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Bhante, based on many of your videos, I think you don't like Samatha meditation at all.

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From what I know, there is two clear ways for enlightenment, Samatha first and Vipassana, or Vipassana first and then Samatha.

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What do you think about this?

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Actually, there are, according to the Buddha, four ways to enlightenment.

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Samatha first, then Vipassana, Vipassana first, and then Samatha.

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Samatha and Vipassana together

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or the settling of the mind in regards to the Dhammas.

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So one has uncertainty or sort of a kind of a mental disturbance about the Dhamma and one settles one's mind in regards to the Dhamma.

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The Buddha said those are the four ways people can become an arahat.

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Anyone who comes to the Buddha

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saying that they've become an arahant does it by one of these four paths.

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So that's the answer to your question, or that's the answer, that's a correction to your question.

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From what you know is wrong, there are actually four, according to the Buddha.

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So it's incomplete.

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Let's address the comment at the beginning.

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You think I don't like Samatha meditation at all.

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Well, that may be true.

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I may be guilty of that.

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But if I am, judging as an outsider, I would say that that's wrong of me.

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Because not liking Samatha meditation is a bad thing.

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Now, I have to be careful about what I say, but I tend to discourage people from Samatha meditation.

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I definitely admit that.

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But it's a light discouragement.

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And I don't ever say to someone, don't practice it.

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I say, I try to focus on the benefits of Vipassana meditation.

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There's two reasons, I guess, for that.

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The first one is, it's what I know.

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So, my focusing on it, and sort of putting it up higher than Samatha meditation, it's because...

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By saying that, so if I have person A here, and I want to bring them here, the best way for me to get them there is to start talking about the benefits of insight meditation.

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Because if I start talking about the benefits of Samatha meditation,

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I'm not going to be able to follow through with that.

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If they say, oh great, so can you teach me Samatha meditation?

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I'm not bringing them to the goal because I can't.

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I don't teach that.

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I will end up saying to them, I'm sorry, I don't teach that.

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You'll have to go somewhere else.

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So quicker for me is to promote Vipassana meditation.

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But the other

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Reason is, well it's complicated, but I've talked about it before, and the first reason obviously is it seems to take longer and require more to do Samatha first.

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So three things.

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It seems to take longer, and we'll have a big argument about that, but I think generally there's a case that can be made for it taking longer, requires more,

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and has a greater potential for getting the meditator lost so these are the three disadvantages of summit to meditation earlier i talked about the benefits now that's more complete it's stronger it and just more complete and stronger more com so let's talk about those

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Okay, more complete and stronger.

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More complete means you have the potential to enter into high states of calm and tranquility where you can sit stiff as a board, where you can have great bliss, great equanimity.

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And more complete in the sense that you are able to cultivate magical powers.

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So you can read people's minds, remember past lives, all sorts of fun stuff.

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More powerful...

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one's ability to enter into cessation gets more powerful.

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Once you've cultivated samatha, as soon as you switch to insight, often very quickly you're able to cultivate insight meditation.

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You enter into nibbana, as soon as you switch, it takes very little time.

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And it can be very strong, so you can actually enter into cessation, nibbana, for hours or days or so.

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So with the power of the Samatha.

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Those are the two benefits.

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The three disadvantages, it takes longer because you have to first cultivate meditation based on a concept which has nothing to do with reality.

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And then you have to afterwards cultivate meditation based on reality.

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So you have to switch.

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It's two steps.

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And they're different because based on a concept you're actually avoiding the situation.

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You're suppressing the defilements by not focusing on them, by focusing elsewhere.

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So it takes longer.

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It requires more.

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So in order to do that, you need to seclude yourself.

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You need to find a quiet spot.

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Sometimes people can't do that.

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You need, ideally, to be in the forest, to be away from any kind of noise, any kind of disruption.

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Be by yourself.

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So it takes more time, requires more.

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and the potential for getting lost because you're in the world of concepts.

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If you don't ever make the change, you can spend years, lifetimes practicing meditation without ever getting, making the final step.

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And this is the case.

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We can show that through pointing out individual meditators.

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We can show that in the Tipitika.

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It's clear that this Samatha meditation isn't enough.

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It leads you to the Brahma world, where it led the bodhisattvas to teachers.

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So for those reasons,

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with those reasons coupled with the fact that I don't have the we don't have that so we generally don't have that much time we don't have that great resources of the forest and so on and I don't have the ability

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I suppose I could.

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I don't have the training.

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Actually, I probably could do fine teaching Samatha and Vipassana, but don't have the technical training to lead people first through Samatha and then through Vipassana.

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Therefore we don't do it.

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We focus more on insight meditation.

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Now Samatha is great.

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It's a wonderful thing.

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It quiets your mind.

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It calms your mind.

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I don't think I really dislike it.

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In fact, in our tradition, there's a sense of maybe even jealousy.

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It's like, oh, I wish I could get more into Samatha meditation.

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But we're strict with ourselves.

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We say, no, we're going to focus on this because we don't have the time.

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We don't have the resources.

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We want to streamline it, especially in this day and age where time and resources are of the essence and it's our best attempt at getting the most people across.

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You want to get people off the Titanic when it's sinking?

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Well, you have to improvise.

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You have to find ways to get them off.

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So I don't think I don't like Samatha.

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I'm pretty sure I don't feel that way.

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When I was young I did practice it, sort of not knowing what it was.

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But it's very different.

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And what I really take issue with is people who don't see the difference.

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People who think they're practicing Vipassana but are actually practicing Samatha.

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And that's tough because you can't say that to someone.

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You can't just say to someone, your practice sucks.

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You know, your practice is inferior to my practice.

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Everyone's going to say that their practice is better, but you know it.

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You're clear in your mind that this is conceptual.

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You're not going to reach enlightenment that way.

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So there's this muddling of the two.

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So this is why we try to make it clear that's not going to reach nibbana and be very clear about that.

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And so that's the issue that we always have, is people who try to muddle it.

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The other issue, of course, is people who say there's only one way.

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You need to practice the jhanas in order to attain enlightenment.

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I've talked about that on the buddhism.stackexchange.com, which, again, I think is a better sort of platform for those kind of questions.

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But anyway, good question.

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Thank you for it.

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It's kind of a nice one.

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It's not often I get one that calls me out on something like that.

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So thank you.