|
Retreat Dharma Talks
at Cittaviveka
|
|
Love as the Breath of Life - an online retreat with Ajahn Sucitto and Willa Thāniyā Reid
|
| In the Buddha’s Dhamma, the four expressions of the loving heart establish the atmosphere for our practice. Combined with the opening and enrichment of the body’s somatic presence, they clear negative patterns such as fear, guilt, self-criticism and resentment. In this retreat, the cultivation of breathing, devotion and wise reflection are offered to further this process. |
|
2021-07-10 (6 days)
Cittaviveka
|
|
| |
|
2021-07-12
Day 3 Q&A
58:30
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto,
Willa Thaniya Reid
|
|
|
How to respond to the energy of craving (taṇhā); how to navigate states of calm; advice for approaching cancer without fighting/setting up a war; how to work with thinking, between suppressing in meditation and reacting while living in the world; encountering doubt after 20 years of practice; how to work with unhappiness/sadness.
|
|
2021-07-12
Sitting in the Place of Awakening
30:53
|
|
Willa Thaniya Reid
|
|
|
Wherever you are, waking up is here. It’s not somewhere else in some other time, it doesn’t belong to somebody out there. Let us come out of small senses of ourselves and take up this tremendous teaching. Again and again, establishing faith and confidence regarding the heart, letting insight arise – this is how we touch nibbāna in the body. [SN 48:50]
|
|
2021-07-12
The Mettā Sutta and Things as Process
32:57
|
|
Willa Thaniya Reid
|
|
|
When we cultivate and sustain the deep friendliness and well-wishing described in the Mettā Sutta, a certain clarity starts to arise – one recognizes the shifting nature of everything, arising dependent on conditions. The upright heart grounded in love allows us to be present to what is. The grip of certainty softens and the tendency towards fixed views falls away.
|
|
2021-07-13
Guided Meditation – Open Stability
15:00
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
A practice with opening the sense fields while remaining with the upright. Remain in receptive mode – there is the seeing, the seen, the one who sees – not moving out into any of these, staying with undivided wholeness.
|
|
2021-07-13
Day 4 Q&A
45:24
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
How can I love myself; how to deal with loneliness; questions that arise while sitting; gratitude and rejoicing; preventing negative energy coming towards us; in-breath gets stuck at solar plexus; using breathing meditation in standing posture; working with the effects of harmful childhood events; energy can be helpful but isn’t a meditation technique; worry about other people.
|
|
2021-07-13
Puja – Surveying the Field of Kamma
39:52
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
Puja offers the opportunity to survey the field of your mind, your kammic field. Survey it with the eye of a Buddha, with compassion and awareness, not self, just qualities moving around. Remain on the edge, keep your intentions light – sensing, steadying – and let things reveal themselves more fully.
|
|
2021-07-13
Replenishment
65:06
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto
|
|
|
Citta can become established on our own or others’ foolish actions, then suffers from depletion, withdrawal of empathy. It doesn’t know how to drink in its own goodness. Use breathing to shift these deep-seated negative formations, suffusing the body with the qualities of the brahmaviharā. Put aside the doing and receive these natural resonances as a source of nourishment and replenishment.
|
|
2021-07-13
Day 4 Q&A
54:09
|
|
Ajahn Sucitto,
Willa Thaniya Reid
|
|
|
Maintaining mindfulness on sleeping and waking up; relationship between being sensitive and taking things personally; human enhancement and right view; sense is of being a frightened deer – practices for inner sense of security; gathering the good for wandering mindstates.
|
|
2021-07-13
Serving the Dhamma
53:40
|
|
Willa Thaniya Reid
|
|
|
The Buddha’s teaching is a deepening examination of cause and effect. It takes us out of the contraction of self-view, stress and suffering and into the possibility of waking up. Take in the teachings as nourishment, let them soothe and stabilize the citta. We’ve been given all we need. Trusting the process, trusting ourselves, let us serve this awakening heart.
|
|
2021-07-13
Dhamma as Uprighting and Encouraging
28:52
|
|
Willa Thaniya Reid
|
|
|
Let the Dhamma resonate and support our understanding of our own lives. The encouragement is to come to know it for oneself. Come into body, ground, here, establish mindfulness. Whatever is happening, we have a way of meeting it and coming into right relationship in a way that steadies and frees the heart.
|
|
|
