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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Retreat Dharma Talks
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Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
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| Our heart/mind gets clogged and soured by living in a situation of stress. Stress from performance drives and anxiety are a growing problem – they even affect spiritual and contemplative practice with goal-orientation and insecurity. All this leads to an obscuration of the potential for the heart: spaciousness, groundedness, and compassion. This retreat is aimed at putting us in touch with this fundamental resource, strengthening it, and integrating it into our lives. |
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2018-07-14 (10 days)
Madison Insight Meditation Group
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2018-07-15
04 Walking Instructions: Can You Move without a “There”?
7:36
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Our walking is generally to get “there,” which carries with it a certain quality of distress. Instead, try walking without a “there”. Check the mental constructions of destination- including a ‘spiritual’ one - instead pay attention to how the body walks. It’s more peaceful that way!
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2018-07-15
06 Using Thought for Recollection
38:20
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Dhamma practice is generally marked by a tangle of thoughts. But thought can be used for recollection. Taking words into the heart, we consider what has meaning, what serves as refuge, setting distractions aside.
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2018-07-16
07 Posture and Breath for Chanting
21:21
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Chanting begins with opening the belly, chest and throat. Posture and relaxation help clear blocked areas so the heart tone of chanting can vibrate and deepen through the body. [9:50 – 21:30 breathing and voice exercises]
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2018-07-16
09 Don’t Resist the Disorientation Experience
53:01
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Ajahn Sucitto
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On retreat there can be disorientation – new people, place, restrictions that weren’t there before. Disorientation is a tough medicine, but we use it to meet the boundary of the habitual self with its instinct to ‘make things go my way'. Stay with the discomfort, so that the mind changes direction: to the settled ground, through the body.
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2018-07-16
10 Discerning Your Way Through Systems
13:33
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Ajahn Sucitto
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One of the fundamental obstacles for unawakened beings is the attachment to systems and customs. Rather than a habit of a system or technique in meditation, rely on organic human intelligence. Discern what is skillful and unskillful, necessary and unnecessary. Keep paring away what’s not needed and dwell in what remains. Something is waiting to meet you – a certain stillness and firmness of the spirit.
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2018-07-17
11 You Don’t Stop Craving, You Stop Believing in It
68:20
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The mind is a dynamic process with a certain familiarity to it that seems to reiterate and get stuck in wanting and not wanting. Liberation from this begins with not getting involved with, tussling with or pandering to the habit of craving.
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2018-07-18
14 Allowing Innate Intelligence to Arise
55:03
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Two kinds of reflexes occur in the flow of experience: not knowing what to do and knowing what to do. Both are subject to suffering. Recognize that within experience there is an innate intelligence, clarity, refuge if we allow it to arise. Doing is guesswork; being is clearer.
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2018-07-19
17 Walking Instructions: Staying in Flow
4:20
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Ajahn Sucitto
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As we walk, we’re moving through the aggregates, through the field of mind as it opens with its senses of urgency, discord, worry. Sustain mobile mindfulness, walking through your psychological and emotional ‘weather’.
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2018-07-21
19 Careful Thinking to Be Cultivated for Wisdom and Release
37:44
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Used wisely thinking supports liberation. Through wise reflection we begin to understand the views and attitudes that give rise to afflictive thinking. But through patiently resisting acting on these creations, it’s possible to gain authority over one’s mind, rather than be caught in worldly currents.
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2018-07-21
20 Wisdom: Detox for the Heart
59:10
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Ajahn Sucitto
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One of the roles of wisdom is to continually check the toxic influences and open to what is here naturally. The unconditioned can be found through wise reflection and handling of the uncertain and unresolvable nature of conditioned experience. When we no longer resist it or feel agitated by it, the mind is released. The mind released shines in its own luminosity and that radiance gives the heart back its strength.
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2018-07-21
21 Q&A
61:55
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Working with sexual energy (0:08); social justice in line with Dhamma (15:20); mindfulness, thinking, speaking & listening (35:03)
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2018-07-22
22 The Comfort Place Is Here
57:24
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The end of retreat provides the occasion to experience endings and separation. Check the tendency to rush into the future, the desire to get out of the uncomfortable and move towards the comfort zone. These boundaries of entering something unknown are important places to pause and notice what’s happening. The comfort place is here, don’t leave it. Feel the disturbances, and meet them with mindful and loving acceptance.
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2018-07-23
23 Closing Exhortation: Being Is First, Doing Is Second
27:58
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Ajahn Sucitto
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As soon as something comes to mind, the impulse is to do something about it. This is just blind. The most important piece is be something first. It shouldn’t take that long, just 10 seconds. Even if being something is being aware of confusion, aware of dukkha, drop into the center of your reactivity. Then awakened intelligence has the possibility to arise in the pause.
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