From a link on the samatha.org
Yogāvacara Talks | Samatha Buddhist Meditation
https://itipiso.org/
The teaching of Buddhist meditation in the West has developed strongly since the 1960s, such that there is now widespread familiarity with words such as “mindfulness" and “vipassanā". A very basic approach to mindfulness, for example, is used in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, (MBCT) introduced into the UK Health Service in 2010 as a treatment for recurrent depression. Vipassanā for a while became a catch-all term for Buddhist meditation, particularly in the 1960s and 70s, and it is only relatively recently that samatha meditation is becoming better understood in the West.
The development of meditation teachings in the West has also paralleled major upheavals in source countries such as Tibet, as well as reforms and upheavals in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. Some of the “reforms”, as in early 19th century Thailand when a new ordination line, the Thammayutika Nikāya, was formed, continued into 1950s Thailand with the two sects the Thammayutika Nikāya and the Mahā Nikāya vying for influence, seeking to modernise and Westernise Buddhist practices. This was at the expense of centuries-old esoteric practices related to the samatha tradition, suppressed in favour of the “dry” Burmese vipassanā practice which was heavily promoted in the 1950s.
Research in Cambodia by L’École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), and in particular by the French ethnologist François Bizot since the 1970s, has recovered a number of old palm-leaf manuscripts related to the older practices, with similar texts also found in Thailand and Sri Lanka. This has opened up an interest in what has come to be known as Tantric Theravāda, or Boran Kammathāna (ancient practices), or the way of the Yogāvacara. Because of the cryptic nature of these texts, which reflect only fragments of what has always been an oral tradition, there is great scope for misinterpretations and misunderstandings if taken out of context from direct meditation experience.
and this is from wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yog%C4%81 … 27s_manual
The Yogāvacara’s manual is a Theravada Buddhist meditation manual with unique and unorthodox features such as the use of mental images of the elements, the mantra “A-RA-HAN”, and the use of a candle for meditation. It has been loosely dated from the 16th to the 17th century.[1]
Overview
The text is addressed to a “Yogāvacara”, referring to any practitioner of Buddhist meditation and hence it is a practical meditation manual.[2]
The text covers Buddhist meditation material such as the ten recollections (anussati), the brahmaviharas, the five kinds of piti (joy), the four formless realms (arūpajhāna), the nimittas, and 10 vipassanā-ñāṇas.[3] It teaches a form of breath meditation in which one cultivates a bright perception of a nimitta at the tip of the nose and moves it down the body to the heart and then to the navel.[4] It also includes many other exercises such as meditation using a candle flame, kasinas and the use of mental images of the elements (mahābhūta).[5]
The single rare Pali and Sinhalese manuscript was discovered in 1893 at Bamabara-walla Vihara in Sri Lanka by Anagarika Dharmapala.[6] T.W. Rhys Davids of the Pali Text Society translated the text into English in 1896. It was later translated by F.L. Woodward as “Manual of a Mystic”. The manuscript has no information on the author and has no title.[7]
Some scholars like Francois Bizot have argued that this work is influenced by the esoteric Theravada tradition, though other such as Justin Thomas McDaniel find this assertion dubious.[8] Caroline Rhys Davids notes that in the 16th and 17th centuries monks from Siam were invited by the Kandyan kings to revive Buddhism in the island and states it is possible that the manual derives from this tradition.[
