An Online Retreat with Ajahn Sucitto
An international community retreat conducted online via Zoom. Live from Cittaviveka Buddhist Monastery to the world.
Category: Living, Dying and Liberation
Opening Talk: Ethics and Meditation
Ajahn Sucitto (Start of Retreat, 15 December 2020)
Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 1, talk 1
Introduction to online format and schedule, encouragements for how to practice and make the most of these circumstances.
Introduction to Precepts
Ajahn Sucitto
Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 1, talk 2
The fundamental citta sense is an ethical sense. We try to encourage that with precepts. This is how we align ourselves to citta.
Sila Practice
Ajahn Sucitto
Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 1, talk 3
Precepts are what most skilfully link citta to the world of sense contact. Without this ethical sense, citta runs out and gets into damaging circumstances. Precepts are the way you communicate the Dhamma through your actions into the world.
Samādhi Practice
Ajahn Sucitto
Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 1, talk 4
With the sīla practice in place, we give attention to samādhi practice – finding our center within the world of sense contact. From this steady place we are present, witnessing, attuning to how citta is touched by it all.
Strengthen Heart within the Mind
Ajahn Sucitto
Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 1, talk 5
Citta requires strength to meet the afflictive perceptions and meanings that compress it. Shutting down and distracting ourselves is understandable, but inadequate. Cultivation of spiritual faculties gives citta tools and capacity to meet phenomena with compassion and skillful action.
Centring Meditation
Ajahn Sucitto
Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 1, talk 6
Tune into the capacity to open and be sensitive. Listen in a feeling way to the pulses, tinglings, warmth of the body. Everything that resonates in your heart is felt directly in the body. Stay with awareness and allow feelings and emotions to shift, move, be ventilated and pass.
Recollection on Skilful Thought
Ajahn Sucitto
Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 1, talk 7
It’s important to learn to feel our thoughts. When thoughts are felt, there’s an instinctive filtering for true, uncluttered, undistracted thoughts. Chanting gives us a way to practice with this.