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Retreat Dharma Talks
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Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
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| This on-line Zoom Retreat focused on clearing sensory and karmic overload and residues that impact the heart. Unresolved history can cause us to continue to frame ourselves and others with unhelpful projections. Clearing these within the interactive heart while staying present gives us confidence that we can move forward with a sense of path, of foundation, and of gratitude.
The daily schedule included sitting, walking and standing meditation, Dhamma teachings, chanting and question & answer sessions. Qigong and recorded Dhamma teachings were also offered to support your practice. |
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2021-05-30 (6 days)
Cittaviveka
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2021-05-30
Puja and Chanting
48:13
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Puja means honor or praise. It’s an important gesture to cultivate – the sense of rising up to something beautiful, something worthy. Making offerings, bowing, chanting and meditating are steadying and calming acts that massage the energies of body, heart and mind.
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2021-05-30
Precepts – A Way to Cross the Floods
47:21
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Determining to keep precepts is a way to cross the floods. They help check and restrain urges of gratification, malice and escapism. Coming from a place of ethics and mutuality naturally gives rise to pleasant states of being, giving us an orientation we want to remain with rather than following the immediate pull of inclination.
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2021-05-30
Establishing Firm Ground
42:33
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Ajahn Sucitto
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To stand against the tide of the floods we need firm ground. Established first in the body, mental/heart energies pick up the same theme of stability and core presence. This is the process of samatha – calming, stabilizing, giving one firm ground.
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2021-05-30
Guided Meditation – Body Energy Fields
23:25
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Ajahn Sucitto
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In standing, sitting and free movement postures, exercise an attitude of goodwill, sympathy and encouragement to invite body channels to open. Energies know what to do – body wants to wants to arrive at wholeness.
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2021-05-30
Day 1 Q&A
44:47
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Can we chant just in the heart, without sound; Buddhism’s view on healing with energy; how to work with various energy blocks and imbalances; feeling disoriented when letting go of a topic and giving attention to body energies; what importance to give to thought; how does one cultivate absorption, to be with intense emotions; when only eating before noon does hunger become an object of meditation.
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2021-05-30
Guided Meditation – Rhythm and Energy of Breathing
42:57
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Deal with the compulsions of becoming by tackling energy in the body. Thoughtful breathing becomes comfortable and soothing. Its rhythm moderates the floods, diffusing stressful energies and psychologies. Heart and body draw close in the enjoyment. From this place of samādhi you can stand back from the most fundamental flood of becoming.
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2021-05-30
Guided Meditation – Open Stability
23:17
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Ajahn Sucitto
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In meditation we’re resetting the dynamic movement of mental and physical energies with open energy. Using body as a guide, resonate the sense of balance and stability throughout. Let mindfulness deepen and maintain a wide-open energy that is receptive.
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2021-05-30
Sharing Heart
10:26
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Once an open stability has been established, we can work from this basis, engaging decisively from the place of giving. Bringing the quality of a giving heart to mind, allow yourself to be touched and feel moved. Continue practicing with the resonances of the brahmaviharā.
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2021-05-31
Puja – The Path to Here and Now
11:31
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Ajahn Sucitto
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In this practice we are gently peeling back the layers of time and identity to come into something much more sensitive. The act of puja is a sign for citta. Praising and recollecting in both meaning and enactment mark the path of the here and now.
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2021-05-31
Guided Meditation - Recollection
27:10
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Ajahn Sucitto
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With recollection, we drop meanings into the heart and listen. It’s how we come to know experience directly. Recollections of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha help frame up our meditation and cultivation – how to act, what to put aside, what to say no to, what to say yes to, and how to do that in a measured way.
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2021-05-31
Know One’s Range
52:33
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Realization can’t be taught, but it can be induced. Stable in one’s presence – open, listening, attentive – one comes to know one’s own range, the place where your potentials can properly unfold without getting tangled and without overreaching. Absorb into this steady place to begin clearing the floods.
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2021-05-31
Guided Meditation – Core Stability of Body
60:21
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Body’s somatic intelligence is receptive to signals – suggest signals of safety, space, freedom. Settle more deeply into the core stability of the body, where it’s not mediating with internal or external phenomena – restful, like a tree.
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2021-05-31
Day 2 Q&A
48:50
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Ajahn Sucitto
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What is practicing directly; differences between sāti sampajañña and sātipañña; meandering/curious attention when practicing; how important is jhāna; help working with our habits and blind spots; how to work with the inner critic; when to address things internally or externally with regards to other people.
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2021-05-31
Steering Thought
24:32
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Ajahn Sucitto
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We need to train and tame thought so we can use it carefully for inquiry and investigation. Steering away from the conceived, find out how citta is being affected. Supported by embodiment and qualities of goodwill and compassion, the tamed, trained thinking mind gives rise to insight – it’s a liberator.
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2021-05-31
Feeling Creates the Person
24:23
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The effect of feeling, agreeable or disagreeable, touches the citta. The practice is not to contract around the resonance, don’t grab the feeling. It’s the clinging reflex that creates the person. Maintain open stable presence – go bigger and wider than the activations – and the grasping lessens.
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2021-06-01
Day 3 Q&A1
42:27
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Ajahn Sucitto
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How do I know if I have stream entry; how is fasting a benefit for practice; is body contemplation needed, how often; how to live with someone who lacks integrity; sāti and samādhi; experience of rapture during meditation; difficult to see dukkha in sense pleasures; observing eight precepts; keeping ‘not eating after noon’ based on which time zone; issue of entitlement; receiving guidance from a teacher; understanding causes and conditions for clarity.
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2021-06-01
Puja - The Sacred
30:09
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Ajahn Sucitto
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In puja we align ourselves to the sacred. It gives our hearts a sense of purpose. Recollection of values and virtues are uplifted and sustained, giving rise to sappurisa – a person of integrity whose actions are for the welfare of all.
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2021-06-01
The Three-fold Flood
53:02
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The floods that wash over citta – floods of sensuality, kamma and unknowing – make it unstable, causing it to constantly search outside of itself for an anchor. The training is for citta to sit back in itself – remain embodied and use the tools within its range to gain strength and weaken the underlying programs.
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2021-06-01
Day 3 Q&A2
47:34
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Relationship between manas and citta; excessive sexual images; what is the subtle body; breath as prana/breath of life; heart qualities that shift perception to vitality; opening energy centers; does energy discharge in standing meditation; working with psychological and emotional pain; resentment and anger arise when practicing at home; unlearning addiction to the clock.
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