Using mindfulness of the body to chill emotional reactions.

Ajahn explores the sutta on the two acrobats, illustrating the theme of protection of oneself and others, and their inter-relationship.

How to steadily warm rather than get fried.

...(And is released from) three threads.

How to withdraw energy from the mind - and why.

Persistent mindfulness through changing conditions reveals portals to liberation: Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta.

Practice is a matter of carefully noticing and moderating feeling.

How do we get to what the Buddha called, the end of the world? Ajahn points to a practice of exploring the internal / subtle body and its relationship to mental serenity.

How to stay at ease in the world as it is.

Balancing effort and purifying kamma. Learn to be with what is uncomfortable, including personal mistakes. Cultivating the noble heart requires forgiveness. (at ATBA in Auckland)

From New Zealand

From New Zealand - 02:19 Q1 What is the difference between heedfulness and mindfulness? 10:24 Q2 I often hear the words: “Your dukka is not personal”. There seems so much behind this but it seems this does not heal the situation in the moment. What can you say about this please? 22:37 Q3 I have a chronic illness which comes on suddenly and affects many parts of my body. I carry a lot of fear about getting sick. It affects my breathing. Can I use something other than the breath in calming myself? 27:10 Q4 I’d like a better understanding of papancha / proliferation please. 33:39 Q5 Sometimes I feel unsure of how to go about connecting with others. How can I get my social needs met without being demanding on others?

We discover a sense of purpose in considering the notion of path. But the path does not lead to a place, it is the end of places.

In taking refuge we seek an environment where we feel we can find ourselves, be safe and grow. How can we operate in or even transform our relationship to the toxicity of the world?

00:18 Q1 When experiencing feelings and emotions is it part of the practice just to experience the suffering?07:59 Q2 When dealing with powerful emotions, is the foundation that you speak of built from continuous practice, being real? 17:15 Q3 If self enquiry is to bring us to a place of open heatedness, why do we carry these stories with us? How has that come about, that is has become so important to us? 33:43 Q4 Do you think that as you go on the path that you can experience suffering more? Because you are more aware of it? 46:34 Q5 How do you develop the level of understanding and insight that you have? 52:36 Q6 How can we find the balance between intentionally cultivating skillful qualities and accepting or allowing them to emerge?

The open state is unrushed, receptive to all the six senses. It receives them with a basic intelligence that stays intact and responds.

Recorded during Ajahn's New Zealand trip

The subtle body or energy body is a layer of experience we can explore. It's not esoteric, it's a normal part of life we can learn from. (Recorded during Ajahn's New Zealand trip)

Using a retreat for internal strengthening / cleaning, starts with an inventory of where we are and what's happening. It's a deep caring for oneself and one's experience. (Offered at ATBA.)

Precepts are a vehicle for happiness and comfort for the heart – supporting that which can be liberated.

Sitting starts at 19:40

When virtue is straight one’s view is straight, you establish mindfulness, realizing that what you do, think and say has significance. Exercising attention, awareness and intention, we develop a sense of embodiment, stabilizing attention on it.

00:08 1. The word restraint brings up a lot of aversion in me. I feel as if it's an imposition on me. It is asking me to give up a known pleasure that can be felt now, or soon, for an unknown pleasure on the path that I may get to experience. It just doesn't add up. How do you see restraint? 06:33 2. You said something about how right views and virtue put the body and the mind in position that leads to right concentration and insight. I think I missed some steps. Can you clarify please? 15:24 3. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and struggle with doubt from time to time what is the nature of doubt? How can I work with it? 22:50 4. Questions about energy: a) You spoke about energy and awareness being open as opposed to closed. I have a hard time visualizing this as energy and awareness are all contained within the body. b) What's the relationship between steadiness in the flow of energy in the body and mind? c) How to turn to qualities in the bodies such as steadiness that support these same qualities in the citta? 37:56 5. What is it to be receptive? It seems receptivity also includes a skillful way of evaluating things too. Perhaps the other end of receptivity is being a doormat? 43:04 6. In walking meditation I'm learning to trust my feet to lead me to adapt to uneven terrain. However my left side gets tense. I find a reluctance to be at ease. 46:58 7. Regarding the subjects for frequent recollection, could you elaborate on the idea that the wise could find fault with my conduct.

The poetic nature of puja allows one to enter, touch the mind and know it directly.

The mass of suffering seems impenetrable. But through practice we see it's actually a weave, a net, which is mostly space.

Walking meditation

1. How do you handle fear and doubt? 13:27 2. Can you explain the difference between mental feeling and emotional feeling? 16:30 3. I experience angry and unproductive thoughts over damage caused by the neighbours over 15 years. What do you suggest? 26:55 4. I experienced bullying when I was at school and I picked up a habit of trying to sleep through my classes inform the connection between aversion and drowsiness. Can you offer some suggestions please? 31:58 5. My main practice is practicing metta. Is it important to develop my meditation and walking practice alongside metta? 40:18 6. There's a negative mind state that I thought I should investigate but seem to have no energy to do so. As I continued to practice the mind state disappeared. Is it still important to investigate in case this complete lack of purpose and meaning returns?

Description pending

What is awareness? Where is it? What is ‘mind’ (manas).

The seeds of practice take time to germinate and grow.

Questions are précised: 00:00 Q1 What conditions the in breath and the out breath? Are the in and out breath, one breath? 30:51 Q2 I understand that after achieving samadhi one must do vipassana. Or there’s a need to direct the mind or to know what to see or look out for. 47:45 Q3 On retreat, every time the energy body unlocks some more space in my physical body and seems to open into a relaxing garden. Then it retreats. What’s your advice for my energy body to stay in the garden a bit longer? 51:31 Q4 Is it a must to see past lives to penetrate on the path? 52:34 Q5 I’m afraid of being born without wisdom and beauty. How can make sure I will always be close the dhamma in my next lives? 59:07 Q6 How can I establish daily meditation practice? What’s a good amount of time?

Circumstances and changing events both shape our worldly life and allow growing insight into the inability to control events. We can learn what lies beyond circumstances.

Examine how things become signs that catch our attention and enter our heart. Understanding the process can lessen delusion and provide us with protection and the development of wisdom.

00:15 Can you clarify what is citta? And the asavas? 31:02 Q2 What is meant by nimitta? I’ve never experienced a light nimitta, but I experience calm and peace after I meditate. How can I go deeper into this? Q3 34:31 How can one speed up the process of becoming a stream enterer? 45:26 Q4 How do we practice mindfulness in daily life?

We interact with experience as it happens, liking, disliking and bearing with. Developing a quality of balance provides for the end of personal dissatisfaction.

What we attend to and what we leave out needs wise assessment. This leads to a deepening of wisdom and the abandonment of daily compulsive habits.

Questions are précised 00:15 Q1 Can you clarify why the Buddha recommended sense restraint in cultivating citta? What harm does sense desire to the citta? 04:20 Q2 I have a picture that the sense organs are shooting stuff into the citta. Is that correct? 12:42 Q3 How can I overcome sound distractions to focus more on my breathing ? 18:59 Q4 The Buddha said, light arose and vision arose. What does this mean? 20:27 Q5 If we trust in awareness, would this lead to attachment to citta and become another soul? 24:09 Q6 I feel emotions deeply and am sometimes affected by other being seen and unseen, like ghosts. Also getting angry gives me power and sometimes I feel that metta softens and weakens myself to others. How can I protect citta, one’s sensitivity? 30:45 Q7 How to distinguish between self-care and attachment?

00:09 Q1 Could you speak about the experience of thinking and emotions. 06:09 Q2 I feel I have no control. The music in my mind keeps playing, I feel I am going mad. How can I cultivate mindfully without making thoughts and stories stronger. 20:59 Q3 How can I deal with grief over loosing loved ones? 28:19 Q4 Is it normal to feel warm and perspire during sitting meditation? 32:56 Q5 Does it matter how you place the hands during sitting meditation? 35:40 Q6 When one sees the light – I guess this is meditation nimitta – do you focus on the breath or follow the light? 37:47 Q7 [Should one] place attention on the entire body even when walking? 47:43 Q7 I have scoliosis and am uncomfortable in every position. Are there techniques to help with body and mental pain skillfully when I meditate? 52:59 Q8 Regarding the 12 links of dependent origination, which link is the weakest? 59:46 Q9 How do we enter the stream? 01:01:45 Q10 Can you elaborate on what you said about what Sariputta and Moggallana understood regarding the arising of the Tathagata?

Ajahn describes the framework of factors that the human body and mind have that receive experience. Walking instruction at 32:29

We build awareness of the many ways in which heart intentions are responses to energy streams. Goodwill and selflessness are key to shedding the ‘me’ sense and understanding the power of the streams that create it.

The different Buddhist traditions span many cultures and languages, exploring this psycho-spiritual sphere, using a stable body as its theme, free of greed and delusion. The teachings point to experiencing an end to the preoccupation with phenomena.

00:18 Whenever I tell someone about my worries or problems I'll be told to think positive. Does positive thinking accord with the teaching of the buddha? 06:16 I've been practicing with the satipatana sutta, establishing mindfulness. Often I get confused with the words "externally and internally" parts of the awareness practice. Can you help please? 24:37 I'm working on opening, meeting and releasing with the sympathetic attitude. I've noticed some joy and yet in unexpected circumstances I've become defensive and angry and this leads to shame. What do you advise? 30:50 If I can't get to a center where there is a more authentically embodied practice, could I practice with traditions that are more disembodied? 33:20 You mentioned the Great Forty sutta (https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN117.html) regarding the basis of samadhi. Surely it needs the five precepts to be steadfast in right view etc? 37:44 As individuals we have creative potential, skills etc. Do we invite that unique particularity to manifest in our lives?

Description pending

To internalize Buddha, we can direct mindfulness to each of the four bodily postures. Through these they will guide our psychologies to balance and steadiness in the midst of conditions.

The Buddha's Awakening and release came through firm intent and rigorous inquiry into the roots of mental behaviour: something we can all practise.

Description pending

Description pending - a talk to Little Bangkok Sangha

Dhamma Culture and the forest ajahns

Practice means bringing ourselves into line with and sensing a dhamma transmission that is thousands of years old.

The dhamma is an amazing inheritance that allows us to experience the fullness of being a human being, inheriting and participating in the entire cosmos of material and immaterial experience.

Let voice become a special experience, using it fully and carefully to experience the mutuality of the cosmos. Making and receiving sounds is a wonderful interactive experience.

Puja means honouring, revering and praising, bringing our hearts into the path of purity, of harmlessness.

Practicing composure, collectedness and stability enables us to be wise and compassionate towards forms that arise from both internal and external domains.

(Questions précised) - 00:32 Q1 Could you please explain what you mean by the cosmos? 16:16 Q2 When you say feeling”, do you mean vedena or more complex emotions? 20:32 Q3 How can one be with emotions and not in them? 33:33 Q4 Could you talk more about tanha and its relationship to sanya and dukkha. 44:21 Q5 In one of the guided meditations, you mentioned getting in touch with joy. How can we do that when it can feel completely absent.

The relentless bombardment by signals to activate ourselves and evoke heart movement can be noticed.

Questions précised - 00:06 Q1 A lot is said about ‘moving away from’. Could you also say something about moving towards? 15:31 Q2 When I have pain while sitting I usually practice with the pain until I feel there may be a risk to my health, for example by restricting blood flow in the leg for too long. Any ideas on this please? 17:23 Q3 Regarding sleepiness while witting, I discovered that by surrendering to it my body deeply rests and then the mind is bright again. Any comments please? 21:52 Q4 Meditation doesn’t allow me to gather energy but actually dissipates it. Why does this happen? 30:53 Q5 I live in a country where’s there’s a lot of suffering and misery and this often throws me into a state between empathy and impotence. What can you advise please? Q6 34:40 I live in the midst of great fear, witnessing emotional hostility. Where do actions and decisions and wise reflection play a part in helping but if I do too much the thinking mind goes astray. What is your advice please? 37:31 Q7 How does one we free oneself from jealousy and comparison? 40:12 Q8 How can we help others who are suffering but believe they are happy?

The cultivation of wisdom allows us to manage the information cascading into our lives.

Questions précised - 00:16 Q1 Is it possible to start waking up and still have a mind that is clinging or fixating at times? What are the characteristics of awakening? 14:27 Q2 Sometimes there are moments where everything is gone or stops, with no thoughts or awareness f an outside world. Time seems to be gone as well. Can you say something about this?16:21 Q3 It seems the heart needs to be allowed to know itself. When with family and partner there seems to be no possibility for this. This is desperately uncomfortable which doesn’t resolve and is filled with fear. Can you offer some guidance. 22:54 Q4(a) I feel parts of the body frozen in anxiety. Spacious awareness and reclining help. What else would help? Patience? (b) I get feelings of joy, gratitude then contentment. When contentment arises I feel the desire to move on rather than stay with it. What can I do about this? (c) What can I do if the energy flow gets overwhelming say with sickness? 34:46 Q5 What would you say to a teenager who seems to have ill will in the family? 36:44 Q6 No matter how good meditation is in the previous evening, there will come sleep and with it the end of awareness. Next morning we have to start again.

We're always at the centre of our lives. It is there that we can contemplate sense experience and emotional energy that underlies it.

Questions précised – 00:06 Q1 What’s the importance of the lotus posture for practice? As a beginner I can’t sit like that but also I don’t feel good using a chair 05:34 Q2 Is awakening possible for a lay practitioner of mindfulness meditation such as I practice, or is this just a lost cause? 19:57 Q3 I have been doing sitting meditation almost daily for almost 30 years. There are good days when my attention is stable and I feel unified. But more frequently my experience becomes stagnant and I don’t know where to turn my attention and I feel bored, inadequate. 27:47 Q4 It’s so limiting to identify with a self. Why, when we have perfection in us is it so difficulty to see the truth? 38:42 Q5 Sometimes I see light around people or objects and sometimes things seem transparent with light. Can you say something about this? 39:38 Q6 I’m concerned about my daughter with obsessive compulsive disorder. What can you recommend? 42:15 Q7 Is it possible to overdue investigation? Sometimes it feels that investigating frozen states seems more like prodding rather than compassion. 43:18 Q8 How can I feel connected to people who don’t share the same values and vision of life? I feel lonely and angry when I’m with them.

Becoming familiar with direct experience, we can put aside the need for reaction and immediate action, allowing us to cultivate the liberating view.

Questions précised – 00:09 Q1 What is energy? 23:02 Q2 I get involuntary shaking sometimes in meditation. If I focus on the skin it helps to dissolve this. What is this please? 28:31 Q3 Tuning into my body I find tension from unreleased aggression and images that are not always pleasant. What do you suggest? 32:44 Q 4 Sometimes I experience dropping out of identification into an open clear spacious presence. It mostly lasts only half a second and then I get pulled back into self-identification. How can I make it longer or more permanent? 34:58 Q5 Don’t meditation and attentive awareness stimulate and arouse? Don’t they sometimes arouse supportive activation of the heart and spirit? I find sometimes this is a bit of a strain or tiring because I feel in the grip of it. 36:55 Q6 What nourishes the daily practice on your own? Regarding daily offerings, what are some examples of that? 43:07 Q7 Can you speak about the value of renunciation? 44:47 Q8 What should one do with one’s talents? Excelling involves competition for leader ship roles and in that the moral compass gets bent.

Centring ourselves in the middle way, between extremes of indulgence or denial allows us to observe and moderate our responses to sense phenomena, especially thought.

Questions are précised - 00:15 Q1 What’s the difference between QiGong and standing meditation? 02:34 Q2 Is there a specific QiGong for meditation? 03:00 Q3 What is the proper balance between sitting, standing and walking? 04:49 Q4 Can you speak more about the forms of knowing described in the satipatanna sutta? 20:38 Q5 What’s a helpful sequence of steps to take in a meditation?28:16 Q6 I find a lot of energy goes into the head when I meditate. What do you suggest? 30:20 Q7 Normally I find in my meditation there is a subtle feeling of pushing or trying. If that is acknowledged there is more of a sense of flowing and playfulness. How can I cultivate this more consistently? 33:36 Q8 I had a very nice walking meditation experience with gratitude and opening. Then there were feelings of fragility and vulnerability. What can you advise? 36:01 Q9 I find myself getting very frozen or locked when I go into my job responsibilities. What’s happening here? 39:19 Q10 We talk about safety and feeling secure. I think this attachment is not the same as the attachment we talks about in Buddhism. What do you think?

Forms and our responses to them are always arising and passing away, including the form called "retreat". The learning that comes from using these forms is independent of these changes. It requires our tenacity.

Our life is the ever-changing experience of ourselves and the world around us - internally and externally. Cultivating goodwill provides stability for piloting this interaction.

The initial disorientation of entering a retreat is useful. It reveals how familiarity breeds stagnation, blinding us to the deeper reality and vitality of being alive.

We use our practice for understanding the direct and intimate experience. This experience cannot be predicted, imposed or demanded, but it arises, offering itself for our careful attention.

We use puja to exercise and develop our heart quality of honouring and respecting.

Understanding the aggregates allows us to see our world is a tangled web of conditions that needs untangling not tearing.

Self and other, life and death, body and mind are some of the basic fragmentations causing stress. Practice allows a healing wisdom to arise.

00:05 Q1 (AS) You talked about protection during the QiGong. How does protection happen without closure? 09:39 Q2 (LB) Could you explain how the citta can cleanse sankaras? 17:05 (AS response). 36:04 Q3 (AS) Given that I struggle to maintain focus even on a narrow object, it’s very hard to bring the whole body into awareness . Any hints? 45:02 (LB response).

There is a heart place that experiences reverberations and exasperation. It seems that this is me. Keep asking: What and where is this me?

00:05 Before encountered the dhamma I always thought that problems required solutions. You say they need spaciousness, openness and patience. What then is the place for mental strategies and solutions.

Ajahn reviews some of the teachings during the retreat so far and urges us to use our potency as individuals.

The day starts with a sense of decisive engagement but confusion frequently masks this and we get run by external conditions. Breathing is an animate centre that allows perspective.

Unplugging our normal drivers and moving into retreat can be an uncomfortable experience. Use it as an occasion to strengthen presence through embodiment.