Ajahn Sucitto
Day 4 – Well Being is the Shape of the Heart – An Online Retreat
Author: Chithurst Buddhist Monastery
The Key to Standing Meditation: Balance
Ajahn Sucitto
Day 4 – Well Being is the Shape of the Heart – An Online Retreat
If the back is not yet strong enough to sustain the sitting posture, standing offers relief. The feet, legs and ground sustain the upright posture so shoulders and upper body can relax. The key reference is balance.
Guided Meditation
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
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.
Liberation is a careful, everyday, process
Ajahn Sucitto
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 12 Jan 2022
Of all the things to be sensitive about, the most urgent and important, is to know how you’re activated and to calm the citta saṇkhāra. We get morphed by what we plug into, so unplug and let go of the unskillful, and plug into what’s necessary for calming and steadying. It takes time
Wisdom – The Intelligence that Leads to Stillness
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.
Cracking the Shell is Pleasant
Ajahn Sucitto
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 10 Jan 2022
The process of cultivation is a pleasant one of cleaning away the dross and delusions that cause us suffering and stress. Drop by drop the bucket fills up with skillful actions and overflows into something more deep, steady, reliable. Be a stable presence rather than search for it, ‘out there’ – gradually the chaos will begin to still. There’s a process there, and the result is purification.
Careful Attention: Food for Awakening
Ajahn Sucitto
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 9 Jan 2022
With careful attention we pick up those qualities within experience that are most supportive for liberation. It means we notice how things affect us and the results that follow. Mindfulness of body gives you something to rest in as you breathe through the rocky areas of heart and mind. Citta comes out of its restricted state and there’s a widening, stepping back, letting go.
Stream of Liberation
Ajahn Sucitto
Winter Retreat – Morning Reflection, 8 Jan 2022
There is the nutriment for ignorance and the nutriment for true knowledge and liberation. Both are dependently arising on other factors. What arises, whether skillful or unskillful, is based on how one places attention, moderates attitudes, and relinquishes self-view. This is a transpersonal process – keep filtering experience in these transpersonal terms.