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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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2018-11-23 27 Don’t Go into Things until You Can Stay Out of Them 41:53
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We need firm ground to stand on before meeting the difficulties of our lives. Without that firm place, the difficulties don’t unravel –you unravel. With cultivation of the five spiritual faculties – indriyas – they become rock solid, enabling us to stand back from experience and allow it to unravel and pass.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-22 26 Fields as a Way of Experiencing Phenomena 16:45
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In a field of experience, qualities that are assumed to be other people, entities or myself because of the way they’re stuck together can be seen as specific factors that are pliable and flexible. “Field awareness” means a wider span of attention where suppressed, unnoticed, unresolved energies can arise and be discharged, purifying the bodily field.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-22 25 What Sustains a Steady Heart Energy? 49:41
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Compulsive problematic activations can be replaced with conscious deliberate ones aimed at liberation. Whether in daily activities or in the action of meditation, we can steady and calm energy by orienting around skillful signs – generosity, service, clarity – until the mind is comforted and no longer flowing down old tracks.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-22 24 Place Attention Directly on the Here and Now 29:37
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There is a different way to meet what arises rather than through our conditioned perceptions, one free of self, other people, the future. Place attention on what’s arising directly as it is.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-21 23 Ānāpānasati – A Model for Cultivation and Freedom 53:34
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In the search for happiness, we generally only experience the search, marked by discomfort or desperation. Relationship is key. The instructions for ānāpānasati train us to develop a more dispassionate relationship where we learn to stand in the presence of, or witness from, the edge of experience. From here the right kind of relationship, marked by non-expectation and non-aversion, can be cultivated.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-19 22 Leave Space for Miracles 54:00
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The cultivation of samatha is to be able to direct one’s intentions and attention away from the afflictive activations, settling into a place where they’re not happening. This place of cooling and ceasing is to be lingered in. Here we come out of the personality and into the realm of the miraculous.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-18 21 Standing Meditation: Where There Is No Activation in the Body 40:13
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The theme of this meditation is to move attention from more activated areas to parts that have no activation at all. Beginning with the sense of balance and cohesion, guidance is provided to sense through the entire body, sustaining a soft attitude with no time frame, a quality of very little effort.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-18 20 Review of Four Points for Orientation 42:29
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A review of the four points recommended to orient around: 1) The sacred - virtue and truth, 2) other people, 3) the subtle body/body energies, 4) nature. These are means for becoming more embodied and heartful, and regaining our natural intelligence.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-17 18 Brahmavihara Cultivation for a Happy Abiding 47:27
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The qualities of goodwill, compassion, gladness and equanimity can be cultivated to generate a subtle form, a subtle state of consciousness. Abiding and lingering in these qualities, citta sustains consciousness in that mode, sees objects in that light, and experiences itself in that light making human life manageable, fruitful, enjoyable.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-17 19 Q&A 62:17
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How to clear stuck sankharas (greed/overeating, fear); clarifying samatha, vipassana, samādhi; clarifying language: rūpa, nāma-rūpa
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-16 17 Intention and Effort 63:58
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Take away the track of conditioned intentions – better, more efficient, goal orientation. Learn to sense into the intention of the citta here and now. Effort informed by the spiritual faculties is a means to stave off hindrances. The first right effort is to dwell in what is skillful.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-16 16 Nothing Works - Get Used to It 61:13
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Our conditioning and underlying programs have us aiming at unattainable benchmarks. We come to believe it’s possible to make everything work, make things efficient, clear, comfortable. But this only sets us up for suffering. So we practice to purify intention and attention, widening the range of what our citta can bear with and accommodate. We’re then able to be with the uncomfortable without suffering.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-15 15 Learning to Cultivate Relationship 61:41
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We can learn to relate to the conditioned world with a sense of knowing it doesn’t work, dealing with the inevitable clashes and frictions with a mind that is spacious, that can digest the chafing. Nourish and strengthen citta through qualities of goodwill, patience and acceptance facilitate disengagement. Then the heart is not troubled by things not going its way.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-14 14 Sangha Heals Afflictions of Exclusion 50:17
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With devotional practices we choose to direct ourselves in terms of awakening. Pūjā gives the occasion to settle in our Refuge quality rather than our personal kamma. This is the way we build up a reference point to cultivate and clear the kamma of the person within the field of sangha.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-14 13 Soothing and Steadying Body Energies 53:33
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The deeply ingrained reactivity to jump from unpleasant feeling is saṇkhāra. We leave the richness and intelligence of embodiment for the virtual world of programs and drives. Steadying and stabilizing the bodily energies with ānāpānasati develops a different kind of saṇkhāra, one that responds to phenomena with non-demand and acceptance.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-12 12 Nourishing the Citta 47:31
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Creating a feedback loop to keep citta refreshed and nourished strengthens our ability to meet the uncomfortable. This can’t be done through the virtual realm of the intellect; take time every day to touch into bodily presence without adjusting anything or turning away. That steady presence becomes the place of regeneration and refreshment.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-11 11 Q&As 53:17
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Q1: ways of strengthening the citta; Q2 31:37 How can one best work with the citta? Q3 34:01 What is the relationship of intuitive awareness to the citta? Q4 36:56 Could you say something more about the sacred? Q5 40:10 greed and aversion – are they two sides of the same coin? Can one exist without the other? Q6 46:46 What is animita (signless) samādhi as opposed to nimitta samādhi or jhāna?
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-11 10 Weaning the Citta from Clinging 63:27
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The habit of clinging stems from a search for safety and security, yet we cling to that which can never provide security. It’s not easy to give up clinging, so an inner strengthening is required – energetically, psychologically and emotionally.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-11 09 Guided Meditation: Feeling Grounded and Safe in the Space 40:02
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Before reviewing the themes that present themselves to us in meditation, we need the support of safety and ground. Guidance is provided to establish center, ground and safety in this embodiment.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-11 08 Resourcing the Faculty of Heart, Our Responsive Capacity 58:10
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Phenomena that are mutable, not solid, and dependently arisen become experienced as fixed and solid by unconscious grasping and holding on. The relationship is then one of fixation. A more mature relationship is not based on eliminating displeasure but on responsiveness and flexibility. With practice one can feel comfortable with things that are uncomfortable.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-10 07 Intention - a Property of Citta 31:53
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Meditation practice instructs us to sustain harmonious relationship with our minds, bodies and the world – to not be dominating, not to grasp or push away, but to be present. Sometimes an open accepting awareness, rather than a focus on a particular object, is the proper mode. When mental and body energies are in sync there’s a sense of harmony and unification. This is samādhi.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-10 06 Walking Instructions: Human Bodies Walk Like This 12:46
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Our walking gets programmed by the drives of the mind. Whatever affects the mind affects the nervous system of the body – the body shows us the effects of our thinking. Walking meditation can return us to the natural quality of the body, so the mind can relax.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
In collection: A Moving Balance
2018-11-09 05 The Wisdom Faculty 52:10
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The search for happiness, security and steadiness binds us in a tangle of stressful and unsatisfactory experiences – because we’re looking in the wrong place. Wisdom/discernment helps us detangle and discern what to set aside and what is worth bearing in mind.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-08 04 Calm and Discernment Work in Tandem 20:02
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Discernment helps filter from the amalgam of experience what’s skillful now. Having picked up what is skillful one lingers in it, dwells in it, sustains it. This is calming. So skim off stressful habits of “trying to make it work”, “getting on to the next”. Use the body to learn what the mind is happy to linger in.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-08 03 Regaining Our Natural Intelligence 37:28
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In meditation both the topic and the manner in which we attend can help train our mode of mental engagement. Shifting from stressful tendencies of “making it happen” and “getting it right”, come back to the natural body. This living system is the source for a steady, safe and easeful state.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-07 02 Going for Refuge - Reorientation of Citta 58:37
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What is it that we need to take Refuge from? The poisons of greed, hatred and delusion that mask themselves and corrupt our hearts and minds. This requires reorienting from worldly ways and orienting around what has value and meaning, that which you can trust: virtue, embodiment, nature and other people.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-11-07 01 Setting up the Relational Context of Dhamma 22:24
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Four compass points to orient around while on retreat: how you relate to the earth, to other people, to your body and to the sacred; an explanation of pūjā – recollections and making offerings, as with the offering of food.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge :  November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-10-15 21 Day 6 Closing talk: The Smallest Unit in the Cosmos is Two 32:38
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When we reflect on the nature of fields, we notice everything is a duality. How we relate in this twosome is the practice. Unskillful latent tendencies are revealed in relationship, giving us an opportunity to clear them. Kalyāṇamitta (spiritual friendship) is essential. It’s only others that can show us what we don’t see in ourselves.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-14 20 Day 5 Evening Puja: Wilderness Training 25:00
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We struggle for certainty and clarity, but the true orientation of Dhamma is disorientation from old maps, thereby allowing forms to arise and change with disengaged attention. Then we’re much more alert and agile. This is wilderness training.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-14 19 Day 5 Morning Instructions: Maps that Dispel Differentiation 53:22
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The Buddha expounded Dhamma using various maps. The map of the khandhā and dependent origination provide means for understanding and responding to experience without the sense of a fixed self. Meeting and relating to phenomena in the body, free from aversion and resistance, you don’t have to like it, just accept it. This is the way out of suffering.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-14 18 Day 5 Guided Meditation Intention – a Softer Effort 46:47
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Using intention in practice means there is a wish, a prayer, an aspiration – subtle movements of energy rather than the push of effort. If we use intention too forcefully we block receptivity. It’s up to us to determine what’s skillful at this time. Perhaps it’s the intention to relax, set aside, widen, soften. Wisdom is our guide, and effort is just to use wisdom to arrive at deeper wisdom. [8:15 Begin Standing Meditation Instructions] Translating Anatomical Descriptions into Felt Sense: We all use anatomical descriptions of the body as a sketch, but the encouragement in this meditation is to translate them into energetic or felt experiences. Beginning with physical experience, guidance is provided to sense into subtler energies and felt tones and meanings.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-14 17 Day 5 Morning Puja: Lingering 54:42
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Beginning our day, we make the intention to enter the Dhamma field before entering the hallucinatory field constructed of time and space. Refrain from what’s not needed, linger in what’s needed. What you linger with increases. If you linger in the world of suppositions - ‘got to do, should do’- that increases. Find out what’s truly needed and linger there.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-13 16 Day 4 Evening Puja: Q&A 67:49
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Different ways of presenting Dhamma in Theravada Buddhism (single-pointed, ‘dry insight’; Thai forest). Are there certain thought patterns that are related to nervous energy in the body? How do you do discharge? Metta practice as cultivating non-aversive, non-contractive state rather than a doing/sending out. Clarifying the term ‘fields’. Qi Gong questions (is it normal to get so hot while practicing Qi Gong? Is it good to use wu qi for standing meditation?); Responding to sexual awareness in the presence of others. Skillfully handling trauma that are still alive. Distinction between perception and consciousness. How feelings and emotions are experienced in Samadhi. Reclining meditation
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-13 15 Day 4 Qi Gong 9:17
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Ajahn Sucitto responds to a question about how he got started with Qi Gong.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-13 14 Day 4 Guided Meditation: Goodwill 23:27
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Citta is moved by images that can be sparked by thought, visual, auditory or somatic/felt experience. This guided meditation accesses these portals to generate receptivity and resonances of goodwill within yourself, then spread them out.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-13 13 Day 4 Morning Instructions: Heart Yoga 48:49
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Relationship is always necessary, always there, whether with other people or with ourselves. To absorb into comfortable relationship, and clear this area from greed, hatred and fear, there has to be a lot of negotiation, the back and forth movement of disengaging, then returning again. This is true yoga of the heart. To keep the heart flexible and responsive, brahmavihārā ‘asanas’ are suggested.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-13 12 Day 4 Morning Puja: Think Short, Listen Long 22:31
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Instruction on disengaging attention from mental contact. Disengagement allows for longer listening time. The quality of listening has a different tone – softer, more open, the ability to be with but not in. That non-engaged space allows for signs of comfort, contentment and gladness to arise. It’s not in the object but in the relationship. Keep re-establishing relationship to the chosen object.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-12 11 Day 3 Evening Puja: Learning to Prefer Dispassion 63:01
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In citta’s maturing process, it goes from seeking stability and comfort in things that can never satisfy, to finding a place of dispassion. It learns that disengagement is preferable to getting fired up, disappointed, humiliated. In this letting go it finally finds the stability and happiness it has been seeking.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-12 10 Day 3 Standing Meditation: Turning in Space 33:41
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After settling and grounding in the standing position, Ajahn Sucitto introduces a slight movement to the posture. Gently turning in space, noticing the effects of the body moving in its energy field, making note of the mental tone – how’s that?
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-12 09 Day 3 Morning instructions: The Dhamma Field – Our True Home 54:54
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We take things personally, but the person is the result of the fields that it encounters. We get shaped by the worldly fields of the business model, of material progress, of ‘faster’ and ‘more’. When we take the Dhamma field as our true origin rather than the worldly or personal field, we access the arising of the search for truth and meaning, and of the capacities to bear with and be accepting, to experience gratitude and generosity. This is our home, and in this we are deeply resourced to meet what comes up.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-12 08 Day 3 Morning Puja: Immersion in the Dhamma Field 25:48
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Being immersed in worldly and personal fields is not a choice, but we can choose to immerse ourselves in the Dhamma field. In it we can meet the problematic painful field of sense contact without collapsing or blocking, but with big heart. Pūjā is an occasion for entering into that field, gaining resources, strength and happiness for the journey.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-11 07 Day 2 Evening Puja: Don’t Follow the Bounce 63:19
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Cultivating Dhamma involves viveka, a certain kind of disengagement primarily from thought and emotional reactivity. As these reactions are running, check their ‘bounce’ – that tendency to deflect or suppress unpleasant feeling. Emotion by itself cannot discharge, but access the emotional state in the body – the body can discharge the emotion.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-11 06 Day 2 Pausing before “the Next” 8:20
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Transitions points are an opportunity to train one’s reflexes to return to the base – the ground as fundamental orientation. At the moment of reflexive response, pause. The reflex isn’t good or bad, just pause and check it as a habit of training. It can be helpful to rise into a bodily response rather than habit reactive responses. Whatever our intention or purpose can be more measured.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-11 05 Day 2 Morning Instructions: Bear in Mind – You’re a Threesome 61:50
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The verbal, heart and body fields are mutually affected. Of the three, body doesn’t lie and is the one that can discharge stress. Refer to how experiences of the heart and mind arise in the body with disengaged awareness. Learn to release stress when it arises, and acknowledge the patterns of behavior that generate it. [52:00 Begin Walking Instructions] Notice the Parts that Don’t Seem to Be Doing: The whole body is walking. Some parts are doing, some are receiving – they’re part of the field of awareness and sensitivity. The parts that don’t seem to be doing are helping to discharge stress.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-11 04 Standing Meditation: Standing to Promote Energy Movement 17:45
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Use the standing form to establish alignment in an upright posture that allows energy to move through stuck places. [10:27 transition to sitting posture]
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-11 03 Day 2 Pāli Pronunciation 15:01
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Ajahn Sucitto provides an overview of Pāli pronunciation to aid with chanting. [5:00 Begin Morning Chanting]
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-11 02 Day 2 Morning Puja: Recollection and Chanting 48:07
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We can use pūjā and chanting as a means for connecting with the heart in a meaningful way, to recollect values in a slowed down process of mind: What am I rising up to? Inclining towards? What’s important for me? The Buddhist convention is to recollect the Triple Gem – drop below personhood to something more fundamental and universal.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-10-10 01 Day 1 Opening: An Attitude of Practice Rather than a System 47:16
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Rather than rely on a system, cultivate an attitude towards practice. Systems have uses, but can eventually curtail what we’re trying to drop into. Part of the theme of this retreat is about recognizing some of the stressful systems that get built into our minds around speed and progress – and awakening out of them. [24:06 Begin Guided Meditation] Establishing Ground and Space through Breathing: We can use the body as a channel to settle the mind. Use the out-breath to ground, use the in-breath to lift. These two together give you a form with a distinct foundation and uprightness to it.
New York Insight Meditation Center :  Entering the Dhamma Fields: A Five Day Residential Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
2018-07-25 The Practice of Inclusivity 54:19
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Ajahn Sucitto describes how our external and internal worlds come to be built upon exclusion. He encourages us to give up the exhausting endeavor of excluding the uncomfortable and to meet the suffering of the 1st Noble Truth instead. Suffering is met and released through embodied presence with all that arises.
Cambridge Insight Meditation Center
2018-07-23 23 Closing Exhortation: Being Is First, Doing Is Second 27:58
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As soon as something comes to mind, the impulse is to do something about it. This is just blind. The most important piece is be something first. It shouldn’t take that long, just 10 seconds. Even if being something is being aware of confusion, aware of dukkha, drop into the center of your reactivity. Then awakened intelligence has the possibility to arise in the pause.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart

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