How does one maintain one’s center in the world? What are the 8 worldly “winds” and how to relate to them? What do we ask forgiveness for from Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha in evening chanting? How to balance energy between personal practice and moral duty to respond to suffering in the world?
Practicing for release follows the trajectory of knowing (ñāṇa) and culminates in realization (aññā). We review the aggregates with dispassion, recognizing their causal basis, and stop taking them to be self. Devotional practices support the shift from self-consciousness to trackless consciousness where self, other, future, past are no longer concocted. This is the turning towards the deathless.
The inability to feel difficult emotions causes closure of heart and body. If things haven’t been allowed to arise, they don’t pass. Using the practice of calming and insight, we calm just enough to make difficult feeling manageable and let it move through the body, then apply the skill of insight to look into just this experience without proliferation. Dispassion, clarity, and a wide attentive heart remain.
Relationship of tanha to chanda. How to arouse urgency for someone whose sankharas are geared more toward on desire? How to contemplate kamma as an object? How does wholesome “becoming” (bhava) happen?
[Citing from AN4:171] The ignorance that underlies volition conditions our ways of perceiving and being. As a result we bring stress and pressure into our bodies, hearts and minds. We train to come out of this by moderating attention and gentle persistence to everyday tasks. Communing with nature is also a resource.
Is mano essentially the same as citta sankhara;? Is there awareness besides sense consciousness? Clarification between sati/mindfulness and citta. Is mindfulness of body necessary for liberation, why? Difference between circumstances and conditions; how to “eradicate” self-view.
Referring to the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, The Honeyball, (MN18), Ajahn Sucitto describes a two-fold training to get a handle on and curtail mental proliferation. Citta can be trained through deliberate attention to starve afflictive intentions, and to instead establish pāramī tendencies towards renunciation, clarity and patience.
The Buddha’s instructions for gladdening the mind are not to be skimmed over. Without qualities such as gladness and appreciation we approach practice through the highly conditioned, self-conscious personality. Gladdening must directly touch the citta which cannot be reached through the rational mind or personality. Ajahn suggests accessing citta through imagination and play.
The experience of the aggregates doesn’t have to lead to suffering. Addressing the form aggregate of body, Ajahn Sucitto describes ways it teaches us, purifies the heart and mind, and can act as a source of refuge for our long-lasting welfare and benefit.
Translation of vipassana bhumi chant; clarificiation around sutta passage that asserts that a female could never become a Buddha; why we chant the Refuge Mantra 9 times; questions around working with perception; skillful contemplation of independence; taking pleasure from food; how to recognize and clear blocked energy in the body
