Practice Library

Loving kindness (metta)

118 teachings in the library cover this practice.

• Session Two - From Need to Care, and the Open Palm David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded July 18, 2026

  David shifts the basis of a relationship from need to care, then reads Thich Nhat Hanh on loving in such a way that the person you love feels free. Contentment and gratitude come in as the medicine for attachment, and equanimity as the open palm rather than the fist closed around a songbird that has landed in it. David then guides a practice in which we turn towards the fear of things changing with reassurance rather than argument, and wish a loved one free. It closes on the group's own reflections.

• Session One - What Attachment Is, and Where It Hides David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded July 18, 2026

  David separates attachment from genuine love, quoting Venerable Robina Courtin that attachment is I-based and love other-based, and that the two are stirred together like milk and water. He traces it to the feeling of not being enough: in being liked, in being right, and in the roles we hold on to, his own being the tech person on the ward until others arrived who could do it too. In the guided practice we set the two side by side for a loved one and a friend. It closes on the fear of abandonment underneath.

• 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.

• Three Habits for a Happier Life David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026

  In the loving kindness practice we move outward from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger, a difficult person and finally all beings. David talks about three simple daily habits for counteracting negativity: wishing others well, rejoicing in their good fortune, and harvesting joy from small pleasures, and invites everyone to try all three for a week as an experiment.

• Guided Meditation - Meeting a Small Irritation David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded January 28, 2026

  David asks you to bring to mind a small recent irritation, nothing traumatic, and to find where it lands in the body, a tightening or a heat you can name. When an urge to speak arises, you pause for one slow breath. He calls it heat and space: the feeling is real, and it is one part of a bigger field. Goodwill phrases close it.

• Guided Meditation - Sitting with a Difficult Emotion as a Hurting Friend David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded October 26, 2025

  A recent worry or difficult emotion is brought up from under the surface and held as if it were a hurting friend. David asks for no fixing and no dialogue, only hello. We follow how it maps across the body, a swirling, a tightening, a pressure, then the narratives and memories, listened to rather than believed. When the mind starts problem solving, the exhale lengthens. It closes on three energetic breaths sighed out through the mouth.

• Session Two - Enthusiasm, People Pleasing and Contemplation David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded October 15, 2025

  The session opens with a guided meditation in which we drop from body sensation into resting in bare awareness itself, then continues through generosity, joyful effort and concentration among the six perfections. David explains the three kinds of giving, why generosity is spoiled by wanting something back, and pictures contentment and gratitude as floating in a reservoir, before setting out the three levels of wisdom: study, contemplation and meditation. Questions cover where generosity shades into people pleasing.

• Teaching & Meditation for the International Day of Peace 2025 David Oromith · 38 minutes · recorded September 21, 2025

  David marks the International Day of Peace, a day for committing to peace above our differences. The loving kindness practice comes first, and we widen from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger and someone we are in conflict with, then to all beings in the words of the Metta Sutta. The talk sets the Dalai Lama on inner peace coming first, and closes on Wangari Maathai's hummingbird carrying drops of water to a forest fire, doing the best it can.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness and Appreciation for Spiritual Friends David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded September 3, 2025

  Loving kindness turned towards the people who keep a practice alive. David starts with early influences, anyone who showed you kindness and led you towards the spiritual life, then one particular spiritual friend, then your wider Sangha, and finally the lineage of teachers behind your own teacher. Each is appreciated, then wished well.

• 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.

• 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.

• D3S3 - Loving Kindness Through the Classic Sequence, and Its Near Enemy David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded August 20, 2025

  Loving kindness outwards now, through the classic sequence of loved one, neutral person and difficult person, and on to all beings. Quoting Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, loving kindness says I love you, therefore I want you to be happy, while attachment, its near enemy, says I love you because you make me happy. It may look like love and act like love, but there are strings attached. Questions afterwards cover hypnagogic imagery mistaken for meditative experience, and how to learn to practise without guidance.

• D2S3 - Loving Kindness, Beginning With Yourself David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded August 19, 2025

  The first of two evenings on loving kindness, given to what David calls such a tricky area for many of us: loving kindness for oneself. He is direct about how the classic practice starts with the self and stalls there for many Westerners, and offers contemplations that get underneath it, including something kind you have done and a quality you admire in yourself. A guided practice follows, then questions on a mind sent worrying, and on expectations too high, where he passes on the Dalai Lama's words to Lama Alan: expectation is the foundation of failure.

• 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.

• D6S3 - Atisha on Perception, and Closing the Retreat Lama Alan · 67 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025

  Lama Alan opens with Atisha's teaching that extrasensory perception depends on shamatha, illustrated with siddhis he has seen and Russell Targ's remote-viewing research. He contrasts the effortful path of tantric practice with the Dzogchen alternative: resting body, speech, and mind in complete inactivity until the mind settles of itself. The retreat closes with a four-part loving-kindness meditation in which we dedicate merit to the group's shared aims.

• Random Acts of Kindness David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded May 4, 2025

  In the loving kindness meditation we extend the wish for genuine wellbeing from ourselves outward to a loved one, a stranger and finally someone we find difficult. David talks about noticing the small kindnesses that rarely make the news, from a stranger helping push a stuck car free of mud to holding a door open, and about practising one small act of generosity a day while letting go of any need for thanks.

• Do You Need To Be Right? David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded March 30, 2025

  The session opens with a loving kindness style meditation in which we rest attention on bodily sensations, sounds and sight without preference, softening tension and holding the whole experience with warmth. David tells the story of a newlywed couple bickering over whether a distant call is a duck or a chicken, each digging in until the husband lets it go. He asks what our arguments are really about, and offers noble silence and taking defeat as ways to choose harmony over being right.

• 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.

• Guided Meditation - The Four Immeasurables Woven Together David Oromith · 26 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025

  The four familiar stages, yourself, someone you love, someone you have no strong feelings about and someone hostile, but with an extra move at each one. After wishing them happiness and freedom from suffering, you imagine it has already happened, picture how they would move and speak, and take joy in it. David closes by spreading that closeness to all beings equally.

• 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.

• Day 7 - Closing Discussion David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded January 6, 2025

  The final morning revisits the fourfold vision quest meditation, held with loving kindness: what would bring true happiness, what is needed from others, how to transform, and what to offer the world. The group recites all 37 verses together as a closing contemplation, then breaks into small groups on which practice has landed most and what gets in the way, from workplace frustration to a longing for solitary practice. David closes with long life prayers and Shantideva's dedication.

• 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.

• D3S1 - Loving Kindness, Refuge, and the Workings of Karma David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  The morning's practice is loving kindness, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult. David presents refuge in the three jewels as an active direction we take rather than protection handed to us, contrasting it with money, reputation and other worldly refuges that cannot ultimately help. Karma follows, covering the ten non-virtues and the four opponent powers used to purify a negative action: regret, reliance, remedy and resolve.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, Widening the Circle David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded September 17, 2024

  Loving kindness widened one person at a time: yourself, someone whose life you admire, a close friend, then someone you feel nothing about either way, and finally a person who wishes you harm. With that last one David asks you to cut through the hardened image to the real person who wants happiness as you do. It closes with the Metta Sutta and a dedication.

• Session 2 - Loving-Kindness (part two) David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded September 17, 2024

  In the classic loving-kindness meditation we move through ourselves, an admired person, a close friend, a stranger and an enemy, using the phrases may you be well, happy and safe. David works through Lama Alan's antidotes for a difficult person: seeing them as multifaceted rather than a caricature, questioning what exactly is hated, and reflecting on emptiness of self. Questions cover forgiveness, distancing from a difficult colleague, and separating someone's behaviour from who they are.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded September 11, 2024

  Loving kindness for yourself, beginning where many find it awkward: recalling a kind thing you did, naming a quality you like in yourself, and asking what those who love you would say. David then turns to your own wish to be happy as something right and beautiful, before moving into three phrases, each one imagined rather than just said.

• 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.

• Guided Meditation - Purification with Loving Kindness David Oromith · 18 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024

  The four opponent powers in order. You recall what you did that was harmful in body, speech and mind and generate sincere regret without concluding that you are a bad person, turn for help to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha or to the principles you hold, then use loving kindness as the remedy, and close by resolving what you can realistically give up.

• 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 3 - Empathetic Joy & Equanimity David Oromith · 58 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024

  In the guided practice in empathetic joy we rejoice in our own good qualities, a loved one's happiness, and the kindness of strangers. David describes mudita as harder to sustain than it looks, distinguishes it from envy and cynicism, and tells how seeking joy in a local park helped him through depression. He then teaches equanimity, showing how we sort people into loved, neutral and disliked, and how true equanimity extends equal warmth to all three, unlike the flat indifference that mimics it.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• D3S4 - The Inner Practice and the Mala Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  Garchen Rinpoche's inner practice, in full: Vajrasattva father and mother above the crown, the short mantra garland revolving, nectar running down the lotus stem into the central channel and out through every pore to all beings. Tenpa explains why this purifies although the four opponent powers are not named in it, and is no substitute for the practice that does. Then the mala, how it is held, which way the beads are drawn, how a round is counted. A ten minute loving kindness meditation closes the retreat.

• 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.

• D3S1 - Questions on Visualisation and Images Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 91 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  The fourfold vision quest opens the day, now with an orb of light at the heart or navel. Tenpa then answers four questions sent in by participants: what to do with little aptitude for visualising, where the syllable hum and its mantra garland belong inside Vajrasattva's body, whether he can be kept in front rather than above the crown, and what counts as creating images, from hand made tsatsas to 3D printing. A brief text by Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro closes the morning.

• The Four-Fold Vision Quest David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded January 7, 2024

  A visionary loving kindness meditation built around four questions: what your own flourishing would look like, what you need from the world to get there, how you would love to change, and what you have to offer others. David talks about the difference between craving, which the Buddha named as the root of suffering, and wholesome aspiration, tracing how aspiration, confidence, motivation and intention lead to action, using the choice between an assignment and a box set as an example.

• D1S4 - Regret, Rejoice, Dedicate, and Six Remedial Actions Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 67 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

  Tenpa lays out a daily frame: threefold and fivefold aspirations in the morning, and at night a review that regrets, purifies, rejoices and dedicates. A guided practice starts the four powers with reliance, not regret, then remedy and resolve, with loving kindness for all beings as the remedy. Six kinds of remedial action follow, from the fourth Shechen Gyaltsab's commentary: reciting buddhas' names, making images, circumambulation, reciting sutras and tantras, mantras and meditating on emptiness.

• D1S3 - Teaching the Four Factors Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 92 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

  A body scan run in reverse opens the session, then loving kindness extended from oneself to a benefactor, a friend, a stranger and all beings. Rejoicing in what is virtuous joins every practice from here on. Tenpa places the practice within the three vehicles and reads the short Mahayana sutra Teaching the Four Factors, in which the Buddha gives Maitreya the four opponent powers of regret, remedy, resolve and reliance. Regret is practical, not moralistic; guilt concludes that we are bad people.

• D1S2 - Why Purification Came West, and Inviting the Lineage Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

  Tenpa traces how three month Vajrasattva retreats came to be offered to Western practitioners from the 1970s, a tradition begun by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and restates the key points of body, speech and mind. Loving kindness is guided for oneself, then for everyone on the retreat, then for all beings. The teaching turns to supplicating the lineage, and to mepa, the appreciation that Vajrayana rests on. A second practice invites that inspiration as light and nectar entering through the crown.

• D6S5 - Ending Where We Began Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 24 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  A short closing session of about twenty minutes. Michael Lobsang Tenpa returns to the meditation the retreat opened with, asking again what you can do for the healing of your own body and mind, of the communities you belong to and of the world, then inviting the inspiration of the three lineages before the dedication. He says plainly how little of the material was covered, and where the practice can carry on.

• D6S4 - Four Lines on Altruism Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The golden portal practice again, then a four line verse on altruism gone through twice, first in a secular sense and then as the whole path folded into four lines. Through the attitude of benefiting others I tame my own mindstream, then the mindstreams of others, then everyone delights me, then there is tenderness for all. Michael Lobsang Tenpa then guides a free association practice, drifting between beings and spending a few cycles of breathing wishing each one well.

• D6S3 - Pervading the Directions, and Basic Goodness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  An enhancement practice that comes through Buddhaghosa: the wish for peace sent to all the beings in front, to the right, behind, to the left, above and below, then to all beings everywhere. Michael Lobsang Tenpa then reads Jigme Lingpa on love as a loving mother cherishing her child, and Longchenpa on the karmic results of the four immeasurables. He works through the five faults of not knowing about basic goodness and the five benefits of knowing, then a short practice for all beings.

• D6S2 - Concentric Circles, and Finding a Teacher Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  Loving kindness in widening rings, beginning with yourself and the tiny beings within your own body and ending in any corner of existence. Michael Lobsang Tenpa then answers a practitioner with ADHD about boredom. He passes on Garchen Rinpoche's point that the point four finger widths below the navel is much safer to focus on than the heart centre. He also says how someone comes to have a teacher, and how rarely anyone needs to see one weekly.

• D5S5 - The Difficult Person, and Privilege Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 63 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The full sequence now reaches a difficult person, and the rest of the evening is questions. Someone who panics around people asks how to believe they have a right to exist. A breathless feeling in the chest is not loving kindness itself, which is mental, but probably some tensing up. Michael Lobsang Tenpa separates self-cherishing from self-care, and answers a question about women and ordination first with lineages of female ordination that died out, then with blind spots and privilege.

• D5S4 - The Eleven Benefits Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The eleven benefits of loving kindness attributed to the Buddha, taken one at a time: sleeping and waking comfortably, no unvirtuous dreams, being adored by people and by non-human beings, gods protecting you, no harm from fire, poison or weapons, a clear face, a joyful mind, a peaceful death. Michael Lobsang Tenpa describes how the practice starts turning up in dreams, and what Atisha and Dromtonpa say about the three best ways to die. The golden portal practice opens the session, self-guided.

• 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.

• D5S2 - Choosing a Stranger Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The stranger, said to be 99 percent of all beings, and how to choose one when you can barely picture anybody you feel neutral about. Michael Lobsang Tenpa lays out the circles to be used later today and tomorrow, from your own body out through Lampeter and Wales to the planet, and the three levels of loving kindness in wisdom practice. A distracting sound, or a flashback that surfaces while walking, can be turned into loving kindness for a few seconds before returning to the object.

• D4S5 - The Neutral Person, and Questions Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The neutral person joins the sequence, someone you neither like nor dislike but still know. Most of the session is then questions. One asks whether the Dalai Lama allows that a machine could be conscious; Michael Lobsang Tenpa rules out mind arising from matter, then reads the exchange in Gentle Bridges. Others cover how to help without controlling, mindfulness and ageing, and the phrases producing no feeling at all. A short practice and a threefold dedication close.

• D4S4 - Vertical Love and Horizontal Love Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  Two practices using imagery. The golden portal comes first, then drawing the strings of attention back in, breathing in particles of rainbow light that gather in the pearl below the navel, and breathing loving kindness out. Michael Lobsang Tenpa then gives Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's two preconditions for recognising the ultimate nature of awareness: vertical love, appreciation and respect for realised beings, and horizontal love, the four immeasurables at full intensity. Three styles of teaching close.

• D4S3 - Near Enemy and Far Enemy Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 64 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  Largely unguided at the start: Michael Lobsang Tenpa cues only the preparation, the main part and the conclusion, and leaves everyone to steer their own practice. The teaching rests on the four kinds of balance from Alan Wallace and Paul Ekman's Cultivating Emotional Balance, and on the Visuddhimagga, where loving kindness fails when it produces selfish affection, its near enemy, and succeeds when it makes ill will subside. A fully guided practice follows, then loving touch and loving gaze for the breaks.

• D4S2 - Loving Kindness for a Friend Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The step to someone close, a partner, a sibling, a best friend, where the practice gets harder. Michael Lobsang Tenpa shows how the wish quietly turns conditional, may you be happy but only with me, and asks people to hold that person's flourishing steady even with themselves removed from the picture. He is clear that this does not mean tolerating harmful behaviour, and that healthy boundaries and loving kindness belong together.

• D3S5 - Why the Benefactor Comes First Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  Questions, at length. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains why the loving kindness others radiate barely reaches us, using the image of a bowl turned upside down under the sun, and what happiness might mean for a bird. He says why the benefactor is chosen before a friend, because nothing is expected in return, and why Buddhaghosa requires an object who is alive to reach shamatha through loving kindness. The closing practice is framed by the three excellences, and the dedication carries Shantideva's verse.

• D3S4 - The Golden Portal Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  A practice from the lineage of Akong Tulku Rinpoche, founder of Samye Ling, who taught it for compassion: you become a golden portal, and all the random thoughts and mental chatter come out through it as golden light of loving kindness radiating outwards. The circle of kind beings is practised again, with loving kindness extended to them at the end. Michael Lobsang Tenpa also talks about informal practice, and the Japanese image of practice as a red thread to hold onto at all times.

• 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.

• D3S2 - May I Be at Ease Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The phrase comes from the Metta Sutta, may I be at ease, taken from oneself out to fellow practitioners and then to all beings. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains sukha as good space, or the smooth hole at the centre of a wheel that lets it turn. He answers a question about a teacher who called Alexander Berzin stupid, and why kindness can only be judged in context. A body directed practice he learned from Sharon Salzberg, who had it from a Burmese monastic teacher, is described for the break.

• D6S1 - Rain of Prosperity and Dedication Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The last morning, and the last page of the notes. Michael Lobsang Tenpa introduces a chant on the rain of prosperity, from the teachings of Padmasambhava and revealed by Chokgyur Lingpa, in which abundance falls everywhere and the hearts of beings turn generous, and a few words of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's, edited into a prayer by Venerable Thubten Chodron, dedicating every action and circumstance to others. The closing meditation runs the full sequence out to a difficult person and all beings.

• D5S1 - Building a Circle of Inspiration Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  How to keep the practice alive. Michael Lobsang Tenpa suggests a eudaimonic journal, a book of the antidotes that work for you personally, and a mandala of inspiration made of images, scents, music, quotes and inspiring practitioners. He tells of Sharon Salzberg asking the Dalai Lama whether to teach loving kindness for oneself first, since so many people suffer from self-hatred, which he did not understand. The closing practice runs from oneself to a benefactor, a friend, a neutral person and all beings.

• D4S1 - Mindfulness, Introspection and Awareness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  The machinery underneath the practice. Michael Lobsang Tenpa separates awareness in the ordinary sense from pristine awareness, then explains mindfulness as non-forgetfulness rather than the non-judgemental awareness of the mindfulness movement. Mindfulness holds the chosen being and the awareness through the lens of loving kindness; introspection checks for laxity, excitation, and whether loving kindness itself has gone. The four questions open, and a short harvesting joy practice closes.

• D3S1 - What Loving Kindness Actually Is Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

  Answering a question about simply feeling love for others, Michael Lobsang Tenpa guides the four questions, with an optional radiant orb of basic goodness in the heart, then works through the definition of maitri, why loving kindness is a wish rather than an emotion in Paul Ekman's sense of the word, and what Dipa Ma meant in saying there is no difference between mindfulness and loving kindness. A shorter loving kindness practice for oneself closes the session.

• 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.

• D2S3 - Phrases for Loneliness and Good Fortune Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023

  Two more sets of phrases are practised. The first is written for loneliness: may I be happy, feel loved, feel supported and be wise. The second comes from Mipham's Prayer of the Eight Auspicious Ones, good fortune, prosperity, happiness and peace. Michael Lobsang Tenpa also answers a question about a mind that turns every mention of love into a romantic story, offering three strategies, among them Tsoknyi Rinpoche's handshake practice.

• 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.

• D2S1 - Loving Kindness for Oneself Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023

  Loving kindness proper begins, and the object for the whole day is oneself. After the four questions, Michael Lobsang Tenpa guides tenderness crystallising into the wish, may I be happy and have the causes of happiness, and explains why the Indo-Tibetan wording adds those causes where the Pali sometimes starts with the simpler may I be happy. He also corrects a common error: the object of concentration is the being, not the phrases. Walking meditation pairs one step with one aspiration.

• Taking Our Practice One Step at a Time David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded November 12, 2023

  The session opens with a short mindfulness of breathing to settle the mind, before David guides a visualisation of a glowing white orb at the heart centre, inviting you to meditate from that point of clarity. He talks about pacing our practice one day at a time rather than trying to accumulate everything at once, using the Buddha's image of the water pot filled drop by drop and the tortoise who beats the flitting hummingbird. He suggests a varied practice of concentration, loving kindness and small daily mindfulness.

• Our Need to Be Liked & Approved Of David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded September 17, 2023

  In the meditation on the sky-like nature of mind we watch thoughts arise and pass like clouds while resting in the clear, spacious awareness beneath them. David talks about our need to be liked and approved of, seen in social media validation, peer pressure and people-pleasing at work, and why tying self-worth to others' opinions is such shaky ground. He offers loving kindness towards ourselves, reflecting on impermanence and the Dalai Lama's reminder that we carry Buddha nature.

• D1S5 - Tenderness, and the Metta Sutta Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023

  Two practices on tsewa: holding yourself in awareness as you would hold a kitten or a newborn, then adding a hand on the chest so that the warmth also travels through touch. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains why trauma needs both safety and connection, and why a plush toy is a legitimate object here. He tells the story of monastics sent into a frightening forest who were given loving kindness as the antidote to fear, and the group then recites the Metta Sutta and dedicates the day.

• 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.

• D1S3 - Stillness, Silence and Spaciousness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023

  Two shamatha practices to make loving kindness possible. The first settles the body in relaxation, stillness and vigilance, and closes with a reverse body scan. Between them Michael Lobsang Tenpa passes on Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's three pillars, stillness for the body, silence for the speech, spaciousness for the mind. The second is mindfulness of breathing, attended to as tactile waves moving through the whole body.

• D1S2 - Three Lineages, and Dipa Ma Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023

  A guided practice acknowledging three lineages: the land and everyone who has lived on it, blood and bone ancestors, and the teachers who carried these methods down. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains supplication as a way of inviting inspiration rather than listing the dead. He then tells the story of Dipa Ma, the Bengali housewife widowed young who turned out to be a concentration prodigy, and her two minute instruction to Wendy Palmer: this life is in trouble, so for now do only loving kindness.

• D1S1 - The Four Questions, and Two Kinds of Happiness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023

  The practice that opens every day here, a vision quest of four questions: how you envision genuine flourishing, what support it needs, how you would have to change, and what gift you want to offer. Michael Lobsang Tenpa then revisits a distinction Lama Alan quotes but did not invent: hedonic happiness, whose kinds and their flip sides are the eight worldly concerns, and the eudaimonic wellbeing that comes from the inside. It closes with harvesting joy, finding what is pleasant in each sense.

• Loving Kindness, Introductory Session Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 84 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023

  The opening evening at Lampeter, before the schedule proper begins. Michael Lobsang Tenpa guides a settling practice through the body and then a contemplation on healing, for your own body and mind, for your communities and for the world. He then says what being in retreat means, tells how Drukpa Kunley left a three year retreat on its first day because his brother was already making plans for his monastery, and quotes Lama Alan Wallace on why a gentle approach works better.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Self-Cherishing vs Cherishing Others David Oromith · 37 minutes · recorded May 8, 2022

  In the classic loving kindness practice we move from ourself to someone loved, someone neutral and someone we find difficult. David talks about self-cherishing, the mind's habit of placing our own comfort above everyone else's, from wanting the fastest lane to the last item in the shop. He explains the Mahayana shift towards cherishing others instead, quoting Shantideva that all happiness comes from this and all suffering from self-focus alone.

• The Mirror-Like Mind and Five Obscurations David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded March 6, 2022

  The practice is a full loving kindness meditation: we extend from ourself through someone loved, someone neutral and someone difficult, out to all beings. David talks about the mind as a mirror or a still pool, reflecting reality but tinted by whatever is mixed into it. He works through the five classical obscurations, desire as coloured water, ill will as boiling water, dullness as algae, agitation as ripples, and doubt as mud, each one clouding what we actually see.

• 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.

• D3S1 - Emptiness, and Transforming Good Fortune Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

  Dodrupchen teaches adversity by way of ultimate truth in two sentences, which Lama Alan Wallace opens out with the refutation of the four extreme views concerning production. A car never objectively becomes a car, and adversity is adversity when you identify it as such. Turning to felicity, he quotes Padampa Sangye, that people can handle only a little felicity but a lot of adversity, and tells of a yogi who declined cancer treatment. In the closing practice we radiate loving kindness from the heart.

• 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.

• Interconnectedness, Self and Other, Loving-Kindness David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded August 22, 2021

  We settle whole body awareness into the natural rhythm of the breath, with counting offered to steady a busy mind until it clears like a lake settling after a storm. David tells the story of a farmer who shares his best seed with neighbours to keep his own crop strong, and uses it to explore how our happiness depends on others rather than being self made. He looks at how us and them thinking creates conflict, and closes by reading the Buddha's teaching on loving kindness.

• Guided Meditation on Maitrī (Loving-Kindness) David Oromith · 18 minutes · recorded June 19, 2020

  This is a guided meditation on Loving-Kindness (maitrī in Sanskrit). Loving Kindness is the first 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 loving-kindness is a yearning that the person we are directing our attention to be well and happy. The object of one's loving-kindness may be oneself, another human being, an animal, or any other sentient being. May everyone be free of enmity. May everyone be free of affliction. May everyone be free of anxiety. May everyone be well and happy.

• 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.

• D2S4 - Four Questions on Flourishing, and What Free Will Means Lama Alan · 75 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

  Tibetan has no words for self-loathing or low self-esteem, and Lama Alan begins loving kindness where it is easiest, with yourself. Four questions follow: your own flourishing, what you would love to receive, how you would love to transform, and what to offer, each aroused with the breath and imagined as already so. Then the Buddha's three kinds of genuine well-being for the contemplative, from ethics, samadhi and wisdom, and free will as the ability to act in ways conducive to one's own and others' well-being.

• D2S3 - Awareness of Awareness, Dying Lucidly, and Loving Kindness Lama Alan · 85 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

  Nothing could persuade you that you are not conscious, and Lama Alan takes that as his starting point. He describes the substrate consciousness, then guides awareness of awareness, released into space on the out-breath and inverted upon itself on the in-breath. What the dying process holds for anyone who stays lucid follows. The session closes with loving kindness, an aspiration rather than an emotion, with the near enemy Buddhaghosa names in the Path of Purification, self-centred attachment.

• 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 - Loving Kindness, Radiating Light from the Heart Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Lama Alan Wallace turns from present sensation to imagination, inviting you to envision your own flourishing in detail: what you would love your life to become, and the deeper wishes beneath that. You picture the pure ground of your awareness as a small orb of white light at the heart, radiating through your whole being with each out-breath. The light then flows to a dear friend, and to someone whose voice you would be glad to hear.

• Guided Meditation - Unconditional Loving Kindness, Beginning with Yourself at Your Worst Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Can you love yourself at your worst? Lama Alan Wallace begins here, asking you to recall an episode of your own regrettable behaviour and to distinguish the person from the afflictions and habits that gripped them. You offer yourself the four aspirations. The same recognition then extends to someone whose conduct has clearly harmed others, and finally to a person who has harmed you, met as a brother or sister in the same predicament.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Neutral Person and Someone You Find Difficult Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Lama Alan Wallace carries the sequence of loving kindness out to a neutral person, someone you know but barely notice. You picture them vividly, even imagine being them, and offer the four aspirations breath by breath. Then you bring to mind someone you find disagreeable and examine the cartoon you have made of them. Looking past behaviour to the wish for happiness beneath it, you extend the same aspirations, then open in every direction to all beings.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, the Four Aspirations from I to We Lama Alan · 22 minutes

  After several quiet minutes settling the mind in its natural state, Lama Alan draws on what the Dalai Lama calls the deepest impulse of the heart: caring whether you suffer or flourish. You breathe a fourfold aspiration, to be free of hatred and ill will, of physical pain, of anxiety, and to be well and happy. Then the I becomes we, and the same four wishes widen through the room, the city and outwards in every direction.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Loved One, Asking What They Long For Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Lama Alan asks you to bring to mind one person you hold dear and to attend closely to what they long for: what obstructs their happiness, and how they picture it. With each out breath you send the breath of loving kindness, wishing them free of every encumbrance and imagining them realising their heart's desire. The session then closes resting within the field of your own body, present to sensation without grasping.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Genuine Happiness Lama Alan · 26 minutes

  You begin by envisioning genuine happiness: a well-being with roots deep enough to survive praise and ridicule, gain and loss, kindness and cruelty from others. Lama Alan invites you to imagine that capacity already within you, visualised as a radiant orb of white light at your heart, and with each out breath to send its rays through your whole being. The field then widens to everyone around you, before a closing rest.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself at Your Worst and at Your Best Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Lama Alan turns loving kindness towards yourself, in two directions at once. You recall a day when your mind was in turmoil and your behaviour at its worst, then look past the affliction to the person underneath who only ever wanted to be happy, and wish them free. Then you recall yourself at your best, kind and patient, and wish that person well too. The session closes by releasing every thought.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Flourishing, Receiving and Offering Lama Alan · 26 minutes

  Loving kindness begins with yourself. Lama Alan asks you to envision your own wellbeing, then to picture all you would love to receive from other people and the natural world, flowing in as effortlessly as the breath. You consider which habits you would love to be free of and which qualities you would love to be endowed with, then what you would love to offer the world. The session closes with a moment of simple presence.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Freedom and Fulfilment Lama Alan · 23 minutes

  Lama Alan turns loving kindness inwards, towards yourself. You ask what you most wish for and have not yet found, what is missing, and what stands in the way of your own wellbeing, seeing clearly that you are not those habits and states of mind. With each out breath you arouse the yearning to be free of them and to find genuine happiness, envisioning that freedom and fulfilment realised here and now.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

More by practice

• Shamatha (calm abiding) 163
• Compassion (karuna) 155
• 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