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 ... 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ... 54 55 56 57
2021-08-14 Guided Meditation – Subtleties of Breathing 22:17
Download Listen
Supporting the heart with embodiment, with steady ground and safe space, allow breathing to happen naturally. Releasing what’s not needed, the subtle shielding around the body, open to what’s around with goodwill and love. Whatever arises, breathing it in, breathing it out.
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies :  The Sacred Cosmos
2021-08-14 Standing Meditation: Openness – the Sacred Quality 43:19
Download Listen
Standing can help adjust you physically, anatomically and psychologically. Establish balance, connection, openness and ease. Let breathing flow through you. Aim for what’s harmonious in all that – open, allowing. This is the birthplace of wisdom and compassion.
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies :  The Sacred Cosmos
2021-08-14 Q&A 1 31:43
Download Listen
Separation and interconnectedness; citta doesn’t fit in this world; destruction of the environment; fear of letting go; energy of body vs. sensations; healing divisiveness in my community.
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies :  The Sacred Cosmos
2021-08-14 The Search for Safe Ground 54:18
Download Listen
There are many kinds of world – biological, political, and so on. Their common source of discord is selfishness, the separatist, supremacist view. The common intention of all worlds is the search for safe ground. We might start with a safe human environment, then establish safe embodiment. When there is safety, security and truthfulness, by itself citta opens and brings forth its own qualities – love, wisdom and morality. These are our unique offerings to heal the discord in any world.
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies :  The Sacred Cosmos
2021-08-13 Guided Meditation – Liberating the Body 49:33
Download Listen
This body that we can see as an object it’s also a subject – it’s a feeling, intelligent creature. Start with this right attitude, right view, and open the mind from the assumptions about body as an object to treating it as a sensitive creature. As we liberate this creature from clinging and identity, the witnessing heart – awareness – becomes more steady and peaceful.
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies :  The Sacred Cosmos
2021-08-13 The Myth of the Individual 47:01
Download Listen
We see ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, but we’re not. We are a meeting point of all kinds of relational qualities, qualities that can be imbued with Dhamma to make our experience a mandala of sharing and communion. Stress comes from developing an ineffectual relationship with what happens. We practice to come out of the worldly dividedness into something more compassionate, deep, less isolated. This is sacred practice.
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies :  The Sacred Cosmos
2021-08-10 Q&A 24:57
Download Listen
00:15 I find it difficult to access body and heart intelligence through sitting and breathing; 04:26 Is there a chant or practice we can do before or while eating?; 06:23 Sometimes the citta feels vast and spacious and other times intimate; 09:12 What is paritta chanting; 11:50 I suffer from tinnitus. How can I incorporate this into my meditation?; 14:18 Do you have long retreats, like 3 months?; 15:09 I experience reluctance to doing a daily formal sit even though I know it’s good for me; 17:33 What is right effort when it comes to strong sustained energy that is released during meditation?; 19:45 What is the background to the stained glass windows that Ajahn Sucitto helped design at the Sunyata Center?
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-10 Opening the mind door 41:07
Download Listen
We can’t always feel good but we can get enough stability to stop running, and instead meet what’s unpleasant. Meditation is the opportunity to safely become insecure – set aside the defenses and strategies, remain present and stable, and open. When you’ve accepted its presence with mindfulness, fear no longer propels the citta because it’s been integrated.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-10 No obligation 40:25
Download Listen
Time boundaries, pressure and obligation, create a frame within which the citta becomes compressed. We become a driven or burdened person. What is lacking is internal stability and openness. Stand back from all that and bring a gesture of goodwill to the constricted places. You then have your stable open presence to offer.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-09 Guided Meditation – Breathing 52:29
Download Listen
The aim of mindfulness of breathing is to steady, refresh and bless the mind. When the heart becomes clean and happy, it naturally widens and sends out good energies and actions into the world. So when you cultivate through heart, you benefit both your own mind and the lives of others.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-09 Q&A 46:38
Download Listen
O1:06 Q1 How should one prepare the body and mind for sleep. 07:27 Q2 Could you explain again what is meant by the axis and the heart line. 20:44 Q3 If I go to crowded places, when I get home I feel sad and sometimes even suicidal from all negative energies. How can one protect oneself from this? 24:47 Q4 How can we get beyond the habits of the mind? 27:29 Q5 I think you said that “known” is a feeling. I am confused. 33:08 Q6 Most jobs have to do with the exploitation of the environment in some way and even healing professions are contaminated with the exchange of money. Can you offer some comments? 41:01 Q7 I have a chance to get a new job. I feel excitement but also see I will have less time to meditate and care for my elderly Mum. 43:49 Q8 My son has cut himself and my grandchildren off from me and I feel my heart has turned to stone.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-09 Walking through your identity 8:27
Download Listen
In walking meditation, move through the identifiable world. Feel its resonances and triggerings and keep walking, see them as changing flickering phenomena. Maintain a steadiness as you walk through your world – it’s not actually yours, it’s always going its own way.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
In collection: A Moving Balance
2021-08-09 No person, no problem 33:11
Download Listen
Citta’s tendency is to grasp onto phenomena, seeking stability in the ever-changing nature of things. Citta can also respond to phenomena with mindfulness — an open attention that allows things to do what they do and move through. When the constant seeking abates, a pleasant abiding place remains. This is where true stability is found.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-09 Guided Meditation - Samadhi is harmony 29:47
Download Listen
When we establish steadiness of body, citta returns to being embodied because that’s its home base. With steadiness and comfort, pressure is released in both body and heart. Cultivate like this and the self-referencing can disappear; then there’s just witnessing. When body and heart are held together in harmony – this is samādhi.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-09 Well-being is the shape of heart 43:03
Download Listen
The heart takes shape based on certain activations. We can train to avoid certain intentions and actions that make for either a shaky insecure heartone or one stuck with pain. A wise person concerned for their welfare cultivates a citta that is open, spacious, not hankering, not resisting. We begin to reset how our world feels and how we feel about ourselves. This is our treasure.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-08 Guided Meditation - Awareness spread over the body-mind field 47:45
Download Listen
Many things arise in the field of awareness. It’s all energies moving – some bodily, some emotional, some conceptual. Spread awareness over all of it equally, without grasping or repelling. Every detail is to be included into the whole, like a mosaic. There’s no person separate from this, there’s just this and awareness of it. May it be well.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-08 Standing Meditation – Whole Body Vitality 26:56
Download Listen
Begin with a bit of movement and loosening so energy can flow freely. Once movement stops, sense into subtler aspects of bodily experience – where is there stability, space, connection. A lightness, even playfulness, is encouraged in meditation. Enjoy.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-08 Q&A 49:41
Download Listen
Q1 – A comment about personal experience of alignment – lateral and vertical and Ajahn’s response; Q2 18:32 Can you provide more guidance on the use of space. Q3 21:15 I am dealing with a very volatile situation with severe conflict and stress. How can I deal with it mid-way between expressing my emotions and suppressing them? Q4 28:24 When I feel my body and heart are stable is that a good moment to bring up a problem of concern for me? Q5 28:59 Someone has been asking for my help, rather too much and too often and I find the pressure difficult. How can I handle this?Q6 31:33 You mentioned meditating with eyes open but not seeing. This is challenging for me. How does that happen? Q7 35:02 I feel a band of tightness at the back of the head and behind the ears. What might I do? Q8 38:12 In my family we have a history of Alzheimer’s. Do you think heart wisdom is noble when dementia is present? How might practice be a support in the face of any decline of cognitive functioning? Q9 40:49 They say one in four women and men in Ireland have experienced some form of childhood sexual abuse. How might people practise with this in their background?
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-08 Using embodied intelligence 7:46
Download Listen
Practice with sustaining open space for phenomena to arise and move within. Sensitive to what’s going on, but not contracting around it, body remains spacious and open. It’s possible to experience sense contact without intrusion, remaining internally clear, free from congestion.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
2021-08-08 Embodied intelligence 25:17
Download Listen
We are familiar with conceptual intelligence, but body and heart intelligence need to be trained. These do not interpret or think about phenomena, but experience it directly – feeling, sensing, responding. Exploring things as phenomenal rather than as myself, there’s no need to understand them; instead let them pass with dispassionate, open stability.
Sunyata Buddhist Centre :  Open Stability
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

     1 2 3 4 ... 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ... 54 55 56 57
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