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Retreat Dharma Talks

The Sacred Cosmos

In this retreat, Ajahn Sucitto will outline this cosmos in terms of four interacting aspects: one’s body, the sentient universe, one’s mind, and overarching social trends and views. The retreat aims to encourage working with these in a holistic way through ethics, meditative healing, and livelihood. Texts from the Pali Canon will be explored.

2021-08-13 (3 days) Barre Center for Buddhist Studies

  
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2021-08-13 The Myth of the Individual 47:01
Ajahn Sucitto
We see ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, but we’re not. We are a meeting point of all kinds of relational qualities, qualities that can be imbued with Dhamma to make our experience a mandala of sharing and communion. Stress comes from developing an ineffectual relationship with what happens. We practice to come out of the worldly dividedness into something more compassionate, deep, less isolated. This is sacred practice.
2021-08-13 Guided Meditation – Liberating the Body 49:33
Ajahn Sucitto
This body that we can see as an object it’s also a subject – it’s a feeling, intelligent creature. Start with this right attitude, right view, and open the mind from the assumptions about body as an object to treating it as a sensitive creature. As we liberate this creature from clinging and identity, the witnessing heart – awareness – becomes more steady and peaceful.
2021-08-14 The Search for Safe Ground 54:18
Ajahn Sucitto
There are many kinds of world – biological, political, and so on. Their common source of discord is selfishness, the separatist, supremacist view. The common intention of all worlds is the search for safe ground. We might start with a safe human environment, then establish safe embodiment. When there is safety, security and truthfulness, by itself citta opens and brings forth its own qualities – love, wisdom and morality. These are our unique offerings to heal the discord in any world.
2021-08-14 Q&A 1 31:43
Ajahn Sucitto
Separation and interconnectedness; citta doesn’t fit in this world; destruction of the environment; fear of letting go; energy of body vs. sensations; healing divisiveness in my community.
2021-08-14 Standing Meditation: Openness – the Sacred Quality 43:19
Ajahn Sucitto
Standing can help adjust you physically, anatomically and psychologically. Establish balance, connection, openness and ease. Let breathing flow through you. Aim for what’s harmonious in all that – open, allowing. This is the birthplace of wisdom and compassion.
2021-08-14 Guided Meditation – Subtleties of Breathing 22:17
Ajahn Sucitto
Supporting the heart with embodiment, with steady ground and safe space, allow breathing to happen naturally. Releasing what’s not needed, the subtle shielding around the body, open to what’s around with goodwill and love. Whatever arises, breathing it in, breathing it out.
2021-08-14 Kamma – Leaving Pain and Misery for a Divine Abiding 48:47
Ajahn Sucitto
There is such a thing as good and evil and they give rise to fortunate or unfortunate consequences. Good and evil not as value judgments, but as particular energies that have consequences. The heart opens as a consequence of skillful energies, like generosity and love. This is the key to the celestial domains of the Sacred Cosmos, where gods are void of judgment and keen on Dhamma as a way to happiness.
2021-08-14 Q&A 2 30:38
Ajahn Sucitto
Subject-object division of the senses; hardening in the face of trauma; greed, hatred and delusion; caring for others; broad vs. specific attention; harmonious relationships; experience of subjectivity; relationship of verbal formation (vacī saṇkhāra) to ānāpānasati.
2021-08-15 It’s the Wholeness that Does the Work 31:41
Ajahn Sucitto
Mostly we operate from a fragment, excluding the whole of experience because it doesn’t fit our model of what should be. Return to wholeness, first in your own heart and mind, then extending it to society. Maintain a wide focus and receptivity, an open state where citta remains attuned, and you’ll find your inner security, having plugged into the life force as it manifests in this body.
2021-08-15 Q&A 3 32:36
Ajahn Sucitto
Impact of other people; over-reliance on others; staying open with the unknown; responding to others’ sense of entitlement; innate truth of the cosmos; citta and the sense world; fear and constriction in the energy body.
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