How to see and use the retreat; Significance of bowing; refuges and precepts; need to realize the opportunity for practice and its urgency

Review of posture; mixture of alertness in the back and relaxation in the front

The nature of praise; the nature of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. Filling the heart with faith and aspiration; cultivating uprightness of the body, the mind; being present in the river of our lives with all experiences. Mindful of the body - moving through the body and optimizing the posture. Mindful of attitude.

Sati - the quality that allows remembering; different types of bodies we can experience inwardly through mindfulness of our physical senses and the mind; cultivating feelings from honesty, calm, patience and metta/ loving kindness - cultivating the citta/ heart; four places to live in a complete practice; wise attention; what do I feel/ feel like? Sankharas or energies / vitalities in the body; feeing oneself from the trap of the senses using the body of the breathing ; what knows how to breathe? Cultivating the experience of anapanasati - purifying through breathing. Discovering and working with tensions in the body - widen and soften. Breathing calm and patience into the body, nursing the body.

Using sensation or impressions of the body; watching the energy begin to reveal itself; 30 minute meditation with bell

Moving from sitting to standing; feeling the whole body; walk so you feel the whole body walking; not just the legs - hips, body, shoulders, feet. Feeling the lift, feeling the weight transfer, the fluidity.

Mindfulness is like a hand to hold things; how and why and want to hold? The need for correct application, correct object, correct way of holding. The breath and its vitality.

A reference point for the day; coming back to the same place - Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha; acknowledging the citta

Open and Include ; Relaxing the Chitta

Bring our understanding into line with the Dhamma; direct experience rather than what we think we experience; getting a feel for the citta; the experience of something happening to citta; how perceptions are seen as real and the clinging that results; sankhara/ the activities/ the reactions

Bringing to mind, to recollect, to bring into your body what is good and upright every time; remembering things in the body; to sustain or protect attention with the breathing; keep pushing away whatever is unskillful or unhelpful; taking care of the baby;

Three things to bear in mind: Pay attention, soften and widen, include it all

Bring yourself into Sangha - the community who practice; staying present; the body as a symbol of the upright mind

Finding a place to rest; preparing a nest to allow the citta to settle with the body; breathing through the body; releasing the past, cleaning the house; mindfulness of death; forgiveness of oneself and others

A place to stay, a place to sit, a place to feel more comfortable in yourself; taking time and practicing with all four positions; the spider and the web of impressions, memories, sensations and feelings; what is it that compounds it and sticks it altogether? Seeing/ listening to the citta moving and the stirring up of thoughts; releasing the citta from being a someone; using samatha to calm and separate the citta from its endless spinning

What can you take with you from the retreat? Using the occasion of retreat to develop wisdom of understanding - the 4 satipatannas / foundations of mindfulness; the transient nature of satisfaction; the rich man and the Porche; things are never finished; this is “mine”; seeing how conditions give rise to certain kinds of thinking; the release of the citta from clinging generally happens a little bit at a time; training the wisdom element.

Review thoroughly how your mind works; the world is created by the mind in this very body; seeing uncertainty; using the body to receive and allow the citta to calm; see how the citta sits on its worry and flies on its desire and is carried along by its fear; the citta sankhara never stops creating reasons why it has to keep going just a little bit further; watch how craving paints the world with beautiful but very thin paint. You can do it, you can see it. Pause, check, be aware.

Listening to the unique but common struggles of others; Ajahn Sucitto on a 40 year retreat; some personal history of how Ajahn came to meditation and his early struggles; thank you to all participants; coming from a place of gratitude; being firm with all the reasons that we throw up not to practice; take a little time every day to sit and breathe; it's as important as eating or bathing every day; the citta goes one way - it does not go down, it goes up. “Thank you for your determination and your company and your honesty in the practice. May you all progress and develop and may your cittas rise to happiness and peace.”