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Deity yoga

Practice Library

Deity yoga

5 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • 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.

  • S3 - Questions on Guru Yoga and Lineage Eva Natanya · 59 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020

    Questions put to Eva Natanya, starting with where to begin reading in the hesychast tradition: the Philokalia, and the contemporary writing of Father Silouan. She answers at length on whether a Christian can practise Dzogchen ngondro with Christ as root lama, and why she would keep a visualisation as it was transmitted while holding guru and yidam as inseparable. Further answers cover how lineage and authorisation work, and what the words Buddha, guru and lama actually carry.

  • S2 - Christ as Yidam Eva Natanya · 90 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020

    Eva Natanya takes the phrase from the Council of Chalcedon, without confusion and without division, and asks what it means to hold Christ as yidam as well as guru. She reads briefly from the chapter on obedience in The Ladder of Divine Ascent, setting John Climacus on examining a spiritual father and then not judging him beside the Lamrim instruction to list a teacher's good qualities and never begin a list of faults. The session closes with a guided meditation on the light at the heart.

  • S1 - Levels of Devotion to the Teacher Eva Natanya · 98 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020

    Devotion has a lot to do with listening, and Eva Natanya opens with a fifteen minute meditation on the elements and on the heart's own deepest plea. The teaching sets out how the teacher is regarded in the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana, and where reifying a teacher turns reverence into idolatry. She compares committing to a yidam with falling in love, since one does not get to choose the form. She closes with a guided visualisation in which we bring our own teacher to mind as light.

  • 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.

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