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Retreat Dharma Talks
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Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
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| Mindfulness of breathing is the most thorough system for meditation that the Buddha taught– he used it for his own awakening and described at as being ‘of great benefit, of great fruit’.
In this retreat, Ajahn Sucitto will present the practice as a guide through the three-fold conditioning force (saṇkhāra) of body, thought and heart. These forces and their programs generate the conditions that embed the heart in saṃsāra, and yet if trained, lead to liberation.
The retreat will focus on the texts of the Ānāpāṇasati sutta (M.118) and also the Ānāpāṇasati saṃyutta of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. |
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2021-11-22 (5 days)
Bodhi College
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2021-11-22
Introduction – Steadying our internal environment
35:18
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Our intimate environment shakes us up; we become activated by phenomena and impressions. Through meditation we can begin to undo some of these reflexes, and cultivate a sense of stability and happiness. Then when things go wrong, our internal environment can be ok – it knows how to steady itself and discharge stress.
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2021-11-22
Guided meditation - Receiving the gift
44:35
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Tuning in to ground, space and breathing, send messages of safety and comfort, stillness and ease to your internal environment. What your citta lingers on becomes the dominant theme. This is why it’s possible to experience happiness in this crazy world. Receive the gift of abiding in the simplicity of the given.
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2021-11-23
Sutta + right view, attitude, mindfulness
62:42
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Ajahn Sucitto
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An overview of the Ānāpānasati Sutta, the first three tetrads having to do with samatha – steadying and opening the energies of body and – and the fourth having to do with vipassana – onlooking, contemplating what samatha brings to light. Right view, right attitude, right mindfulness are the guiding factors.
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2021-11-23
Q&A
38:29
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00:35 How to work with painful memories; 08:33 Difference between pīti and sukha; 11:06 Style and benefits of your QiGong; 15:51 Awareness of bodily energies and sensations; 23:27 Feeling body from the inside vs. outside; 25:40 Which practices are precursors of satipaṭṭhāna practices; 27:43 How to shift from (uncomfortable) sensation to energy; 30:51 Reflective capacity of citta; 34:51 Mindfulness with pleasant but faint sensation; 36:57 Drowsiness with samādhi.
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2021-11-23
Guided meditation - Breathing whole body
16:43
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Establishing a firm foundation and upright posture, breathing in, breathing out. Let the exhalation drain the tired, stressed energy; let the inhalation refresh embodied energy. Put attention where it needs to go to facilitate breathing in and out through the whole body.
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2021-11-23
Q&A
24:06
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00:14 Doubt around ability to meditate; 19:05 Going through the sixteen steps vs. just being aware of breathing; 20:27 Significance of the quality of effort.
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2021-11-23
Standing meditation – Harmony of the elements
21:54
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Guidance to sense into the felt body, experiencing its elemental qualities. When the elements do what they’re supposed to do, energy moves freely, harmoniously. Heart picks up the sign and feels happy, comfortable
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2021-11-24
Body regulates heart
39:32
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Ajahn Sucitto
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You’re born into a system that knows how to regulate and discharge emotions and energy. If the energy is right, distractions and unevenness fade away, and the harmony of body and mind acts by itself. Practice asking what is needed now to bring ease, clarity and joy into your life. Use cultivation to do what’s needed, to maintain health, balance, sanity, lightness of being.
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2021-11-24
Returning to body and heart
59:30
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Ajahn Sucitto
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We get conditioned to be insensitive to heart and body. To return, enter the body as an energy form, staying with it, thoroughly sensitive to the entire body. When you can feel the presence of your own embodied energy, the heart finds a refuge in that. There’s something here that stays present, grounded, firm, accepting.
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2021-11-24
Q&A
34:29
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00:11 Feeling dizzy with QiGong; 00:49 Difference between calming mental activity and calming mind; 14:33 How to calm bodily activities with searing bodily pain; 16:29 Do we work sequentially on calming mental, then bodily formations, or together; 18:09 Examples of ‘accept not adopt’ particularly around past trauma; 21:04 Q6 When the hindrances calm down, what else is there to be found as citta saṇkhāra? 22:56 What does vicāra mean; 26:09 In-breath is short and painful when trying to elongate; 28:25 Should I try to smooth out bumpy breathing; 30:18 Meditative experience in terms of this social existence.
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2021-11-24
Guided meditation – The craft of meditation
29:04
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Settling into direct experience, finding a stable place within the constant tidal wave of phenomena arising. Disengaging, carefully attending. It’s a craft, feeling out how this form is best sustained, smoothed out, appreciated, lingered in. This is the craft of meditation.
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2021-11-24
Q&A Saṇkhāra, self, khamma, khanda
39:39
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00:48 You said, ‘I’m not a person who worries a lot, but a worry that persons too much.’ Can you say more? 02:07 I’m not clear about the term ‘volition’; 31:32 Are the suttas prescriptive (something to do) or descriptive (something that will happen anyway); 34:03 How to calm the bodily formation; 36:30 How to contemplate impermanence, dispassion, cessation and letting go?
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2021-11-25
Time, craving and where they stop
51:03
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Your intimate environment is not about time, it’s about kamma. Enter into this embodied world with patience, resolution, goodwill and mindfulness, holding it steadily. There’s an aware intelligence that gets stronger and wiser when you can let go of the stories; it will work for your welfare.
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2021-11-25
Jhāna
56:48
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Jhāna is a condition that supports getting out of the conditioned realm. It gives the mind enough stability to step out of time and enough happiness to step out of the pull of sense pleasure. It makes turning away, nibbida, possible leaving an experience of something open, measureless, where the heart feels freedom from stress, freedom from pressure.
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2021-11-25
Guided meditation - Gladdening the heart
38:37
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Tuning into where gladness is can be approached from different ways. One can recollect people or events that are gladdening, or one can tune into the energy of gladness that is felt in the body. Linger in its effects, the brightening, lifting quality that is agreeable.
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2021-11-25
Q&A
23:17
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00: How to suffuse; 04:40 Placing and sensing the thinking mind; 07:14 Does Ānāpānasati help prepare us for end of civilization; 08:42 Nimittas; 10:01 When one area of body is not suffused; 11:25 How can we suffuse pīti/sukha? 13:00 Softening the process of enquiring; 15:26 Generating joy with chronic pain and vicious personal circumstances; 18:17 Blockages make nostril breathing difficult; 21:24 Can you speak about death?
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2021-11-25
Q&A
33:13
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00:12 Dispassion; 03:45 How do dispassion, disengagement and relinquishment reconcile with activism; 12:39 Body time versus clock time; 15:23 How should I teach mindfulness of breathing; 17:42 Joy and poignant sadness; 19:38 What is one then to be sensitive to in the third stage of the feeling tetrad; 25:55 Could you say that the citta is the deathless?
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2021-11-26
Standing meditation - Unified energy
52:51
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Practicing in standing posture, it’s much easier to feel the whole body as an undivided object. Certain things then become apparent – an unbroken unity, an energy. Stay in your energy body as agitations well up, are received, and then dissolve – because they’re energy. This is the development of true insight, to know phenomena is changeable. Therefore one becomes dispassionate towards them.
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2021-11-26
Bring your chaos home to be released
43:11
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The suttas can give us prompts for how to practice, but the agent is this embodied heart. It’s a process of calming and steadying shared between body and heart that reveals that stable constant presence beneath the activated energies. Withdrawing energy from the activations, just witnessing the changeability of phenomena, there is dispassion and releasing. Meeting energy, not feeding it, so it can be freed.
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2021-11-26
Guided meditation – Breathing regulates body and mind
45:12
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Aspects of energy can be steadied through sustaining awareness over the entire process of an exhalation, until the inhalation begins. Help breathing to regulate your energy. Energy will regulate your mind, quiet it, steady it, compose it, and over time it will consolidate into a steady quiet form.
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2021-11-26
Q&A
31:20
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00:13 Working with tinnitus; 03:06 ‘sensing a way home to what I am’; 04:42 Becoming more comfortable with non-doing; 06:57 Mention not-self/anattā in the suttas; 11:26 Focusing on one point with breathing; 14:45 Feeling I should be doing something; 16:12 Building more energy in the practice as one ages; 22:32 Feeling angst about ending of the retreat; 23:15 Recollecting one’s virtues as preparation for death; 25:01 Having lost our ability to express open steady presence; 26:13 Refusing to identify with someone or some movement; 27:10 Aches in my shoulder in long sits; 29:06 Arūpa jhānas.
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2021-11-26
Closing remarks – Refuge in this very body and mind
16:37
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Ajahn Sucitto
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This is a practice that bears great fruit. In the long run it makes you into a more wakeful, less tense person. Take some time to recollect it. Put aside what you don’t need and focus on what’s absolutely essential – presence and awareness. In this very body and mind you have the perfect system to practice, and to develop the boundless heart.
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