As a monk, I bring a strong commitment, along with the renunciate flavor, to the classic Buddhist teachings. I play with ideas, with humor and a current way of expressing the teachings, but I don't dilute them.
Sitting in a field of fifty to eighty people really starts my mind sparking. Since I don't prepare my talks ahead of time, I find myself listening to what I'm saying along with everyone else. This leaves a lot of room for the Dhamma to come up. Just having eighty people listening to me is enough to engage me, stimulate me, and create a nice flow of energy. The actual process of teaching evokes ideas that even I did not realize were being held somewhere in my mind.
Different teaching situations offer their own unique value. In retreat, you are able to build a cohesive and comprehensive body of the teachings. When people are not on retreat and come for one session, it opens a different window. They are more spontaneous and I'm given the chance to contact them in ways that are closer to their "daily-life mind." This brings up surprises and interesting opportunities for me to learn even more.
I'm continually struck by how important it is to establish a foundation of morality, commitment, and a sense of personal values for the Vipassana teachings to rest upon. Personal values have to be more than ideas. They have to actually work for us, to be genuinely felt in our lives. We can't bluff our way into insight. The investigative path is an intimate experience that empowers our individuality in a way that is not egocentric. Vipassana encourages transpersonal individuality rather than ego enhancement. It allow for a spacious authenticity to replace a defended personality.
I normally incorporate Qi Gong instruction in my retreats. They are not suitable as audio files but you can watch the nine videos here: https://tinyurl.com/Sucitto-qigong
Establish mindfulness with the experience of a feeling body, the most fundamental source of feeling. Use a wide form of attention that covers the whole body. As phenomena are changing the mind is still with receptivity and deep listening. The nature of sati doesn’t react to feeling. The feeling can be felt, without blaming, criticizing or getting involved. When feeling isn’t given any more food, it becomes more equanimous.
We become entangled in the creations and reactions that arise based on ignorance. Mindfulness immersed in the body is where we can experience release from the powerful reflexes and currents. Translate the complexities of thoughts into the simplicity of emotional drives, and feel them in the body. Tune into what’s given – awareness, presence, stability – this is comfortable, this is pleasure, this is our basic ground.
The quality of dāna, giving, is not dependent on materiality or even a charitable obligation. It’s a Dhamma practice that makes you stronger than you thought you were – it brings up your nobility. It’s a privilege to give because it makes you glad, and so the enlightenment factors arise in the mind. For the one receiving, giving brings forth integrity – one wants to live up to the offering. This is the dāna principle; everybody wins. This dāna is a step on the Path to awakening.
Structures can be helpful, but they only get you so far and then you have to trust something more deeply felt – mindfulness internally and externally, conscience and concern. That’s the ultimate system. The qualities of this spiritual intelligence then blend into something affirmative and potent. We can begin to relax who we think we are, focus instead on these spiritual qualities that merge into the deathless, and allow the unbinding of that fixation of self.
In meditation, one might recognize troughs and peaks with regard to feeling. The idea is to smooth these out so we understand what touches us and how we react. Body and mind work together to create a stable, open presence so we don’t get swept away. Widening, opening, receiving activated energies but not the stories. This is the way you can level out the peaks and troughs.
The protocols for cultivation of citta differ from those that operate in the sense world. Step back from the object and notice how it’s affecting you; notice how the subject is being affected. This leads to a purification in terms of engagement with phenomena, and draws away from clinging and passion. From this place of solidity and strength, turn back to the wisdom of your own heart and act from there.
In cultivation we’re learning to experience things directly as they really are. We come to understand that we are moved and triggered by signs, not things. A lot of practice is about turning attention away from unskillful signs and cultivating skillful ones – cooperation, generosity, goodness. Then you’ve got something precious that takes you through difficult places and makes you feel comfortable when you’re in a bleak state.
We are triggered by phenomena, and all kinds of turbulent emotions and reactions can result. But how does it all happen? We use wise attention to investigate the source, where things rise up from. A strong citta needs to be cultivated so you can review how stuff affects you. You have a choice in this: responsiveness or compulsiveness.
We usually associate change with lots of moving around, but deep change comes through stillness. It’s associated with pleasure – not sense pleasure but heart pleasure. It’s a shift to learn to pause and lift from the engagement. Citta’s qualities come through in this stillness and we can meet what arises with openness and goodwill.
How to meet the problematic nature of conditioned experience without becoming overwhelmed? From a steady heart and mind phenomena can be investigated. We learn what affects us, what is for our welfare and what to let go of. This is how we begin to become independent from conditions: we develop a different center.
Energy is a constant fact of life. If you don’t apply it, it gets applied – there’s no neutral place. Be responsible. That’s what right effort means, constantly taking responsibility for where your energy goes. It’s an act of heedfulness and careful attention – choose what you want to abide in.
We live in a human context with its mixture of bright and discordant energies. Our individual internal contexts are no different. We cultivate to potentize Dhamma factors for our own benefit and the benefit of the world. Grounding in wholesome qualities and steadiness of body, we find a raft in this very flooded swampy saṁsāra from which we can meet and review the flood of emotions and impulses.
As we practice, there can be an urge to get out of this world. Rather than follow that instinct, find a way to move through the world in a way that’s harmonious. By being heedful, lifting attention, disengaging and seeing the world clearly, there is the possibility to act rather than get swept up. The 5 indriya are our allies, protecting the heart as we put the teachings into practice in our lives.
The results of our actions – physical, mental and verbal – make the person. If we are generous or selfish, condemning or forgiving, the results wrap around the heart and shape the person. This is kamma – it’s not personal, it’s a law. Kamma isn’t locked, it can be turned. Turn towards the measureless states – abundant, exalted, free from ill-will.
Based on who we associate with and surround ourselves with, a field is generated where we pick up the behaviors and tonalities. One trains to generate a supportive field for training and learning. Whatever the field, open to what you’re in, get a feel for that, and aim for what is honorable, steady and balanced.
How we meet and move through our world determines our experience of it. If we can shift our volition, the world changes. Contemplate the proper intention for whatever you’re a part of – best thing to stop suffering is to be in harmony with it. Breathing in, breathing out, setting aside any hint of ill-will, open to your world with the gentle quality of suffusing goodwill.
We use the forms of everyday life to notice what the mind makes out of them, the accumulations that occur. The theme is stay with the whole, stay connected, let the details go. What’s behind the inclination to move out? The stable reassuring quality of attention over the whole form – without ill-will, closing down, or dismissal – results in the freedom and happiness we seek.
By its nature, mind is absorptive. In skilful cultivation we steer that towards internal qualities of contentment, unity, release. This is how we are gladdened – the nervous system steadies and cools, body gets happy, mind composes itself, then you begin to see things clearly – what’s causing the distortions, stress and struggle, and you stop doing it, stop throwing your heart away to your obsessions. Settle into the goodness, drink it in. Wisdom arises from here.
Kamma is a feedback loop of actions and results, out of which comes the experience of ‘me’. We use meditation to step out of the scenarios, recognize the process and change the patterns. Once you see it, you get the meaning – ‘a suffering being’– and the response is sympathy. Use the energy of breathing to calm and clear afflictive states, replacing them with healing.
Bring attention to where body and mind come together in the upright. Upright is not just anatomical, but energetic – where you feel balanced, poised, wakeful. Relax the stress in body and mind with the calming effects of breathing. As mental and bodily energies gather and steady around the center, citta can rest here, and begin to experience its collectedness.
Suffering tends to isolate us into a small tight heap forming around a particular topic. In this narrow field we lose access to gladness, self-acceptance, and forgiveness. Breathing through the agitating energies, feel them as just that – it’s not personal, we can rise above. Willing to touch what’s difficult with gladness, we can meet the failing world without getting upset.
The Buddha teaches the middle way between the extremes. This quality of balance extends from right view, the recognition that actions extend beyond oneself – into the world around, to other people; it sets up what develops next for oneself. It matters which way the mind dips. Stay upright in that center that deepens into samādhi and wisdom, extending goodwill and clarity across whatever we contact and touch.
When mindfulness is based on right view, there is understanding of skillful and unskillful mind-states and the effects they give rise to. Otherwise mindfulness is merely attention. Right mindfulness, established firmly in the body, has the quality of steadiness and stillness, witnessing and non-involvement with phenomena. Mindfulness is about returning to body and breathing – ground, space, center.
Parting words and expressions of gratitude from the teachers. “These are opportunities in this human realm to experience letting go, gratitude, compassion, gladness, equanimity.”
Balance between discipline and self-love; failure as a shadow side of practice; addiction to Dhamma talks/books; skillful way to deal with anger; benefits of regulating breath.
Use of images and recollections to deeply experience the qualities of the brahmaviharā. Keep attention wide, body relaxed, attuned to how things are felt – shifting, moving, and affecting the body. And is it possible to turn any feature of these intentions towards yourself?
The way to make use of the closure of retreat is to harvest. Standing at the door of the mind, use the body for support to review the stuff of the mind from a balanced place. The upright axis cools the field of reactivity. Witnessing with disengagement, don’t be deceived by what appears internal and external, it’s all happening in the mind.
Guidance to gradually return to awareness through the sense fields. No pushing, just expanding lightly, integrating the inner domain with your external circumstance in whatever you do next.
The occasion of puja provides a useful link between our inner realities and outer circumstances. As we chant and make offerings, we’re open and receptive to the virtue, values, insights of our depth experience. The body picks up these signs as deep tissue memories, making these qualities available to enrich what we do in the external world.
Advice for specific sāti helpful in each posture. Establishing ground, steadiness and center while keeping awareness wide, allow dhammas to swim by, letting them all go. A certain strengthening effect comes from that.
Difference between wise caution and anxious reaction; use of psychiatric medicines; please condense teachings and instructions for practice; cultivating relationship with gods/celestial beings; commitment to waking up entangled with wanting and striving; transitions in place, experience and practice.
Realization isn’t something you do, it’s something that arises from beyond yourself. When we stop reacting to the stirrings of our kammic field, stop creating a self, awareness can lift and witness – this is suffering, this is its origin, this is how it ceases. As we begin to wear out these distorted psychologies that make up the self, qualities of happiness, freedom, joy and love become available as a gift.
The nature of puja is it’s a direct participation in Dhamma. Setting aside what is not needed, boundaries of self and circumstance dissolve and there’s just the upright center, receptive. Surveying the field of kamma from this awakened position gives you a direction, a vantage point from which to navigate your day and your meditation.
Accepting my own aging; emptiness; is taking a stance alignment rather than saṇkhāra; how to deal with conflict mindfully; can our practice become self-centered; how to maintain this in daily life; how to repay kamma/transfer merit for accidentally killing animals; struggling to wake up and meditate; how to work with desire for solitude and concern over isolation/loneliness; how to relate to mother who has long term issue of complaining.
Practicing in the upright body, surveying the field, whatever is happening for you, wherever you are, however you are – it’s like this now. Without reacting, denying, fighting or fudging, staying with experience but not in it. That’s the still point. Through that power of this truth, the tide of kamma begins to settle and clarify, and wisdom begins to arise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Guidance to sense experience at the cellular level, not as a person. Establish the firm welcome of ground and safe benevolent space around. Sensing, with every inhalation is a birth, with every exhalation a complete emptying back into ground. Tuning into the subtle bodily and mental feelings, may this be well.
How we live on the surface – our lifestyle, speech, actions – generates signs and messages received in the depth. Make an effort to establish right view in your daily life. Mindfulness is then established from that message, not in self-view but in the right territory of lovingkindness, compassion, renunciation.
From the depth of the heart is a place of refuge. A place you can go with failures, pains, mistakes – and be accepted. A place to put it all down, finish it. Let go of the tangles and snagging that happen at the surface.
Speech today tends to be surface babble, it doesn’t go to the depths. One who knows the depths speaks things that are valuable, useful, conducive to harmony. Therefore one looks at speech as a potential treasure, something that can demonstrate love, show that other people matter to me.
Other people’s suffering; what is meant by ‘non-self’; remaining with love when one feels constricted and out of control; cause of excessive burping; please talk about the perception-feeling saṇkhāra processes; the purpose of sensing space around; body scanning to train the mind.
Questions have been grouped by theme: Breathing; how do we work with the regret; questions around citta; how does piti (rapture) manifest in the body; heart feels like a lump of black coal.
Whatever arises from the depth, it’s not yourself. It’s citta territory – nothing to fight with, claim or stir yourself up with. Stay with the center, the quality of uprightness and the ground from which it arises.
Upright is both a physical and psychological feature. We can feel the balance, and if attention is sustained there, afflictive energies pass through –confusion transmutes into sanity. Because of ignorance we lose touch with wholeness, energy scatters and spills out through the khandas. Return to the wholeness, extend love and gentleness. Linger in skillful perceptions and the heart will reform itself in line with those meanings.
The upright is both an anatomical and psychological reference. It’s from the upright that we deepen, moving through difficult territories without getting hooked, arriving at places of authenticity and clarity. Puja offers an occasion for opening and deepening.
