Dhamma Tracks
You have to learn to moderate - how much pressure can you take at any given time? That takes mindful discernment. Dhamma practice is not just a matter of feeling, but of mindfuIness; of holding the feeling in the presence of stability.
It’s like holding the rope on a bucket when you drop it down the well: you don’t just descend into the realm of emotions without mindfulness immersed in the body. No, you lower the bucket of the heart on a rope, and acknowledge: I can be with this much grief or anxiety at this time. If the bucket is going upside down, it’s time to pull up a little - that’s too much right now - but you don’t haul out of the well. You gain discernment at the point where you keep in touch with embodiment in order to feel what’s being felt without going so deeply into it that it overwhelms you. Then we can learn: that’s an emotion, it’s not a person, it’s not another, it’s not myself. Nothing need be added or subtracted from that truth.
This process will allow citta to come to a stability where its reactions and its fear and its agitations ceases. That’s obviously for our own welfare, we feel comfortable. It’s for the welfare of others because from this state, I will not be producing reactions of righteousness, hatred, violence, nor will I be producing feelings of fear, impotence or despond. My heart will be steady. Therefore, what arises from it will be just truthful, sagacious, loving, equanimous, for the welfare of others.
Ajahn Sucitto
Recorded Teachings
Guided Meditation – Training the Mind with Light Touch and Listening (25:36) Bodhi College, UK; 6 Dec 2020
Citta is energetic, its energies habituated to going out. Settle and calm it through the body, and sustain attention with light touch and listening, vitaka-vicara. Listen for a long time to what you place your attention on. Mind becomes calm and receptive.
Vinaya-A Universal Training (47:59) Cittaviveka Buddhist Monastery, UK; 2 Aug 2008
Vinaya isn’t just monastic rules. It is a set of teachings and guidelines that help check our actions so we can live according to our deeply held values – generosity, mutual respect, simplicity of needs. These values act as Path factors, to support the release into freedom.
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