putana

suta and the instructions in the sati

putana suta and I said you have to

understand that there is tightness that

you've been ignoring in your head you

haven't seen it there before and now I'm

showing you where it is and I'm showing

you that it's there and I'm saying this

is what the way you recognize craving

simple tension tightness in that you

relax it it's not there whoa now your

mind is clear there's no thoughts that

are going to distract you there's no

unwholesomeness at all

and you bring that mind back to your

object to meditation

so you're purifying your mind when you

do that and then he's finally started to

agree and he asked if I had any talks

that he could listen to so we had a few

talks online so I gave him the the

website and he started listening to the

talks and he started hearing Dhamma like

he had never heard before and it was

plain and it was under understandable

and it was easy after a few months of

doing this he said I'm going to immerse

myself in only listening to your talks

I'm not going to listen to the radio I'm

not going to watch TV and his progress

in meditation was really something

spectacular in a short period of time he

was doing things that he had never

dreamed possible because of letting go

of old commentaries and just using the

sutras as the guide