Ajahn Sucitto's most recent Dharma talks (Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley)

(Cittaviveka) Cultivation of citta is the highest kind of learning we can undertake. The breathing body is our means for learning, for directly experiencing our kammic configurations. It provides a basis so when difficult states arise, citta can remain open and stable, and move through them.

(Cittaviveka) The Buddha said that amongst all the bodies, best is the breathing body. Most important is to give emotional support to let the breathing do the work – allowing, wishing, encouraging. This a useful foundation for contemplating the various currents, energies, obsessions that citta has to release.

(Cittaviveka) All the world rests on very simple human emotions – fear, anxiety, loneliness, gratification. We run out because of them, or build walls to protect ourselves from them. Practice with restraint, keep coming back to here, now, knowing, it’s like this. Don’t run out, just return, and the outflows fade on their own.

(Cittaviveka) The tendency to keep running out into concepts eventually results in overload, insecurity, anxiety, collapse. We’re desperately looking for sanity. The steadiness and fulfillment we seek is already here, in the non-conceptual intelligence of body and heart. Rather than going out, return to where body, mind and heart energy come together. In this presence our real home appears.

(Cittaviveka) One of the most fundamental requirements in meditation is restraining the mind. Rather than running out, energy can settle and calm. Then one’s effort is neither straining towards some goal, nor enmeshed in agitation. There’s space for sensitivity, receptivity, listening. When the outflows are restrained goodwill, compassion, clarity and wisdom come forth on their own.

(Cittaviveka) Use the three intelligences of heart, mind and body to create a sense of calm and happiness. Body helps restrain mind; heart generates an atmosphere of gentleness and goodwill. Know what’s worth giving attention to for liberation.

(Cittaviveka) Our apparent reality arises from moods and interpretations that generate the world of time and space, self and other. It’s possible to meet the moods and mental states directly without creating stories or identities until the signs dissolve and only clarity remains. Meditation and engagement are skillful means to understand the dependent arising of our world, of suffering, and of skillful dhammas.

(Cittaviveka) We can use the occasion of puja to cultivate signs of purity, beauty, liberation. You’ll feel it changes the rhythm of the mind – heart opens, thinking mind slows down and bodily presence wakes up. Anxieties and agitations are held in this open presence, felt in the body, and allowed to pass and dissolve.

(Cittaviveka) A reflection on how this online retreat came together: good people combining their skills towards a wholesome intention. Whatever we embark on has an element of uncertainty and possibility of failure, but the heart doesn’t fail. Stay open, do your practice, and meet the challenges that arise. Best to form a group – it becomes difficult when you feel you’ve got to do it on your own.

(Cittaviveka) Trying to find triggers and safe space in the midst of health issues that affect nervous system, heart rate and breathing; stiff neck and shoulder muscles keep re-contracting; how to respond to getting so tired; what is the wise and caring response to body; navigating touch and contact skillfully; how can we be heirs to our kamma if there is no self to inherit it; through investigation of qualities of citta clarity and falling away has occurred – how to sustain; the more I see things clearly the more I feel the weight of delusion causing sadness and disgust and feeling of pointlessness for practice; how to approach in and out breath to calm mental activity (citta)/please speak to mindfulness of feeling from the Ānāpānasati Sutta.