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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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2018-10-13 13 Day 4 Morning Instructions: Heart Yoga 48:49
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
2018-07-22 22 The Comfort Place Is Here 57:24
The end of retreat provides the occasion to experience endings and separation. Check the tendency to rush into the future, the desire to get out of the uncomfortable and move towards the comfort zone. These boundaries of entering something unknown are important places to pause and notice what’s happening. The comfort place is here, don’t leave it. Feel the disturbances, and meet them with mindful and loving acceptance.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-21 19 Careful Thinking to Be Cultivated for Wisdom and Release 37:44
Used wisely thinking supports liberation. Through wise reflection we begin to understand the views and attitudes that give rise to afflictive thinking. But through patiently resisting acting on these creations, it’s possible to gain authority over one’s mind, rather than be caught in worldly currents.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-21 20 Wisdom: Detox for the Heart 59:10
One of the roles of wisdom is to continually check the toxic influences and open to what is here naturally. The unconditioned can be found through wise reflection and handling of the uncertain and unresolvable nature of conditioned experience. When we no longer resist it or feel agitated by it, the mind is released. The mind released shines in its own luminosity and that radiance gives the heart back its strength.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-21 21 Q&A 61:55
Working with sexual energy (0:08); social justice in line with Dhamma (15:20); mindfulness, thinking, speaking & listening (35:03)
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-20 18 Appropriate Attention: Comfortably Held rather than Witnessed 57:39
The way we direct and hold attention either regenerates afflictive self-forming tendencies or decreases them. By relaxing attention and taking in qualities that give rise to ease and gladness, the body is more comfortable and the mind is happy.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-19 16 Right Effort: How to Strive without Getting a Hernia 55:13
The Buddha crossed the floods of ignorance, sensuality and becoming by not halting and not straining. The right effort of finding ground in the body is a means for balancing and moderating energy and effort.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-19 17 Walking Instructions: Staying in Flow 4:20
As we walk, we’re moving through the aggregates, through the field of mind as it opens with its senses of urgency, discord, worry. Sustain mobile mindfulness, walking through your psychological and emotional ‘weather’.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-18 13 Guided Meditation: Disengaged Awareness 39:52
We’re not having an experience, we are an experience. An experience that’s changing, that’s affected. Allowing content to arise and manifest generates spaciousness and eases the sense of self.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-18 14 Allowing Innate Intelligence to Arise 55:03
Two kinds of reflexes occur in the flow of experience: not knowing what to do and knowing what to do. Both are subject to suffering. Recognize that within experience there is an innate intelligence, clarity, refuge if we allow it to arise. Doing is guesswork; being is clearer.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-18 15 Q&A: I Don’t Answer Questions I Respond to People 68:00
Ajahn Sucitto reflects on questions posed about breathing, how to engage with the felt sense, heedfulness vs mindfulness, metta practice and cultivating an open heart
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-17 11 You Don’t Stop Craving, You Stop Believing in It 68:20
The mind is a dynamic process with a certain familiarity to it that seems to reiterate and get stuck in wanting and not wanting. Liberation from this begins with not getting involved with, tussling with or pandering to the habit of craving.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-17 12 Guided Meditation: The Felt Sense of the Body 21:31
Awareness is a centering place. Not pushing away, not taking a position. It’s a reference point. Rest and remain present to the experiences and expressions of the heart.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-16 07 Posture and Breath for Chanting 21:21
Chanting begins with opening the belly, chest and throat. Posture and relaxation help clear blocked areas so the heart tone of chanting can vibrate and deepen through the body. [9:50 – 21:30 breathing and voice exercises]
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-16 08 Guided Meditation: Soothing Nervous Energy Through Breathing and Body 24:17
A comprehensive guided meditation to bring gentle, full awareness to all of the parts of the body, creating connections across them. In this connected state, body channels can open allowing for energy flow and discharge.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-16 09 Don’t Resist the Disorientation Experience 53:01
On retreat there can be disorientation – new people, place, restrictions that weren’t there before. Disorientation is a tough medicine, but we use it to meet the boundary of the habitual self with its instinct to ‘make things go my way'. Stay with the discomfort, so that the mind changes direction: to the settled ground, through the body.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-16 10 Discerning Your Way Through Systems 13:33
One of the fundamental obstacles for unawakened beings is the attachment to systems and customs. Rather than a habit of a system or technique in meditation, rely on organic human intelligence. Discern what is skillful and unskillful, necessary and unnecessary. Keep paring away what’s not needed and dwell in what remains. Something is waiting to meet you – a certain stillness and firmness of the spirit.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-15 02 Clearing Toxins of the Heart Through Body 60:26
The heart and mind are susceptible to toxins that drive action and infect intention. In the body we find a trustworthy orientation – a reliable source for knowing how it is now.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-15 03 Standing Meditation: The Body Seeks Harmony 28:50
Guidance to help the body come into natural harmony. Notice the effects ground, space and breathing in the body. When the body feels safe, the skin boundary loosens and armor comes off.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-15 04 Walking Instructions: Can You Move without a “There”? 7:36
Our walking is generally to get “there,” which carries with it a certain quality of distress. Instead, try walking without a “there”. Check the mental constructions of destination- including a ‘spiritual’ one - instead pay attention to how the body walks. It’s more peaceful that way!
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-15 05 Guided Meditation: Where Do I Find Meaning? 32:43
Take a simple word or theme and bring it into the heart. Holding it, sensing it and asking what’s most meaningful? When you take the word into your heart, what happens?
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-15 06 Using Thought for Recollection 38:20
Dhamma practice is generally marked by a tangle of thoughts. But thought can be used for recollection. Taking words into the heart, we consider what has meaning, what serves as refuge, setting distractions aside.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-14 01 Precepts: Something You Can Always Do 15:35
You can’t always “do” pleasant mindstates or an easeful body. Precepts are always available to enact as a way of practice.
Madison Insight Meditation Group :  Madison Vipassana Retreat: A Detox for the Heart
2018-07-02 24 Closing: Unfolding Your Dhamma Field and Carrying It Within 20:45
We entered retreat as “personal packages” that unfolded into a collective field of Dhamma. This field has immense capacity to hold wholesome potencies beyond the world of space and time. We can continue to enrich and access this field after leaving the retreat form as support for our ongoing Dhamma practice.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-07-02 23 Guided Meditation: Distilling and Dwelling in Your Dhamma Potential 24:34
Imagining there is only an hour left to live, recollect what has been meaningful and of value. The word just acts as the suitcase, then we have to open it and get a feeling for it in the heart and body.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-07-01 22 Q&A: Relational Snags, Power of Resolve, Liberation from Clinging 1:10:53
Why did you become a monk; the place of women in this lineage; relational snags; strengthening pāramīs; what survives death; stream entry; identifying is another word for clinging; responses to the group process exercises
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-07-01 21 The Skill of Thinking: Allowing the Heart to Speak 58:11
Instructions for restraining the human tendency to dominate. Learning to set up the right relationship and allow experience to speak for itself. Only after the truth is spoken can there be silence.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-07-01 20 “About to”: The Moment of Becoming 8:29
Training to notice the point when the “I am” is born. Allowing a fresh response. Learning to follow, not lead.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-07-01 19 Standing Meditation: Opening to Feeling 18:33
Getting a sense of the tones that arise in the body. Don’t act immediately, awareness is open and non-intrusive. Noticing the tendencies towards favoring and opposing.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-06-30 18 Comfortable or Ignorant? Choose Dhamma 53:57
One thing to keep in mind about wilderness training: you’re never ready, but that’s how you cultivate pāramīs. Stay in touch with your Dhamma field and you’ll always be ready to meet the uncomfortable.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-06-30 17 Pūjā: The Occasion for Refuge 18:05
Through pūjā we take refuge not in a world of time and structure but in what the mind knows. We take refuge in knowing the heart can open to suffering.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-06-29 16 Disengaging the Self - the First Right Effort 59:46
When we make effort to disengage and avoid the unskillful, we enter the Dhamma domain, the domain of patience, clarity, sensing. Then the Dhamma potencies, not self, naturally do the work of untangling the self-saṇkhāras.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-06-29 15 Guided Meditation: Breathing In Healing Energies 22:57
There is an innate interest in the body to release itself. If we can meet what arises with the right kind of invitation – a mind of goodwill, patience and trust – breathing will act as a messenger and carry these qualities into the body. These then act as healing energies.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-06-29 14 Pāramī - Embodying Truth 13:19
Pāramī are described as qualities that extend and further. When cultivated, they provide steadiness to cross over the field of dukkha and confusion into the transcendent plane of Dhamma.
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-06-28 13 Guided Meditation: Everything Unfolds from the Center 8:15
Establish and maintain core presence through the upright axis. Keep your tap root firmly rooted in your Dhamma field and resist the temptation to move out into what arises. Just by not getting stuck in what arises weakens the power of difficulties. [Instructions end 8:08]
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature
2018-06-28 12 Q&A: Negotiating Contact & Gladdening the Mind 51:35
Negotiating contact; gladdening the mind; the meaning of spirit; spiritual powers; consciousness creating duality; advice for Dhamma teachers; transmuting sexual energy; what is sampajañña; jhāna training
Insight Retreat Center :  Dhamma-fields Dhamma-nature

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