Ajahn Sucitto's most recent Dharma talks (Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center)

(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.

(Cittaviveka) On this last day of retreat, mind might be occupied with comings and goings and what’s next. Remember the stabilizing practices that give citta the strength and encouragement to open despite the bewildering nature of things. Don’t be moved by the change of circumstance, every moment is precious.

(Cittaviveka) An encouragement to continue finding the time and occasion to establish presence to be with all that arises. It’s not about getting through the maze of dukkha but gaining the skills and balance that lift you out. It’s the path of the sappurisa, the person of integrity who attunes to practice with all it requires – faith, open center, with the first movement being goodwill.

(Cittaviveka) We throw ourselves away into identities, sources of stress, comparison, separation. Puja is an occasion for returning to citta’s true home – the sacred that includes it all. Make note of what takes you out and what brings you back home – faith, values – and keep them close by.

(Cittaviveka) Is citta able to verbalize/understand words; citta’s role in nightmares; differences between hindrances and fetters; is cultivating bhavana or khanti better for burning off defilements; a lot of pain in the body caused movement in meditation disrupting energy; cultivating mētta; alternative healing methods; startled out of the body when bell rings; locating ancestral exclusions in the body; understanding workings of mind from Abhidhamma perspective vs. contemplation of 4 foundations of mindfulness for realizing non-self; accessing solar plexus during meditation; finding firmness when touching into open spaciousness; musician is torn between music and meditation.

(Cittaviveka) As you review what’s arising and passing for you, establish balance and continue with non-engagement. It’s just the human citta doing what it does. Awareness, firm and focused, lingering – in that you’ll find a quiet happiness.

(Cittaviveka) Working at our levels but there’s nothing to attain/is citta is inherently pure; how to think about kamma after death; how does being enveloped in compassion feel; after moving energy down into belly deciding to move from samatha to vipassanā; the knower merges with the known and there’s no object left; when beginning to become concentrated I get hijacked into numbness/feeling lost in brahmaviharā; relationship between awareness, citta, mindfulness and the mind.

(Cittaviveka) We can become flooded by signs that carry meaning according to our kammic histories. To move out of the floods of thought, self, other people, let the sign be a reminder. Go to the body, the felt sense, to the place where the personal qualities are subdued and there’s just the qualities of goodwill and patience. Energies shift and release. This is how we clean out embedded kamma.