Month: January 2022

Attend to the Heart Tones

Chithurst Buddhist Monastery

Ajahn Sucitto

Day 4 – Well Being is the Shape of the Heart – An Online Retreat

When your heart becomes buried under thought, or you can’t manage what’s happening, then you need your body to bring you back. Body provides the steadying effect that allows the heart to come out. The other approach is through kindness, the ability to maintain presence, pausing and lingering whilst waiting for the heart’s response. This is how we begin to put aside the reactions and compulsiveness, and find our way out of the tangled web of confusion and distraction. 

Q&A 18 Jan 2022 (Day 4)

Chithurst Buddhist Monastery

Ajahn Sucitto

Day 4 – Well Being is the Shape of the Heart – An Online Retreat

Q&A (41:14) 18 Jan 2022

00:06 Mind in body or body in mind; 01:31 Citta voice and thinking mind voice – how to bring them together; 03:12 Mind storm leads to confusion, compulsive thoughts; 05:51 Sleeplessness, especially accompanied with anxiety; 08:02 how to ensure qualities like love are not coming from self-centeredness or craving; 11:09 Fear around upcoming surgery; 13:34 Losing the balance of mind when overcome with pain; 20:22 Others means of practice in addition to meditation; 21:59 Practicing meditation with the aim of attaining jhānas; 27:04 Getting a sense of pīti during meditation; 34:55 If there’s no self who inherits the karmic residues from past lives; 36:51 discernment vs judgment.

Guided Meditation

Chithurst Buddhist Monastery

Ajahn Sucitto

Day 4 – Well Being is the Shape of the Heart – An Online Retreat

In meditation we practice viewing the stream of circumstance from the place of acknowledgement. Let the stream flow past without getting into the details. Centering practices of body, presence, ethics and heart strengthen the possibility to shift attention from the outflows to here.

Shape 7 Presence and sharing it

Chithurst Buddhist Monastery

Ajahn Sucitto

Day 4 – Well Being is the Shape of the Heart – An Online Retreat

​​Wherever you are, you’re always present. We tend to focus on what we’re present with, the sights and sounds, but what’s the capacity to be present with them? Remove the fear, agitation, craving, imagined hostility of other people – these block presence. Presence has stability, freedom from regret and agitation, goodwill towards myself and others. This is the most peaceful abiding.

Wisdom – The Intelligence that Leads to Stillness

Chithurst Buddhist Monastery

Ajahn Sucitto

Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 11 Jan 2022

The cultivation of wisdom is not just a matter of intellectually knowing something, it’s a practice of handling, and staying in touch with what’s felt. Steadying citta so it can come out of its fixed gripped state, there’s a turning towards dispassion and right response. Stay in touch with the process, and see where it goes – that’s how you learn.