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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.
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2021-07-14 Guided Meditation – Fine Tuning the Postures 5:46
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
2021-07-11 Puja – Coming into Uprightness 46:45
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The upright is both an anatomical and psychological reference. It’s from the upright that we deepen, moving through difficult territories without getting hooked, arriving at places of authenticity and clarity. Puja offers an occasion for opening and deepening.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-10 Day 1 Q&A – Common Problems 53:19
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with Ajahn Sucitto, Willa Thaniya Reid
How to deal with bodily pain; what to do when mind is obsessively thinking; mind goes dull and I keep falling asleep; what to do with weird energies that can happen; I can’t seem to do breath meditation.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-10 Guided Meditation - Deepen and Breathe 34:23
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Begins with standing posture, aligning the posture so muscles can relax deeply. Flows into sitting posture without breaking the deepening process. Energies from the depth rise up and concoct scenarios that carry the flavor of what’s unresolved – passion, despair, worry. Breathe through it, cooling and steadying the energy in your body.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-10 Love, Breathing and Life – an Outline 49:10
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An introduction to the theme of the retreat that redefines traditional meanings of love, breathing and life. Breathing provides the foundation from which we can open to circumstance without fighting, without grabbing. And isn’t this what love is? Just staying with the restrictions, not asking for anything, just flowing through. This is what it means to live a meaningful life – to meet and show up for this experience.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-07-10 How to Use the Body 54:02
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Instructions for establishing an upright, open posture where you can relax and let breathing happen. The body recognizes that. When the body is relaxed and peaceful, mind sees things clearly. Introduction to chanting as a means for expressing our faith and aspirations. This is how to set up a meditation temple in your own body.
Cittaviveka :  Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
2021-06-26 Q&A 43:16
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Cultivating mental/emotional equilibrium – drowsiness, other people. Energies – how to sense subtle body, body sways in meditation, standing meditation, qigong, kundalini. Do we need goals in life; fear and anxiety; physical pain devoid of mental pain; advice about becoming a nun.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-26 Guided Meditation – Acknowledging Dukkha 14:41
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When we try to settle, what we might notice is unsettledness. Rather than go into the topic, recognize the energy. Give attention to places in the body that are non-agitated. Use body and breathing to change the speed of the mind, steady it. Once settled, then dilemmas and unfinished business can be related to with dispassion, compassion, detachment.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-24 Innate Nobility 55:15
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The world that consciousness presents us as existing within is divided into self and other; this is a source of suffering. Authentic relatedness is needed to realize that there is no fundamental self or other. So we need to establish a relationship with the uncertainty of this that’s harmonious. Stop the topic, experience the energy. If we meet suffering not in terms of me and you, but with awareness of agitated energies, then lovingkindness, compassion and patience naturally arise. The tangle of fear and insecurity that imprisons us dissolves. The citta returns to its innate nobility.
Cittaviveka
2021-06-23 Guided Meditation – Staying Present with Experience 52:30
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There are 2 qualities of citta: it is affected and it is knowing, aware. With cultivation, awareness can become much more apparent and encompassing while the affective sense can steady, calm and subside into something still. The process is to go through the body. As the body eases, citta settles and collects into itself – samādhi. Happy, easeful, refreshed.
Cittaviveka
2021-06-19 Breathing Intelligence 37:26
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Cultivation of citta is the highest kind of learning we can undertake. The breathing body is our means for learning, for directly experiencing our kammic configurations. It provides a basis so when difficult states arise, citta can remain open and stable, and move through them.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-19 Guided Meditation – Emotional and Bodily Bases 16:49
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The Buddha said that amongst all the bodies, best is the breathing body. Most important is to give emotional support to let the breathing do the work – allowing, wishing, encouraging. This a useful foundation for contemplating the various currents, energies, obsessions that citta has to release.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-17 Restraining the Outflows 58:11
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All the world rests on very simple human emotions – fear, anxiety, loneliness, gratification. We run out because of them, or build walls to protect ourselves from them. Practice with restraint, keep coming back to here, now, knowing, it’s like this. Don’t run out, just return, and the outflows fade on their own.
Cittaviveka
2021-06-13 Stop Running and Your Real Home Appears 56:31
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The tendency to keep running out into concepts eventually results in overload, insecurity, anxiety, collapse. We’re desperately looking for sanity. The steadiness and fulfillment we seek is already here, in the non-conceptual intelligence of body and heart. Rather than going out, return to where body, mind and heart energy come together. In this presence our real home appears.
Cittaviveka
2021-06-13 Sensitivity and Restraint 31:52
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One of the most fundamental requirements in meditation is restraining the mind. Rather than running out, energy can settle and calm. Then one’s effort is neither straining towards some goal, nor enmeshed in agitation. There’s space for sensitivity, receptivity, listening. When the outflows are restrained goodwill, compassion, clarity and wisdom come forth on their own.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-13 Guided Meditation - Bodily Ease 14:51
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Use the three intelligences of heart, mind and body to create a sense of calm and happiness. Body helps restrain mind; heart generates an atmosphere of gentleness and goodwill. Know what’s worth giving attention to for liberation.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-06 Not Quite So: Co-Dependent Arising 28:49
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Our apparent reality arises from moods and interpretations that generate the world of time and space, self and other. It’s possible to meet the moods and mental states directly without creating stories or identities until the signs dissolve and only clarity remains. Meditation and engagement are skillful means to understand the dependent arising of our world, of suffering, and of skillful dhammas.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-06 Guided Meditation – Establish Puja as Your Abiding Place 14:40
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We can use the occasion of puja to cultivate signs of purity, beauty, liberation. You’ll feel it changes the rhythm of the mind – heart opens, thinking mind slows down and bodily presence wakes up. Anxieties and agitations are held in this open presence, felt in the body, and allowed to pass and dissolve.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-06-04 Inching into Uncertainty - Closing Talk and Chanting 28:02
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A reflection on how this online retreat came together: good people combining their skills towards a wholesome intention. Whatever we embark on has an element of uncertainty and possibility of failure, but the heart doesn’t fail. Stay open, do your practice, and meet the challenges that arise. Best to form a group – it becomes difficult when you feel you’ve got to do it on your own.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-04 Day 6 Q&A2 – The Sacred, Body, Self and Other 47:37
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Trying to find triggers and safe space in the midst of health issues that affect nervous system, heart rate and breathing; stiff neck and shoulder muscles keep re-contracting; how to respond to getting so tired; what is the wise and caring response to body; navigating touch and contact skillfully; how can we be heirs to our kamma if there is no self to inherit it; through investigation of qualities of citta clarity and falling away has occurred – how to sustain; the more I see things clearly the more I feel the weight of delusion causing sadness and disgust and feeling of pointlessness for practice; how to approach in and out breath to calm mental activity (citta)/please speak to mindfulness of feeling from the Ānāpānasati Sutta.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-04 No Beginnings, No Endings, Just Practice 3:03
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On this last day of retreat, mind might be occupied with comings and goings and what’s next. Remember the stabilizing practices that give citta the strength and encouragement to open despite the bewildering nature of things. Don’t be moved by the change of circumstance, every moment is precious.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-04 Open Path 46:53
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An encouragement to continue finding the time and occasion to establish presence to be with all that arises. It’s not about getting through the maze of dukkha but gaining the skills and balance that lift you out. It’s the path of the sappurisa, the person of integrity who attunes to practice with all it requires – faith, open center, with the first movement being goodwill.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-04 Puja – Regaining Heart, Regaining Life 42:49
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We throw ourselves away into identities, sources of stress, comparison, separation. Puja is an occasion for returning to citta’s true home – the sacred that includes it all. Make note of what takes you out and what brings you back home – faith, values – and keep them close by.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-04 Day 6 Q&A1 34:29
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Is citta able to verbalize/understand words; citta’s role in nightmares; differences between hindrances and fetters; is cultivating bhavana or khanti better for burning off defilements; a lot of pain in the body caused movement in meditation disrupting energy; cultivating mētta; alternative healing methods; startled out of the body when bell rings; locating ancestral exclusions in the body; understanding workings of mind from Abhidhamma perspective vs. contemplation of 4 foundations of mindfulness for realizing non-self; accessing solar plexus during meditation; finding firmness when touching into open spaciousness; musician is torn between music and meditation.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-04 Guided Meditation - Quietly Witnessing the Kammic Field 5:30
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As you review what’s arising and passing for you, establish balance and continue with non-engagement. It’s just the human citta doing what it does. Awareness, firm and focused, lingering – in that you’ll find a quiet happiness.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-03 Day 5 Q&A2 54:25
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Working at our levels but there’s nothing to attain/is citta is inherently pure; how to think about kamma after death; how does being enveloped in compassion feel; after moving energy down into belly deciding to move from samatha to vipassanā; the knower merges with the known and there’s no object left; when beginning to become concentrated I get hijacked into numbness/feeling lost in brahmaviharā; relationship between awareness, citta, mindfulness and the mind.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-03 Kamma, Signs and Signlessness 56:49
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We can become flooded by signs that carry meaning according to our kammic histories. To move out of the floods of thought, self, other people, let the sign be a reminder. Go to the body, the felt sense, to the place where the personal qualities are subdued and there’s just the qualities of goodwill and patience. Energies shift and release. This is how we clean out embedded kamma.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-03 Puja – Images of the Sacred 23:11
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The signs in daily life can be sterile, abrasive, rapid – designed for effective organization, not for organic life. Puja is an occasion to shift gears and cultivate signs of simple beauty, warmth, inclusivity. It’s helpful to have an atmospheric dip every day into signs that cause citta to feel like home.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-03 Day 5 Q&A1 51:17
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Bright pure light which comes up in meditation; dealing with trauma from a kammic standpoint; how to practice with back pain and lack of sleep; if there’s no self who puts forth effort into the 4 right efforts; offering of invitation was not received leaving sourness; when feeling arises from words do I just stay with the feeling or inquire about it; a lot of pain in body and sudden urge to cry; mind first allows phenomena to subside and investigates later; transitioning back into kammic realm from a place of presence is challenging too easily losing mindfulness; difference between citta and manas; compulsive tendency around cleanliness; struggle with breath meditation feeling like I’m controlling it.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-02 Day 4 Q&A2 50:15
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Shifts of energy and bodily effects: verbal vs. non-verbal insights; distinction between flood (ogha) and outflow (āsava); how to prepare for aging and death; with things that matter when and how to speak up and when to refrain from speech and actions; self and other/regret/family.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload
2021-06-02 Healing, Forgiveness and Blessing 17:17
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It’s very important to share the heart, share the blessings with all that arises. One should do this regularly. Let go of the image, let go of the person – don’t dismiss it, relate to it, witnessing with sympathy, extending the heart. Lingering in the steady open presence, get familiar with it, feeling it, resting in it.
Cittaviveka :  Clearing the Floods - Dealing with Internal and External Overload

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