Introduction

The purpose of this book is to help the earnest seeker and advanced meditator understand the experiences and signposts on the Buddha’s path, which has as its goal the destruction of craving and the elimination of ignorance. I want to document these experiences for the meditation community so they may be studied and preserved to guide future meditators.

This book was also written so that meditators without access to local teachers could have a guidebook to continue down this path on their own. Every instruction on how to meditate at every level is here. There are no secret techniques held back, just the words from the suttas and commentary by Venerable Bhante Vimalaraṁsi.

In this edition, the beginner’s instruction guide is added to the back of this book, “A Guide to Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation” by Bhante Vimalaramsi. Read this first if you wish to start from the beginning and make the quickest progress.

If, when you are starting, you bog down and you just can’t feel this loving-kindness for yourself, take a look at the pamphlet also at the end of this book by Bhante Vimalaramsi entitled, “A Guide to Forgiveness Meditation.” Try this meditation and see if it doesn’t loosen possible blocks in your mind from past traumas, bosses or other scary memories! Forgiveness can be a perfect prerequisite to experiencing warm, flowing loving-kindness.

At some places in the book, I will put “—Meditation Instruction:” to highlight for students using this book as an instruction guide, any updates to the meditation practice instructions based on progress, or an important experience that they should watch for.

This book expands on the previously printed A Guide to Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation1. That guide clearly lays out the beginning instructions for the practice of “TWIM” in fine detail. This entire pamphlet has been included at the back of this book for your use at home if you wish to start now.

TWIM is basically the Brahmavihāra practice starting with mettā or loving-kindness as the object (breath may be used but tends to have slower progress). These instructions are taken directly from the meditation methods described in the suttas, the earliest Buddhist teachings. TWIM is the practice that will lead us to Nibbāna as it is outlined in the texts. We will see that when the instructions are followed carefully, there are immediate results exactly as the Buddha talked about.

The Path to Nibbāna elaborates on both the goal and the practice of meditation as explained by the Buddha. Its purpose is to follow the progress of the practice as it is explained in the suttas themselves. For that, the clearest map is the Majjhima Nikāya (MN) No. 111, the Anupada Sutta, “One by One as they Occurred.” This sutta shows how progress occurs step-by-step all the way to Nibbāna. This is the “map” we will use as we go through the levels of insight in this book.

The suttas of the Pāli Canon are traceable back 2,550 years to the Buddha himself. They are considered by scholars to be the words of the Buddha as he originally spoke them.

To put a finer point on this, it is thought that the Buddha spoke Magadhi. That was his native language. Pāli is a form of that language, and later, all of the suttas were documented in Pāli, first by reciting and then writing them down by members of the Buddhist Order in Sri Lanka. They were written on palm leaves about 80 B.C.2 As they were written down monks, who had memorized the suttas, checked the written texts for any added or wrong words.

The suttas were inscribed on stone tablets in Mandalay, Burma, and today are still being memorized and recited by Buddhist monks in Burmese monasteries since the first council of Senior Monks was convened three months after the Buddha died. I visited this interesting site in 2003 and saw the white marble stones with these inscriptions.

Groups of monks memorize the sutta texts together. One monk will recite, and the rest of the group will check and correct him as he goes. This method has been about as foolproof as any other to retain original texts for long periods. Even writing them down can be subject to the translator’s misinterpretation of what words to use to describe the practice precisely.

But, even with this method, there could have been errors that crept in, even as perfect as this system was. We can’t really know because we weren’t there and it was over twenty-five centuries ago!

Thus, we use these suttas as the closest direct guide to what the Buddha really taught.

There are many Buddhist sects and many different beliefs and practices; all we can do is find what meditation practice matches the Buddha’s words. The practice of TWIM is “new” in the sense it has been rediscovered in the suttas. It is not practiced very widely (yet), which seems rather surprising. In fact, Venerable Bhante Vimalaraṁsi and his approved teachers are the only ones who teach directly from the suttas in this way. Others reference the suttas but don’t follow them precisely. TWIM is the actual practice of Right Effort. This is the reason for its resulting success. I will discuss more about this later.

Changes have been made in other practices to supposedly “improve” upon the Buddha’s meditation instructions. But, hold on, he was the Buddha! Is it not just a little bit presumptuous to think that the instructions of a Buddha can be improved upon? After all, he was indeed the supremely awakened Tathāgata, perfecting his wisdom over countless lifetimes.

Let’s try to put aside all the other techniques for now and just focus on how to practice, as described in the early teachings, as close to the actual words of the Buddha as we can get. Most scholars agree that the Pāli Canon and its suttas are the actual teachings of the Buddha. So, let’s go to them, and only them, to find the way to practice.

The Anupada Sutta, MN 111, explains the progress of the meditation through the jhānas and the Four Foundations of Mindfulness at the same time. It will be shown here to you that these jhānas when practiced as taught in the suttas, lead to awakening. The jhānas described in the Anupada Sutta are not to be confused with the concentration states commonly taught elsewhere. These are the Tranquil Aware Jhānas that are being taught in the suttas, in which you maintain awareness of both mind and body. Their foundation is collectedness, not concentration which we will cover later.

It is this rediscovered “aware jhāna” that is the key to a new understanding of the Buddha’s teachings.

The TWIM technique referenced in this book uses for its primary sutta guide, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya by Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Nāṇamoli. Bhante Vimalaraṁsi feels this is the closest translation available, though sometimes he prefers different wordings than are used there. For example, he uses the word “habitual tendency” instead of “becoming.” More on this later.

We will combine here the explanation of the suttas’ meaning with the actual experiences of the many meditators who have practiced and have been successful. Also, we will attempt to explain some of the reasons why certain experiences and subtle phenomena occur — though only the Buddha knows for sure. Please forgive me for errors and omissions.

Some phenomena like the subtlest links of dependent origination that are deep down in the mental processes have had their descriptions left out. They are for the student to discover on their own and it won’t change the pace of a student’s progress by not describing them here. Explaining certain phenomena before the student is ready to see them can create false expectations and wrong ideas.

Many students, later, are grateful that Bhante does not explain to them where they are in the jhānas. They just want to progress and not be thinking and analyzing as they practice. They may develop some sense of pride because of thoughts about “I am in this jhāna or that jhāna.” They might have some familiarity with meditation practice and may have some conceit arise and get stuck thinking about how far advanced they are — when they are only beginners in this practice. It is better off not knowing where you are if you are on an intensive retreat and just follow the instructions.

If you are seeking an even deeper understanding of how the practice works than what is described here in this book, more descriptions of insights and levels of understanding that arise, and the sutta references that support this meditation, you may also want to read one of the following books: Meditation Is Life; Life Is Meditation which provides information in depth and detail. Breath of Love and Moving Dhamma Volume Vol. 1 also offers skillful guidance as one goes deeper into the practice. These are all written by Venerable Bhante Vimalaraṁsi.

My purpose here is to put down on paper the steps to awakening — the progress through the levels of insight to awakening. It is my hope that this knowledge can be handed down, studied in the future, and not lost. This book is based on Venerable Bhante Vimalaraṁsi’s sutta-based methods and results, using texts from his various talks as well drawing on my own personal experiences involving this practice.

Today’s practices include Brahminic influences, New Age methods, and even a new take on Buddhism in which the...