Dharma Seed - Dharma Talks from Retreats

Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

Mindfulness of breathing is the most thorough system for meditation that the Buddha taught– he used it for his own awakening and described at as being ‘of great benefit, of great fruit’.

In this retreat, Ajahn Sucitto will present the practice as a guide through the three-fold conditioning force (saṇkhāra) of body, thought and heart. These forces and their programs generate the conditions that embed the heart in saṃsāra, and yet if trained, lead to liberation.

The retreat will focus on the texts of the Ānāpāṇasati sutta (M.118) and also the Ānāpāṇasati saṃyutta of the Saṃyutta Nikāya.

2021-11-22 (5 days) Bodhi College

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2021-11-26 Bring your chaos home to be released 43:11
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
The suttas can give us prompts for how to practice, but the agent is this embodied heart. It’s a process of calming and steadying shared between body and heart that reveals that stable constant presence beneath the activated energies. Withdrawing energy from the activations, just witnessing the changeability of phenomena, there is dispassion and releasing. Meeting energy, not feeding it, so it can be freed.

2021-11-26 Guided meditation – Breathing regulates body and mind 45:12
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
Aspects of energy can be steadied through sustaining awareness over the entire process of an exhalation, until the inhalation begins. Help breathing to regulate your energy. Energy will regulate your mind, quiet it, steady it, compose it, and over time it will consolidate into a steady quiet form.

2021-11-26 Q&A 31:20
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
00:13 Working with tinnitus; 03:06 ‘sensing a way home to what I am’; 04:42 Becoming more comfortable with non-doing; 06:57 Mention not-self/anattā in the suttas; 11:26 Focusing on one point with breathing; 14:45 Feeling I should be doing something; 16:12 Building more energy in the practice as one ages; 22:32 Feeling angst about ending of the retreat; 23:15 Recollecting one’s virtues as preparation for death; 25:01 Having lost our ability to express open steady presence; 26:13 Refusing to identify with someone or some movement; 27:10 Aches in my shoulder in long sits; 29:06 Arūpa jhānas.

2021-11-26 Refuges and five precepts 6:19
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen

2021-11-26 Closing remarks – Refuge in this very body and mind 16:37
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
This is a practice that bears great fruit. In the long run it makes you into a more wakeful, less tense person. Take some time to recollect it. Put aside what you don’t need and focus on what’s absolutely essential – presence and awareness. In this very body and mind you have the perfect system to practice, and to develop the boundless heart.

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