Bringing up a sound through the body, we listen and harmonize with others. The citta seeks that harmony to feel comfortable in its environment.

Questions are précised: 00:10 Q1 Can you clarify the analogy of dhammas you gave using the orange. 07:16 Q2 Can you speak more about the desires tanha and chanda? 21:46 Q3 Regarding breath meditation, should one focus on breathing sensations rather than the subtle body? 27:51 Q4 When the mind becomes unified, do I stay and let go of the breathing as the mind unifies, or should I watch the breathing in the background? 32:46 Q5 Sometimes I reach an awareness that feels so alien that I pull back. 34:09 Q6 How does one forgive oneself and handle regrets? 42:14 Q6 When helping others how do we decide when to stop helping? 44:24 Q7 How can we handle feeling inferior? What leads to the sense of unworthiness? 49:34 Q8 My body has pain in every position and it’s hard to meditate. What can you suggest?

Questions are précised: 00:00 Q1 Can you please distinguish between citta anupassana and dhamma anupassana. Which frame of reference should one apply to such contemplation? 28:43 Q2 During mindfulness of breathing, I find vichara (sensing and evaluating) to be an issue. How can I strengthen vichara? 35:47 Q3 I am a project manager, and there is a lot of planning and decision making. Is this a sankara? How to do so wisely and skillfully?

Questions are précised - 00:22 Q1 How to practice mindfulness of death? 16:27 Q2 We take in the world through the five senses. If we do not hear or see any news does that mean things, like the war in Gaza, are not really happening? 28:07 Q3 How do we know whether a kalyanamitta (spiritual friend) is trustworthy? 29:44 Q4 I get tension and constrictions in the chest and other places. I often get frustrated with this. Perhaps I am too preoccupied with it? 37:23 Q5 I am eager to understand imbalances – like jealousy and comparison - and to break through them quickly. What is your advice? 44:01 Q6 How can one influence or talk to other people about other views, like politics for example?

Vedana/ feeling is a primary source of intelligence, where things first impact. By knowing what penetrates and moves you, you can understand the mainspring of motivations and reflexes.

00:13 Q1 Sense restraint and diligence in daily life: I'm motivated to practice when there's suffering, when life is fine I slacken off and indulge in sense pleasures. Please advise. 28: 14 Q2 Questions on sleepiness: How to deal with sleepiness on waking up in the morning? I take a lot of caffeine to avoid sleepiness. Is there an alternative? How can I be mindful all the time? 40:46 Q3 When I sit the body collapses and the energy required to straighten the body makes it hard to feel relax. Any advice? 44:44 Q4 I have a compulsive need to feel liked and even try and force people to like me. What can I do? 52:55 Q5 Nama rupa vinayana (name form and consciousness). Can you explain more about this please?

The teachings reiterate cultivating the knowing of contact – that Is, what is felt internally, externally and as the internal and external worlds meet.

Moving into a new day, puja creates openness and sanctuary, recollecting the meaning of ‘Buddha’.

Puja/ honouring the sacred creates conditions for awakening. The group effort adds enormously, focusing on values and liberation, offering the opportunity to share an ongoing and ancient transmission.

A retreat is a training for life. It’s simple but hinges on careful sustained attention on useful frames of reference. What is worth giving prolonged attention to?

Dhamma teaching is never completed because it has to be right at the right time. It points to something; it never describes or defines. This allows the mind to decompress and get free from the conditioning forces of data and the pressure to make things happen.

When the citta is out of touch with Dhamma, reactive tendencies arise and we start responding to the designating and naming that the mind creates, thereby destroying the freshness of our experience.

Excellent resource in the current news environment

On retreat we can develop a frame of reference which becomes a reliable way of filtering – not controlling – experience. Retreat structure, silence and participation are key ingredients.

Steady the citta by replenishing it with good food. These include the fruits of friendliness, goodwill, ethical sensitivity, stability, and a steady resolve. These become a drip feed.

Signs / nimittas are significant. Ajahn examines what is meant by these words.

With integrity as a basis for mindfulness, we can go beyond calming down in sports, the office or even the army. Through meditation we see there is something deeper in the heart that needs to be unpacked.

Effort: taking an overview, we can recognize the first effort is to generate right view, to note the conditionalities in which we find ourselves. We see which ones lead to stress, and which allow it to cease.

We use retreat to learn how to soften and loosen the worldly ways of stimulation and action, and to enter the space and silence of our temple.

Teachings from the last week of the vassa. Description pending.

Finding a place to begin can’t come from history. Intuitive faith / saddha is useful to distinguish the mundane from the place where truth, the unconditioned, can be revealed.

Participant questions are précised and read into the file. The reading does not communicate the emotion that was frequently beautifully present: 00:08 Q1: I started listening to your recordings maybe in 2020 and it just really resonates with me the way you explain the citta. I just have never heard it described in quite the way you do, it all makes sense. So just to say thank you for this. 01:11 Q2: Could you speak about the bowing - what you are doing and how to do it. 05:56 Q3: I don’t have words to express my heart but thanks. The silence this morning … there’s something about it … The process is so intriguing, so beautiful, so thank you all everybody. 06:22 Q4 I so appreciate your clarity. You have helped me to understand things that I touched into years ago. And I went down cul-de-sacs not understanding. I am so grateful to have come into contact with you. 08:32 Q5 It’s been a difficult year for me and with your teaching I feel like an instrument that has been retuned. I feel I can play now or sing. 08:49 Q6 I want to say I am very grateful to be here and it seems that I have probably done some wholesome actions along the way. Sometimes when I look at my life I look at the difficult things that have happened to me and now I see I need to also look at the beautiful things. 09:21 Q7 For the last 10 years I have been struggling with daily practice and now I see better that practice is not just for half an hour but it’s 24/7 and I have to do my best. 11:15 Q8 You’ve talked about practicing with the paramis. I don’t know what they are. Is there a text you could recommend on this? 11:59 Q9 I just wanted to thank you and everyone for the silent presence and especially to thank you for how you led us into silence. 12:17 Q10 I just want to add that the QiGong was really special and added a lot. Thank you for that. 12:35 Q11 Who is your teacher in QiGong?

A Dhamma session is special, a form that is unlike the form in which most people live. But as we return to the helter-skelter of city life, it offers certain things to bear in mind.

Meditation is part of the eight-fold path. We see there are no such things as objects just many, many subjects – and they all experience themselves as subjects.

An examination of the operating system that gets set up with life and the program “I am a separate being.”

Dependent arising is accompanied by dependent ceasing. Is mindfulness enough? The dhammas involved are potent and need persistent attention to a multiplicity of factors.

The temple is built through contemplating, understanding and clearing the ground. The construction is through a process called recollection: to bring up a topic, linger on it and see what the resonances are.

Questions are précised and read into the file: 00:10 Q1 Is there a Buddhist perspective on the soul and how that might relate to citta. 09:08 Q2 I am wondering about the teachings of the trikayas in terms of the territory of the soul or the devas. 11:38 Q3 You were saying there is no me and no not me; there is no soul. But then, what gets passed on? 20:42 Q4 When I think about what gets passed on I tend to think more of the role of genetics. To me, Buddhism doesn’t seem to give enough weight to the social or family element in our development. 22:39 Q5 Regarding the concept of qi (chi), does that life force come with intelligence imbued in it? 23:02 Q6 I so appreciated your comments about the beauty of freedom the Buddha had was to choose to teach out of compassion. So his enlightenment was not the end point but it was the responsive space that resulted that was so beautiful. 33:01 Q7 Can you elaborate please? Is the most basic link in the dependent origination is the I am singularity? Is there an asava independent of the I am?34:26 Q8 Earlier you talked about the four areas of crystallization of clinging: sense pleasures, becoming and principles / ethics. What was the fourth?

Guided meditation

The Brahmaviharas are all full-hearted intentions towards good will; heart energies that carry the same code / language. They are not about liking.

Questions are précised and read into the file: 00:25 Q1 I’m wondering if you have thought about animal sankara formations and what they might be like? 04:27 Q2 Can the environment change your citta? 07:23 Q3 Can you talk more about calming the formations? It seems such a huge subject. 08:44 Q4 You say we have to turn towards our regrets and not suppress them. But these have to do with the past and we have to turn to them. I think I am confused. 25:07 Q5 Can you say more about existence and non-existence?

Questions are précised and read into the file: 00:38 Q1 Buddhist cosmology I find terribly overwhelming. If I just focus on what is helping me, will I be missing out on much? 02:07 Q2 I really value your teaching that it all comes back to clinging. 02:55 Q3 Yesterday you mentioned a shift that can be sensed before the tone of pleasant or unpleasant actually arises. Can you say anything more about this shift before the vedana quality actually appears? 04:23 Q4 This seems so interwoven. I guess it's a tangled skein. 12:17 Q5 You mentioned that it was helpful to point the citta towards kaya sankara rather than the vaci sankara. Is that what allows the development of equanimity? 16:52 Q6 I am confused. Are the heart and the citta two different things? 19:44 Q7 About the taints/ asava, is this a linear sequence? 28:15 Q8 Isn't part of the beauty of what you've done with samadhi as well is that to enter samadhi you've experienced non-fabrication of the 5 hindrances. 30:13 Q9 When I practice the jhanas I find I get to a certain point where I can't get further into calmness. Is that where I should start to investigate? 35:13 Q10 I have a resistance to being grounded. It seems I prefer the fizzy state. 42:37 Q11 In relating to signs and to being able to set signs aside, what role does beauty play in the dhamma? 44:58 Q12 Could it mean that it reduces the energy in unhelpful sankaras? Q13 There might be a time when I'm experiencing an upset and I would just put myself in front of a tree and the experience of viewing, considering the tree gives time for the capacity to identify with something wholesome and helpful.

Ajahn points out that the dependent origination teaching is not a linear sequence. It's more like a chaotic attractor with feedback loops, some returning more quickly than others.

Several participants relay their personal experiences with and understanding of delusion with responses and commentary by Ajahn. (The participants' voices are read into the file.)

Questions are précised and read into the file:14:10 Q1 Is there any significance to this figure of speech “there is a cause, it does not lack a cause” or is it just giving emphasis? 15:38 Q2 How do you withdraw emotional energy? 40:56 Q3 Regarding the role of being inspired, I was thinking about the Buddha’s own journey. His movement towards the path was the fourth messenger, the samana who moved him. If he hadn’t been open to that … 43:45 Q4 At some point we want to be skilful and pay attention to those problematic tendencies. So maybe being caught up in that negative script is like getting caught up in judgement. 44:33 Q5 When you can stand back and look at it without being sucked into the vortex. Is that it?

Questions are précised and read into the file: 00:48 Q1 You mentioned subtle body energy, heart and mind energy. Are these the same or different? What is the heart energy? 08:21 How do you heal the citta? 19:52 In dependent arising, is there a link where you can catch it more easily? 24:03 By bringing some acceptance to that craving or that aversion feeling, in my experience it doesn’t normally stop but reveals it more and allows it to be and I can respond to it.

The realization that waves of energy pass, allows us to see the thoughts and emotions that they support subside. It's not an annihilation, it's just a withdrawal of energy. Realizing this shows us just how fake our normal interpretation of experience is.

Questions are précised and read into the file: Q1 About this drip, drip, drip experience … can we moderate it? Can it be influenced by others? 01:46 Q2 When you were talking about vedena, you said things don’t come into existence without formulation. In that context it seemed like formulation was desirable. And yet when taking about consciousness it seemed like formulation was not desirable. 03:55 Q3 And probably, at least I sense that compassion has less clinging than indifference where there is less solidification which is a movement towards the skilful. 09:50 Q4 Earlier you were talking about the search or the wish for certainty. Today I got the impression that there is no life to have permanence and solidity is like a stone statue. The better alternative perhaps is managing and growing over the predictability of I don’t know what … of stone. 13:45 Q5 I’m remembering what you said about existence … out of mind out of sight. But are there times when holding someone in mind can feel comforting for them and for you. 21:20 Q6 I’m not clear about vidia,veda, vedana and how these relate to avicca. 30:04 Q7 I’m struggling with the distinction between sankaras and dhammas. 31:15 Q8 And would nimitas be related to that? 33:45 Q9 That makes sense but my mind wants to connect that process to sankara. 40:09 Q 10 My question is about movement or awareness or flow in emotion. You mentioned that QiGong has supported your practice. But is it not also a meditation itself - cultivating awareness, supporting presence.

Things do not exist independent of cause, but co-arise from a combination of factors. This understanding provides for a radical analysis of momentary experience – that it is conditioned by the things which have the strongest impact on our citta.

Guided meditation

The practice of avoiding extremes also means experiencing a sense of balance. It's not about becoming and not about denying, but contemplating phenomena.