As Cittaviveka’s Group Practice begins, Ajahn Karuniko investigates the asavas, the outflows of the mind, and shows how these always lead us to suffering. He suggests that an antidote to this activity is to find an object of meditation that keeps the mind away from this unskilful habit, and recalls his own personal experience many years ago in New Zealand, in which he calmed his anxiety by remaining with the breath.
After the Cittaviveka community’s chanting of the Fire Sermon (SN 35.28), Ajahn Ahimsako investigates the stages in the cycle of Dependent Origination. He explains how the factor of contact can only occur in dependence on its three constituent elements, and asks if we can experience the subsequent factor of feeling with awareness, instead of being drawn into grasping and the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.
In so far as mindfulness is to be established and sustained, there is a doing, but samādhi is not a concentration that you do, it is a unified state that you enter. It’s a place from where you can review and reset your attitudes and deepen your understanding. And its determining factor is that the heart is happy in itself.
Ajahn Kevali, abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand, advises us to develop our Dhamma practice by looking at the life of the Buddha. Through becoming familiar with the life story of the Buddha and keeping in mind that he was a human being, we can emulate the same practices. We can regard the teachings of the Buddha as a template, the elephant’s footprint that all of our own experiences fit within.
Ajahn Ahimsako explores the wheel of Dependent Origination, focussing on the factors of contact and feeling. He explains how feeling tones, in the absence of mindfulness, can lead on to grasping, desire and suffering, but with mindfulness and the wisdom to see feelings only as feelings, that this cycle can be broken and an unconditioned happiness can be realised.
Ajahn Ahimsako discusses the vital role that Right Effort plays in the development of the Buddhist training. He shows how effort, working in conjunction with mindfulness, allows unwholesome states to be abandoned and wholesome ones to be cultivated instead. He also explains the concept of clear comprehension, as a way of practicing correctly within the context of each situation, and explains how the the training is a holistic, whole path to understanding.
On an auspicious visit to Cittaviveka, Luang Por Liem, abbot of Wat Non Pah Pong in Thailand, points to the freedom that can be found from deeply knowing the restraints that are present in the mind. He explains how an unwise relation to mental formations and a sense of self creates obstruction in the heart, but by utilizing the tools of samatha and vipassana meditation, we can begin to see all of our experiences as part of nature, which can lead to detachment and a real, lasting freedom.
Luang Por Damrong reflects on the life of the Buddha, and relates how the Buddha remembered his previous births, which arose according to his past kamma. Keeping in mind our own mortality and the Buddha’s teaching out of compassion, he exhorts us to pracice with diligence, developing virtue and making an effort to be free from the cycle of birth and death.
On a rare visit to Cittaviveka, Ajahn Koon discusses the five khandas, explaining that when we regard them as a self, they become a burden, but if we are able to let go of them, there is freedom. He describes how the triple gem is a refuge, and likens the precepts to a boat that fills in the gaps of our experience and allows us to float and eventually sail to nibbana.