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Ajahn Sucitto's most recent Dharma talks (Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley)
Ajahn Sucitto's most recent Dharma talks (Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) episodes
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: The Healing Potential of the Heart(Cittaviveka) Training involves the pause – connect to what’s happening, and use careful attention to deepen into citta. There’s more than just discomfort there – there’s healing potential if one can touch into the healthy spots.*Sutta reference Udāna 4:148 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Cittaviveka Buddhist Monastery Uposatha Public Talk: The Foundation for Relinquishment Is Comfort(Cittaviveka) There are many meditation techniques, but fundamental is finding where the mind will settle - what citta finds comfort in. The more energy rests in that and returns to is, energy is consolidated instead of scattered, running out to external forms. This is the principle for clarification, purification, for awakening.52 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: Freeing the Heart from the Whip of ‘Should Be’(Cittaviveka) Mind (manas) whips the heart with its interpretations of how things should be, thereby stirring up discontent and agitation. Mind can be placed in service of heart (citta) instead. Citta’s awakened response to the conditioned realm is one of empathy. Holding, soothing, steadying – there is the possibility to experience the clarity and calm of the Buddha rather than the misery that mind creates.*Sutta Nipāta: 721, Dhammapada:134, and M.1838 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: Make Your Mind Like Gold(Cittaviveka) The process of purifying gold can help us understand the nature of mind. Clearing out the turbulences and impurities makes way for what is naturally pure and radiant to come forth. Freed from the hindrances, the mind is pliable, luminous, properly fit for work.*Sutta references: AN5:193; AN3:101-102; SN:46:53; AN6:8538 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: Spiritual Friendship As the Basis for Awakening(Cittaviveka) We may feel more isolated than ever, but the truth is that we’re always captive in our sensory prisons. The aim is to liberate and open the heart so that qualities beyond sense consciousness can be realized. Key among the factors needed for liberation is kalyāṇamitta – spiritual friendship.*Sutta reference AN9:336 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: The Gift of Vulnerability(Cittaviveka) It’s possible to meet suffering with an open heart. If the heart can open to grief, pain and vulnerability, a new view is possible – one beyond the cycle of birth and death. Keep the heart open to Dhamma, rooted in faith and goodwill. This is the Path to the deathless. *Sutta References: Therīgatha 6:2; Samyutta Nikaya 12:23; Samyutta Nikaya 1:1033 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: The Way Out of the Flood(Cittaviveka) Mindfulness based on body is the way out of the mind. From here I can witness feeling rather than dive into it. With wisdom we can come to prefer skillful intention rather than seeking good feeling. When intention is skillful conduct, there is no grasping at results. That feels good! And we are free to act without seeking a result, without becoming. *Sutta reference is AN10:58.36 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: The Skill of Recollection(Cittaviveka) Recollection is not just thinking about things, it’s associated with the quality of careful attention. Encourage the mind to think slowly, touch the heart and abide in wholesome qualities. In daily life we do the external, but embedded in the ground of the heart is where your basis is. *Sutta reference is AN11:11-12.40 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Dhamma Stream Online Puja: The End of Fear(Cittaviveka) We look for safety and stability in a level of experience that cannot provide it, that’s the source of agitation. In meditation we practice the ability to sustain ungrasping attention around a thought, feeling, situation, and particularly unpleasant feeling. The content will constantly shift, but the relationship to them, awareness, can become the source of stability. *Sutta reference is SN2:17.27 min
- Ajahn Sucitto: Home Movie from the Kuti: Where and How Are You Going?(Cittaviveka) We can use this experience of lock down to address the routines and standards that support our daily becoming. The mind is pulled further and further wondering what to do, planning what's next. What to do is stop, rest in the body, maintain deep attention. Consider rituals that nuplug and cut the tide of becoming.36 min
About Ajahn Sucitto's most recent Dharma talks (Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley)
From the publisher's feed
As a monk, I bring a strong commitment, along with the renunciate flavor, to the classic Buddhist teachings. I play with ideas, with humor and a current way of expressing the teachings, but I don't dilute them.
Sitting in a field of fifty to eighty people really starts my mind sparking. Since I don't prepare my talks ahead of time, I find myself listening to what I'm saying along with everyone else. This leaves a lot of room for the Dhamma to come up. Just having eighty people listening to me is enough to engage me, stimulate me, and create a nice flow of energy. The actual process of teaching evokes ideas that even I did not realize were being held somewhere in my mind.
Different teaching situations offer their own unique value. In retreat, you are able to build a cohesive and comprehensive body of the teachings. When people are not on retreat and come for one session, it opens a different window. They are more spontaneous and I'm given the chance to contact them in ways that are closer to their "daily-life mind." This brings up surprises and interesting opportunities for me to learn even more.
I'm continually struck by how important it is to establish a foundation of morality, commitment, and a sense of personal values for the Vipassana teachings to rest upon. Personal values have to be more than ideas. They have to actually work for us, to be genuinely felt in our lives. We can't bluff our way into insight. The investigative path is an intimate experience that empowers our individuality in a way that is not egocentric. Vipassana encourages transpersonal individuality rather than ego enhancement. It allow for a spacious authenticity to replace a defended personality.
I normally incorporate Qi Gong instruction in my retreats. They are not suitable as audio files but you can watch the nine videos here: https://tinyurl.com/Sucitto-qigong