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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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2025-06-25 Mindfulness, aggregates and the inner critic 55:16
Cittaviveka
2025-06-24 Q and A 56:50
00:18 Q1 It said that the awakened ones attained nibbana through mindfulness of the body. What about going through the formless realms? How do you maintain awareness of the body until nibbana? 13:02 Q2 I consider that for nibbana it requires mindfulness to be present every second, not just a while but continuously. This may be uncomfortable, perhaps we should bite the bullet and speak it out. On the other hand it's common when one has a strong practice for extended hours, for a few hours to think maybe I'm close? 25:35 Q3 Can you say more about the cultivation of the measureless states. 34:39 Q4 Ajahn Chah says something like happiness and unhappiness are both suffering and Buddhism seeks peace not happiness. Could you help me hear that as less of a bummer? 37:32 Q5 A person mentions that both teachers on the retreat like each other and are happy not just peaceful. Could you speak about this? And, why do you bother to dress your salad? 40:57 Q6 Regarding the spinal, sense could you please expand on this as a place of security and refuge, neutrality and Buddha. Does it have anything to do with the chakras? 48:35 Q7 Can you talk about practice to forgive oneself and others?
Cittaviveka
2025-06-23 Rituals as pragmatic resources 64:16
Resonating with images and meanings of the Triple Gem generates positive waves that place one in the field of the True, the Good and the Beautiful – the best place for practice.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-22 How do I establish and know sati sampajañña? 28:04
Ajahn responds to several questions around the themes: Is it necessary to have an attitude of sanctity or divinity when one is mindful in the sati sampajanna way? Is it possible to get anywhere in the practice without being ordained? How long should I sit and what particular process should I go through? Will I arrive at a certain recognizable state?
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-06-22 Guided Meditation 17:57
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-06-22 The practice of non-clinging 42:49
Investigate the causal process of how dhammas arise and subside, and learn how to be with that.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-20 Recollecting and entering the benevolent field 55:45
Bringing to mind and resonating with benevolent occasions in one’s life to build up a solid resonant sign to sit within – with 39 min silent meditation.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-20 Managing the waves in the lake 54:11
Citta/heart is like a lake with waves rippling through it. The unawakened response is to create walls to resist the unpleasant, and fences to retain the pleasant - and ‘me’ to hold it all. Awakening responses to the waves are the skills of samadhi and brahmavihara. These make the lake vast and able to allow waves to arise and subside. They are doors to the Deathless - the unconstructed that the citta can enter through non-holding.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-19 Realization goes against the grain 51:03
The process of fruition through satipaṭṭhāna entails resources, obstacles, skills, release and integration. Nibbana can be momentary whenever the consciousness of subject and object deconstructs.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-18 Q and A 57:31
Q1 00:52 When you're walking around and brushing your teeth what's your experience of the sense world and nibbana? I'd like to experience more beauty and sacredness in the sense world and cultivate a relationship with the transcendent, but it feels so out of reach; Q2 17:43 Recently I listened to a talk by Ajahn Tanissaro and he said he didn't know any practitioner in the West who was a stream enterer. I was disheartened. Can you say something about this? Q3 28:09 can you give some advice on cell phones and technology please? They drain my energy quickly. Q4 35:34 (several questions) In mindfulness of breathing, does one proceed sequentially through the 16 phrases, or pick up the steps that seem to fit with whatever seems to be arising. Why is it presented as a graduated training? Also, can you speak about releasing the heart? Q5 44:18 What are the differences between attention and awareness? What are their Pali terms? Q6 49:42 "One reviews the extent to which one's mind is liberated..." In the Book of the 5s. If one's mind is non-liberated how do you go about it? Q7 52:59 How to relate when resistance arises in practice from feeling blocked, to discouraged or lost etc etc etc.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-17 How citta unwraps 56:37
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-15 Citta - skin, scars and healing 53:40
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-13 Tracking experience with feeling 53:07
Turn away from the measuring mind to track how experience is, and the arising and passing of stress. In this way, we engage with the ‘noble pleasure’ that leads to samadhi.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-10 Roots of felt body - sensing the field 50:11
Touch sense establishes relationship and presence within the shared field. When this is safe, citta can unfold, and we re-form.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-08 Walking Meditation 5:53
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-07 Q and A 43:32
01 06 Q1 I don't have any particular devotional practice. Is this like a Brahmavihara practice? 01:41 Q2 Regarding the relationship between citta and yoni as in yoniso manasikara, I relate to citta on a moment to moment basis. Yoni seems to be a seat of integrated wisdom. 20:15 Q3 Can you explain about metta practice. 27:31 Q4 Someone said resentment and aversion are natural conditions of the mind. They're not self and when seen as not self, they disappear. Can you comment please? 34:17 Q5 I would like to know if the inner tyrant is considered wrong view.
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-06-07 Guided meditation 14:05
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-06-07 A simple short refuge mantra is offered 3:20
Buddhaṃ me jīvitaṃ yāva nibbānaṃ saranaṃ gacchāmi Dhammaṃ me jīvitaṃ yāva nibbānaṃ saranaṃ gacchāmi Sanghaṃ me jīvitaṃ yāva nibbānaṃ saranaṃ gacchāami {To the Buddha I go for refuge living my life to realize nibbana To the Dhamma I go for refuge living my life to realize nibbana To the Sangha I go for refuge living my life to realize nibbana}
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-06-06 Regulating inner with outer 56:38
Through consciousness, boundaries form between subject and object; thus, me and the world. Through the stress of that, the me closes into a bag. Defense and acquisition strategies. Heart (citta) is not consciousness and can turn away from creating the same me bag. This is through regulating inner-outer sensitivities to a harmonious whole.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-04 Chanting: theory and practice 39:14
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-03 Heart + spine = committment 33:14
Effort is the engagement of heart with a topic. In satipatthana, the engagement is with body as an intelligent entity. When heart meets the ‘spinal sense’ there is resolve and stability.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-02 GM - Standing 9:27
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-02 Body in and of itself, internal-external 42:43
A review of the Satipatthana as a holistic practice
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-01 GM - Standing 19:37
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-01 Environmental balance 36:51
How precepts and understanding support environmental balance
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-06-01 Opening comments, introductions 6:19
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge One Month Retreat at the Forest Refuge
2025-05-30 Embodied awareness and the 'me bag'. 60:30
A talk given at the Insight Meditation Center of Western Mass with QnA. Questions are précised: Q1 33:26 You were talking about the inner and outer skin. It seems this inner skin creates suffering. How do we start to be able to deal with this?Q2 37:34 Those words: Open, allow, let go are such a release. But something can happen that scares me, fear of annihilation. How do you practice with the insecurity of monastic life without being scared? Q3 42:03 In moving from control, do you go through indifference? Q4 43:50 Would you mind speaking about qualities of willfulness, striving, urgency, rigidity around meditation and holding attention in the body and that urgency. Q5 52:10 I feel very uplifted being so close to a monastic. Could you say something about the challenges and the fruits of being in robes for so long?
Insight Retreat Center
2025-05-30 Guided Meditation 29:06
GM at Insight Meditation Community of Western Mass
Insight Meditation Center
2025-05-10 Dhamma talk 33:01
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-05-10 GM 17:04
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-04-19 Holistic Awareness and Right Livelihood 42:02
Mental consciousness experiences in terms of points and lines, holistic awareness is the mode the body uses for its maintenance, health and balance. This is what we cultivate in meditation, so that the heart attunes to it and is also well-maintained, healthy and liberated from stress. Right livelihood is a matter of sustaining this kind of awareness in terms of duties, collaboration and the welfare of others. These clear mental hindrances and restrictions and bring joy into our daily lives.
Cittaviveka
2025-04-05 Participatory intelligence 34:02
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-04-05 Guided Meditation 18:24
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-04-05 Dhamma transmission is based on a mutual openness 38:05
A review of the Channa Sutta (S.22:90) in which Bhikkhu Channa receives Dhamma through being open and welcomed - despite his bad reputation. The teaching he receives from Ven. Ananda points to the openness beyond affirmation or denial of conditioned existence. This instructs us to handle our intentions, interpretations and perspectives carefully without fixation.
Cittaviveka
2025-03-27 Light on Path - deconstruct, return to presence 40:30
Cultivate what brings joy, and is immediately accessible. These bring us to our 'Dhamma home'. Here is an unbinding, a subsiding of the complexities of the mind that allows the factors of the Path of Awakening to arise and guide us.
Cittaviveka End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
2025-03-26 Light on knowing - empty, open, secure 43:08
What is the knowing? It’s not the phenomena, not the mood, not the mind. It’s a basic openness that helps one get less impacted by the pleasant and unpleasant. Recognize the aggregates and how they are activated, then stay with the knowing where is no establishment, no activation. This knowing makes way for discernment to arise.
Cittaviveka End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
2025-03-25 Light on concentration – a skilful gathering of factors and fruits 55:37
Samadhi is generally translated as 'concentration' but it is based on one-pointedness of purpose, rather than on focusing on a point in the body. As a factor of the Path, concentration represents the gathering of uplifting qualities and the removal of hindrances that block wisdom.
Cittaviveka End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
2025-03-24 Light on desire 52:54
This is a desire realm - we have desire. We’re not trying to eliminate it, but train it. Where it goes wrong is where desire becomes craving, when it’s shrouded by ignorance. I don’t create craving, craving creates me. Take the me out of it, and there’s the possibility to view things differently. Moments, thoughts, objects, so intensely configured, begin to lose their hard edges. There is a stilling, a chance to clear one’s residues.
Cittaviveka End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
2025-03-23 Light on effort, an oar in the stream 40:37
With effort, citta is the main thing. It’s both the heart quality from where intention streams and that which harvests the results. Then one knows where to best apply energy and how that’s done. Practise the application of effort to mindfulness of breathing, acknowledging and moderating the tools being used and the material they’re being applied to. When you practise rightly, there will be fortunate results.
Cittaviveka End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
2025-03-22 Light on balance 35:57
March 2025 retreat - talk 1 - This teaching uses the metaphor of a keel of a boat, that which gives balance in open ocean waters, to point to how to handle conditionality. Finding that balance between what we restrain from (varita) and what we do (charita); between internal and external. The heart already knows this balance, if we can just shine a light on it.
Cittaviveka End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
2025-03-22 Feel truth, avoid plastic 42:57
Whether one’s context is of a meditative community, or a natural world, or of mainstream society, one’s world is based on perceptions. To get perspective on this, bodily presence is basic. It opens an awareness before the mind gets going, and before the world of circumstance. Learn to filter the shocking ‘world’ of the media.. Sustain perceptions of the bright and worthy- and live in accord. Don’t go automatic!
Cittaviveka End of 2025 CBM Winter Retreat
2025-03-16 Q&A 43:58
Questions are précised. 00:36 Q1. Can you please clarify the difference between awareness and presence; 09:04 Q2 I became a monk but left due to overwhelming negative meditation experiences which are still continuing. Can you suggest something please? 15:24 Q3 In the evening I think I would like to get up early so there’s more time for practice; 19:42 Q4 I’ve been a Buddhist for 35 years but only recently have started to open up the heart. I’ve never been able to cry, only anger and depression. Since my mother died I cry a lot, even through the day. What can I do?22:43 Q5 I’m on two and a half solitary retreat. I use body practices but I am experiencing migraines. What can you suggest; 27:42 Q6 I live by myself after being asked to leave by house mates with no explanation. In my new place the neighbours pick fights with me and yell at my door. My previous housemates said I was psychotic. I am depressed. How do I not loose heart? 42:18 Q7 How can one embrace this human existence and remain unattached to any identity?
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-03-16 Guided Meditation 15:05
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-02-16 Presence and response 57:40
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-02-16 GM - Presence and response. 21:06
Dhamma Stream Online Sessions
2025-02-12 Patient relationship is the Sangha vehicle 45:08
(The occasion of Magha Puja) The Buddha established the Great Assembly (male/female monastic/lay) to preserve the ongoing transmission of Dhamma. Patiently bearing with conditions is the way to curtail negative engagement - and relate more wisely. Thus one acknowledges what arises as objects - and thus reveal the open knowing. With this, a purer relationship to what arises, rather than identifying with it, is established.
Cittaviveka
2025-02-08 Stay in your boat 31:11
Retreat is an occasion in which to repair, reset. In terms of life and meditation practice. In this process, mindfulness is accompanied by atapi - ardour, keeping things fresh - and various forms of clear comprehension (sampajano): to sense what is appropriate and fitting. Through referring to what arises in terms of objects one cultivates comprehension of purpose: to know objects as they are, and not self. This is comprehension in terms of non-delusion. There is also comprehension in terms of context (gocara), both internal and. external. This cultivation brings stillness in the midst of conditions, and if we keep this going results build up. Through sustaining clear comprehension one realizes an openness that is stable, alert and all-encompassing
Cittaviveka
2025-01-12 Return to and Strengthen the Heart 40:40
Aim to clarify, and strengthen the heart. This is through gathering energy in the heart – that is ‘samadhi’ (concentration). Letting go in the flood of life requires this strength and the relinquishment that support, and are supported by, samadhi. In the presence of a balanced and strengthened citta, we see and respond to the irritations of life in a full-hearted way; The aggregates are cooled. (refers to M64 and S47.42)
Cittaviveka
2025-01-11 Entering the undifferentiated 50:09
Progressive cultivation of mindfulness to maintain presence through the range of states, so that one allows then to pass. Attention is less snagged on different qualities. It opens to simple awareness. Familiar reactions, and with them, identification,subside. Undifferentiated awareness remains. (refers to S.47:42)
Cittaviveka
2025-01-10 Wisdom – which mountain and how to climb 48:45
Practice is about fostering growth based on wisdom, effort and view. Wisdom is conditioned by a faith that leads on to motivation/desire, energy, heart and discriminative attention (iddhipada). Effort should be wisely moderated - to sustain, restrain, persevere, uplift, calm. Application of citta is fundamental to the Path; but make it relevant to uplifting the heart. Details on application to mindfulness of breathing.
Cittaviveka

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