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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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2021-06-26 Q&A 43:16
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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