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Mantra

Practice Library

Mantra

20 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • 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.

  • D5S1 - Six Domains of Practice, and Why Mind Is Not the Brain Lama Alan · 119 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

    Morning devotions and mantra lead into a guided practice in which we move through the six domains of experience, from sight and sound to the space of the mind alone. Lama Alan works through Dudjom Lingpa's dream teaching from Padmasambhava on the stages of realisation, using ice and water, night and day, to distinguish ordinary mind from pristine awareness, then argues that mental events are correlated with brain activity but never transform into it.

  • D2S1 - The Liturgy, and Whether Dzogchen Must Wait Lama Alan · 95 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

    The morning liturgy is recited once in Tibetan, once in English and once in silence, neither abandoned nor performed by rote. A guided Dzogchen practice follows, in which we rest awareness in stillness while attending to the fluctuations in the space of the body. The text then opens with Dudjom Lingpa stating plainly what he has realised, and the question Lama Alan spends the session on is whether Dzogchen must wait until the generation and completion stages are finished.

  • 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.

  • D3S3 - Signs of Purification, and Vase Breathing Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

    Giving and taking is widened to friends, strangers and enemies, and to the three kinds of suffering. Tenpa relays Lama Zopa Rinpoche's daily minimum, enough to keep negative seeds from multiplying, and warns against visualising internal organs. He reads the dream signs of purification, and the real sign, afflictions becoming weaker, citing Ven. Thubten Chodron on her first three month retreat. Garchen Rinpoche's instruction on the channels and winds follows, vase breathing guided and the inner practice read out.

  • 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.

  • D2S4 - Preparing for Death, and the Three Cleansings Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

    Purification as preparation for dying, opening with death and impermanence and the seven branch practice. Tenpa defines the pair of words that recur in these texts, misdeeds and obscurations, the second meaning here the factors that trigger afflictions and thoughts that block meditation. The commentary he quotes likens the practice to surgery rather than slow medicine, and to aiming at one problem such as anger. The long guided practice runs the whole text, with the hundred syllable mantra and the three cleansings.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • D2S1 - Vajrasattva in the Space Before Us Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

    The morning begins again with the fourfold vision quest, then a recap of day one. Tenpa turns to Vajrasattva himself: the snow white body, a vajra at his heart, a bell at his left hip, and white as the colour of pacifying activity. He reads the aspiration Vajrasattva made while on the path, that beings be purified merely by hearing his name or reciting the hundred syllable mantra. A guided practice follows: Vajrasattva in the space in front, the four opponent powers and the six syllable mantra.

  • 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.

  • The Four Noble Truths: The Truth of Suffering David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded October 3, 2023

    The session opens with a short guided meditation in which we ground awareness in the body, followed by refuge and bodhicitta. David opens the first noble truth using a doctor's diagnosis as the model, and the story of the nun whose patched robe leads her to a cat, a cow and a field. He sets out the three types of suffering, gross pain, the suffering of change, and pervasive conditioned existence. Questions cover addiction and letting go of attachment to pleasurable moments.

  • 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.

  • Embodying the Qualities of Tara Thubten Chodron · 105 minutes · recorded November 5, 2022

    Ven. Thubten Chodron works through the poem on Tara who liberates from the eight dangers, taken from her book How to Free Your Mind. Pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, distorted views, miserliness, attachment and doubt each get an image and an antidote, with stories from her own life against each one. Her argument is that Tara protects by teaching, not by fixing us from outside. The talk closes with a guided visualisation of Tara in green light with her mantra.

  • Green Tara Thubten Chodron · 13 minutes · recorded November 5, 2022

    A guided visualisation, short and complete in itself. Tara is imagined in the space in front of you, on a lotus and a flat moon disc, her body made of green light, one leg tucked in and one stepping out into the world. You make a request in your own words for protection from the eight dangers, and green light flows from her heart into you and everyone around you. Her mantra is chanted alongside the visualisation, Tara dissolves into your heart, and the merit is dedicated.

  • Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 2 Lama Alan · 64 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021

    Can Westerners achieve shamatha? Lama Alan Wallace answers firmly yes, naming one of his own lamas, Lama Karma, who reached it in six months of very strict retreat after twenty years of practice, and argues that it is rare because conducive conditions are rare. Waves of fatigue in practice mean take a nap. Mantra recitation opens the heart but cannot carry anyone to shamatha, since the mind stays active. Readiness for a strict retreat is contentment when the stimulation is taken away.

  • 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.

  • Workshop Part 2 Charlie Morley · 209 minutes

    Charlie Morley tells the story of Namgyal Rinpoche, the Canadian who founded what became Samye Ling and was the first Western tulku, and his advice on purification, merit and dream recall. A thirty minute yoga nidra follows, thanking skin, flesh, bones, blood and heart while awareness is held in the hypnagogic state. Everyone then writes a dream plan. The final practice taught is Lochen Dharmashri's white AH at the heart centre, for those with the Vajrasattva empowerment. He then runs back through the whole day.

  • Workshop Part 1 Charlie Morley · 214 minutes

    For practitioners who have taken refuge, Charlie Morley's workshop opens with refuge and works through the four stages of dream yoga: recognition, transformation, multiplication and unification. He teaches the Chenrezig dream practice, which needs no initiation, and Akong Tulku Rinpoche's three word instruction, walk through wall. After the break comes Padmasambhava's dream yoga from Natural Liberation, with a guided rehearsal of falling asleep in divine form, focus drawn to the throat centre.

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