From: https://youtube.com/watch?v=e7zjMAB9Oxs

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

when you practice meditation what you're

doing is you're practicing

purifying your mind

you're purifying your mind from states

that generally cause

suffering to arise

in pain

and the buddha recommended very strongly

that

there are some

uh precepts

that if you follow these precepts

without breaking them then your

meditation will get very good very

quickly

now these precepts are recommendations

they're not commandments

you can take them or leave them do

whatever you want with them

but if you're interested in having your

meditation

improve

so that you can sit for periods of time

without having a lot of distractions

then

it would be best for you to

keep these presets as closely as you can

now there's five of them

you have five i have two hundred

twenty-seven

the first one is not to kill or harm

living beings on purpose

why would you have

a precept like this

because if you kill or harm living

beings on purpose

you have a mind that has hatred in it

and if you do that fairly often

naturally some of the things that arise

is fear

and anxiety

and it can be real hindrances if you're

trying to calm your mind out

this includes cockroaches

mosquitoes

shakers

but you can make these animals

leave you alone without

killing them

there are certain botanical insect

repellents that if you put on

you go out the chiggers will not bother

you

if you take

cucumber

you have cockroaches in your house and

you don't want them there to take a

cucumber

and chop it up into fine little squares

put it in a dish

put it where the

the

cockroaches come out

they don't like the smell

they will leave

i lived in san francisco for a long

period of time

every

restaurant

from five star on down to one star

they all had cockroaches

and whenever

the inspector would come the night

before they knew the inspector was

coming they put out the

cucumbers and

they just left

they'll do it for a period of time but

you have to keep doing it

to make them go away all the way

another thing that works very well is if

you have trouble with ants

cayenne pepper

you can put it on a line of ants and all

of a sudden that line will just stop and

they'll leave they don't want anything

to do with it you can put it in front

of the line

and they'll come right up to it and say

no let's go the other way

so there's a lot of things that you can

do to prevent

animals from harming you

or causing problems

without killing them

when i was in asia

they got

lots

and lots and lots of mosquitoes

so what did i do when it got to be

mosquito time because they come in the

morning they come in the evening

it's very simple

i cover it up

and

i only had to do that for about an hour

or so

and they left me alone i didn't get

mosquito bites

or if i had a mosquito bite i saw a

mosquito land i would

blow it away

leave me alone

i found out something interesting and

that is if you eat raw garlic

a lot of insects will leave you alone

of course everybody else will too

but as a monk that was okay for me

but when you when you intentionally kill

another human another being

there has to be

dislike in your mind

or else you wouldn't kill it

and

that is a thing that will

it leaves the door open for

fear and anxiety to arise

and it can be quite overpowering at

times fear is really able to freeze you

so if you don't want that kind of

problem when you're sitting in

meditation

having these kind of things come up then

it's recommended and it's like i said

it's not

a commandment that you have to do it

but understand that if you

kill beings your meditation is not going

to be as calm and peaceful as if you

didn't

now the next precept just about

everybody agrees on

don't take anything that is not given in

other words don't steal anything from

anybody

now a lot of times people will

they'll work in offices and this sort of

thing and they wind up taking pins

and that's stealing

now what's the disadvantage of stealing

your prosperity

disappears very quickly

and it causes a guilty mind

it causes anxiety it causes remorse

i knew a guy one time that he was in

uh he'd been in prison for about seven

years because he

went to i think it was an elks lodge or

something like this right after they had

a big fundraising thing

and he broke into the the safe and he

took twenty five thousand dollars

and he said he really had a rush when he

saw that money after he had to literally

tear the safe apart to get it open

and i said uh

okay you had all that money what'd you

do with it it just disappeared

it lasted about a week and i was gone

that's what happens when you take things

that aren't given

your prosperity disappears

so

that you have remorse arise you know

that you shouldn't do these kind of

things

and if you try to justify it in your

mind it doesn't matter it's only this

little thing

it will come back

it will come back at you and it always

comes back in the form of restlessness

and anxiety

now what is restlessness

we'll get into that in just a minute

but generally speaking it's a mind that

is really really active and thinking all

the time

and that translates into

when a person is very restless

they have trouble sitting still

they're always

wiggling

it's real funny when you if you can get

up high above a crowd and look down at

people when they're sitting

how much they're continually moving

their body

and the reason they're continually

moving their body is because

pain starts to come up and they want

relief so those shifts

somebody that practices meditation

they get to sit through that

you remember the instructions

and

when they sit

please

you don't need to move around

i've i've been in

different stores and something will

catch my attention and i'll stand there

and i'll look at it for a little while

and people have

they've come up not paying attention

that i was standing there and just

because they have clothes it doesn't

matter and paying attention to this

and they'd turn around

and then they'd start to move somewhere

and they'd go oh

i thought you were a mannequin

because it wasn't moving

and this happened more than once

so one of the

benefits

of

the meditation

is

starting to let go of the restlessness

and again we'll talk about that in a

minute

the next precept

is not to have any wrong

sexual activity

what's wrong sexual activity

sexual activity with another person's

mate

sexual activity with someone that's too

young they're still under the care of

their parents

or guardians whatever

sexual activity with prostitutes

what it basically comes down to is

not having any sexual activity

that causes

anyone

pain

or upset

that means yourself that means the other

person that means the relatives of the

other person

why

because it causes a lot of

other breaking of the precepts which

we'll get into in just a minute

the next precept

is

not to tell any lies

say the truth

now there's four different

parts of this particular precept

you say what's truthful

and you don't slander now what is

slander slander is i go to this side of

the room and i say something about

people over there

and it gets you upset

and then i go over there and i tell you

about these people over here and it gets

you upset and it divides people

okay

that's slander

don't do that

use words

that bring people together not tear them

apart

that's part of the preset

another part of the precept is

don't curse

don't use harsh speech

and the last part is don't gossip

what is gossip

it's making up stories

it doesn't mean i can't talk about you

to him to her

but what i say about you

needs to be honest

not

a made-up story to make you think

something in a particular way

that's what gossip actually is

so

be careful with your speech

say things that unite people

that

are

easy for everyone to listen to

it was a major shock when i came back

from 12 years in asia

to hear people on the tel on the

television and on the radio

cursing

it was a major shock i wasn't

it wasn't like that when i left

but now they're using all kinds of foul

language

and the f word seems to be a very common

especially for the younger people

no don't do that

it's not nice to hear it upsets other

people

and

it causes your mind to be tense and

tight because when you're using curse

words

you have

dissatisfaction and dislike

in your mind

and the meditation

is about loving acceptance

not

closing down around

the last precept

is

not to take any drugs or alcohol for

recreational

purposes

well if i have a bear now every now and

then it doesn't really it's not so bad

well it affects your thinking

and you will have a tendency to break

the other precepts

if you take drugs and alcohol

and i'm talking about recreational

not medicinal

although i don't really like western

medicine very much

because it does have a tendency always

to dull your mind in one way or another

when i was in

burma

i started catching a cold i felt my

throat starting to get sore

so i went to the doctor there's a doctor

at every meditation center

and i said do you have anything for a

cold

and he said well

gargle with salt water

and take an aspirin

so he gave me an aspirin

one aspect one pill

and

i started thinking about how i didn't

really want to take it but okay i'll

take it anyway so i cut it in half

and i just took half an aspirin

i took it in the morning

it affected my whole meditation in a

negative way

for the whole day

my mind was flighty

i was used to having

great concentration

but

when i took the aspirin

even half an aspirin

it affected my mind so that my

concentration wasn't as good

so

what do i do now when i have a cold

coming on

i gargle with water with

salt water and i put some hydrogen

peroxide in it

and then i lay down and i take vitamin c

and when i lay down i rest

that means i don't listen to the radio i

don't have the tv on i don't read a book

i rest

and sometimes the cold will last a whole

six or seven hours

but when you try to push your way

through a cold

you've got it for two weeks

so it's your choice what are you gonna

do oh i have to do this

well there's nothing that important

my way to thinking anyway

and this this was proven to me over and

over again because i was staying in

burma i was staying in a

it was a dormitory style situation

where there was a lot of other people

and one person catches a cold everybody

gets a cold

and

i felt the cold coming on i just said no

i'm not gonna meditate today i'm just

gonna rest and i took vitamin c

and i gargle

and

in the evening i was feeling great so i

got up and i

started meditating and everybody else

they look like they're getting hit with

something you know they they look

terrible

and

everybody got the sniffles and they they

were coughing and they were moaning and

groaning but they kept trying to

meditate

and their nose was running so they'd

take a kleenex and they'd stuff it up

their nostrils so that they could sit

so it's it's a matter of if you have to

take drugs

for medicinal purposes watch how it

affects your mind and your body

and see what the most natural way is to

overcome that problem now i just sent

an article

to other today

on

the health effects of having a good

belly laugh

it's amazing the things that it does for

you

now when i'm when i'm teaching you

meditation i'm telling you i want you to

smile

and i really want you to smile

and this is not just while you're

sitting

okay

this is an all the time practice

the sitting meditation is for

your quiet time so you can really

see things more clearly

but the rest of the time

need to be smiling

and every time you see yourself getting

serious about anything

you need to laugh

you

when you practice meditation what you're

doing is you're practicing

purifying your mind

you're purifying your mind from states

that generally cause

suffering to arise

in pain

and the buddha recommended very strongly

that

there are some

uh precepts

that if you follow these precepts

without breaking them then your

meditation will get very good very

quickly

now these precepts are recommendations

they're not commandments

you can take them or leave them do

whatever you want with them

but if you're interested in having your

meditation

improve

so that you can sit for periods of time

without having a lot of distractions

then

it would be best for you to

keep these presets as closely as you can

now there's five of them

you have five i have two hundred

twenty-seven

the first one is not to kill or harm

living beings on purpose

why would you have

a precept like this

because if you kill or harm living

beings on purpose

you have a mind that has hatred in it

and if you do that fairly often

naturally some of the things that arise

is fear

and anxiety

and it can be real hindrances if you're

trying to calm your mind out

this includes cockroaches

mosquitoes

shakers

but you can make these animals

leave you alone without

killing them

there are certain botanical insect

repellents that if you put on

you go out the chiggers will not bother

you

if you take

cucumber

you have cockroaches in your house and

you don't want them there to take a

cucumber

and chop it up into fine little squares

put it in a dish

put it where the

the

cockroaches come out

they don't like the smell

they will leave

i lived in san francisco for a long

period of time

every

restaurant

from five star on down to one star

they all had cockroaches

and whenever

the inspector would come the night

before they knew the inspector was

coming they put out the

cucumbers and

they just left

they'll do it for a period of time but

you have to keep doing it

to make them go away all the way

another thing that works very well is if

you have trouble with ants

cayenne pepper

you can put it on a line of ants and all

of a sudden that line will just stop and

they'll leave they don't want anything

to do with it you can put it in front

of the line

and they'll come right up to it and say

no let's go the other way

so there's a lot of things that you can

do to prevent

animals from harming you

or causing problems

without killing them

when i was in asia

they got

lots

and lots and lots of mosquitoes

so what did i do when it got to be

mosquito time because they come in the

morning they come in the evening

it's very simple

i cover it up

and

i only had to do that for about an hour

or so

and they left me alone i didn't get

mosquito bites

or if i had a mosquito bite i saw a

mosquito land i would

blow it away

leave me alone

i found out something interesting and

that is if you eat raw garlic

a lot of insects will leave you alone

of course everybody else will too

but as a monk that was okay for me

but when you when you intentionally kill

another human another being

there has to be

dislike in your mind

or else you wouldn't kill it

and

that is a thing that will

it leaves the door open for

fear and anxiety to arise

and it can be quite overpowering at

times fear is really able to freeze you

so if you don't want that kind of

problem when you're sitting in

meditation

having these kind of things come up then

it's recommended and it's like i said

it's not

a commandment that you have to do it

but understand that if you

kill beings your meditation is not going

to be as calm and peaceful as if you

didn't

now the next precept just about

everybody agrees on

don't take anything that is not given in

other words don't steal anything from

anybody

now a lot of times people will

they'll work in offices and this sort of

thing and they wind up taking pins

and that's stealing

now what's the disadvantage of stealing

your prosperity

disappears very quickly

and it causes a guilty mind

it causes anxiety it causes remorse

i knew a guy one time that he was in

uh he'd been in prison for about seven

years because he

went to i think it was an elks lodge or

something like this right after they had

a big fundraising thing

and he broke into the the safe and he

took twenty five thousand dollars

and he said he really had a rush when he

saw that money after he had to literally

tear the safe apart to get it open

and i said uh

okay you had all that money what'd you

do with it it just disappeared

it lasted about a week and i was gone

that's what happens when you take things

that aren't given

your prosperity disappears

so

that you have remorse arise you know

that you shouldn't do these kind of

things

and if you try to justify it in your

mind it doesn't matter it's only this

little thing

it will come back

it will come back at you and it always

comes back in the form of restlessness

and anxiety

now what is restlessness

we'll get into that in just a minute

but generally speaking it's a mind that

is really really active and thinking all

the time

and that translates into

when a person is very restless

they have trouble sitting still

they're always

wiggling

it's real funny when you if you can get

up high above a crowd and look down at

people when they're sitting

how much they're continually moving

their body

and the reason they're continually

moving their body is because

pain starts to come up and they want

relief so those shifts

somebody that practices meditation

they get to sit through that

you remember the instructions

and

when they sit

please

you don't need to move around

i've i've been in

different stores and something will

catch my attention and i'll stand there

and i'll look at it for a little while

and people have

they've come up not paying attention

that i was standing there and just

because they have clothes it doesn't

matter and paying attention to this

and they'd turn around

and then they'd start to move somewhere

and they'd go oh

i thought you were a mannequin

because it wasn't moving

and this happened more than once

so one of the

benefits

of

the meditation

is

starting to let go of the restlessness

and again we'll talk about that in a

minute

the next precept

is not to have any wrong

sexual activity

what's wrong sexual activity

sexual activity with another person's

mate

sexual activity with someone that's too

young they're still under the care of

their parents

or guardians whatever

sexual activity with prostitutes

what it basically comes down to is

not having any sexual activity

that causes

anyone

pain

or upset

that means yourself that means the other

person that means the relatives of the

other person

why

because it causes a lot of

other breaking of the precepts which

we'll get into in just a minute

the next precept

is

not to tell any lies

say the truth

now there's four different

parts of this particular precept

you say what's truthful

and you don't slander now what is

slander slander is i go to this side of

the room and i say something about

people over there

and it gets you upset

and then i go over there and i tell you

about these people over here and it gets

you upset and it divides people

okay

that's slander

don't do that

use words

that bring people together not tear them

apart

that's part of the preset

another part of the precept is

don't curse

don't use harsh speech

and the last part is don't gossip

what is gossip

it's making up stories

it doesn't mean i can't talk about you

to him to her

but what i say about you

needs to be honest

not

a made-up story to make you think

something in a particular way

that's what gossip actually is

so

be careful with your speech

say things that unite people

that

are

easy for everyone to listen to

it was a major shock when i came back

from 12 years in asia

to hear people on the tel on the

television and on the radio

cursing

it was a major shock i wasn't

it wasn't like that when i left

but now they're using all kinds of foul

language

and the f word seems to be a very common

especially for the younger people

no don't do that

it's not nice to hear it upsets other

people

and

it causes your mind to be tense and

tight because when you're using curse

words

you have

dissatisfaction and dislike

in your mind

and the meditation

is about loving acceptance

not

closing down around

the last precept

is

not to take any drugs or alcohol for

recreational

purposes

well if i have a bear now every now and

then it doesn't really it's not so bad

well it affects your thinking

and you will have a tendency to break

the other precepts

if you take drugs and alcohol

and i'm talking about recreational

not medicinal

although i don't really like western

medicine very much

because it does have a tendency always

to dull your mind in one way or another

when i was in

burma

i started catching a cold i felt my

throat starting to get sore

so i went to the doctor there's a doctor

at every meditation center

and i said do you have anything for a

cold

and he said well

gargle with salt water

and take an aspirin

so he gave me an aspirin

one aspect one pill

and

i started thinking about how i didn't

really want to take it but okay i'll

take it anyway so i cut it in half

and i just took half an aspirin

i took it in the morning

it affected my whole meditation in a

negative way

for the whole day

my mind was flighty

i was used to having

great concentration

but

when i took the aspirin

even half an aspirin

it affected my mind so that my

concentration wasn't as good

so

what do i do now when i have a cold

coming on

i gargle with water with

salt water and i put some hydrogen

peroxide in it

and then i lay down and i take vitamin c

and when i lay down i rest

that means i don't listen to the radio i

don't have the tv on i don't read a book

i rest

and sometimes the cold will last a whole

six or seven hours

but when you try to push your way

through a cold

you've got it for two weeks

so it's your choice what are you gonna

do oh i have to do this

well there's nothing that important

my way to thinking anyway

and this this was proven to me over and

over again because i was staying in

burma i was staying in a

it was a dormitory style situation

where there was a lot of other people

and one person catches a cold everybody

gets a cold

and

i felt the cold coming on i just said no

i'm not gonna meditate today i'm just

gonna rest and i took vitamin c

and i gargle

and

in the evening i was feeling great so i

got up and i

started meditating and everybody else

they look like they're getting hit with

something you know they they look

terrible

and

everybody got the sniffles and they they

were coughing and they were moaning and

groaning but they kept trying to

meditate

and their nose was running so they'd

take a kleenex and they'd stuff it up

their nostrils so that they could sit

so it's it's a matter of if you have to

take drugs

for medicinal purposes watch how it

affects your mind and your body

and see what the most natural way is to

overcome that problem now i just sent

an article

to other today

on

the health effects of having a good

belly laugh

it's amazing the things that it does for

you

now when i'm when i'm teaching you

meditation i'm telling you i want you to

smile

and i really want you to smile

and this is not just while you're

sitting

okay

this is an all the time practice

the sitting meditation is for

your quiet time so you can really

see things more clearly

but the rest of the time

need to be smiling

and every time you see yourself getting

serious about anything

you need to laugh

you