The initial disorientation of entering a retreat is useful. It reveals how familiarity breeds stagnation, blinding us to the deeper reality and vitality of being alive.

Formalizing our relationship to values of harmlessness, trustworthiness and respect in retreat, can remind us of what matters and let us land into a softer heart.

We use our practice for understanding the direct and intimate experience. This experience cannot be predicted, imposed or demanded, but it arises, offering itself for our careful attention.

Ajahn Laura describes the form, process and dynamic of offering alms.

We use puja to exercise and develop our heart quality of honouring and respecting.

Arriving and adjusting to the retreat provides an example of the fixities and rigidities challenging us from settling. These are actually the khandas.

Understanding the aggregates allows us to see our world is a tangled web of conditions that needs untangling not tearing.

Self and other, life and death, body and mind are some of the basic fragmentations causing stress. Practice allows a healing wisdom to arise.

00:05 Q1 (AS) You talked about protection during the QiGong. How does protection happen without closure? 09:39 Q2 (LB) Could you explain how the citta can cleanse sankaras? 17:05 (AS response). 36:04 Q3 (AS) Given that I struggle to maintain focus even on a narrow object, it’s very hard to bring the whole body into awareness . Any hints? 45:02 (LB response).

There is a heart place that experiences reverberations and exasperation. It seems that this is me. Keep asking: What and where is this me?

00:05 Before encountered the dhamma I always thought that problems required solutions. You say they need spaciousness, openness and patience. What then is the place for mental strategies and solutions.

Ajahn reviews some of the teachings during the retreat so far and urges us to use our potency as individuals.

In understanding craving, one of my teachers suggests using right view – ‘everything is nature happening’. This helpfully moves craving out of being good or bad.

The day starts with a sense of decisive engagement but confusion frequently masks this and we get run by external conditions. Breathing is an animate centre that allows perspective.

Unplugging our normal drivers and moving into retreat can be an uncomfortable experience. Use it as an occasion to strengthen presence through embodiment.

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Questions are précised: 00:00 Q1 What do you mean by “re-wilding your mind”? 19:59 Q2 What’s the relation between pitti, sukka and chi. 25:05 Q3 Which comes first after sense contact, sannya (impression/ perception) or vedena (the feeling)? 28:00 Q4 Does the third sattipatana (the establishments of mindfulness) only include citta of mano / manus? 34:21 (LB) Q5 How to contemplate the “gunky” parts of the body – the organs that get diseased etc. 41:35 Q6 I have a sense of the experience of annica like a connection to dynamism. Impermanence has a very time bound quality to it. 42:31 Q7 How can one develop one’s yoniso manisakara to keep attention turned inwards?

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