The Four Noble Truths Retreat, Part 2

Ajahn Sumedho asks the retreatants to reflect, which he describes as witnessing the way things are rather than thinking about them. He points to consciousness and space as the unbounded ground in which the elements and sense experience appear. He then takes the three fetters that block stream entry in turn: sakkaya-ditthi, the sense of a separate self; silabbata-paramasa, clinging to social, religious and national conventions; and vicikiccha, doubt, fed by endless acquisition of knowledge. He draws on the news of the Turkey and Syria earthquake, his American childhood, and founding a monastery in Thailand with ideals that did not hold.