Dharma Seed - Ajahn Sucitto's Dharma Talks

Donate | Contact

In Memoriam: Rick Woudenberg

The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings

Ajahn Sucitto's Dharma Talks

Ajahn Sucitto

Ajahn Sucitto's Website

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.

Sitting in a field of fifty to eighty people really starts my mind sparking. Since I don't prepare my talks ahead of time, I find myself listening to what I'm saying along with everyone else. This leaves a lot of room for the Dhamma to come up. Just having eighty people listening to me is enough to engage me, stimulate me, and create a nice flow of energy. The actual process of teaching evokes ideas that even I did not realize were being held somewhere in my mind.

Different teaching situations offer their own unique value. In retreat, you are able to build a cohesive and comprehensive body of the teachings. When people are not on retreat and come for one session, it opens a different window. They are more spontaneous and I'm given the chance to contact them in ways that are closer to their "daily-life mind." This brings up surprises and interesting opportunities for me to learn even more.

I'm continually struck by how important it is to establish a foundation of morality, commitment, and a sense of personal values for the Vipassana teachings to rest upon. Personal values have to be more than ideas. They have to actually work for us, to be genuinely felt in our lives. We can't bluff our way into insight. The investigative path is an intimate experience that empowers our individuality in a way that is not egocentric. Vipassana encourages transpersonal individuality rather than ego enhancement. It allow for a spacious authenticity to replace a defended personality.

‹‹ previous next ›› 1 2 3 4 ... 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 ... 53 54 55 56

2017-07-29 13: The Aim of One-pointedness 28:01	Download Listen
One-pointedness, ekaggata, is a later development. The first aim is to get settled, to meet and dispel crankiness, negativity, craving. One-pointedness arrives after these are dispelled.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-29 12: Mind Doesn’t Know How to Discharge – Body Does 68:55	Download Listen
In embodiment exercises there are two qualities to emphasize: energy and the body. The basis of energy is this body. Embodiment exercises can help us cultivate the ability to redirect energy from the thinking mind by referring to the body.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-29 11: Walking Meditation 4:14	Download Listen
First establish bodily presence. Notice how the leg lifts and moves. Keep the eyes soft. Experience the wave-like motion - it feels good! Allow what’s been difficult or closed to arise and walk it out.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-29 10: Standing Meditation 2: You Can’t Let Go Without Support 8:22	Download Listen
Establish support through feet and legs. Process of letting go can seep upwards through the body. Breathing acts as stabilizing quality.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-29 09: Q&A: Am I Wasting My Opportunity Staying As a Lay Person? 45:09	Download Listen
Ajahn Sucitto responds to this question by first reframing it – rather than thinking: here’s the real world, how can I fit my practice into that? Consider: here’s the real practice, what kind of world can I operate in from that place? The reality that’s available to us all, regardless of place or position as monastic or lay person, is refuge. And the real refuge is in your presence. Be a refuge unto yourself.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-29 15: The Root Perception of Change 35:31	Download Listen
There are many things one can cultivate in meditation. There is craft, what can be learned. And there is art, what can’t be taught. Follow your nose, where’s your interest? Notice the difference between awareness and consciousness. Place an object in space, experience the object with dispassion.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-29 08: Return, Return, Return 8:35	Download Listen
The energy body is a particular fullness of being – this is citta. As it’s more completed, it becomes less obstructed. Take time to gather and center in the completed citta, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Meditation means to return time and time again.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-29 14: It’s Just a Movement 7:22	Download Listen
Puja is a time for offering, for being received into a quality of blessedness and welcome, just as you are. The mind searches for directions – all reasonable, but don’t follow it. Notice the energy of the movement that’s occurring now – no future, no past.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-28 07: Standing Meditation 1: Balance – the Place of Least Stress & Most Harmony 6:30	Download Listen
The single most important quality of standing meditation is balance. This is the place of least stress, of most harmony. Guidance is provided to sense into this balance where it’s just the muscular alignment that’s holding you up. Locking places can then relax and release.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-28 06: A Quality of Deep Attention 52:40	Download Listen
The key to the Buddha’s awakening was his use of appropriate attention. Attention is either grounded in the right place or the wrong place, it’s one or the other. The lens of attention and the attitudes we bring to it are extremely significant. It matters how we are seeing things. Our attention is very potent. Whatever you attend to – doubt or confidence, aversion or goodwill – you’ll get more of it. Attention is an amplifier.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-28 05: Put Aside What’s Unnecessary 13:16	Download Listen
The contemplative process is one where you bring to mind simple things and put aside what’s unnecessary, obstructive and irrelevant. Not with aversion, but just noticing that in most of our life we’re moving forward into qualities of pressure, important business, people – but they’re only there because your mind put them there. There doesn’t have to be the drive forward, doesn’t have to be a next. Take time to stop and notice what’s not needed, notice what’s already here.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-28 04: Walking without Headism 12:43	Download Listen
Ajahn Sucitto addresses a form of bodily discrimiation called “headism.” It says, “I’m on top, everything is secondary to me,” and it drags everything underneath it around. Headism can be overcome by operating through the body rather than through the head. It can be practiced in walking meditation.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-28 03: Feeling the Body 4:13	Download Listen
Guidance to settle into the seated posture, relaxing the body, sensing ground and space.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-28 02: Standing meditation - Elements and Directions 13:35	Download Listen
What tells you you have a body? Guidance provided to sense the particular signals that tell us we have a body in the forms of elements and directions.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-07-28 01: A Harmony of Body and Mind 27:27	Download Listen
Meditation is where the body and mind interact. Physical form creates the boundary within which to dwell. No third party is needed, no abstractor, no one to do anything. Just allow body and mind to come into harmony autonomously.
Aruna Ratanagiri Buddhist Monastery : Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto

2017-06-17 End of Retreat Reflections: Four Reference Points 32:33	Download Listen
Ajahn Sucitto leaves the group with four reference points to continue relating to as we leave retreat: relating to embodiment, to people, to earth and to the sacred. Themes of pausing, subjectivity and respect run through.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-17 Early Morning Reflections: Don’t Go into Automatic – What’s Beautiful Now? 12:27	Download Listen
An automatic quality can take over as we practice. It happens when we retain the past: I am this, I had this experience, I want to have another experience… Instead we can arise and awaken into this body even when it’s not so comfortable and bright. Receive everything as a gift, as something new. Access what’s beautiful now.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-16 I Teach Pleasure 62:57	Download Listen
The Buddha taught pleasure. When the mind feels safe and comforted, it doesn’t crave. It loses its fear and regret. This is pleasant. Sila helps us practice this skill of turning things to the subtle pleasure of releasing stress and pressure. We stop creating the boundary of self and other that prevents unification. To others as to myself.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-16 Qigong Instructions: Cow, Crane & Dragon 47:56	Download Listen
Warming up feet, legs, hips, arms; kwa squats; drawing the thread (shoulder opening); cow gazing at the moon; crane spreads its wings; punching the dragon; neutral position
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-16 Teaching on Embodiment and Guided Meditation – Descending from the Top of Your Brain to the Basin of Your Heart 61:10	Download Listen
As we meditate, we might find ourselves dropping through layers of experience. Bits that are stuck and not yet resolved keep getting triggered. What we thought was past keeps coming in – people, places, events – and it’s happening now. But there is something that doesn’t move forward in time, a foundational experience of just being present. From this place of primary embodiment, where citta meets the body, we can begin to release the layers of construction that bind us.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-15 Qigong Instructions: The Active and the Receptive 49:59	Download Listen
Torso twists bending over each leg; waterfall; ball in the sky; cow gazing at the moon; crane spreads its wings; closing the field/gently gathering in
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-15 Morning Teaching: Wisdom of Embodiment 57:24	Download Listen
Beyond the visual and sensory experiences of body, there is a felt sense that is our center. Life keeps pushing other things to the center – sights, sounds, attitudes, views and opinions – but these are only the center of our suffering, not the true center. From the true center, primary sympathy becomes available to meet suffering.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-15 Early Morning Reflections: Being the Center 28:13	Download Listen
We can know the body directly, using tactile sense and contact impressions. Step by step we can build the specific body with what is actually present, discerning the center, and placing with specificity. The act of placing is sacred.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-14 Q&A: All that Ends Is Suffering 1:12:50	Download Listen
Where to put the focus in standing/walking meditation; what is meant by awareness/mindfulness/citta; conditioned/unconditioned, kamma and the choice; awakening and healing; goodwill and discernment/embodied goodwill
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-14 Qigong Instructions: Noticing the Quality of Space Around You 56:09	Download Listen
Instructions for standing/neutral posture [ends 9:00]; loosening by shaking; torso twists with waist bend to each side; knee circles; the “clock” hip circles; string puppet; bow and arrow; cow gazing at the moon; ends with standing/neutral posture
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-14 Morning Teaching: How Good Do You Have to Be 45:40	Download Listen
Find the response to this question from that safe space in embodiment. Mixed in with places where one feels shut down, agitated and sleepy is a certain quality that feels comfortable. Sense it, enjoy it, then view the rest from that place of refuge. This is a movement of compassion. It’s not good, it’s not right, it’s just aware.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-13 Goodwill – Giving Yourself Back to Yourself 67:57	Download Listen
Goodwill isn’t about changing things, but bringing up the right atmosphere and steeping your awareness in that. The right atmosphere isn’t 100% approval or love or celebration, but a quality of granting permission. Non-resistance, non-aversion. Experiences of exclusion and being treated as an object cause the citta to close down over time, and we lose the ability to feel anything. Subjective presence will give yourself back to yourself.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-13 Early Morning Reflections: The Trained Mind, The Untrained Mind and The Choice 17:12	Download Listen
Remember the gift of mind. It can seem such a tangle at times. The untrained mind is difficult and can be deadly. The trained mind is a beauty, it can be liberated – deathless. This is choice. Attending to what’s worthy of attention; attending to what gives rise to beautiful states that lift and brighten. Withdrawing attention from states that become burdensome, confusing, useless. The gift of attention, use it wisely.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-12 Qigong Instructions: A Means for Release 42:47	Download Listen
knee circles, neutral position, string puppet, kwa squat, sensing the midline, raising the sky, medicine ball
Cittaviveka

2017-06-12 Standing Instructions: Free from Obstruction, Free from Intrusion, Free from Harm 23:48	Download Listen
Three references for standing: anatomy, sensations and energies. Setting aside what isn’t needed and firming up what is useful, allowing the body to complete itself and come into balance. Free from obstruction, free from intrusion, free from harm.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-12 Morning Teaching: You Don’t Get to the End of the Story by Following It 40:32	Download Listen
We tend to get the situations that will work on us. Our approach, if we get wise, is to meet dissatisfaction in the body. There is a possibility to unhook from the tides of affliction that cause us to form up in these challenging situations. We can pause, unhook, and bear open, steady presence. Shifts occur by themselves.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-12 Early Morning Instructions: Coming to Terms with Dukkha – It Just Doesn’t Have to Be That Good 20:02	Download Listen
Rather than following the mental movements of the mind, there’s the possibility to just open to the manifest with no particular engagement. The particular point is meeting dukkha – where we chafe, want, resist – and recognizing it as it is. At the moment the engagement changes, the mind releases. Then the world doesn’t have to be that good.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-11 Walking and Reclining Instructions 11:46	Download Listen
Walking from your center, finding fluidity of movement, sensing with the torso rather than the eyes. [Ends 10:10] For reclining, laying flat on one’s back, allowing front of body to completely open up, extending awareness from the feet to the head and the space around.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-11 Afternoon Instructions: How to Approach Mindfulness of Body 21:04	Download Listen
Mindfulness of body is not just in reference to the outer form, but to energetic sensitivity. Data from the body is direct, not filtered through the mind. If we track it and tune into it, it can release blocked areas, clear psychological effects and bring clarity. Approach with goodwill and softness of attitude.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-11 Morning Teaching: The Body As a Sense Organ 24:59	Download Listen
As we enter retreat, we may feel a certain amount of jangle and disorientation. Our embodiment can provide a source of strong, inner orientation. This inner form has its own language, rhythms and moods that can ground and settle us into the real here and now.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-11 Early morning instructions: Guided Meditation ‘Awakened Repose’ 60:10	Download Listen
Instructions for sitting and standing meditation are offered. In both, sensing ground, balancing of outer and inner forms, rhythmic flow of in and out breathing, allowing the beauty and intelligence of subtle forms to come forth.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-06-10 Introduction to Retreat: The Most Important Thing 54:50	Download Listen
Guidance to keep putting things aside, and keep establishing ‘here,’ a bodily feeling that serves as a guide to what’s always here. In the space of open awareness, we can ask ourselves every day: What is the most important thing? And the answer may change each time. For the retreat time, we consider silence and goodwill as the most important things.
Meditationszentrum Beatenberg : The Wisdom of Embodiment

2017-04-15 About Chithurst Monastery, Temple Forest Monastery, and Sati Sārāņīya Hermitage 8:11	Download Listen
with Ajahn Jayanto, Ajahn Sucitto, Ayya Medhanandi
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-15 Chanting 9:10	Download Listen
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-15 Protection skill and strength - Refuges and Precepts 54:26	Download Listen
Refuges and precepts offer the practice of Protecting our Dharma-hearts.They are then a source of inner wealth, friendship and an asset for meditation.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-15 Guided meditation - Sustaining good will 42:57	Download Listen
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-15 Guided meditation - Sustaining good will - edited 40:02	Download Listen
edited to remove coughing and room noise
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-14 Meeting the world, generating a self. 65:21	Download Listen
As our daily-life world comes into awareness, We are called upon to meet it push back aagainst its delusion and seek new approaches - this is the path.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-13 Life, Strength, Safety - breathing mindfully 65:40	Download Listen
Where we meditate from is important. First access the safe grounded space and sense breathing from there. Then let it fill the body.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-13 Morning Reflection 40:23	Download Listen
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-12 Meditation Instructions - walking and reclining 19:00	Download Listen
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-12 The Centrality Of Feeling 67:51	Download Listen
A simple aim of practice is to make you feel better! This comes around through tuning into the present feeling of skillful mindsets and using that to dispel negative ones.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-11 Q&A with Ayya Medhanandi 1:34:50	Download Listen
on aspects of body, worldly winds, action in the world, hope versus practice
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-11 The use of discernment - understanding a samadhu 56:25	Download Listen
Discernment (panna) distinguishes skillful from unskillful. For example - use it like a sensitive hand and it can detect and peel off layers of blockage - and restore enjoyment. This rest is samadhi.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

2017-04-11 Guided meditation: cultivation of safe embodiment 50:01	Download Listen
A guided meditation into the experience of being in a body that is free from fear or ill-will.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center : Holistic Awareness: Monastic Retreat

‹‹ previous next ›› 1 2 3 4 ... 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 ... 53 54 55 56


	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