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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.
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2019-05-30 Associating with Good People 54:35
Associating with good people is the nutriment that leads to true knowledge and liberation. We learn what’s most important from other people, not from books and ideas. To find good people, start by being one.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-28 The Unbiased and Unwavering Heart (Upekkhā) 61:00
Cultivating equanimity (upekkhā) begins with touching into primal sympathy. As this develops, we are more able to meet experience without shrinking from it or becoming feverish for it. This paves the way for insight and release.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-27 Learning to Linger and Appreciate (Muditā) 59:27
Liberation begins with appreciation of one’s own heart, one’s sensitivity. Learn to linger in it, and speak to it with kindness. Gladness and ease naturally arise, and the mind becomes concentrated. This is the natural Dhamma process.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-26 Guided Meditation: Begin with Intention 60:02
Wherever intention is, there is citta. So we begin formal meditation practice there, establishing intentions based on goodwill, sensitivity and relinquishment. With these themes resonating in one’s heart, what can be put aside now?
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-26 Strengthening through Compassion (Karuṇā) 50:52
Citta is made stronger and deeper through cultivating patience and resolution. It gains an imperturbable stillness and serenity that lets things pass through. Steady in the face of the pleasant and unpleasant alike, this ‘soft strength’ refuses to give way to the tides of ill will.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-25 Integration through Goodwill (Mettā) 63:01
The territories of the somatic field and qualities of goodwill are offered as a clear, firm foundation for wisdom. Having cultivated them on retreat, we need to integrate liberation, purity and goodwill into our lives.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-24 The Lucidity of Careful Attention 51:05
We use careful attention – yoniso manasikāra – to steward the meditative process. It helps us know the appropriate technique to use and to discern what is skillful to give attention to and what is not. Without it, clinging coopts experience and makes an ‘I’ out of it. With it, there is non-clinging – lucidity – and the cessation of dukkha.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-23 Dismantle the Do-er 61:06
Contemplation of how form manifests as the 4 great elements – earth, air, fire, water. When sensed externally and internally, materially and mentally, the biases that create separateness, and hence identity, begin to soften.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-21 Nibbāna Here and Now 57:35
The 5 aggregates represent the sum total of our conditioned experience. When the direct experience of them is penetrated, and the activations of body and mind calmed, one gains insight into the momentary, concocted, selfless nature of experience itself.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-20 Purifying Posture 11:15
Guidance on clearing the posture of compressions and strain.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-20 Relationship – The Core of Our Practice 61:27
The I/me sense arises within a field of kamma. This requires consistent relational practice as we respond to both phenomena (object-experience) and activations (subject-experience) in the field. Mindfulness and a good somatic sense are the keys to relate to experience without clinging or proliferation.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-18 Q&A 60:15
1) The difference between tanhā and upādāna – which is more important to address? 2) Stream entry – what is it, what helps get to the next level, different definitions of the ‘noble disciple’. 3) Questions about citta – difference between citta and citta saṅkhāra, between mano and citta. 4) Jealously, loneliness, lack of love. 5) Ānāpānasati sutta – is it sequential, do we develop each step in every sitting? 6) Ajahn’s one word of advice. 7) Questions on identity and anattā.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-18 Commitment Is Necessary 57:03
On the occasion of Vesak we are encouraged to make a commitment to training the heart. Then to steer the world of space and time we live in around that commitment. This is how actions (kamma) can build up helpful results and lead to the end of kamma.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-17 A Peaceful Abiding Is Possible 59:41
We put energy into territory that can’t be under our sway, seeking security in systems and customs. What we do have sway over is this embodied mind. It can be trained to orient around wholesome qualities, and to realize that it’s most secure when clinging is released.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-17 Standing Meditation: Balance Is Conducive to Release 17:55
The balance required in standing supports an uncontracted body. Lengthening, widening and deepening the somatic field, discordant energies, which may manifest as troubled moods, thoughts or impressions, can be ventilated and released.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-16 The Person Doesn’t Stop Clinging 59:04
Clinging can’t be dealt with by the person. Meet it instead in the body where it manifests as stuck or numb places. Appropriate attention and the rhythm of breathing encourage constricted places to release, smoothing out the entire bodily field.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-16 Liberation through Non-Clinging 23:16
Our reality is assembled from selected material that comes through the sense bases. As a result of craving and clinging, consciousness lands on particularly poignant material and continues the cycle of becoming and rebirth. Citta can be trained to handle material with dispassion rather than craving, awareness rather than clinging. The release of consciousness can be known.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-14 The Wisdom of Walking and of Sheepdogs 50:26
There are 3 kinds of wisdom: discernment, skillful means and realization. Walking meditation and appropriate mindfulness are skillful means for cultivation. Together they bring around a stewarding akin to that of the sheepdog that moves within the flock, not outside it. This results in the deep harmony of samādhi.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-13 Guided Meditation: Sensitizing to the Direct Experience of the Body 55:21
A guided meditation through the Ānāpānasati sutta. Establishing a comfortable, upright posture, incline awareness toward direct experience of the body. Sustain appropriate mindfulness and citta will sensitize to the qualities we call 'body’. This exercise resets the mind, which is then gladdened, steadied and cleared so that insight can develop.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-13 Samādhi – A Step Outside the Personal Footprint 57:01
Samādhi is entered into dependent on the ripening of other factors. It gives us a place to stand outside of the personal perspective. The process of stepping out requires meeting the painful and unresolved in the body, then calming and soothing the heart.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-12 Making Use of the Power of Mindfulness 54:40
Mindfulness is an empowered awareness that exerts authority over dukkha. Mindfulness doesn’t contract or become agitated by it. Holding steady and curtailing proliferation, it provides the proper laboratory within which wisdom can arise.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-12 Puja – A Daily Going Forth 11:26
Puja provides an occasion to step out of our personal lives. The gesture of offering and dedicating trains citta to open rather than grasp. The unfolding of citta reveals awareness.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-12 Standing Meditation: Relieving Pressure with Ground and Space 21:40
An important theme in mind cultivation is to relieve pressure – mental, emotional, physical. This is done through moderating the quality of ground and space. When these are sensed through the body, citta picks up their signs and relaxes its own pressure.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-11 Viriya – The Cultivation of Energy 54:49
Energy has to be cultivated as a resource for practice. This process has three stages: gathering, specific application, and the strength that can release obstacles. The thinking mind uses energy but cannot generate it; energy is generated in the heart (citta) and in the body. Apply energy to empty out the negative and unskillful – the good and bright will arise on its own.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-10 Training in Direct Knowing 22:29
Sati – mindfulness – is only mentioned once in the Ānāpānasati sutta. ‘Directly feeling and knowing’ – pajānati – is the mode of practice. When we’ve attuned to this, we move to ‘training’. This phase of ānāpānasati begins with training in deeper sensitivity of the entire body.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-10 Standing Meditation: Contemplate Inner and Outer Space 23:13
Sensing the space beyond the skin boundary, and the space felt ‘within’ the body. The two can blend. In this way, they facilitate our experience of breathing.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-10 Wisdom as Know-How 55:45
Wisdom is the know-how faculty that discerns suffering and its end. It knows how the 3 intelligences (verbal, emotional, bodily) can work together to bring about the stilling of saṇkhāras. From it noble knowledge – realization – arises.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-09 Don’t Take Saṁsāra Personally 52:32
The 5 indriya are spiritual faculties that become activated by feeling them in the body. Starting with faith –the pivotal faculty for coming out of the personal and sensory realm – and culminating in wisdom – the ability to discern skillful from unskillful, non-stress from stress – these 5 indriya work to release the mind from the pressure of identity.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-07 Standing Meditation: Restraining the Mind So the Body Can Speak 22:51
Placing one’s attention carefully and repeatedly into embodiment, listen to what manifests as body. Make the shift from conceiving of body to felt knowledge, from regarding body to being body. Clearing away what’s not needed and inviting what’s important, let the body speak and hear itself.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-07 Free Your Inner Dog 60:42
We’re endowed with 3 kinds of intelligence: bodily, heart and verbal/thinking. The priority given to the thinking mind has numbed and shut down the body and heart. We train in direct knowing and primary sympathy to reawaken our deep intelligences.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-06 Standing Meditation: Appropriate Intentions and Attitudes 24:05
Scanning over the body we are appropriately sensitive, naming and lingering with awareness. There’s a certain sensitive touch and the body responds with warmth and subtle energy. It’s a matter of placing attention with the right intention.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-06 Storing Up the Good 55:54
Notice what one’s citta stores and brings out at potent moments. We tend to store the negative, and that which is most familiar becomes myself. Why not store the good? Store up qualities of the brahmavihāras – goodwill, compassion, gladness & equanimity – as energy in the body. These energetic effects are a resource for your long-lasting welfare.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-05 Open the Heart to the Beautiful and Good 1:17:50
Cultivate the quality of intention rather than objects of attention. Intention is broader, it encompasses everything. Correct intention neither holds on, nor resists. The quality of anukampā – primary sympathy – from which mettā arises. Puja acts as an emblem, it resonates meanings that open the heart. Beyond the physical body or personal state, rise up to the sign of the beautiful, worthy, admirable and the good.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-05 Standing Meditation: Balance and Alignment Enable Letting Go 41:38
A guided meditation to establish a balanced upright posture upon which the rest of the body can relax and let go. It may not do so quickly, so be patient with how the body actually is, always attending with a mind of sympathy and goodwill.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-05 Intention Is Primary, Attention Is Secondary 51:41
Attention forms a focus that is by definition, only a part of the whole field (especially the visual focus). So if a ‘watchful’ focus is making your practice tense and try, relax attention and cultivate intention – it covers it all. Intention has a certain motivation, it steers attention. The intention for freedom from stress and pain is what citta is looking for.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-04 Notes on Ānāpānasati 40:06
Referring to the text, see what’s not there – there’s no mention of one-pointed attention. This is a common misunderstanding. Consider instead a one-pointed intention, to bear in mind, and return again and again to the process of breathing.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-04 Where There Is No Faith There Is No Practice 38:27
Fabricated formations, such as clock time, are useful for some things but not for liberation. Use the ritual of puja to transcend circumstantial reality; recognize there is a place in citta to stand outside of self – in faith and devotion. The belief that an end to suffering is possible is the initiator of Dhamma practice. Where there is no faith there is no practice.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-04 Standing Meditation for Energy and Vitality 22:33
When standing we don’t stand stiff, but fluid. Balanced posture and alignment allow muscles to release so energy can move through the form in a supportive way. Over time we become supported by the body’s energy rather than its muscles.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-04 Do What Will Undo 49:51
How to peel off the layers of saṅkhāra? Do with an intent to undo. Although we unconsciously give energy to our hindrances and programs, if we withdraw energy and interest, they wither. This is right effort. When citta is cleared of hindrances and is no longer pulled out into the abstract, it gains its own strength and you can trust it.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-03 Breathing Forms the Body 14:34
What is the body? Not the picture of it but the direct experience of it. Referring to instructions given in the Ānāpānasati Sutta, guidance is given to directly experience the body in its diverse manifestations of energy, feeling and sensation. Breathing in, breathing out, allow the process to occur at its own rate and stay with what’s unfolding for you.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-03 Our Place of Practice Is Direct Knowing 39:34
Dhamma practice is the channel for direct experience: that which is entered through the door of feeling. This is not the ‘mental’ knowing: the somatic sense responds to feeling. Your place of practice is this direct ‘feeling-knowing’ – pājānati – through mindfulness of the body.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-03 Standing Meditation: Grounded and Firm, Yet Supple and Fluid 26:20
A guided meditation to fully feel the body, filling out the length, width and thickness of the entire bodily form. This upright yet relaxed posture is firm and allows energy to freely flow.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-03 Discharging Dukkha 56:53
Residues of the heart empty into the body and its vitality gets clogged. We tend to recycle the damage, returning to the scene of the crime, trawling the residues that haven’t discharged as resentment, unworthy, the need to be something else. To discharge this dukkha, we use the somatic field, which gives an energetic release. A mind of goodwill – patient and loving acceptance – will ease the process.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2019-05-02 Using Body to Train the Mind 20:43
The primary sense of settling doesn’t come from the mind but from embodiment. So, calm and soothe the somatic energies of the body by resonating the meanings of ‘safe’ and ‘welcome’. This is how one uses the body to train the mind, and aspiration to settle the body.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge The Touch of Dhamma - May 2019 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-12-07 Relational Dhamma 24:20
Input given at the 2018 Beatenberg Meeting
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg
2018-12-04 47 Refuge Mantra Chant 5:34
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-12-04 46 Evening Chanting Pali 12:14
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-12-04 45 Morning Chanting English 10:22
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-12-04 44 Morning Chanting Pali 13:09
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge
2018-12-04 43 Dedication of Offerings and Vipassanabhumi chant 20:06
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge November 6 - December 4 2018 at IMS - Forest Refuge

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