The Four Noble Truths Retreat, Part 1

Ajahn Sumedho opens the retreat by explaining the eight precepts and noble silence, then reads the refuges as taking refuge in awareness, in Dhamma as ultimate reality, and in those who practise to realise it. He teaches the Four Noble Truths as understanding rather than belief, starting from his own Christian and American conditioning. Suffering is met through the sensitive body, and the cause is traced to desire for sense pleasure, for becoming and for getting rid of things. He tells how mosquitoes in Thailand showed him his own aversion, speaks of his age, and ends on the four Brahma-viharas.