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

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) Meeting what is disappointing and frustrating in an unfamiliar way and through contemplating the immediate experience of body and mind, release ownership. This reveals warm heartedness and compassion.

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) Citta is central to our experience of life and can be experienced separately from the energies and moods it is so involved with. It's a kind of '"awareing" that can be contemplated as sense data lands.

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) This embodiment practice is for simplification, a pruning that reveals harmony and harmlessness. It’s not a technique to achieve something.

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) edited

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) Taking off your social identity is a huge relief. Examine the qualities of heart, mind and body. Authenticity and persistence are food for the heart.

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) We use retreat experience to loosen up how we see and experience our habits and feelings. We see citta being shaped by clinging, being bound into the aggregates.

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) 00:00 Retreat culture seems rather elitist in some ways. What would the Buddha make of IMS Forest Refuge? 04:13 You talked about feeling feelings, so they can move through. Any tips on how to do this without getting embroiled in negative feelings? 19:28 Can you talk about working with knots or obsessions that are very strong? 26:33 Can you speak about neutral vedena. It seems most experience is neutral. 28:46 What is meant by worldly and unworldly vedena? 30:25 What is meant by internal and external vedena? Might external mean sensitive to other beings, being sensitive to their presence? 35:30 What is the relationship of the citta, the fine material, the ordinary sensorial body and to the felt sense of embodiment?42:09 How does the citta settle into knowing? 47:28 Regarding upekkha and the other brahma vihara, when do these wholesome states become another “project”, something to do? 49:37 What’s the difference between upekkha in the brahma vihara and upekka as an enlightenment factor? 51:31 How can one fulfil ones’ duties, roles and responsibilities in a way that inclines towards letting go and releasing the sense of self? 57:54 I’ve been taught that it’s better to pause and linger at the end of the inhalation but it seems to get tight. What can you suggest?

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) All things converge on feeling. Using mindfulness, we can scan our experience, developing authority over feeling - and wisdom to discern how things actually are.

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) Body awareness notices the energy that creates form, of the body and the mind/citta. It creates a "me", a blueprint for suffering. Wisdom is an observer that is not taken over by it.

(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge)