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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2021-08-15
It’s the Wholeness that Does the Work
31:41
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Ajahn Sucitto
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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.
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Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
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The Sacred Cosmos
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2021-08-14
Q&A 2
30:38
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Ajahn Sucitto
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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.
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Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
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The Sacred Cosmos
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2021-08-14
The Search for Safe Ground
54:18
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Ajahn Sucitto
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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.
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Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
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The Sacred Cosmos
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2021-08-13
The Myth of the Individual
47:01
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Ajahn Sucitto
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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.
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Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
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The Sacred Cosmos
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2021-08-11
Humility
54:16
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Tara Brach
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In Buddhism and most faiths, humility – feeling that we all share common ground, feeling neither superior or inferior to others – is both a prerequisite to awakening and an expression of mature spirituality. This talk explores how our conditioning and culture reinforce a swing from ego-inflation (self-importance, feeling special, better than others) to ego-deflation (feeling unworthy). We then look at how a wise and kind attention opens us to who we are beyond these confining egoic states, and enables us to live with humility and grace.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2021-08-11
Finding Wisdom in Anxiety
47:15
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Kate Munding
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Dharma talk and guided practice. Anxiety is a contraction and therefore a form of suffering. Sometimes anxiety is the appropriate response to a situation, but there are skillful ways to navigate this experience. This talk and practice examines how we can learn to soothe the body and the mind using somatic exercises and our imagination to bring expansiveness to anxiety's contracted state.
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Assaya Sangha
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Assaya Sangha Dharma Talks
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2021-08-10
Q&A
24:57
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Ajahn Sucitto
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00:15 I find it difficult to access body and heart intelligence through sitting and breathing; 04:26 Is there a chant or practice we can do before or while eating?; 06:23 Sometimes the citta feels vast and spacious and other times intimate; 09:12 What is paritta chanting; 11:50 I suffer from tinnitus. How can I incorporate this into my meditation?; 14:18 Do you have long retreats, like 3 months?; 15:09 I experience reluctance to doing a daily formal sit even though I know it’s good for me; 17:33 What is right effort when it comes to strong sustained energy that is released during meditation?; 19:45 What is the background to the stained glass windows that Ajahn Sucitto helped design at the Sunyata Center?
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-10
Opening the mind door
41:07
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Ajahn Sucitto
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We can’t always feel good but we can get enough stability to stop running, and instead meet what’s unpleasant. Meditation is the opportunity to safely become insecure – set aside the defenses and strategies, remain present and stable, and open. When you’ve accepted its presence with mindfulness, fear no longer propels the citta because it’s been integrated.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-10
No obligation
40:25
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Time boundaries, pressure and obligation, create a frame within which the citta becomes compressed. We become a driven or burdened person. What is lacking is internal stability and openness. Stand back from all that and bring a gesture of goodwill to the constricted places. You then have your stable open presence to offer.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-09
Guided Meditation – Breathing
52:29
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The aim of mindfulness of breathing is to steady, refresh and bless the mind. When the heart becomes clean and happy, it naturally widens and sends out good energies and actions into the world. So when you cultivate through heart, you benefit both your own mind and the lives of others.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-09
Q&A
46:38
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Ajahn Sucitto
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O1:06 Q1 How should one prepare the body and mind for sleep. 07:27 Q2 Could you explain again what is meant by the axis and the heart line. 20:44 Q3 If I go to crowded places, when I get home I feel sad and sometimes even suicidal from all negative energies. How can one protect oneself from this? 24:47 Q4 How can we get beyond the habits of the mind? 27:29 Q5 I think you said that “known” is a feeling. I am confused. 33:08 Q6 Most jobs have to do with the exploitation of the environment in some way and even healing professions are contaminated with the exchange of money. Can you offer some comments? 41:01 Q7 I have a chance to get a new job. I feel excitement but also see I will have less time to meditate and care for my elderly Mum. 43:49 Q8 My son has cut himself and my grandchildren off from me and I feel my heart has turned to stone.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-09
Walking through your identity
8:27
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Ajahn Sucitto
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In walking meditation, move through the identifiable world. Feel its resonances and triggerings and keep walking, see them as changing flickering phenomena. Maintain a steadiness as you walk through your world – it’s not actually yours, it’s always going its own way.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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In
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A Moving Balance
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2021-08-09
No person, no problem
33:11
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Citta’s tendency is to grasp onto phenomena, seeking stability in the ever-changing nature of things. Citta can also respond to phenomena with mindfulness — an open attention that allows things to do what they do and move through. When the constant seeking abates, a pleasant abiding place remains. This is where true stability is found.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-09
Guided Meditation - Samadhi is harmony
29:47
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Ajahn Sucitto
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When we establish steadiness of body, citta returns to being embodied because that’s its home base. With steadiness and comfort, pressure is released in both body and heart. Cultivate like this and the self-referencing can disappear; then there’s just witnessing. When body and heart are held together in harmony – this is samādhi.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-09
Well-being is the shape of heart
43:03
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Ajahn Sucitto
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The heart takes shape based on certain activations. We can train to avoid certain intentions and actions that make for either a shaky insecure heartone or one stuck with pain. A wise person concerned for their welfare cultivates a citta that is open, spacious, not hankering, not resisting. We begin to reset how our world feels and how we feel about ourselves. This is our treasure.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Guided Meditation - Awareness spread over the body-mind field
47:45
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Many things arise in the field of awareness. It’s all energies moving – some bodily, some emotional, some conceptual. Spread awareness over all of it equally, without grasping or repelling. Every detail is to be included into the whole, like a mosaic. There’s no person separate from this, there’s just this and awareness of it. May it be well.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Standing Meditation – Whole Body Vitality
26:56
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Begin with a bit of movement and loosening so energy can flow freely. Once movement stops, sense into subtler aspects of bodily experience – where is there stability, space, connection. A lightness, even playfulness, is encouraged in meditation. Enjoy.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Q&A
49:41
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Q1 – A comment about personal experience of alignment – lateral and vertical and Ajahn’s response; Q2 18:32 Can you provide more guidance on the use of space. Q3 21:15 I am dealing with a very volatile situation with severe conflict and stress. How can I deal with it mid-way between expressing my emotions and suppressing them? Q4 28:24 When I feel my body and heart are stable is that a good moment to bring up a problem of concern for me? Q5 28:59 Someone has been asking for my help, rather too much and too often and I find the pressure difficult. How can I handle this?Q6 31:33 You mentioned meditating with eyes open but not seeing. This is challenging for me. How does that happen? Q7 35:02 I feel a band of tightness at the back of the head and behind the ears. What might I do? Q8 38:12 In my family we have a history of Alzheimer’s. Do you think heart wisdom is noble when dementia is present? How might practice be a support in the face of any decline of cognitive functioning? Q9 40:49 They say one in four women and men in Ireland have experienced some form of childhood sexual abuse. How might people practise with this in their background?
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Using embodied intelligence
7:46
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Practice with sustaining open space for phenomena to arise and move within. Sensitive to what’s going on, but not contracting around it, body remains spacious and open. It’s possible to experience sense contact without intrusion, remaining internally clear, free from congestion.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Embodied intelligence
25:17
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Ajahn Sucitto
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We are familiar with conceptual intelligence, but body and heart intelligence need to be trained. These do not interpret or think about phenomena, but experience it directly – feeling, sensing, responding. Exploring things as phenomenal rather than as myself, there’s no need to understand them; instead let them pass with dispassionate, open stability.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Balance internal and external
2:56
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Use the experience of deepening attention in your practice, to really see what’s around you. You can practice mindfulness when you move around off the cushion. Often we live in the cocoon of an assumed environment that is not really what’s there. Take a fresh look. Pay attention.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Open into the given
27:58
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Ajahn Sucitto
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Mindfulness is the heart's awareness. It can help us be embodied,present, and show up for life. The embodied sense is warm, cohesive and is sustained through the rhythmic flow of breathing. The sense of ‘I am’ sits in the center of that embodied sensitivity. This sense is a given and cannot be created; but mostly its ignored because we're too busy ‘doing’ to receive it.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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2021-08-08
Little me and the sabotage
48:21
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Ajahn Sucitto
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We live at the meeting point of perceptions and impressions with their reactions and cannot stop suffering until we see beyond that domain. Stability and the awareness of the ever-changing nature of experience are both essential. From this perspective we see how the pressure to be harmonious with others captures the heart. This is a form of sabotage; it creates inner conflict, and a person – little me – who is never happy. When there is conflict, it’s important to find common ground with others, prior to negotiating the details.
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Sunyata Buddhist Centre
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Open Stability
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