From: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8NrY4mwfWiE
Context: Throughout this transcript, Bhante Vimalaramsi is the speaker unless otherwise indicated.
[Music]
now I don't recommend you're changing
your meditations okay once you start
with the brahma vihara to stay with the
problem of the artists I'm not real sure
why why it is but there's a real
fascination with the breath meditation
and almost everybody that does a breath
meditation does not follow the
directions of the soup deaths and where
you get say an attend a retreat with a
brahma vihara doing the breath
meditation to get to the same level is
going to take between six and eight
weeks it's a lot different
because it's hard to keep with your
daily activities it's easy to carry
around loving-kindness and radiate that
but if something happens and your mind
gets a little disturbed or you're gonna
say wait a minute I gotta take a couple
breaths well sometimes you can sometimes
you can't
so you you're not as sharp with your
daily activities when you're doing the
breath meditation David and I were just
listening to a guy talking about the
breath meditation and he talked about
the space in-between the breaths like
that was something special and oh it's
infinite space there's just nothing for
a brief moment but if you don't have the
relaxed step on the in breath and
relaxed step on the out-breath you're
not doing it in the correct way
and it just takes longer to do that kind
of meditation
I'm personally I'm hooked on the brahma
vihara z-- because your progress is so
fast and that's one of the advantages
that the Buddha talks about when you're
doing loving-kindness meditation or the
brahma VRS your progress is a fastest
it's faster than any other kind of
meditation
it's really kind of interesting the
attachments that people can have to the
breath I did the breath meditation for
20 years
I'm very well knowledged in the breath
meditation when I decided to start doing
loving-kindness meditation after the
first sitting I didn't have the breath
coming up and distracting my mind
because I made the determination now I'm
gonna be doing loving-kindness
meditation but people who get attached
to the idea well this is what the Buddha
taught actually he didn't teach that
near as much as he did the problem of
the artists he taught the brother of the
artists a lot why because your progress
is fast and there is real personality
change with the Brahm of the Aras with
the breath meditation not so much
there's not so much personality
development and it's much slower
so
if just make up your mind this is a
meditation I'm gonna do then the breath
won't come in and disturb you if it does
come in use the six RS go back the the
object of meditation which is that or
whatever
one of the reasons that the Buddha did
the breath meditation was because that
was what was pretty prevalent during his
lifetime everybody was doing the breath
meditation some people were talking
about holding their breath and he did
that a lot and found out that it does
nothing but bring a lot of pain and it
makes a lot of make makes your whole
body ache and it's not doesn't lead to
happiness it doesn't lead to an uplifted
mind and the Buddha was real big about
having an uplifted night it was real big
about learning how to be compassionate
to all beings in all situations
you