From: https://youtube.com/watch?v=W1g52eTDCfI
Context: Throughout this transcript, Bhante Vimalaramsi is the speaker unless otherwise indicated.
in the heart of the user fountains a new
tradition is being born a tradition of
American Forests monks that will follow
the original practices of Buddha after
25 years of meditation practice Vontae
Villa Ramsay has come back to his home
country in the USA and settled into a
rural area of Missouri that is two hours
south from the city of st. Louis what
we're setting up here is a plunks and
nuns teach and practice meditation and a
study center where they can learn about
what the Buddha taught
while I was in Burma I did many many
3-month retreats between 12 and 15 of
them I did an eight-month retreat in
Burma and this was the time in 1988 when
they had their social unrest and they
kicked all of the foreign monks out of
the country and then it took me two
years to get back in the country to get
the visa and that sort of thing then I
did a two-year retreat at Ram Yetta with
Saida who Jonica at the end of two years
he told me that I was ready to go out
and teach but I wasn't satisfied I
didn't feel like I've gotten as much as
I should have
I went back to Malaysia many people were
very interested in having me teach the
Burmese method of meditation but I
didn't feel like it led to what it talks
about in the soup this didn't lead to
Nirvana the way that I was explained
navona so instead of teaching the
Reposado what I did was started teaching
loving-kindness meditation and that
became very popular in in Malaysia there
was some times I was giving huge
retreats many sometimes as many as 75
people and then at one point I was asked
to go to the largest monastery in Kuala
Lumpur by K sridama nando who has just
that's died
long ago it so happens that there was a
monk that came from Sri Lanka
that was a meditation teacher and he
asked me how I talked so I explained to
him the way that I was teaching and he
told me your teaching exactly right but
you're using the language of
commentaries why don't you put the
commentaries down and then go to the
suta's and just use your suta's as your
guide so that's what I did and as soon
as I did that there were light bulbs
going off in my mind I was understanding
everything in the sutas because I didn't
have the overlay of the commentaries to
kind of cloud my thinking since then I
have developed a way of teaching where I
read the suta so you know that it's not
coming for me and explain what this it
does mean so this has been a very
practical and amazing path that I've
been on been a Buddhist for about 40
years practicing the pasta meditation
for most of that and then a year ago
little over a year ago I decided to
enroll in a retreat that was led by
invantive Gelimer Ramsey friend of mine
recommended that I do such and it
changed my life in wonderful ways having
been a Buddhist to really see the Dharma
unfold in front of me practicing this
tranquility Insight Meditation was a
revelation within a few days I had
experienced in meditation what I hadn't
been able to do in practicing a straight
be positive technique for maybe nearly
40 years in industries' so I'm very
grateful to Avante for doing that and as
a retreat went on I experienced even
deeper states of meditation so what
we're trying to do is get back to the
original teaching of the Buddha and the
more that I read the sutras to people
the easier they understand an awful lot
of people are looking for a path that
they think is very complicated but the
Buddha's teaching is very simple not
always easy but very simple to
understand this is the path that does
lead to liberation
in the heart of the user fountains a new
tradition is being born a tradition of
American Forests monks that will follow
the original practices of Buddha after
25 years of meditation practice Vontae
Villa Ramsay has come back to his home
country in the USA and settled into a
rural area of Missouri that is two hours
south from the city of st. Louis what
we're setting up here is a plunks and
nuns teach and practice meditation and a
study center where they can learn about
what the Buddha taught
while I was in Burma I did many many
3-month retreats between 12 and 15 of
them I did an eight-month retreat in
Burma and this was the time in 1988 when
they had their social unrest and they
kicked all of the foreign monks out of
the country and then it took me two
years to get back in the country to get
the visa and that sort of thing then I
did a two-year retreat at Ram Yetta with
Saida who Jonica at the end of two years
he told me that I was ready to go out
and teach but I wasn't satisfied I
didn't feel like I've gotten as much as
I should have
I went back to Malaysia many people were
very interested in having me teach the
Burmese method of meditation but I
didn't feel like it led to what it talks
about in the soup this didn't lead to
Nirvana the way that I was explained
navona so instead of teaching the
Reposado what I did was started teaching
loving-kindness meditation and that
became very popular in in Malaysia there
was some times I was giving huge
retreats many sometimes as many as 75
people and then at one point I was asked
to go to the largest monastery in Kuala
Lumpur by K sridama nando who has just
that's died
long ago it so happens that there was a
monk that came from Sri Lanka
that was a meditation teacher and he
asked me how I talked so I explained to
him the way that I was teaching and he
told me your teaching exactly right but
you're using the language of
commentaries why don't you put the
commentaries down and then go to the
suta's and just use your suta's as your
guide so that's what I did and as soon
as I did that there were light bulbs
going off in my mind I was understanding
everything in the sutas because I didn't
have the overlay of the commentaries to
kind of cloud my thinking since then I
have developed a way of teaching where I
read the suta so you know that it's not
coming for me and explain what this it
does mean so this has been a very
practical and amazing path that I've
been on been a Buddhist for about 40
years practicing the pasta meditation
for most of that and then a year ago
little over a year ago I decided to
enroll in a retreat that was led by
invantive Gelimer Ramsey friend of mine
recommended that I do such and it
changed my life in wonderful ways having
been a Buddhist to really see the Dharma
unfold in front of me practicing this
tranquility Insight Meditation was a
revelation within a few days I had
experienced in meditation what I hadn't
been able to do in practicing a straight
be positive technique for maybe nearly
40 years in industries' so I'm very
grateful to Avante for doing that and as
a retreat went on I experienced even
deeper states of meditation so what
we're trying to do is get back to the
original teaching of the Buddha and the
more that I read the sutras to people
the easier they understand an awful lot
of people are looking for a path that
they think is very complicated but the
Buddha's teaching is very simple not
always easy but very simple to
understand this is the path that does
lead to liberation