Donate  |   Contact


The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
 
Ajahn Sucitto's Dharma Talks
Ajahn Sucitto
As a monk, I bring a strong commitment, along with the renunciate flavor, to the classic Buddhist teachings. I play with ideas, with humor and a current way of expressing the teachings, but I don't dilute them.
     1 2 3 4 ... 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 ... 53 54 55 56
2021-08-08 Balance internal and external 2:56
Download Listen
Use the experience of deepening attention in your practice, to really see what’s around you. You can practice mindfulness when you move around off the cushion. Often we live in the cocoon of an assumed environment that is not really what’s there. Take a fresh look. Pay attention.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-08 Open into the given 27:58
Download Listen
Mindfulness is the heart's awareness. It can help us be embodied,present, and show up for life. The embodied sense is warm, cohesive and is sustained through the rhythmic flow of breathing. The sense of ‘I am’ sits in the center of that embodied sensitivity. This sense is a given and cannot be created; but mostly its ignored because we're too busy ‘doing’ to receive it.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-08 Little me and the sabotage 48:21
Download Listen
We live at the meeting point of perceptions and impressions with their reactions and cannot stop suffering until we see beyond that domain. Stability and the awareness of the ever-changing nature of experience are both essential. From this perspective we see how the pressure to be harmonious with others captures the heart. This is a form of sabotage; it creates inner conflict, and a person – little me – who is never happy. When there is conflict, it’s important to find common ground with others, prior to negotiating the details.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-07 Love is not a reward 49:34
Download Listen
When we give the citta our attention, there is a possibility for it to offer its four treasures - kindness, compassion, appreciative gladness, equanimity. These treasures are a virtual immune system, protecting one from the hostilities in the world. They free us from seeking adoration from others as well as comparing ourselves to and competing with others. Whereas a narrow form of love is used as a social training and diminishes healthy acceptance and self view, authentic love is a natural and shared medium for mutuality-based life.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-07 Q&A 47:26
Download Listen
Q1- How to deal with strong floods of sankhāra, in dealing with my role and identity as a Mother. Q2 – Are the qualities of the heart conditioned in the same way as intellectual abilities or physical strength. Q3 – I have a 17 year old dying cat. She suffers a lot and rejects the comforting medicine of the vet. Is this cat wisdom? Q4 What would be a sequence for a daily meditation practice? Q5 Are dharma and dhamma the same? Q6 Can we use the 5 indriyas to solve the 5 hindrances? Q7 How to deal with a band of pain around the back. Q8 Healthy attachment is important for example in childhood development. How do we know if it is OK to have an attachment or not.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-07 Guided Meditation - Standing 2 23:23
Download Listen
In some ways we don’t do very much in standing meditation. We use the body to adjust the body energy rather than the mind with the heart gently enquiring: “How is this now?” With the whole body in focus we can experience the body’s natural intelligence.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-07 Balancing indriya (36:59) 36:56
Download Listen
The search for stability and happiness is a reasonable one, it’s just generally pointed in the wrong direction. We overlook our own center as the source for non-suffering. Proper cultivation of the 5 indriya culminate in such a state. Their potency is not so much in each individual quality, but in how they blend – both balancing and enriching each other.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-07 Meditation heart, body and mind co-operating 28:00
Download Listen
The qualities of heart, body and intellect can come together in mutual support. Upright steady body; comfortable heart that’s not straining; mind listening, acting as a coach. This is entering into proper relationship – you can get great strength from just this.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-06 Reflection on goodwill 11:18
Download Listen
Acknowledge the capacity and willingness we have as humans for goodwill – and the horrific capacity we have for ill will. We use our practice to turn our attention towards goodwill and to exercise our ability to notice and generate heart energies. Metta allows us to put aside harmful energies and thoughts and to be grateful for the expanded state of mind that it brings. Equanimity means staying emotionally present regardless of our reaction to experience. We avoid perfectionist tendencies and ideas about what we should or should not do and maintain a generous heart.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-06 Guided standing meditation 45:13
Download Listen
Notice that the body knows how to stand, how to balance, by itself - with no mental effort. Enjoy your feet as the chief of the management team and spread your attention to other members of the team.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-06 Chanting - Divine Abidings 10:00
Download Listen
Ajahn reviews the physical and conceptual approach to chanting and leads (at 06:27) the Divine Abidings Chant
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-06 Q& A On effort and relaxation 34:48
Download Listen
00:41 Q1 I have trouble relaxing with my meditation. Samadhi seems more available when I sit on the couch with a cup of tea. What can you suggest? 16:47 Q2 Receiving or attuning to what is given can be tricky due to our family and social conditioning. How do we deal with this conditioning? 24:15 Q3 When I sit or walk my body sucks in the air and holds it for maybe 5 seconds. Should I just observe this or is my practice misguided?
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-06 Moving out of meditation 6:22
Download Listen
A practice of lingering and noticing what has passed has an open and steadying effect. This is an aspect of mindfulness: to not rush onto the next thing but notice what’s there. This is where samadhi arises. Give yourself a set period of time while meditating, then make the movement out of meditation free and aimless.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-06 Meditation on the axis 5:22
Download Listen
Some brief suggestions on working on posture to sharpen one’s sitting meditation.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-06 The guardians of open stability 48:57
Download Listen
The basis of citta (heart-awareness) can be touched by using the thought “it’s like this now”. We can rely on the 5 indriyas to be as allies and guardians; they protect us from reactivity and from running away from our authentic heart.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-03 Field of Blessings 42:15
Download Listen
Based on who we associate with and surround ourselves with, a field is generated where we pick up the behaviors and tonalities. One trains to generate a supportive field for training and learning. Whatever the field, open to what you’re in, get a feel for that, and aim for what is honorable, steady and balanced.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-08-02 Moving through the World 42:48
Download Listen
How we meet and move through our world determines our experience of it. If we can shift our volition, the world changes. Contemplate the proper intention for whatever you’re a part of – best thing to stop suffering is to be in harmony with it. Breathing in, breathing out, setting aside any hint of ill-will, open to your world with the gentle quality of suffusing goodwill.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-08-01 Easing into Wholeness 45:02
Download Listen
We use the forms of everyday life to notice what the mind makes out of them, the accumulations that occur. The theme is stay with the whole, stay connected, let the details go. What’s behind the inclination to move out? The stable reassuring quality of attention over the whole form – without ill-will, closing down, or dismissal – results in the freedom and happiness we seek.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-07-31 Skilful Signs Skilful Absorption 39:07
Download Listen
By its nature, mind is absorptive. In skilful cultivation we steer that towards internal qualities of contentment, unity, release. This is how we are gladdened – the nervous system steadies and cools, body gets happy, mind composes itself, then you begin to see things clearly – what’s causing the distortions, stress and struggle, and you stop doing it, stop throwing your heart away to your obsessions. Settle into the goodness, drink it in. Wisdom arises from here.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-07-30 A Breath of Kindness to the Kammic Field 41:40
Download Listen
Kamma is a feedback loop of actions and results, out of which comes the experience of ‘me’. We use meditation to step out of the scenarios, recognize the process and change the patterns. Once you see it, you get the meaning – ‘a suffering being’– and the response is sympathy. Use the energy of breathing to calm and clear afflictive states, replacing them with healing.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-07-29 Upright Mind, Upright Body 46:18
Download Listen
Bring attention to where body and mind come together in the upright. Upright is not just anatomical, but energetic – where you feel balanced, poised, wakeful. Relax the stress in body and mind with the calming effects of breathing. As mental and bodily energies gather and steady around the center, citta can rest here, and begin to experience its collectedness.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-07-28 Forgiveness and Gratitude 40:39
Download Listen
Suffering tends to isolate us into a small tight heap forming around a particular topic. In this narrow field we lose access to gladness, self-acceptance, and forgiveness. Breathing through the agitating energies, feel them as just that – it’s not personal, we can rise above. Willing to touch what’s difficult with gladness, we can meet the failing world without getting upset.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-07-24 Asalha Puja – The Middle Way of Practice 50:45
Download Listen
The Buddha teaches the middle way between the extremes. This quality of balance extends from right view, the recognition that actions extend beyond oneself – into the world around, to other people; it sets up what develops next for oneself. It matters which way the mind dips. Stay upright in that center that deepens into samādhi and wisdom, extending goodwill and clarity across whatever we contact and touch.
Cittaviveka :  Cittaviveka 2021 Rains Retreat - Opening Group Practice
2021-07-22 Guided Meditation - Right View Supports Right Mindfulness 50:40
Download Listen
When mindfulness is based on right view, there is understanding of skillful and unskillful mind-states and the effects they give rise to. Otherwise mindfulness is merely attention. Right mindfulness, established firmly in the body, has the quality of steadiness and stillness, witnessing and non-involvement with phenomena. Mindfulness is about returning to body and breathing – ground, space, center.
Cittaviveka
2021-07-15 Closing Remarks 12:14
Download Listen
with Ajahn Sucitto, Willa Thaniya Reid
Parting words and expressions of gratitude from the teachers. “These are opportunities in this human realm to experience letting go, gratitude, compassion, gladness, equanimity.”
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-15 Day 6 Q&A 55:20
Download Listen
with Ajahn Sucitto, Willa Thaniya Reid
Balance between discipline and self-love; failure as a shadow side of practice; addiction to Dhamma talks/books; skillful way to deal with anger; benefits of regulating breath.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-15 Guided Meditation – Brahmaviharā 20:01
Download Listen
Use of images and recollections to deeply experience the qualities of the brahmaviharā. Keep attention wide, body relaxed, attuned to how things are felt – shifting, moving, and affecting the body. And is it possible to turn any feature of these intentions towards yourself?
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-15 Harvesting the field of Dhamma 61:10
Download Listen
The way to make use of the closure of retreat is to harvest. Standing at the door of the mind, use the body for support to review the stuff of the mind from a balanced place. The upright axis cools the field of reactivity. Witnessing with disengagement, don’t be deceived by what appears internal and external, it’s all happening in the mind.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-15 Guided Meditation – Graduated Expansion 8:12
Download Listen
Guidance to gradually return to awareness through the sense fields. No pushing, just expanding lightly, integrating the inner domain with your external circumstance in whatever you do next.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-15 Puja – A Daily Door to the Sacred 16:32
Download Listen
The occasion of puja provides a useful link between our inner realities and outer circumstances. As we chant and make offerings, we’re open and receptive to the virtue, values, insights of our depth experience. The body picks up these signs as deep tissue memories, making these qualities available to enrich what we do in the external world.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-14 Guided Meditation – Fine Tuning the Postures 5:46
Download Listen
Advice for specific sāti helpful in each posture. Establishing ground, steadiness and center while keeping awareness wide, allow dhammas to swim by, letting them all go. A certain strengthening effect comes from that.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-14 Day 5 Q&A 52:15
Download Listen
with Ajahn Sucitto, Willa Thaniya Reid
Difference between wise caution and anxious reaction; use of psychiatric medicines; please condense teachings and instructions for practice; cultivating relationship with gods/celestial beings; commitment to waking up entangled with wanting and striving; transitions in place, experience and practice.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-14 The Gift of Realization 56:06
Download Listen
Realization isn’t something you do, it’s something that arises from beyond yourself. When we stop reacting to the stirrings of our kammic field, stop creating a self, awareness can lift and witness – this is suffering, this is its origin, this is how it ceases. As we begin to wear out these distorted psychologies that make up the self, qualities of happiness, freedom, joy and love become available as a gift.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-14 Puja – Being Buddha 40:03
Download Listen
The nature of puja is it’s a direct participation in Dhamma. Setting aside what is not needed, boundaries of self and circumstance dissolve and there’s just the upright center, receptive. Surveying the field of kamma from this awakened position gives you a direction, a vantage point from which to navigate your day and your meditation.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-14 Day 5 Q&A 41:05
Download Listen
Accepting my own aging; emptiness; is taking a stance alignment rather than saṇkhāra; how to deal with conflict mindfully; can our practice become self-centered; how to maintain this in daily life; how to repay kamma/transfer merit for accidentally killing animals; struggling to wake up and meditate; how to work with desire for solitude and concern over isolation/loneliness; how to relate to mother who has long term issue of complaining.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-14 Guided Meditation – It’s Like This Now 18:10
Download Listen
Practicing in the upright body, surveying the field, whatever is happening for you, wherever you are, however you are – it’s like this now. Without reacting, denying, fighting or fudging, staying with experience but not in it. That’s the still point. Through that power of this truth, the tide of kamma begins to settle and clarify, and wisdom begins to arise.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-13 Day 4 Q&A 54:09
Download Listen
with Ajahn Sucitto, Willa Thaniya Reid
Maintaining mindfulness on sleeping and waking up; relationship between being sensitive and taking things personally; human enhancement and right view; sense is of being a frightened deer – practices for inner sense of security; gathering the good for wandering mindstates.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-13 Replenishment 65:06
Download Listen
Citta can become established on our own or others’ foolish actions, then suffers from depletion, withdrawal of empathy. It doesn’t know how to drink in its own goodness. Use breathing to shift these deep-seated negative formations, suffusing the body with the qualities of the brahmaviharā. Put aside the doing and receive these natural resonances as a source of nourishment and replenishment.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-13 Puja – Surveying the Field of Kamma 39:52
Download Listen
Puja offers the opportunity to survey the field of your mind, your kammic field. Survey it with the eye of a Buddha, with compassion and awareness, not self, just qualities moving around. Remain on the edge, keep your intentions light – sensing, steadying – and let things reveal themselves more fully.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-13 Day 4 Q&A 45:24
Download Listen
How can I love myself; how to deal with loneliness; questions that arise while sitting; gratitude and rejoicing; preventing negative energy coming towards us; in-breath gets stuck at solar plexus; using breathing meditation in standing posture; working with the effects of harmful childhood events; energy can be helpful but isn’t a meditation technique; worry about other people.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-13 Guided Meditation – Open Stability 15:00
Download Listen
A practice with opening the sense fields while remaining with the upright. Remain in receptive mode – there is the seeing, the seen, the one who sees – not moving out into any of these, staying with undivided wholeness.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-12 Day 3 Q&A 58:30
Download Listen
with Ajahn Sucitto, Willa Thaniya Reid
How to respond to the energy of craving (taṇhā); how to navigate states of calm; advice for approaching cancer without fighting/setting up a war; how to work with thinking, between suppressing in meditation and reacting while living in the world; encountering doubt after 20 years of practice; how to work with unhappiness/sadness.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-12 Guided Meditation – Breathing into Empathic Life 19:53
Download Listen
Guidance to sense experience at the cellular level, not as a person. Establish the firm welcome of ground and safe benevolent space around. Sensing, with every inhalation is a birth, with every exhalation a complete emptying back into ground. Tuning into the subtle bodily and mental feelings, may this be well.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-12 Right View of the Domain of Practice 54:47
Download Listen
How we live on the surface – our lifestyle, speech, actions – generates signs and messages received in the depth. Make an effort to establish right view in your daily life. Mindfulness is then established from that message, not in self-view but in the right territory of lovingkindness, compassion, renunciation.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-12 Refuge Place 15:01
Download Listen
From the depth of the heart is a place of refuge. A place you can go with failures, pains, mistakes – and be accepted. A place to put it all down, finish it. Let go of the tangles and snagging that happen at the surface.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-12 The Treasure of Right Speech 15:25
Download Listen
Speech today tends to be surface babble, it doesn’t go to the depths. One who knows the depths speaks things that are valuable, useful, conducive to harmony. Therefore one looks at speech as a potential treasure, something that can demonstrate love, show that other people matter to me.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-12 Day 3 Q&A 54:51
Download Listen
Other people’s suffering; what is meant by ‘non-self’; remaining with love when one feels constricted and out of control; cause of excessive burping; please talk about the perception-feeling saṇkhāra processes; the purpose of sensing space around; body scanning to train the mind.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-11 Day 2 Q&A 52:04
Download Listen
with Ajahn Sucitto, Willa Thaniya Reid
Questions have been grouped by theme: Breathing; how do we work with the regret; questions around citta; how does piti (rapture) manifest in the body; heart feels like a lump of black coal.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-11 Returning to Surface 15:11
Download Listen
Whatever arises from the depth, it’s not yourself. It’s citta territory – nothing to fight with, claim or stir yourself up with. Stay with the center, the quality of uprightness and the ground from which it arises.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-11 Wholeness and Fragmentation 59:39
Download Listen
Upright is both a physical and psychological feature. We can feel the balance, and if attention is sustained there, afflictive energies pass through –confusion transmutes into sanity. Because of ignorance we lose touch with wholeness, energy scatters and spills out through the khandas. Return to the wholeness, extend love and gentleness. Linger in skillful perceptions and the heart will reform itself in line with those meanings.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid

     1 2 3 4 ... 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 ... 53 54 55 56
Creative Commons License Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Dharma Seed is a 501(c)(3) Non-profit organization. email: contact@dharmaseed.org