Compassion (karuna)

155 teachings in the library cover this practice.

Week 9 - The Complete Five Element Flow Dan Brierley · 59 minutes · recorded July 29, 2026
In the final session of the course, Dan leads the complete five element flow once more: Wu Chi, the five breaths, then earth's lion, wood's tree, fire's crane, metal's tiger and water's lake, closing back to the dantian. He talks about the elements as a way of understanding the whole body rather than one isolated system, and closes by encouraging using intention deliberately, including sending care outward toward suffering in the world.
Session Two - The Natural Warmth of Awareness David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded July 21, 2026
In two guided practices we rest in awareness of awareness and then let warmth in on the in breath, without it feeling manufactured. Between them David reads Tsoknyi Rinpoche on essence love, and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on our being something jewel-like rather than worthless. Gold covered in dirt is plunged into the water of awareness rather than scrubbed, and the frightened, contracted part of us is warmed like ice rather than broken with a hammer. It closes on a question about bliss, and a dedication.
Stress Isn't What the World Does to You David Oromith · 4 minutes · recorded May 17, 2026
A short extract. David on a line he rejected outright when he first heard it, that stress is not what the world does to you but what you bring to the world, and on why he came to find it freeing rather than a way of blaming people for their own difficulties.
The Psychology of Stress & Burnout David Oromith · 68 minutes · recorded May 17, 2026
The talk opens with a grounding meditation in which we settle the body and set an intention. David brings together the Buddhist view that stress is the gap between how we want things to be and how they are with Paul and Eve Ekman's psychology of demand versus felt resource, then works through the three stages of burnout: exhaustion, loss of meaning, and shutdown. He closes with the eight sources of well-being, including optimism, gratitude, connection and play.
The Need for Greater Self-Compassion David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded April 19, 2026
The session opens with a self-compassion practice: we recall a real difficulty, then offer ourselves the same kindness we would give a struggling friend, using phrases such as may my suffering be eased. David talks about why we can be so hard on ourselves, tells the parable of the ferryman and the traveller who jumps into the river, and explains why securing your own heart first is not selfish but the more compassionate path.
Throw Guilt Out - You Are Not Your Worst Moments David Oromith · 3 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A short extract. Guilt and shame never get around to the behaviour, only to what a bad person you are, so David argues for throwing them out altogether. Tibetan has no word for this kind of guilt; the nearest is intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.
Guided Meditation - Releasing a Resentment David Oromith · 14 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A resentment you are still carrying comes to mind, and the hurt of it is acknowledged first. David then turns to where that person's behaviour came from, their own pain and confusion, and to the difference between a person and their mental afflictions, without agreeing the action was okay. Hand on the belly or chest, the words are to the extent I am able, I release, I let go. It closes on deep breaths, released through the mouth.
Guided Meditation - Forgiving Ourselves and Letting Go of the Past David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A piece of negative self-talk is brought to mind and held there. David shows the mind as a brilliant storyteller, building a whole identity from one thing you said or did, then shifts the ground from thinking the thought to noticing you are having it. Grace comes next, for being human, and the words to the extent I am able, I forgive myself, I release. It closes with a hand on the chest and wishes to be kind to yourself.
S2 - Turning Inward & Forgiving Ourselves David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
The session opens with a brief settling practice, then the teaching turns inward, tracing self-hatred to fusing bad behaviour with a fixed sense of self. David separates guilt from healthy regret, teaches the four opponent powers for addressing what we've done, and argues our deepest nature is pure, not our anger or shame. A guided practice follows, in which we meet negative self-talk as thought and close in self-forgiveness. Questions turn to ongoing hurt from a parent and why self-hatred is common in the West.
S3 - Introduction to Dzogchen David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded March 18, 2026
David calls Dzogchen the most accessible of the three, and the pinnacle in the Nyingma school. Great Perfection points not at something to strive for but at a nature already self-perfected, and where Mahamudra works up through ordinary mind, Dzogchen introduces rigpa from the start. Ground, path and fruition follow, with tekcho and the pointing out instructions a teacher may give. It closes with a practice in which we look for where thoughts happen, and a reflection called The Unbound Sky.
Guided Meditation - Avalokiteshvara, Visualisation and Mantra David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded March 5, 2026
A full Avalokiteshvara practice led line by line. You visualise the four armed form of compassion, with friends and family beside you, difficult people in front and all beings filling the space, then recite refuge and bodhicitta and contemplate the four immeasurables. The mantra comes with light purifying body, speech and mind, then the eight verses of training the mind, a dissolution into your heart, and dedication.
S1 - The Path of Vajrayana David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded March 5, 2026
David places Vajrayana in context, as a branch of the Mahayana that throws nothing out and makes no sense without renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness beneath it. Then deity yoga, where the ordinary self dissolves into emptiness and is visualised as Tara or Avalokiteshvara, taking the fruit as the path. Empowerment brings lifelong commitments, and seeing the teacher as a Buddha is no licence to ignore red flags. The evening closes with a public Avalokiteshvara practice, with mantra likened to a lullaby.
Session Three - Restraint Without Suppression David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded February 11, 2026
In the guided meditation we invite in a memory of anger, tracing what it cost and how a calmer response might have gone. David works through the Buddha's sutta on anger, its seven things pleasing to an enemy, from bad sleep to reputational harm, then four remedies: restraint, discernment, persistence and right view. He tells the anger eating demon story and reads verses on speech and blame. Questions cover the inner enemy as harsh imagery, and how anger builds until it feels like possession.
Session Two - What Patience Actually Means David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded January 28, 2026
The session opens with a guided heat and space meditation in which we bring a small recent irritation to mind and track where it lands in the body, before widening into spaciousness and phrases of goodwill. David turns to the sutta of Sakka to show patience is not passivity but a mindful, chosen restraint, backed by verses on non aversion and the story of a maid who provokes her mistress into striking her. Questions cover staying calm at the time but doubting it after, and finding compassion for a difficult sibling.
Guided Meditation - Befriending Anxiety David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded November 24, 2025
A low-level worry or grievance is invited to the surface, whatever shouts loudest, and located in the body as a felt sense, with the palm of the right hand over the chest to signify kindness. You then breathe space around the feeling with a deep in breath, neither suppressing nor indulging it, before warmth and compassion are brought in, supporting yourself as you would a friend. It closes with slow breathing, in for five and out for seven.
Session Two - Extending a Hand to Fear David Oromith · 76 minutes · recorded November 24, 2025
The morning opens with a brief settling meditation, then David leads a longer guided practice in which we extend kindness to anxiety using the shoes framework, five steps spelling its name: sensations, hello to the feeling, a one minute reset, explore, then support. David distinguishes fear from anxiety, unpicks catastrophising and personalising, and offers the this is just a thought technique. Questions cover whether anxiety can ever fully go, and how to receive self-compassion when that feels unfamiliar.
Session Three - Refuge, and the Three Higher Trainings David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded November 3, 2025
Refuge is confidence born of experience rather than blind faith, and David uses the trust we place in an airline pilot to say why. He completes the text with the three higher trainings of ethics, mental balance and wisdom, and closes on the parable of the unruly prince, the wise minister and the strong warrior.
Session One - What All of Us Want David Oromith · 95 minutes · recorded October 9, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body and mind, take refuge in the three jewels and arouse bodhicitta, before resting on mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils. David opens this three week series on his own text, Heart Advice from a Foolish Practitioner, telling how the verses came to him on retreat, then works through mindfulness, compassion, wisdom, ethics and patience. Questions cover why seeing yourself as lowest is not self-contempt, and how patience coexists with anger at real injustice.
Guided Meditation - Buddha Visualisation, Refuge and Bodhicitta David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded September 17, 2025
Shakyamuni Buddha visualised in the space in front of you, felt as a presence rather than seen clearly, and inseparable from your own teachers. You go for refuge, then turn to the sentient beings all around and arouse bodhicitta. White light from the Buddha purifies you, and at the end the Buddha dissolves into that light and into you.
Hope In Difficult Times David Oromith · 36 minutes · recorded September 14, 2025
In the candle visualisation meditation we draw in the pain of the world as fuel that makes an inner light burn brighter, then breathe out compassion to push back the darkness. David talks about despair as the near enemy of compassion, how fixating on bad news skews our sense of reality, and how seeking out examples of goodness and empathetic joy restores a truer, more hopeful picture of the world.
S1 - Refuge in Good Company David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded September 3, 2025
Loving kindness is directed towards spiritual friends: early influences, one particular friend, the wider sangha and the lineage of teachers, guided throughout. David explores why the Buddha called admirable friendship the whole of the path, using the story of the monk Magiya, then covers sangha's pitfalls, groupthink, cliques, cult-like devotion and overdependence, and the qualities of authentic friendship. Michelle compares Samadhi to another group; Tracy asks where the community gathers.
D7S1 - The Whole Sequence in One Session, and Carrying It Home David Oromith · 128 minutes · recorded August 25, 2025
The closing session, and the longest of the week: the whole sequence run through in one unbroken practice, from the breath through the movements of the mind to awareness itself. David draws on a teaching Lama Alan and Eva Natanya gave in June on the four modes of mindfulness, and on why observing the mind and observing awareness can be understood as one practice. He ends on lojong, and on the person at work who need not cost you the patience you came here to build.
D6S3 - Equanimity, and the Four Immeasurables Complete David Oromith · 93 minutes · recorded August 24, 2025
The last of the four immeasurables, taught first in some traditions and last in others. Equanimity is not about flattening our emotions, David says: you ride the ups and downs without changing your behaviour and people pleasing so that you get praised again tomorrow. We work through the petty categories we put people in, and how a stranger could be a best friend or a sworn enemy in a year's time as causes and conditions shift. The session opens with a demonstration of the kata offering ahead of tomorrow's ceremony.
D4S3 - Compassion, and Choosing Someone You Can Work With David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded August 21, 2025
Compassion and loving kindness are two sides of the same coin, as Lama Alan Wallace puts it, but the flavour of the practice is different: here you attend to beings who are suffering, with the active mind that asks what can I do to help. David is practical about the hostile person, having had people go straight for Hitler or Putin and then say they could not wish him well, and suggests an annoying colleague. Afterwards, why brief practices more often beat one long block.
Guided Meditation - RAIN, Recognise, Allow, Investigate and Nurture David Oromith · 17 minutes · recorded August 7, 2025
You bring to mind a real memory of being triggered, let it play out until the emotion is actually here, then pause it and work through recognising what you feel, allowing it without any agenda, and investigating the beliefs underneath it with kindness. It closes by resting with whatever is left over, holding yourself with care.
Session Two - The Sacred Pause David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded August 7, 2025
The session opens with a review of the emotional diary from the previous talk, before turning to working with a trigger once noticed. David draws on Shantideva's image of the piece of wood and Jack Kornfield's sacred pause to show how a brief pause, even one breath, interrupts an automatic reaction, and offers a breathing technique to calm the nervous system. He closes with a guided RAIN meditation, recognising, allowing, investigating and nurturing a difficult emotion, and takes questions on anger and trauma.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Beginning with Receiving Love David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded July 2, 2025
Begins with a preliminary practice of receiving. Bring to mind someone who has wished you real love, and feel it arriving like warm sunshine. Only then does the exchange start: we breathe in a loved one's suffering as a dark cloud and send back light. It widens to a small group, then to as many beings as your courage allows.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness and Compassion David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded June 26, 2025
You begin with yourself, attended to as you would a dear friend, breathing in the wish for happiness and breathing out the wish to be free of pain. The same wishes go to a loved one, a stranger, then someone you are in conflict with, cutting past what differs to what is the same. It ends wide, holding those who cause suffering alongside those who suffer, in a Buddha's eye view that is neither pity nor judgement.
Session 3 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded June 26, 2025
Loving kindness and compassion are extended from self to a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person and finally a wide group, guided throughout as preparation for next week's tonglen practice. David works through verses five and six of the Eight Verses: offering the victory rather than retaliating, and viewing someone who wrongs us as a teacher, illustrated with the story of the borrowed baby. Members share how they tried the practice at home and at work.
Session 2 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded June 18, 2025
This second session opens with a twenty minute meditation in which we settle body and mind, then recite the eight verses together. David works through the third verse on watching the mind and applying antidotes to afflictions, then the fourth on cherishing difficult people as a rare chance to practise compassion. A poll shows self cherishing can hide inside low self esteem as much as pride. Questions cover compassion versus empathy, accepting compliments, and giving victory to others.
D7S2 - Hell Realms as Dreams, and the Grip of Self and Other Lama Alan · 37 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The hell realms of traditional Buddhist cosmology, and why they are creations of mind rather than places built or imposed from outside. Lama Alan tells of the Buddha's earlier life as a beast of burden, whose compassion for a fellow ox ended his own hell realm, and turns to how reifying self and other as separate undermines empathy and invites manipulation. The session closes with a short guided practice in which we invert awareness onto the sense of being an agent.
D4S5 - Bodhicitta's Stages and Whether Shamatha Comes First Lama Alan · 104 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Questions on whether one can enter the Bodhisattva path without shamatha lead Lama Alan through the stages of bodhicitta, from its first spontaneous arising to the irreversible form reinforced by wisdom. Wrathful teachers, one placing a boy unharmed in a bonfire, show ferocity as one of four compassionate modes of teaching. He explains why he critiques materialism, not materialists, and why Buddhists never chase people, as the newly enlightened Buddha let the first man he met walk away.
D6S3 - Why Dzogchen Practice Is Simply Waking Up Lama Alan · 89 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan traces how mental afflictions such as anger and pride do not simply vanish upon realisation but melt into the five wisdoms, and offers a third translation of Dzogchen, the Great Encompassment, alongside the more familiar Great Perfection and Great Completion. He describes the false cave of appearances, likening ordinary experience to a non-lucid dream, and says the entire task of Dzogchen practice comes down to one thing: waking up.
D3S3 - Seeing Through the Guru, and Boundless Compassion Lama Alan · 103 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The substrate consciousness as a homing pigeon's coop, the place awareness returns to in sleep and in death. A breath practice leads into a guru yoga visualisation in which we trace devotion through lineage to our own pristine awareness. Lama Alan covers seeing Dharma companions through their Buddha nature rather than faults, cultivating compassion free of a mother's partiality, and what it means to receive a siddhi, in the lama who healed him with a stone heated in meditation.
D2S5 - Shamatha, Materialism and the Question of Rigpa Lama Alan · 101 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
A clarification that wealth, power and prestige are not faults in themselves, only where happiness is mistakenly sought. Lama Alan questions whether a materialist worldview can truly support ethical life, then explains why the Buddha and later masters insist shamatha remains indispensable even for those with deep realisation. The evening ends with a question on pristine awareness and the ground of reality, and a guided practice for settling into sleep.
Session 1 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded June 11, 2025
This first session on the Eight Verses of Training the Mind opens with a guided meditation on settling the body, taking refuge and generating bodhicitta. David gives the lineage of Geshe Langri Thangpa, reads the text, then works through the first two verses: cherishing all beings as the basis of practice and happiness, and taking the humble position rather than seeing ourselves as important. Stories of Atisha and Drom Tonpa illustrate humility, and questions cover therapeutic lying and patience.
Guided Meditation - Meeting Our Feelings About the World with Compassion David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded May 7, 2025
David invites the worries about the state of the world that you usually keep at arm's length, and asks where they actually live in the body. You then breathe space around the feeling, bring in the warmth of compassion, listen to the story that comes with it, and rest in knowing others feel the same. Nothing here is being fixed.
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part Two) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded May 7, 2025
This second session opens with a gentle practice in which we breathe space and compassion around whatever despair, anger or fear arises when facing the world's crises. David then maps the Eightfold Path onto engaged action, from authentic view and speech through to effort, and reads several of Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts on non-attachment to views, speech and livelihood. Questions cover the ethics of the arms trade during the war in Ukraine and how to pass on values to children without imposing them.
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part One) David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded May 1, 2025
The first of two sessions opens with a twenty minute guided meditation from Lama Rod Owens in which we attend to sensations of earth, air, water and fire in the body before extending that awareness to the natural world. David sets out the bodhisattva's aspiration to benefit all beings, drawing on the Buddha's own example and the Dalai Lama's idea of universal responsibility. Questions range across grief at ecological crisis to a member's own difficult family situation.
Session Three - Perception, Emptiness and Clarity of Mind David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded April 3, 2025
Teaching only this week, with no guided meditation until the close. David examines how appearances such as colour or a table are constructed by the senses and mind rather than known directly, drawing on Guy Armstrong and Donald Hoffman's account of perception, before describing mind as the union of emptiness, clarity and compassionate responsiveness, or Buddha nature. The session ends with an eyes open meditation in which we rest in awareness without an object, then questions on that practice.
Compassion vs Despair: A Buddhist Approach to Witnessing Suffering (David Oromith) David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded April 1, 2025
Compassion and its near enemy, despair: how to attend to the suffering of others and of the world without being overwhelmed by it.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded February 13, 2025
One person you love is in pain, and their pain is imagined as dark smoke you breathe in towards a point of light at your heart, where it is extinguished. You breathe out everything good you have. It widens to a crowd with the same pain, then to hunger, thirst and homelessness, and David keeps saying the light is never burdened.
Session 4 - Ethics & Patience David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded February 13, 2025
In the guided Tonglen practice we breathe in a loved one's suffering, then a wider crowd's, as dark smoke dissolved at the heart, and breathe out light and wellbeing in return. David turns to ethics as the foundation of practice, likening unruly behaviour to bashing holes in a leaking boat, then works through three kinds of patience: staying calm when provoked, accepting what cannot be changed, and being patient with slow progress. One shares how the quicksand image helped with her own anger.
Session 3 - Cultivating Bodhicitta & Generosity David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded February 5, 2025
In the guided meditation we work through the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for cultivating bodhicitta, recognising all beings as having once been a mother, then building gratitude, loving-kindness and great resolve. David contrasts this with the equalising and exchanging method, then turns to the first paramita, generosity, described as a state of mind rather than an act, using the story of a poor woman's simple offering to the Buddha. Questions cover how expectation can quietly poison giving.
Session 2 - Exploring Bodhicitta David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025
A guided practice weaves the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and an enemy. David explains how these four give rise to great compassion and then bodhicitta, and reads passages from the Dalai Lama on its benefits for health, relationships and facing an enemy without anger. Questions cover holding all beings in mind by caring for everyone we actually meet. A short closing meditation follows.
Caring for Yourself While Caring for Others (David Oromith) David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded January 26, 2025
This Insight Timer talk for carers opens with a short body based meditation on motivation. David sets out three levels of burnout, emotional exhaustion, loss of meaning, and depersonalization, with the antidote to each, then turns to universal compassion, naming despair as compassion's near enemy and describing the friend based thought experiment for self compassion. Carers share their own motivations and advice throughout, and this first part ends with a loving kindness meditation.
Session 2 - Practices for Inner Joy David Oromith · 71 minutes · recorded January 19, 2025
The session opens with a short meditation on gratitude in which we notice where appreciation is felt in the body. David then describes three doorways to joy: living kindly, the calm that meditation brings, and a settled confidence he calls the joy of knowing, alongside practices of empathetic joy, rejoicing and harvesting delight from ordinary moments. Questions cover keeping compassion for others in balance with self-care, and what to do on waking in a low mood. It closes with a guided harvesting joy practice.
Guided Meditation - Repaying Kindness with Affectionate Love David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The kindness you have received is counted up: parents, teachers, friends, strangers who helped once, and the people who grow the food, maintain the infrastructure and care for the environment around you. Gratitude turns into a wish to repay it by using this precious human life for others. David then asks for a vast gathering of beings visualised around you, friends, strangers and those you find difficult, held in affectionate love and great compassion.
D5S1 - Meeting Deprivation, Prosperity, Anger and Craving David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
A practice of bare attention across the senses builds toward resting in awareness itself. David works through verses on facing deprivation and prosperity without losing heart, then turns to anger and craving, using the image of salty water to show how craving only deepens thirst. The group asks about rumination, anxiety and turning anger at oneself into compassion.
D4S4 - Bodhicitta's Final Steps, and Meeting Ordinary Scorn David Oromith · 55 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The final meditation in this sequence combines the great resolve, the wish to free all beings, with the four immeasurables to complete bodhicitta. David turns to verse seventeen, on honouring someone who looks down on us out of arrogance rather than compete for status, and takes questions on where this shades into self-deprecation, whether the bodhisattva vow sounds egotistical, and where limited time is best spent, closing with the girl and the starfish: your bit is worth doing however small.
D4S3 - Responding to Disgrace, Disparagement and Betrayal David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
After a meditation on affectionate love and compassion for all beings, David works through three verses of the text: meeting disgrace with kindness rather than argument, responding to public disparagement by offering the victory instead of escalating, and continuing to care for someone who turns on us after we have helped them. He explains cognitive fusion, treating bad behaviour as a person's whole identity, and takes questions on living this out at work.
D4S2 - Everyone's Kindness, and Hard Questions About Rebirth David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The session opens with a guided contemplation, continuing the previous one, in which we dwell on the care shown to us since birth, through learning to walk and talk, to the ordinary kindnesses that sustain daily life. A long discussion follows on the evidence and doubts around rebirth, including a mathematical objection to universal motherhood. David then turns to using suffering on the path, the image of the two arrows, and the RAIN practice for working with rising anger.
D4S1 - The Continuum of Mind and Turning Loss into Practice David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
In this meditation we trace the mind back moment by moment to show it is beginningless, so every being has at some point been our mother or carer. David turns to using loss and theft on the path, drawing on karma and compassion for what drives someone to steal, and the story of Gyalse Togme dedicating his stolen robes to the thieves who took them. Questions cover lingering sadness in a practitioner of many years and whether dedication lessens a thief's karma.
D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The session opens with a practice of mudita in which we delight in the good fortune of a friend, a stranger and someone we find difficult. David completes the seven point instruction on cause and effect, from recognising kindness to the great resolve, then explains why self-cherishing is the root of misery and how tonglen exchanges it for others. Questions turn to where kindness tips into people pleasing, and whether karma means we should not intervene in someone else's suffering.
The Path of Wisdom and Compassion Thubten Chodron · 119 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
Ven. Thubten Chodron argues that the mind is not the brain, drawing on her exchanges with reductionist scientists at the Mind and Life meetings. She describes the periscope of I, me and mine through which everything is filtered, so that the same words only sting when aimed at us. Most of the talk works through the Eight Verses of Training the Mind with the Dalai Lama's commentary from Approaching the Buddhist Path, dwelling on the first five and reading the rest for transmission.
D6S2 - Self-Cherishing, Honest Speech and Healthy Boundaries David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
In a meditation on exchanging self-cherishing for cherishing others we weigh putting our own happiness first against treating everyone's welfare as equal. David covers examining one's own faults rather than gossiping about others, when raising real harm differs from criticism born of jealousy, and speech that passes tests of being true, kind and well timed. Questions turn on boundaries, forgiveness and self-neglect.
D6S1 - Diligence, Concentration and When to Step In David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
In this patient acceptance practice we ask what changes when a real conflict is met with acceptance, understanding and compassion rather than resistance. David covers enthusiastic diligence and its three kinds of laziness, then concentration as the union of shamatha and vipassana, the Buddha's key innovation. Questions turn on witnessing cruelty, whether to speak when nothing you say will change the person, and how much capacity we have to live out our values.
D3S2 - Compassion Practice and the Two Paths to Bodhicitta David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
Compassion follows loving kindness as the second immeasurable, wishing others free of suffering rather than simply well. David explains why happiness chased through possessions never truly satisfies, using the story of buying a Dyson vacuum as a teenager expecting lasting contentment from it. Bodhicitta, the wish for enlightenment to benefit all beings, is introduced alongside two routes to it: seeing all beings as having once been one's mother, or exchanging self with others.
Reflecting on the Last Year David Oromith · 26 minutes · recorded November 24, 2024
In the guided reflection meditation for the final session of the year we settle first into the body and its sensations, then look back gently over the year's joys and struggles with compassion and gratitude, rejoicing in whatever growth has taken place. David asks two questions to close: what positive changes we have noticed in ourselves this year, and what inner qualities we want to carry into the new one. Members share their own reflections in response.
Befriending the Mind Natalia Bojanic · 178 minutes · recorded November 9, 2024
Natalia Bojanic on the attitudes that make mindfulness possible: curiosity, non-striving, letting be and letting go, and generosity, offered as antidotes to boredom, agitation, aversion and doubt. Two thirds experiential, with guided meditations, mindful walking and stretching, journalling and discussion.
Guided Meditation - Equanimity David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024
Before levelling the three people, David has you look at your grip on each: the attachment mixed into love for someone dear, the reasons behind indifference to a stranger, the basis of aversion to someone hostile. You then set all three in front of you and ask whether any deserves suffering more than another.
Session 5 - Equanimity David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024
The teaching turns to equanimity, upekka, the balance underlying loving kindness, compassion and joy. David distinguishes it from flat indifference, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of relating differently to knee pain, and explains why acceptance means acknowledging what is, not condoning it. Questions bring stories of grief for a missed friendship and a man at peace with terminal illness. In the meditation we extend loving kindness equally to a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult.
Guided Meditation - Navigating the World's Darkness with Our Light David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded October 4, 2024
In this meditation, David guides us in a compassion practice through the metaphor of a candle flame in darkness. This practice helps us to connect with our compassionate nature, and feel grounded, supported and motivated to remain a light amid the world's troubles.
Guided Meditation - Compassion (Karuna) David Oromith · 27 minutes · recorded September 24, 2024
Compassion begins here with yourself, under two claims David sets down first: that suffering is a temporary affliction rather than who you are, and that everyone wants to be free of it. You then work outward through someone struggling, a loved one, someone you give little thought to, someone whose behaviour you find hard, and finally everyone.
Session 3 - Compassion David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded September 24, 2024
In compassion practice we move from ourselves through a suffering acquaintance, a loved one, a stranger and finally someone acting cruelly, wishing each free of suffering and its causes. David distinguishes compassion from its near enemies, grief and pity, describing how despair once fed his own depression working in mental health wards, and why compassion stays active rather than overwhelmed. Members discuss compassion fatigue, burnout and caring for an ageing parent.
Session 1 - Loving-Kindness (part one) David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded September 11, 2024
David guides a loving-kindness meditation directed entirely at oneself: recalling a kind action, naming a quality worth admiring, then arousing the wish to be at ease, well and happy, and joyful. He explains why metta is a yearning rather than an emotion, and traces its near enemy, self-centred attachment, and its far enemy, malice, reading from the Metta Sutta. Several members speak openly about how hard they found turning kindness towards themselves.
Day 1 - Introduction David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded August 24, 2024
The retreat opens with a meditation on settling body, speech and mind through relaxation, stillness and alertness. David then introduces the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas, telling the story of Gyelse Togme Zangpo giving his robes and blood to a diseased beggar, and outlines how the week will move through samatha, the four immeasurables and tonglen. He closes with the text's opening homage, on how emptiness and compassion stand together, and takes a question on how discussion will work.
Session 5 - Purifying Negative Karma - The Four Opponent Powers David Oromith · 94 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024
After a settling meditation, David introduces collective karma and gives a concise summary of the course before turning to purification. He explains the four opponent powers, regret, reliance, remedy and resolve, distinguishing healthy regret from corrosive guilt, then leads a guided loving kindness meditation in which we apply all four steps. Questions cover a run of bad luck at work, whether places or mindsets carry negative karma, and how effective Vajrayana purification practice is alone.
Session 4 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Mind) & How Karma Ripens David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded July 30, 2024
After settling meditation and refuge, David shares Alan Wallace's teaching that the person who ripens our karma in a future life is not quite us, so even cruelty deserves compassion rather than blame. He completes the ten nonvirtues with the three mental ones, covetousness, malice and wrong views, then explains projecting and completing karma and what shapes the mind at death. Questions range over pure lands, evidence for rebirth, funerals, and the forty nine day bardo.
Building Resilience David Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded July 21, 2024
In the visualisation meditation we imagine a pure white light at the centre of the chest expanding to fill the body, representing our own goodness and Buddha nature. David answers a longstanding question on building resilience, describing it as returning to balance rather than never losing it, and names self awareness, self compassion and meditation as the key supports. He closes on starting small, with today's ordinary challenges, rather than waiting for a crisis to test us.
Session 3 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Four of Speech) David Oromith · 76 minutes · recorded July 16, 2024
The session opens with a short meditation in which we settle body and breath, before David explains what makes karma heavier or lighter: strength of intention, habit, planning, rejoicing, and whether precepts are held. He then works through lying, divisive speech, harsh speech and idle talk using the four branches of basis, attitude, action and completion. Questions cover polite excuses, withholding information from a parent, blunt honesty, and whether sarcasm in a family can be purified.
Session 2 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Body) David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded July 16, 2024
In the short guided meditation we combine bare attention on the body with breath counting, refuge and bodhicitta. David sets out the four things needed for a complete negative karmic act, the basis, the attitude, the deed and its completion, then works through killing, stealing and unwise sexual behaviour, weighing pests, vegetarianism, euthanasia and abortion along the way. Questions cover suicide, whether all beings incur equal karma, and taking a puppy from its mother.
An Introduction to the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas David Oromith · 42 minutes · recorded July 10, 2024
David explains bodhichitta and what makes someone a bodhisattva, and places the 37 Practices among the four classic lojong texts. Most of the evening is the life of Gyalse Tokme Zangpo, born in 1295 in central Tibet and orphaned young, hailed a second Asanga at nineteen. Too quiet and humble to attract patrons, he refused to perform village rituals for offerings and wrote these verses instead. The retreat on the text is in the library as a one week course.
Session Four - Questions and Discussion David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024
Questions and discussion following the four immeasurables retreat, closing with a short dedication rather than a practice. David takes questions on book recommendations, on aiming for progress rather than perfection, and on telling harmless joy from joy that should not be rejoiced in. He discusses keeping compassion separate from the need for boundaries against harmful behaviour, and advises a participant on staying positive amid a negative community, before closing on catching envy early.
Session 2 - Compassion David Oromith · 57 minutes · recorded June 10, 2024
In the guided compassion meditation we move from ourselves through a loved one, a neutral person and someone in conflict, wishing each freedom from suffering. David distinguishes compassion from despair, its near enemy, describing his own depression while working in mental health services. He draws on the Dalai Lama and a visit to a man living amid hoarded possessions to show empathy turning into active care rather than paralysis. A question on karma is held over for later.
Session 1 - Loving-Kindness David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded June 9, 2024
Two guided loving kindness practices: a short reflection on our own good qualities, then the full meditation, in which we extend well wishes from ourselves through a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult. David explains loving kindness as a wish rather than a feeling, distinguishes it from attachment dressed as love and from malice, and tells the story of the Dalai Lama's puzzlement at Western self-contempt.
Three Types of Patience & Self-Cherishing David Oromith · 67 minutes · recorded May 22, 2024
After a short meditation in which we settle the breath, David sets out the three traditional types of patience: not retaliating when harmed, voluntarily accepting difficulty, and patience with the Dharma itself while still learning it. He explores self-cherishing through mundane examples, the last parking space, the electric car charging queue, and the Dalai Lama's wise versus foolish selfish. Questions cover self-care, a barber's story of self-cherishing hidden inside helping, and patience with oneself.
Aversion and Patient-Acceptance David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded May 7, 2024
The evening opens with ten minutes counting the breath and extending loving-kindness. David returns to the Dalai Lama's Beyond Religion to show attachment and aversion turn destructive only when out of proportion, then sets out patient acceptance through acceptance, understanding, compassion and fortitude, using the spark and fuel image and the two arrows. Questions cover a job left out of aversion, indifference as a near enemy of equanimity, and looking after oneself.
Exploring Aversion David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded April 24, 2024
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body, speech and mind, then refuge and bodhicitta. David turns from attachment to aversion, tracing it from subtle irritation to hatred, and shows how the mind exaggerates an unpleasant contact into a caricature, the three headed green monster. He distinguishes constructive from destructive anger and sets out the four enlightened activities: peaceful, enriching, powerful and wrathful. Questions range across assertiveness, martial arts and the Buddhist view of war.
The Antidotes to Attachment and Navigating Loss David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded April 17, 2024
The session opens with a short guided meditation in which we settle body, speech and mind, with refuge and bodhicitta. David completes his look at antidotes to attachment: non-attachment, contentment, gratitude and generosity, using the image of a bird resting on an open palm. He turns to loss, telling the story of Kisa Gotami and the mustard seed, and separates the cognitive work of understanding impermanence from the compassion grief itself needs. Questions bring up chronic illness, bipolar and the loss of a parent.
Radical Acceptance David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded April 14, 2024
In this meditation we rest attention lightly in present moment experience across all five senses, without labelling or elaborating on what arises. David reads a passage on living peacefully alongside what irritates us, then works through two questions for any difficulty: can this be changed, and if so is it worth changing. He talks about the cost of pushing away what we cannot alter, and offers patient acceptance, understanding, compassion and fortitude as the way through.
Unconditional Love for Friends, Strangers & Enemies David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded March 31, 2024
In the sky gazing meditation we observe thoughts and feelings as clouds passing through the open space of awareness, without judging or identifying with them. For Easter, David talks about love as a theme common to most traditions, explaining loving kindness and compassion as two sides of one wish, and the three categories we quietly sort people into: those we like, those we are indifferent to, and those we oppose. The discussion turns to what stops our love reaching further, and whether it should.
Choose Compassion David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded January 28, 2024
In the meditation on the four immeasurables, built from loving kindness, we extend first to ourselves, then to someone we love, someone neutral and someone we find difficult, each time imagining them free of suffering and rejoicing in their happiness. David shares two quotes from the Dalai Lama on the practical benefits of compassion, and talks about how the divide we draw between us and them closes the heart. He asks that when we meet unkindness, we choose kindness anyway.
Compassionate Choices: Non-Harm, Vegetarianism and Veganism in Buddhism (David Oromith) David Oromith · 53 minutes · recorded January 18, 2024
This talk opens with a brief pause to set an intention rather than an extended practice. David sets out how vegetarianism and veganism are treated across Buddhist traditions: the Theravada threefold purity, which permits meat offered without suspicion of killing, against Mahayana sutras such as the Lankavatara, where the Buddha rejects meat eating outright. He describes his own move from vegetarian to vegan, then turns to the scale of factory farming and asks what compassion demands of us now.
D3S2 - Tonglen, and Vajrasattva as Guru Yoga Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024
Giving and taking, guided from a past and future self out to one being in need, a group, then all beings, the light given out as Vajrasattva's body, mantra syllables, vajra and bell. Tenpa adds the healing adaptations, nectar heavy, warming or cooling, then shows how Vajrasattva practice itself can serve as guru yoga, the mantra recited in the manner of supplication and the nectar granting the four empowerments as it fills the four chakras. An empowerment is needed only to visualise yourself as the deity.
D2S3 - Why We Use Images, and the Hundred Syllable Mantra Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024
Love as a purifier first, from Garchen Rinpoche, then compassion practice again. Trouble with visualising gets a plain answer: a vague image is enough, and no mental imagery at all is no bar. A Nyingma translator supplies the four components this practice needs, positive images, positive thoughts, positive feelings and trust, the last explained through a washing machine we do not doubt. Tenpa then reads Lama Zopa Rinpoche's short Vajrasattva text line by line, and introduces the hundred syllable mantra.
D2S2 - What Is Actually Being Purified Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024
Compassion first, for everyone in the retreat, then for all beings. Tenpa quotes Garchen Rinpoche: what is to be purified is nothing but self grasping, and a single teardrop of compassion purifies negativities accumulated in aeons. He sets the discovery and cultivation views of buddha nature side by side. A second full practice uses the short mantra and the style revealed by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok at Larung Gar. An emailed question on guilt when recalling misdeeds is answered: acknowledge it, then shape the energy into regret.
D1S1 - Motivation as Protection, and the Fourfold Vision Quest Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024
The retreat opens with introductions, then two guided practices. The first settles body, speech and mind in their natural states; the second is the fourfold vision quest, four questions about flourishing, the support needed, how one must change and what one offers, each answered with 'may it be so'. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains why a vast and kind motivation is itself a protection, drawing on Viktor Frankl and on Tibetan teachers who kept their sanity through years in concentration camps.
D5S3 - Beginning with a Mild Enemy Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The difficult person, started deliberately small, someone only mildly unpleasant rather than anyone you truly hate. Michael Lobsang Tenpa separates ill will, which he answers with fierce compassion, from the irritation that comes from our inability to control someone. He lays out the four conditions that contribute to cultivating the four immeasurables, and passes on a gesture Garchen Rinpoche describes in a great yogi, raising a hand while thinking may all beings benefit.
D3S3 - Extending It to a Benefactor Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The first move away from oneself, to a benefactor, someone we respect and are grateful to, and someone who is still alive. Michael Lobsang Tenpa answers a practitioner who cannot wish happiness on people who make lots of people die and suffer, then defines what makes loving kindness immeasurable and then great. He sets out the two readings of Buddha nature, an acorn to be grown or a tree already there, and how Milarepa got that wrong before meeting Marpa.
D2S5 - Questions, and Essence Love Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023
An evening given over to questions: basic goodness without conceit, holding all beings in mind without being overwhelmed, vegetarianism without arrogance, phrases that feel mechanical, how Buddha nature can be severed, and what to do on witnessing harm when neither passivity nor impulse will serve. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains Tsoknyi Rinpoche's term essence love, and the okayness a Himalayan grandmother radiates. The practice at the end is Shantideva's verses of dedication.
D2S4 - Loving Kindness with Imagery Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023
The visual method, opening with a note on aphantasia and why nobody needs mental imagery to succeed at this. Michael Lobsang Tenpa passes on Tulku Thondup's four key points for any practice using visualisation: positive images, positive words, positive feelings and trust, arguably the most important of the four. Two practices follow, a circle of kind beings returning the wish to you before dissolving into light, and a warm pearl below the navel that radiates and then expands past the body.
D2S2 - The Four Loving Kindness Phrases Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023
Three ways of pointing the wish at yourself, as a mirror image in front of you, as something rising from within, or as something converging from the spaciousness of awareness. Michael Lobsang Tenpa sets out the three approaches to generating it, phrases, imagery and liturgy, then guides the four phrases originating with the Buddha and coming through Buddhaghosa: free of enmity, of affliction, of anxiety, and well and happy. He explains why wishes in the negative are still loving kindness.
The Noble Eightfold Path: Prajñā - Right View, Right Resolve David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 22, 2023
This session starts with a brief settling meditation, with refuge and bodhicitta, before turning to the wisdom division of the path. David takes right view as knowledge of the four noble truths and the Kalama Sutta's advice to test a teaching by its results, then turns to right resolve as work at the level of thought, the Buddha noticing craving or ill will arise and letting it subside. Questions range from whether studying philosophy is wasted time to why compassion for others comes more easily than for ourselves.
Turning Everyday Life into Dharma Practice David Oromith · 53 minutes · recorded November 6, 2023
No formal meditation until the close, a ten minute practice in which we harvest joy through the five senses and gratitude for this life. The talk is on turning everyday life into practice: difficult people become opportunities for patience and compassion, chores are done with mindful awareness rather than boredom, and pleasant experience is enjoyed with gratitude rather than craving more. Listeners share their own struggles, including a difficult mother and mindful eating with the television on.
The Four Noble Truths: The Cessation and the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded October 24, 2023
The evening opens with ten minutes of mindfulness of breathing, and refuge and bodhicitta motivation before the teaching. David covers the third and fourth noble truths: cessation as extinguishing ignorance, attachment and aversion, using the sky and clouds to show why afflictions are temporary while peace and compassion are not, then the path via the Lam Rim's three scopes and the eightfold path's ethics, concentration and wisdom. A question asks the difference between nirvana and enlightenment.
A Candle in Darkness - Compassion in the World David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded October 8, 2023
In the compassion meditation we use the image of ourselves as a candle: we breathe in strength for the flame using empathy for the world's suffering, then breathe out the wish that all beings find freedom from it, until other candles begin to light around us. Responding to a question about feeling overwhelmed by the news, David distinguishes empathy from despair, which he calls compassion's near enemy, and shares the Dalai Lama's insistence on never giving up.
The Spread Of Buddhism: Three Main Branches of Practice David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded September 19, 2023
This session opens with a short settling meditation and a going for refuge, then David traces how Buddhism divided into Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, using the mustard seed story to show how one teaching suits different people, and a burning building image to contrast liberation with the bodhisattva's wish to help others out too. He explains nirvana against full enlightenment, and the guru bond distinctive to Vajrayana. Questions cover chanting and finding a teacher without turning sectarian.
Finding a Spiritual Teacher David Oromith · 63 minutes · recorded August 30, 2023
This talk on finding a spiritual teacher opens with a short guided meditation in which we rest attention on the sensations of breathing. David traces the teacher's role from early Buddhism's oral tradition to today's very different Western situation, then sets out the levels of teacher, from local dharma teacher to root teacher, the qualities to look for in each, and the three faulty attitudes a student should avoid. Questions from viewers are answered throughout in the chat.
D1S4 - Appreciation, Empathy and Tenderness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 64 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023
Three qualities that feed loving kindness before it starts. Stillness and the tactile waves are practised again first, then Michael Lobsang Tenpa works through appreciation, the quality usually translated as devotion, empathy in its cognitive and affective forms as Matthieu Ricard sets them out in Altruism, and tsewa, the basic warmheartedness he calls the stem cell of all four immeasurables. The hour of practice before dinner is spent looking at beings with eyes of caring.
Week 4: Equanimity (Upekkha): Finding balance and serenity with others and amidst life’s ups and downs David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded June 29, 2023
The session closes the four immeasurables series with equanimity, upekkha, opening with a settling breath meditation and returning at the end to the classic practice in which we bring a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult to mind in turn, wishing each equally well. David distinguishes true equanimity from indifference and from attachment. Questions cover boundaries with a difficult colleague, confrontation, and a cooled friendship.
Week 3: Empathetic Joy (Mudita): Sharing in the joy and happiness of others David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded June 22, 2023
After checking in on the week's practice of loving kindness and compassion, David turns to mudita, joy at others' happiness, naming its near enemies, envy and cynicism, and using the image of a monkey stuck in tar for how comparison and judgement trap us. He describes noticing joy in daily life and on social media rather than resenting it. Questions move into acceptance and childhood hurt before a closing meditation in which we recall loved ones' joy and everyday kindness seen out in the world.
Week 2: Compassion (Karuna): Cultivating a genuine concern for the sufferings of others and compassionate action David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded June 15, 2023
The session opens with a short breathing meditation to settle the group, before David turns to compassion, karuna, the wish for others to be free of suffering. He names its near enemy, despair, drawing on his own past depression while working on mental health wards, and its far enemy, cruelty, and why compassion must lead to action rather than pity or anger. Questions cover rudeness at work and a wedding venue caught in protests. The session closes with a meditation in which we extend the wish through self, loved one, neutral and difficult person.
Week 1: Loving-kindness (Metta): Cultivating an open heart and goodwill towards all beings David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded June 9, 2023
The evening opens with a short settling meditation, followed later by a full loving-kindness practice in which we move from self to a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult, closing with the Buddha's words on boundless love. David explains metta as a wish rather than a feeling, and names its near enemy, self-centred attachment, and its far enemy, ill will, using the image of a mosaic buried under concrete. Sarah describes how a small act of kindness turned round a strained work relationship.
Reflecting Before Acting David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded May 14, 2023
In this settling meditation we move attention through touch, sight and sound before resting in open awareness, the stillness David describes as the doorway to wisdom and compassion. The talk takes the Buddha's teaching to his son Rahula, that any action of body, speech or mind is worth reflecting on first: is this helpful to me, to others, to the world, and is what I am about to say true, kind and necessary. David separates the restraint of pausing from the discernment of checking motive.
Connecting to Communities for Genuine Wellbeing Ondy Willson · 116 minutes · recorded May 4, 2023
Ondy Willson asks whether our trouble with anxiety and depression is partly a symptom of isolation, and answers by working outwards from the self to the communities around it. She sets out what Freud, Jung and Thich Nhat Hanh made of the self, then how conditioning hardens into habit and tendency, and which constructive emotions serve as antidotes. The rest is the effort connection takes, and what headphones, video calls and social media quietly cost us. Three guided practices run through.
Week 4: When We’re Blamed or Harmed - Transforming Self-Cherishing (23 March 2023) David Oromith · 74 minutes · recorded March 23, 2023
This closing session opens with a practice of resting in open, non-reactive awareness of body, sight and sound, before David turns to self-cherishing, the habitual sense that my comfort and my losses matter more than anyone else's. He traces it through everyday scenes, a parking space, the last loaf of bread, and sets out equalising self and others as the corrective, citing Shantideva on cherishing others. Questions cover recognising ego in colleagues and guarding against burnout.
Week 3: When Things Go Wrong - Transforming Anger (16 March 2023) David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded March 16, 2023
The evening opens with a guided breathing meditation, before David turns to aversion, attachment's mirror image, which exaggerates the faults in whoever has upset us until we react to what he calls a three headed green monster rather than the person in front of us. He explains patience as accepting what is rather than resisting it, and compassion as redirecting anger toward the person's suffering. Questions cover staying calm around an angry colleague, and the session closes with a short loving kindness meditation.
Week 1: Introduction to Mind Training - Rising to the Challenge (2 March 2023) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded March 3, 2023
This new course on lojong, Buddhist mind training, opens with a short relaxation meditation to settle the group. David explains that we cannot stop difficulties happening, only stop them robbing us of our peace, using the spark, fuel and flame image and Shantideva's line: if there is a solution why worry, and if there is none why worry. Questions explore turning anger into compassion, separating regret from guilt, and the habit of rehearsing arguments that never go as planned.
S3 - The Four Immeasurables, and Empathetic Joy Against Loneliness David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded January 26, 2023
The session opens with a brief meditation on the breath, before David turns to the four immeasurables: loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, practices for countering loneliness and low mood. He works through each, warning that reciting the words is not yet the mind itself, then leads a guided metta meditation in which we extend kindness through a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult. Questions turn to forgiveness, cognitive fusion and using longer exhales to calm the body.
Memoirs of a Buddhist Monk Matthieu Ricard · 93 minutes · recorded January 9, 2023
Matthieu Ricard presents his memoir, with photographs. He talks about leaving molecular biology at the Pasteur Institute after meeting Kangyur Rinpoche in Darjeeling at twenty one, seven years in a hermitage with no electricity or running water, thirteen years as an attendant to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and the 1985 return to Tibet, to crowds who had not seen such a teacher in thirty years. Questions cover devotion against infatuation, mind and brain, and altruism.
Cultivating Wholesome Emotions David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded January 8, 2023
The session opens with a body scan to settle the room into stillness, before we rest attention on the breath, with counting to hold focus for the twenty minute practice. David talks about deliberately cultivating wholesome states such as love, compassion and joy, not only managing difficult emotions as they arise. Drawing on the Dalai Lama, he explains how love strengthens our immunity to anger, compassion prevents cruelty, and empathetic joy counters jealousy.
Guided Meditation - Compassion (karuṇā) David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded December 5, 2022
This is a guided meditation on Compassion (karuṇā in Sanskrit). Compassion is one of the Four Immeasurables, a rich compilation of practices that open the heart, counter the distortions in our relationships with ourselves and deepens our relationship with others. The essential nature of compassion is a yearning for the person we are directing our attention to be free of suffering. The object of one's compassion may be oneself, another human being, an animal, or any other sentient being.
How to Attend to Suffering Without Feeling Burdened David Oromith · 13 minutes · recorded November 7, 2022
In this episode, David explores how to attend to the sufferings of the world without falling into despair and feeling burdened. Using his own experience of compassion and despair, and inspired by the teachings of the Dalai Lama, he explores why we should cultivate compassion for the sufferings of the world in the first place, and how to avoid this crippling feeling of despair.
Four Aspects of Mental Balance Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded August 29, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace argues that modern psychology mistakes symptoms such as depression and anxiety for disorders, and looks outward for causes that are primarily inward. Drawing on the Nalanda tradition, he sets out four kinds of mental balance, conative, attentional, cognitive and emotional, each able to fail through deficit, hyperactivity or dysfunction. It is exposition throughout, with no guided practice. Questions cover his fourfold vision quest and compassion in wartime.
Preventing Burnout and Cultivating Emotional Balance Eve Ekman · 109 minutes · recorded June 16, 2022
Burnout in three layers, emotional exhaustion, a lost sense that the work matters, and cynicism, and how to keep an open heart without being pulled under by it. Eve Ekman reports her study of a hundred medical residents tracking their emotions twice a day, who turned out to be reporting enjoyment in half the moments they logged. Emotion granularity, pro-social emotions and fierce compassion follow as the remedies. The morning opens with a brief embodied practice adapted from Tsoknyi Rinpoche.
Dealing with Difficult People David Oromith · 57 minutes · recorded May 11, 2022
This talk on dealing with difficult people opens with a short guided practice in which we settle attention into the breath. David argues the person is a trigger but not the whole cause, our own grasping and self-cherishing complete it, and separates the external problem, needing boundaries or action, from the internal one, needing patience and compassion. He returns to depressive Danny as a running example, and questions cover trauma, cheating, and how far compassion extends to someone malicious.
Aversion in Response to Tragedy David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded February 27, 2022
In the meditation we return to relaxation, noticing what changes in the body with each in and out breath, counting for focus, and closing with gratitude for this life. Responding to the war in Ukraine, David talks about telling anger apart from compassion, both arising from seeing suffering. He explains that anger's object is someone to hurt while compassion's object is those in pain, and that only compassion is genuinely active and helpful.
D2S2 - Compassion, Not Despair, and the Small Adversities Lama Alan · 83 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace returns to a point he had passed over, on training in compassion, and gives Buddhaghosa's analysis of it and its false facsimile, despair, which looks like it and is not. Practise first with minor adversity, the text says, and it will gradually become easier. Whether a thing is agreeable or disagreeable is the way our minds apprehend it, as with a dentist's drill. Half an hour of questions follows, on shamatha and dzogchen and on why expressing a toxic emotion deepens the habituation.
D6S2 - The Four Yogas of Mahamudra Lama Alan · 98 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
The four yogas, single-pointedness, freedom from elaboration, one taste and non-meditation, and how each maps onto the paths and grounds of a bodhisattva. Lama Alan Wallace reads Atisha's images of realisation complete but not manifesting, the lion cub in the womb whose three strengths are all there and the garuda inside its shell, and describes the mother and child clear light meeting at death. Questions close the retreat, among them what to do when a teacher's conduct has harmed students.
D3S2 - Near Enemies, and Tonglen Mounted on the Breath Lama Alan · 85 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Teaching and questions, no guided practice. Lama Alan Wallace works through the near enemies of the four immeasurables, taken from Buddhaghosa's Path of Purification, self-centred attachment posing as loving kindness, despair as compassion, then the progression in tonglen, starting with your own mother and later mounted on the breath, and the aphorism begin the sequence of taking with yourself. A young father asks whether to put family responsibilities aside for a long retreat.
D1S1 - Whatever Attitude You Cultivate Grows Stronger Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace opens with gratitude to his teachers, then, following Gyatrul Rinpoche's commentary, says who the text is for: those who put genuine well-being above mundane pleasure. The homage follows, then the text's first lines, on how a mind habituated to dwelling on suffering turns the most insignificant circumstance into great distress, and that depression comes from the mind and not the brain. The session closes with a guided twenty minute practice of settling body, speech and mind in the natural state.
D4S1 - Blame Everything on One Culprit Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace explains the two week gap, a perforated intestine and six days in hospital, then takes up the third point, transforming adversity into the path. In Buddhaghosa's framework he names despair, apathy and delight in one's own good fortune as near enemies of compassion, impartiality and empathetic joy, and works through the aphorism blame everything on one culprit, with Shantideva on self-grasping as the great demon. In the guided practice we cultivate the four immeasurables as the four greats.
D3S1 - Self-Centredness and Tonglen Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Relative bodhicitta, and Shantideva's claim that self-centredness is a root of all suffering while caring for others more than oneself is a root of all happiness. Lama Alan Wallace traces the causes of suffering from the shravakayana through to dzogchen, then turns on Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents for teaching learned helplessness, and Francis Bacon's wish to put nature on the rack, which he calls psychopathic. The guided practice is tonglen with a loved one, a despised person and a neutral person.
Tong-Len and Loving-Kindness David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded September 5, 2021
A Tonglen visualisation: a radiant orb of light at the heart absorbs the suffering of yourself, then loved ones, then the wider world on each in breath, and breathes out loving kindness on each out breath. David explains why this giving and taking practice is an antidote to self cherishing, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of realising we are the traffic too. He connects the practice to bodhicitta, the wish to help all beings rather than only ourselves.
D2S2 - The Four Kinds of Mindfulness Lama Alan · 122 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Resting open to whatever arises is neither open presence nor shamatha, Lama Alan Wallace says, because the senses have no reason to implode into the mental. Gyatrul Rinpoche's line that those who achieve shamatha naturally experience compassion, as they view the predicament other beings are in, draws a long commentary. He traces the four kinds of mindfulness from Dudjom Lingpa's revealed teachings, ending in self-illuminating mindfulness, which is shamatha itself. The session closes with a practice on settling the mind in its natural state.
Guided Meditation on R.A.I.N. (with Charlotte Adler) David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded July 10, 2020
This is a guided meditation on R.A.I.N., recorded by Charlotte Adler. R.A.I.N. is a method by which we release painful emotions through mindfulness and self-compassion. Charlotte explains more about R.A.I.N. in Episode 13 of this podcast. This is a beautiful meditation and we're so grateful to Charlotte for her kindness in sharing this with us. We're sure it will benefit many. May all beings be happy.
D3S3 - The Jesus Prayer Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Eva Natanya takes the Jesus prayer apart word by word, from its root in the parable of the tax collector to the Greek Father Silouan spoke to her the week before, arguing that eleison is not simply mercy but hesed, the divine energy by which God gives the gift of himself: Lord, grant us what you are. A short guided prayer of the heart follows. In the questions, Lama Alan explains why compassion plays the prominent role in Buddhism that forgiveness plays in Christianity.
D6S1 - Convergence, Not Conversion Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 128 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Convergence rather than conversion is Lama Alan Wallace's theme for the closing day, and where the two traditions find deep common ground is in love and compassion. He works through the four immeasurables, then guides a practice with an orb of light at the heart, drawing in darkness on the in breath and sending out loving kindness on the out breath, widening from oneself to one person and on to every being. Eva Natanya warns how easily one's own pristine awareness becomes a possession of the ego.
D5S1 - Guru Yoga, and When Samsara Begins Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 119 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Lama Alan Wallace sets the cataphatic question, what do I need to do, against the apophatic, what can I stop doing, and explains why guru yoga is core to Dzogchen: you cannot recognise yourself as a Buddha while seeing your guru as a sentient being. In the practice we dissolve the mentor into the heart, then rest without meditating on anything. Eva Natanya asks how a Buddha ever became deluded, and how the son of God ever fell, and hears that samsara begins in every instant appearances are seen as other.
D5S4 - Probing the Mind as Agent Lama Alan · 71 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Consciousness is defined as luminous and cognizant, and Lama Alan Wallace turns Padmasambhava's next phase inwards: who or what is it that concentrates and releases the attention? In the guided practice we keep the oscillation going and probe the sense of being the agent, which he says can cut through to pristine awareness. The Heart Sutra and the Diamond Cutter Sutra follow, where even nirvana is like a dream, the Dalai Lama on why that turns sympathy into compassion, and lucid dreaming as the footstool into dream yoga.
D3S1 - Free Will, and the Three Qualities of a Student Lama Alan · 107 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
In a detailed preamble Lama Alan Wallace argues that the dispute over free will is the wrong question, and offers Shantideva's counsel to remain like a piece of wood when the mind comes under a mental affliction. The practice that follows is a fourth approach to mindfulness of breathing, from the Dzogchen side: we rest awareness in its own place, knowing itself while the breath is noticed peripherally. He names the three qualities that make a suitable vessel: open-minded, perceptive, eager to practise.
P1 - The View of the Great Perfection Lama Alan · 124 minutes · recorded January 1, 2017
Lama Alan gives the oral transmission and commentary to a Dzogchen text by Yangthang Rinpoche, who turned eighteen years in a Chinese concentration camp into an eighteen year retreat. Four preliminaries come first, all difficult to find: a human life, the spirit of emergence, a qualified guru, the sublime dharma. The view is not theory: stop looking outward, settle the mind in its natural state, then ask where awareness comes from, where it is located, where it goes. The session opens with a guided shamatha practice.
Part Four - What a Thought Is, and Choosing a Teacher Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 133 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Two ways of working with the mind, the controlling one and the letting go one, and why a wild horse has to be tamed before it can be trained. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo explains that meditation is not blanking out but asking what a thought is and who is aware, sets out the eight consciousnesses of the mind-only school, and shows how generosity without wisdom stays bound by subject, action and object. A long section follows on choosing a teacher, and on not postponing practice while waiting for one.
Part Three - Final Questions, then Refuge and the Five Precepts Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 43 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Questions first: whether awakening differs for a woman, how to be selfless without becoming a doormat, and what diminishes ill will. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo describes the bodhisattva as a spiritual warrior rather than a wimp, points to Tara for fearless compassion, and offers humour as a seventh perfection. An eleven year old asks whether she saw snow leopards at her cave. It closes with the refuge ceremony and the five precepts, the Buddha as doctor, the Dharma as medicine, the Sangha as nurses.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen for the Aged, the Ill and the Dying Lama Alan · 24 minutes
Lama Alan directs tonglen through three groups in turn: those worn by old age, those living with physical or mental illness, and those close to death. For each you imagine being in their shoes, then step back and breathe in the darkness of their suffering, dissolving it in the light at your heart, the unborn and undying dimension of awareness. The wish for the dying is a transition met with serenity and without fear. It ends resting briefly in stillness.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Sending and Receiving on Both Breaths Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan takes tonglen through its full two-way cycle. You begin with yourself, breathing in the suffering you are vulnerable to and its inner causes, breathing out from the orb of light at your heart the wish that you flourish. You then let attention rove and settle where it will, on a loved one, a difficult person or a community, moving on like a bee from flower to flower. If attention scatters, you return to the breath and begin again.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Breathing In the Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan begins from the flow of caring that runs through every choice you make, then imbues it with insight. He reasons through why the true causes of suffering lie in the mind rather than in circumstances: delusion, craving and hostility. Using only the in-breath, you draw those afflictions in as a dark cloud and dissolve them in the light at your heart, imagining the enduring peace. You close by wishing the same freedom for someone heavily afflicted.
Guided Meditation - Compassion, Attending to the Core Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace turns compassion towards the roots of suffering rather than its symptoms. You recall times when delusion, craving or hostility dominated your mind, and with each in-breath you draw that darkness into an orb of light at the heart, dissolving it and imagining yourself free. You then rehearse future situations that would once have triggered the same patterns. It closes by extending the same wish to someone you have known to be heavily afflicted.
Guided Meditation - Compassion, Beginning with Your Own Suffering Lama Alan · 26 minutes
Compassion is the heartfelt wish to be free of suffering and its causes, and Lama Alan Wallace begins with your own. You weigh how much mental suffering you have already borne and how little control you have over circumstances, then imagine freedom as an orb of white light at the heart. With each in-breath you draw in the darkness of past and future suffering and dissolve it there. You then do the same for others, closing in simple awareness.
Omniscience and the Buddha’s Mind Vesna A. Wallace · 120 minutes
Vesna A. Wallace reads the Buddha's omniscience through the Kalachakra tradition, working from Indian commentaries on the Litany of the Names of Manjushri, a text of 162 verses carrying some 800 names. The verses are read as outcomes of the six phase yoga, answering to the purification of 162 channels in the six chakras, and omniscience is self-awareness, all pervasive rather than localised. Questions cover how gnosis differs from wisdom, what emptiness means, and which language to recite in.
Cognitive & Emotional Balance Glen Svensson · 90 minutes
The last two balances: cognitive balance, which is vipashyana seeing experience without projecting onto it, illustrated by the coiled rope mistaken for a snake, and emotional balance, which the compassion practices serve. Glen Svensson guides a nature of mind practice in which we search for where awareness is located, and then a tonglen. He then lays out how to integrate all four into daily life, and a review of one good act, one harmful act and one thing received before sleep.
Attentional Balance Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Attentional balance, the shamatha side of the model, where deficit shows up as laxity and hyperactivity as excitation, both met with mindfulness and introspection. Glen Svensson compares the full body, abdomen and nostril versions of mindfulness of breathing, and the merits of the breath, the mind and awareness as objects. Two guided practices: the rhythm of the breath with the emphasis on relax, release and return, then merging mind with space. Questions cover anxiety and mental afflictions held at an unconscious level.
Motivational Balance Glen Svensson · 74 minutes
The final module opens with the fourfold model of wellbeing from Lama Alan Wallace and Shauna Shapiro's article on mental balance, and the first of its four: motivational balance, which corresponds to the preliminary practices. Glen Svensson works through its imbalances of deficit, hyperactivity and dysfunction. One guided practice is on settling body, speech and mind, a second on whether trying to manipulate the things around us is an effective strategy. Mindfulness alone, he warns, can make matters worse.
Tong-len (Taking & Giving) Glen Svensson · 88 minutes
Tonglen, giving and taking, practised twice: first for ourselves and a friend, then we choose one mental affliction to dissolve and one quality to cultivate, before opening out to others. Glen Svensson compares the traditional black rock of self-cherishing with the light at the heart he prefers, warning against holding the smoke to punish yourself. The aspiration to take the suffering and give happiness is the key, and once learnt it can be done on a single breath as you approach a difficult person.
Exchanging Self with Others Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
The second method for cultivating bodhicitta, historically called the secret method because it was considered too profound and difficult for the normal person, though Glen Svensson thinks that may be the reverse now, since it tackles self-cherishing head-on. The session opens with great loving kindness, and in a second practice we reflect on the disadvantages of a me first attitude from our own past. He cites a study in which people who use the words I, me and mine a lot had a 35 per cent greater risk of heart attack.
Great Compassion Glen Svensson · 83 minutes
Bodhicitta, the aspiration for enlightenment for the benefit of others, and the first of the two main methods for cultivating it: the seven cause and effect, running from seeing everyone as your mother through altruistic intention to that aspiration itself. Glen Svensson explains that great compassion is not simply an aspiration, as loving kindness and compassion are in the four immeasurables, but actively helping mother sentient beings, much more proactive. In the guided practice we draw blessings in on the in-breath and radiate the light of great compassion out on the out-breath.
Equanimity Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
Equanimity as an unbiased mind, undoing the habit of sorting people into friends, strangers and so-called enemies by how they seem to affect us. In the guided practice we step into the perspective of a stranger, a loved one and a difficult person in turn, then back out again. Glen Svensson shows how each of the four immeasurables acts as the antidote to the near enemy of another, so they are best practised as a package. He closes with the four opponent powers and an end of day review of one negative action, one good one and one thing received with gratitude.
Empathetic Joy Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Empathetic joy, mudita, as the corrective to the modern obsessive focus on the negative. Glen Svensson turns cognitive fusion on ourselves to explain low self-esteem and the difference between useful regret and useless guilt, and advises praising a behaviour rather than a person. In the guided practice we rejoice in another's good fortune and virtues, then travel the timeline of our life recalling every kindness received. He closes with the four thoughts that turn the mind.
Dealing with Anger Glen Svensson · 81 minutes
Anger, defined here as always carrying the intention to harm, and why Buddhism recommends patience and compassion in its place rather than a right amount of anger at the right time. Glen Svensson guides a practice on occasions when you got angry, on criticism valid and invalid, and on dissecting the irritating person until words are only sounds. He then introduces cognitive fusion, fusing a person and their behaviour into one thing, which turns rejection of an act into attack on the person.
Compassion Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
Compassion, karuna, as the wish for ourselves and others to be free of suffering and its causes, which means understanding dukkha at three levels: unpleasant experience, the change in our pleasant experiences, and the potential for suffering that a mind contaminated by mental afflictions always carries. In the guided practice we draw suffering in as black smoke to be dissolved at the heart, moving from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen Svensson reads from Matthieu Ricard on why compassion burnout is really empathy fatigue.
Dealing with Attachment Glen Svensson · 72 minutes
Attachment is the near enemy of loving kindness, and Glen Svensson defines it as a mental factor that exaggerates an object's attractiveness and wants to hold on to it. In the guided practice you bring to mind a person or thing you cling to, loosen the grip, then look directly at the attachment itself. Glen dispels the common misconceptions that attachment is needed to enjoy things, to have relationships or to be creative, describing how ordinary food grew tastier during a long retreat as his craving subsided.
Loving Kindness Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Loving kindness, maitri, is defined by Glen Svensson as an aspiration rather than an emotion: the wish for ourselves and others to have happiness and its causes. Two guided practices: in the first we cultivate it for ourselves through reflections on our own deepest aspirations, and in the second we extend it in stages to a friend, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen distinguishes pleasure from genuine happiness and names its causes as ethics, concentration and wisdom.
Summary of Practice Glen Svensson · 81 minutes
The last session draws the four modules together and turns to how to integrate the practice into daily life: shamatha first thing and vipashyana after it, the body scan for impermanence, brief moments of questioning appearances, and an evening review of one negative thing done, one positive thing done, and one thing received. In the guided loving kindness practice we work outwards from a sphere of light at the heart. Glen Svensson also distinguishes an autonomous self from an inherently existent one.
Stillness in Motion Glen Svensson · 91 minutes
Resting in stillness while watching the movements of the mind, a practice Glen Svensson draws from Dudjom Lingpa, combines the two objects used earlier in the course. He reviews all four modules, sets shamatha inside Lama Alan Wallace and Shauna Shapiro's fourfold model of mental balance, and advises on when and how long to practise, on triggers for daily mindfulness, and reviewing the day before sleep. A guided open awareness practice follows. The course closes with the Shantideva dedication.

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Shamatha (calm abiding) 163
Loving kindness (metta) 118
Mindfulness of breathing 89
Dzogchen 88
Open presence 79
Vipashyana (insight) 77
The four immeasurables 76
Bodhicitta practice 55
Visualisation 45
Lojong (mind training) 34
Vajrasattva purification 25
Mahamudra 23
Tonglen 23
Analytical meditation 20
Body scan and body awareness 20
Empathetic joy (mudita) 20
Mantra 20
Equanimity 19
Settling the mind in its natural state 17
The four applications of mindfulness 17
Guru yoga 13
The four opponent powers 13
Awareness of awareness 10
Qi gong 9
Yoga (asana) 8
Refuge 6
Deity yoga 5
Settling body, speech and mind 5
Feeling tone (vedana) 3
Journalling and reflection 2
Walking meditation 2
Phowa 1

Compassion (karuna)

Compassion (karuna)

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