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

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies) Supporting the heart with embodiment, with steady ground and safe space, allow breathing to happen naturally. Releasing what’s not needed, the subtle shielding around the body, open to what’s around with goodwill and love. Whatever arises, breathing it in, breathing it out.

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies) Standing can help adjust you physically, anatomically and psychologically. Establish balance, connection, openness and ease. Let breathing flow through you. Aim for what’s harmonious in all that – open, allowing. This is the birthplace of wisdom and compassion.

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies) Separation and interconnectedness; citta doesn’t fit in this world; destruction of the environment; fear of letting go; energy of body vs. sensations; healing divisiveness in my community.

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies) There are many kinds of world – biological, political, and so on. Their common source of discord is selfishness, the separatist, supremacist view. The common intention of all worlds is the search for safe ground. We might start with a safe human environment, then establish safe embodiment. When there is safety, security and truthfulness, by itself citta opens and brings forth its own qualities – love, wisdom and morality. These are our unique offerings to heal the discord in any world.

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies) This body that we can see as an object it’s also a subject – it’s a feeling, intelligent creature. Start with this right attitude, right view, and open the mind from the assumptions about body as an object to treating it as a sensitive creature. As we liberate this creature from clinging and identity, the witnessing heart – awareness – becomes more steady and peaceful.

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies) We see ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, but we’re not. We are a meeting point of all kinds of relational qualities, qualities that can be imbued with Dhamma to make our experience a mandala of sharing and communion. Stress comes from developing an ineffectual relationship with what happens. We practice to come out of the worldly dividedness into something more compassionate, deep, less isolated. This is sacred practice.

(Sunyata Buddhist Centre) 00:15 I find it difficult to access body and heart intelligence through sitting and breathing; 04:26 Is there a chant or practice we can do before or while eating?; 06:23 Sometimes the citta feels vast and spacious and other times intimate; 09:12 What is paritta chanting; 11:50 I suffer from tinnitus. How can I incorporate this into my meditation?; 14:18 Do you have long retreats, like 3 months?; 15:09 I experience reluctance to doing a daily formal sit even though I know it’s good for me; 17:33 What is right effort when it comes to strong sustained energy that is released during meditation?; 19:45 What is the background to the stained glass windows that Ajahn Sucitto helped design at the Sunyata Center?

(Sunyata Buddhist Centre) We can’t always feel good but we can get enough stability to stop running, and instead meet what’s unpleasant. Meditation is the opportunity to safely become insecure – set aside the defenses and strategies, remain present and stable, and open. When you’ve accepted its presence with mindfulness, fear no longer propels the citta because it’s been integrated.

(Sunyata Buddhist Centre) Time boundaries, pressure and obligation, create a frame within which the citta becomes compressed. We become a driven or burdened person. What is lacking is internal stability and openness. Stand back from all that and bring a gesture of goodwill to the constricted places. You then have your stable open presence to offer.

(Sunyata Buddhist Centre) The aim of mindfulness of breathing is to steady, refresh and bless the mind. When the heart becomes clean and happy, it naturally widens and sends out good energies and actions into the world. So when you cultivate through heart, you benefit both your own mind and the lives of others.