Speaker: Ajahn Sucitto

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ajahn Sucitto (Day 2 on 16 December 2020)

Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 2, talk 1

Ajahn Sucitto

Living, Dying and Liberation – Online Retreat – Day 2, talk 2

The clinging reflex constricts citta, causing the loss of intelligence and sensitivity. Allowing things to shift and change lets us live more harmoniously and respectfully. In meditation, practice bringing attention back to the entire body, not fixating on any one point. Where citta and body come together, the all-encompassing world can be reviewed with goodwill and compassion.