Calendar

Open presence

Practice Library

Open presence

79 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • 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.

  • Guided Meditation - Awareness of Awareness Through Sound, Body and Mind David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded July 14, 2026

    Eyes open and the gaze resting in space, sounds are noticed arriving on their own, then the difference between a sound and the awareness of it: sounds come and go, what knows them does not. The move repeats in the body, taking the most obvious sensation and asking whether the awareness itself is aching, and then to a thought and a worry, met from the awareness holding it. It closes sharpening on the in breath and relaxing on the out.

  • Session One - Awareness Is Already Here David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded July 14, 2026

    In two guided meditations we rest attention in bare awareness, first noticing the knowing behind sounds and sensations, then meeting bodily discomfort the same way. David draws on Mahamudra and Dzogchen for a way of meeting difficult emotions that is neither suppressing, avoiding, indulging nor fixing, using the image of sky and cloud and Mingyur Rinpoche's panic suspended in awareness. Questions cover using imagery as a support and resting in awareness when emotions arrive tangled together.

  • Guided Meditation - Simply Being with the Urge to Be Busy David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded May 29, 2026

    Refuge and bodhicitta open it, then the body is given permission to come to rest in stillness, the fidgeting and habitual moving being the evening's subject. The breathing slows, and each out breath releases thoughts rather than throwing them. We open attention wide to sounds, sensations and the movements of the mind, attentive without grasping at anything. Each time restlessness or boredom insists you should be doing something, David has you notice that and come back to simply being.

  • Guided Meditation - Dzogchen, Looking for Where Thoughts Happen David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded March 18, 2026

    Practised with the eyes at least partly open and the gaze soft. David has you look for where your thoughts actually happen, using an imagined oak tree, a distant lawnmower, the feel of velvet, until no place can be found and you rest in that limitless space. Then a step further, turning awareness towards awareness itself, and a reflection read aloud to close.

  • Guided Meditation - Mahamudra, Resting in Awareness While Thoughts Move David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded March 11, 2026

    David reads instructions from a Gelug Kagyu Mahamudra root text and comments as he goes, beginning with the seven-fold posture and the difference between awareness itself and what clouds it. You rest in the stillness of being aware while thoughts keep arising, noticed but not merged with, and near the end David asks where the mind actually is.

  • Attachment & Love in Relationships David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded January 25, 2026

    In the open awareness practice we move through the body, sound and the mind, meeting each with acceptance rather than resistance. David talks about the difference between Buddhist love and attachment, describing the sentimentality that sees a partner or friend as perfect and the possessiveness that needs to control them, and how genuine love wants their happiness regardless.

  • Acceptance or Action? David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded November 23, 2025

    In the practice of open, non-reactive presence with the body, sound and mind we release any need to change what arises. Prompted by a question from a previous session, David talks about acceptance and agency together, using the serenity prayer and Mel Robbins' let them theory to show that accepting what we cannot control does not mean giving up our own response.

  • Guided Meditation - From the Breath to Awareness of Awareness David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded October 15, 2025

    It starts with settling body, speech and mind, dropping the grasping and planning rather than the thoughts themselves, and stabilising on the breath. Then it turns: you are asked whether you can be aware of being aware of the breath, and eventually to let the breath go altogether and rest in awareness itself.

  • 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.

  • D6S2 - Seeking What Is Aware, and the Nine-Round Breathing David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded August 23, 2025

    The same practice, with one question folded in: occasionally seek out what is that consciousness that is concentrating, then release the question back into non-doing. David sets out the three levels of mind this tradition works with, the ordinary psyche, the substrate consciousness that shamatha dissolves into, and pristine awareness, and is careful to promise nothing. The session also teaches the nine-round breathing as a preparation, without the elaborate visualisations.

  • D6S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign: Awareness of Awareness David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded August 23, 2025

    The perfection of not doing, the one method with nothing to hold: we rest attention in its own nature, simply being aware of being aware, with no object at all. David reads Padmasambhava on shamatha without a sign and returns to the three words, relax, release and no return. He also reads Lama Alan on why solitude is found distressing, that without distractions we come face to face with our own minds with no buffer zone and no escape, and on the six prerequisites for this kind of training.

  • D5S2 - Taking the Mind as the Path: Doing Even Less David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025

    A second session with the same method, to get a bit more familiarity with it before moving on. David reads Lama Alan: in each of the two shamatha methods so far the practice involves doing less and less, and here you are doing even less, no longer preferring thoughts to be absent. He reads him again on how this quality of awareness lets the mind heal and unknot itself as resentment, craving and arrogance come up in a space of loving presence, and answers one participant caught between resting in awareness and attending to thoughts, and another who feels dullness and a sense of falling with the eyes closed.

  • D5S1 - Taking the Mind as the Path: Watching Thought Without Following It David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025

    We turn attention from the body to the mind itself: thoughts, images, memories and desires observed as they arise, play out and pass, without following any of them anywhere. David speaks personally about how this meditation helped with his own anxiety, because it totally changed his relationship with those anxious thoughts: the only power they have over you is the power you give them. He also warns of the version that only looks empty, where you are filling the space by talking your way through it.

  • D4S1 - The Dzogchen Approach to Mindfulness of Breathing David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded August 21, 2025

    The last of the breathing methods: we move attention off the sensations of the body and rest in awareness itself, noting only whether the breath is long or short. David takes it back to the Buddha's own instruction for mindfulness of breathing, to go to a forest, sit at the foot of a tree or find an empty room, sit with the back straight and establish mindfulness in front of you, and sets that beside the Dzogchen teaching of releasing awareness into the space ahead, eyes open, with no object of focus at all.

  • Guided Meditation - Meeting Emotion in the Body with Loving Awareness David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded August 7, 2025

    If an emotion is already here you work with that, and if not you recall a recent episode of worry or frustration, then let the memory go and stay with the waves of feeling in the body with no agenda. David then turns attention to the loving attentiveness you have been bringing all along, and you rest in that spaciousness.

  • Catching Your Breath David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded June 29, 2025

    In the open awareness meditation we move attention through each sense in turn, sight, sound and the movements of the mind, resting with bare, non-reactive attention on whatever arises. David tells the story of a traveller who leaps untethered into a river to save a drowning child and is swept away himself, and draws out why we need to secure our own footing before we can help with the world's, or our own, difficulties without drowning in them.

  • D8S1 - Resting in Awareness, and Why the Mind Must Change First Lama Alan · 95 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

    Lama Alan opens with guru yoga and refuge before a long guided rest in open awareness, then turns to why merely suspending self-grasping is not enough: freedom takes seeing the emptiness of self all the way down. He contrasts contentment with material needs against an insatiable aspiration for dharma, and argues that outer revolutions bring lasting good only once they grow from real inner change, as when a retreat at twenty-four showed him a mind like a junkyard and he set his studies aside.

  • D7S3 - The Bardo as a Cinema, and Deities as Your Own Mind Lama Alan · 67 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

    The sense of moving from one life to the next in the bardo, compared to watching from inside a cinema: vivid, but never taking you anywhere. Lama Alan explains why Buddhas and their pure realms are displays of your own pristine awareness rather than places to travel to, and why emptiness must be realised before resting in open awareness or the insight will not hold. A guided practice continues the shift from calm abiding toward inverting awareness onto the observer.

  • D5S5 - Questions on Observing the Mind and Losing the Self Lama Alan · 90 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

    A long question and answer session on why observing the mind is not the same as observing yourself, and why introspection can feel impossible even to a trained philosopher. Lama Alan addresses the anxiety that surfaces as meditation grows spacious and the sense of self loosens, and tells of the experiment in which Matthieu Ricard did not flinch at a gunshot while resting in open awareness. Questions also compare Dzogchen realisation with Advaita Vedanta.

  • D6S2 - Resting in Awareness, and Why Nothing Exists Inherently Lama Alan · 83 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

    A short experiment asks the group to rest in bare awareness for a few seconds before Lama Alan turns to Padmasambhava's song on dualistic grasping, tracing why day and night, joy and sorrow, and even galaxies are displays within pristine awareness rather than things existing from their own side. Using the example of a pair of glasses, he shows how nothing is inherently anything until it is conceptually labelled.

  • D6S1 - The Final Stages of Shamatha and Its Signs of Arrival Lama Alan · 102 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025

    Mindfulness of breathing, settling the mind, and awareness of awareness are described as three nested practices, with mindfulness of breathing offered as the remedy for a stressful day and brief pauses through the day as seasoning. Lama Alan then details the eighth and ninth stages of shamatha and the signs of its arrival: heaviness at the crown, physical and mental pliancy, and waves of bliss, and how daily life and sleep change afterwards.

  • D5S2 - Stability by Effort, or by Letting Go of Grasping Lama Alan · 73 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025

    Lama Alan opens by distinguishing shamatha, only the on-ramp, from the path itself, and contrasts developing stability through effort with simply discovering it once grasping is released. A short guided practice of resting in awareness of awareness follows. Questions take up the rest of the session, including three ways of handling a persistent thought and why reaching for awareness inside the head, instead of resting it in the space ahead, can bring on a headache.

  • D5S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign, and Stages Six and Seven Lama Alan · 115 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025

    The session opens with a guided practice of awareness of awareness in which we rest without any object at all, followed by why this is considered the ultimate retreat. Lama Alan then maps stages six and seven of the nine stages of shamatha, where old material gets dredged up and desire, depression and lethargy can surface, and explains how to tell a meditative experience from something needing a doctor. He warns against treating each stage as a goal to chase.

  • Session Four - Impermanence Makes Rebirth Possible David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded April 14, 2025

    This final session on emptiness opens with a guided Awareness of Awareness practice, eyes open, with Padmasambhava's question of what is aware dropped in gently. The rest is a live question and answer from emails sent during the week: why impermanence is what makes rebirth possible, how karma explains a joy that seems to come from nowhere, and what is aware once no self can be found. David also covers the unsettling shaken feeling as insight deepens, and the difference between mind and conscience.

  • Guided Meditation - The Nature of Awareness David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded April 3, 2025

    Extra time goes to the body first, each out breath releasing more tension and whatever has caught your attention. Then the eyes open, the gaze rests vacantly in the space ahead and you meditate on nothing at all, resting in the plain sense of being aware. David calls it profound inactivity, and later has you drop in the question of what the consciousness that is concentrating is, then let it go.

  • Guided Meditation - The Buddha's Words to Bahiya, Investigating Projection and the Sense of Self David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded April 3, 2025

    Following the Buddha's brief instructions to Bahiya, David takes the domains of experience one at a time, touch first, then sights, sounds and thoughts, attending to each with nothing added. Even the mental map of where a sensation sits is something you have put there. It closes by opening to all six domains at once and asking whether sensations are known is enough, with no I anywhere in it.

  • 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.

  • Guided Meditation - The Buddha's Words to Bahiya, Bare Awareness of the Six Senses David Oromith · 17 minutes · recorded March 26, 2025

    Taking the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, David works through the senses one at a time, body sensations, sight with the eyes open, sound, taste and smell, then mental activity, dropping the naming and the liking from each. The six are then opened at once into a choiceless awareness where experience simply happens, with no I needed to run it.

  • Reigniting our Practice David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded January 26, 2025

    The meditation follows the Buddha's instructions to Bahiya: in the seen let there be only the seen, in the heard only the heard, as we rest in bare awareness of body, sight, sound and thought without elaboration. David talks about Marcus Aurelius' reminder that our principles are never extinguished, only buried, and that we can reignite them at any moment. He offers a journal prompt for what small change would bring us closer to our values, and the water pot filled drop by drop.

  • Session 1 - Practices for Relaxation David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded January 19, 2025

    David opens by naming why so many of us live from a baseline of stress, then leads a longer guided meditation of settling body, speech and mind in their natural state, followed by mindfulness of breathing. He explains shamatha and its three qualities of relaxation, stillness and alertness, and how daily practice builds a calmer baseline rather than forcing a blank mind. The session closes with a second guided practice, open presence with all five senses.

  • D5S2 - The Emptiness of Self and the Nature of Awareness David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

    David guides a practice of watching thoughts arise and dissolve without following them, a step toward resting in awareness itself. He turns to absolute bodhicitta, using a plant pot and an empty bank balance to show how self and things are labels placed over shifting causes and conditions rather than solid entities. Questions cover rebirth, relationships, and resting in pristine awareness.

  • 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.

  • D5S4 - The Three Kinds of Patience, and a Farmer's 77 Problems David Oromith · 50 minutes · recorded November 29, 2024

    The session opens with a brief practice of resting in awareness, before David turns to kshanti, patience in its fuller sense, transforming hardship rather than gritting your teeth through it. He covers patience with people who harm us, with the ordinary ups and downs of life, illustrated by the farmer with 77 problems whose real problem is his belief that he should have none, and with the slow pace of our own progress. The group asks whether he has met anyone who claims to be enlightened.

  • Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Phenomena David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded November 24, 2024

    The eyes stay open and each out-breath is used to let go of grasping, until awareness is open to all six domains at once, noting whatever arrives without preference. You then move from noting to watching how one appearance gives rise to the next, and end by searching that whole web for anything permanent, and for the person your name refers to.

  • Session 4 - Mindfulness of Phenomena David Oromith · 77 minutes · recorded November 24, 2024

    In the guided meditation of open presence, eyes fully open to all six senses, we then watch one appearance cause another, a sound giving rise to an image, a feeling, a thought, while searching within it all for a findable self. David explains dependent origination through a candle lighting a whole room and the froth on a boiling pot, and why the self is unfindable without being non-existent. Questions cover why 'I' feels large in anger but faint in joy, and sensations clamouring for attention.

  • The Power of Nature David Oromith · 26 minutes · recorded November 3, 2024

    In this body based meditation we bear loving witness to sensation, sound, sight and mental activity with no agenda, letting attention settle wherever it lands. David talks about the Buddha's own life among forests and trees, the research behind forest bathing, and how time in nature restores our sense of connection to the world. He closes with an invitation to notice what changes when we bring that same open attention to a walk outdoors this week.

  • S3 - Taking the Mind as the Path David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded October 29, 2024

    The releasing approach to shamatha, practised with the eyes open. David guides what Lama Alan Wallace calls the Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing, resting in awareness itself with the rhythm of the breath only at the periphery. He gives the four benefits the Buddha named for this concentration, and the story of the monkeys raiding a retreat room in Nepal. The Vajra Essence's advice for those who cannot calm their thoughts leads into observing them without identifying or grasping.

  • Two Monks Cross a River David Oromith · 26 minutes · recorded May 12, 2024

    A sky gazing meditation in which thoughts and feelings are observed passing like clouds through the open space of the mind, without being identified with or held onto. David tells the story of the two monks and the river to illustrate how we keep carrying resentments long after the moment has passed, and draws on the Buddha's advice to observe a difficult feeling as a feeling rather than becoming fused with it. The talk closes on widening awareness rather than shrinking into the emotion.

  • Open Presence David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded March 24, 2024

    In the practice called open presence we move in turn through the body, sight, sound and mind before opening to all six equally, witnessing whatever arises without following or analysing it. David describes this as a bird's eye view of experience, likened to watching the water pass from a riverbank, and explains how it can shift us from the tunnel vision of daily doing into a calmer sense of simply being. He leaves the meditation to speak largely for itself this week, with no separate talk.

  • Guided Meditation - Awareness of Awareness David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded March 12, 2024

    Practised with the eyes at least partly open and the gaze resting softly in the space in front of you. With each out breath David asks you to release all thought, all grasping, all doing, and simply sustain the bare sense of being aware. Then a second move, alternating with the first: look in on the one who is meditating, and release again.

  • Prerequisites for Achieving Shamatha and Awareness of Awareness David Oromith · 93 minutes · recorded March 12, 2024

    In the guided meditation we sustain bare awareness of awareness itself, the subtlest shamatha method, releasing focus on breath, body and thought until only knowing you are aware remains. David also explains vase breathing, holding the belly's shape to settle the energies. The teaching then covers the prerequisites for achieving shamatha: a quiet, safe environment, few desires, few concerns and good companions. Questions cover eyes open or closed and quietening the narrating voice in meditation.

  • Guided Meditation - Taking Appearances as the Path David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded February 28, 2024

    David begins with twenty one counted breaths, then turns you towards whatever is appearing: the visual field in front of your partly open eyes, then sound, then the whole tactile field of the body, each met without labels, in the seen let there be only the seen. It closes with the mind itself, watching each thought arise, pass through and dissolve.

  • Guided Meditation - The Dzogchen Approach to Mindfulness of Breathing David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded February 20, 2024

    The breath taken by releasing rather than by holding on. With the eyes partly open and the gaze resting vacantly in space, each out-breath lets go of tension and of thinking, until awareness simply hovers in the present. David then has you notice that the rhythm of the breath rises up to meet you on its own.

  • Guided Meditation - Harvesting Joy, Finding Delight in the Ordinary David Oromith · 10 minutes · recorded November 6, 2023

    The body first, searched for anything pleasant in it, comfort in the seat, clothes against the skin, the soothing rhythm of the breath. The eyes then open at least partly, for whatever is delightful to see, and after that whatever is delightful to hear, birds, wind chimes, or the relative silence. We let awareness roam the five senses, harvesting the small and trivial and multiplying it. It closes on gratitude for this precious human life and a dedication.

  • Simplifying Our Activities and Closing The Tabs David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded June 11, 2023

    In this twenty minute meditation we move through the four elements in the body, then open to sight and sound before resting in a single open awareness of everything at once. David talks about the cost of doing several things simultaneously, from eating in front of the television to photographing a moment instead of living it, and suggests thinking of a busy mind as a computer with too many tabs open. He asks what activities we could simplify to make space for actually being present.

  • 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.

  • Cultivating Joy David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded April 30, 2023

    We settle into stillness with an open awareness meditation, before turning to a recent moment of real joy, wishing that same happiness for every being and extending empathetic joy to good news witnessed in others. David talks about why Buddhism deliberately cultivates joy rather than only addressing suffering, naming empathetic joy, the practice of wishing pleasure universally shared, and the joy that comes from a settled mind and from wisdom itself.

  • Open Presence & Not Identifying With Our Thoughts David Oromith · 27 minutes · recorded April 2, 2023

    In a practice of open presence we move through touch, sight and sound before turning to the mind itself, watching thoughts, memories and emotions arise and pass without identifying with them, like a third party looking in. David talks about why this works even in a noisy environment, and about thoughts that catastrophise or generalise, such as I am a failure or nobody cares about me. He draws on his teacher Venerable Robina's point that the real problem is believing a thought to be true.

  • Acceptance and Seeing Life As Like a River David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded July 3, 2022

    Five slow breaths and a body scan lead into open awareness, where we welcome whatever arises, sound, sensation or thought, without labelling it good or bad. David develops the image of life as a river, sometimes gentle, sometimes turbulent, always flowing, using his and Manu's own house move as an example. He talks about the difference between accepting the current and fighting it, and finding what choice remains when nothing else can change.

  • D2S2 - Examine the Character of Unborn Awareness Lama Alan · 88 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    Atisha turns the enquiry back on the observer: examine the character of unborn awareness. Lama Alan Wallace asks when exactly a human mind comes into existence and when it ceases, answers that we define it and nature does not, and that in the Madhyamaka view the emptiness of your own mind is nirvana. In the guided practice we rest in awareness of awareness, then thrust that attention into the mind that is aware. Questions follow on choosing a shamatha method and on evidence for rebirth.

  • Guided Meditation - Heartful Presence with Neil Seligman David Oromith · 14 minutes · recorded April 7, 2021

    This is a guided meditation on Heartful Presence with Neil Seligman. This practice helps you tune into the body with loving awareness and notice what is arising in your awareness. In this practice, we explore the energy of the heart through deep listening, focusing on body sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts.

  • Guided Meditation - Viewing the Mind As Like the Sky David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded March 31, 2021

    This is a guided meditation on viewing the mind as like the sky. Whenever we identify with and get carried away by our thoughts we lose awareness of the spacious clarity of our mind, within which our thoughts occur, and our perspective becomes small and constricted. When we can simply observe thoughts arising without getting involved, then we can come to know the natural spacious and clear nature of our mind. Calm, clear, peaceful, open spaciousness – without agitation and without anxiety and distress. Getting to know the mind in this way will help us understand and influence our thoughts, emotions, and in turn, our entire reality.

  • Guided Meditation - Experiencing the Mind & Body as a Lake David Oromith · 12 minutes · recorded January 23, 2021

    This is a guided meditation on experiencing the mind & body as a lake. During this practice, we mindfully attend to our experience of all sensations inside and outside the mind and body. Breath by breath, moment by moment, we bring awareness to our experience of being. This experience allows us to access an inner stillness and calmness that is present within us at all times and can be accessed anywhere, at any time.

  • Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 3 Lama Alan · 93 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021

    Appearances are handled differently in shamatha, where attention is selective, and in open presence, where it is not, and that difference opens the last hour of questions. Lama Alan Wallace tells a student with no teacher nearby to let the text itself be her lama, relays Karma Chagme on Mahamudra and Dzogchen being one as far as trekcho, and says fear of the mind dissolving means you are really getting somewhere. He ends by giving the oral transmission of the root text in English for the first time.

  • D5S2 - What Open Presence Actually Is Lama Alan · 121 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021

    Meditation in Dzogchen is nothing but sustaining the view, and the root text gives it in a line: the past has ceased, the future has not arisen, bring the consciousness of the present, as naked empty awareness, onto the path. The Vajra Essence warns how easily resting in the substrate is mistaken for that, and Lama Alan Wallace reads Sera Khandro on the four kinds of open presence. He tells of lamas who kept one taste through years in prison camps.

  • 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.

  • D6S1 - Do Nothing a Buddha Wouldn't Do Lama Alan · 122 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021

    The final morning begins with a twenty four minute practice rather than a talk, in which we rest in awareness of awareness. Lama Alan Wallace then reaches conduct, where equipoise and daily life merge indivisibly and thoughts arise as aids to meditation. Yangthang Rinpoche's commentary adds the detail: sustain that initial moment of freshness, because mental afflictions ride on the current of conceptualization. In the closing practice we watch the mind designate objects and reify them.

  • D2S1 - The Complete Instruction for Shamatha Lama Alan · 121 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021

    The second day opens with a short settling of body, speech and mind, then Lama Alan Wallace takes up the root text's shamatha instruction, directing the spear of entwined vital energies and awareness at the red HUM in the heart, though resting unfabricated and undistracted is enough by itself. He gives the antidotes for laxity and excitation, agitation met by relaxing deeply rather than yanking the leash. In the closing practice we intensify awareness of awareness on the in-breath, releasing into space on the out-breath.

  • D4S2 - The Circular Movement of the Intellect Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 132 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020

    Eva Natanya draws out the circular movement of the intellect, which Gregory Palamas quotes from Dionysius: awareness returning to itself and beholding itself in the heart, set beside awareness of awareness in Dzogchen. The meditation is an inquiry: who am I, where did this consciousness begin, could it have arisen from matter or been infused fresh from the divine mind. Lama Alan answers that the guru for all Christians is Jesus the Christ, and realisation comes through devotion and reverence.

  • D3S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 123 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020

    Lama Alan Wallace turns awareness in upon awareness itself, the method the Buddha called the most profound of the shamatha practices, and traces where it leads: the mind dissolving into the substrate consciousness, which is often mistaken for nirvana. He guides a practice of inverting awareness on the in breath and releasing it into open space on the out breath, then asks who the meditator is. Eva Natanya asks about the different levels of mystery, and which of them can be known.

  • D7S4 - Open Presence and the Rainbow Body Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

    The final session opens with Lama Alan Wallace objecting to open presence being flattened into bare attention, a practice he says a marmot could manage. A silent 24 minute period builds through shamatha and vipashyana into open presence itself. He then reads Padmasambhava on entering lucid dreamless sleep with attention at the heart, the elements dissolving as sleep comes, and how the clear light of sleep prepares one for the clear light of death, closing with the levels of rainbow body.

  • D7S3 - Nighttime Dream Yoga Lama Alan · 80 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

    Yangthang Rinpoche's pointing out instructions are completed and then practised, awareness resting in open presence, body relaxed, voice silent, mind unmodified. Lama Alan Wallace then takes up Padmasambhava's stages of dream yoga, beginning with falling asleep in the lion posture, Padmasambhava at the throat and a request to recognise the dream. Recall and vividness come first, then the dream is transformed, one thing multiplied into many. Last comes seeing through it, by jumping into a river.

  • D5S5 - Prospective Mindfulness, and Questions on Karma and Free Will Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

    The session opens with a silent period, with a choice of methods and two combinations Lama Alan Wallace likes, earth and wind and earth and sky, mindfulness of breathing leading into settling the mind or into awareness of awareness. He reviews prospective mindfulness: resolving to notice an anomaly or a dream sign and do a state check, and catching the moment of waking so the dream can be re-entered. Questions follow on free will, whether an android could be conscious, and whether watching an affliction arise accrues karma.

  • D5S3 - Awareness of Awareness Lama Alan · 88 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

    Lama Alan Wallace takes up shamatha without a sign, awareness of awareness, which the Buddha counted among the ten kasinas and the subtlest of the methods Padmasambhava teaches. We use an oscillation of arousing the attention and releasing it into space, and three things mean you are doing it incorrectly: distraction, grasping, and losing clarity. Conduct between sessions follows: rely upon unwavering mindfulness, picking thought up and putting it down like a knife and fork.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • S1 - Cracking Open the Egg of Unawareness Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016

    The session opens with a twenty four minute practice on awareness of awareness. Lama Alan begins his transmission of Mipham Rinpoche's A Lamp to Dispel Darkness with who a village tantric practitioner has to be: an authentic motivation, bodhicitta and insight into emptiness. Then the fool's gold, the muddled consciousness of dwelling in the substrate, a space devoid of appearances, which yogis have conflated with realisation generation after generation, and why unawareness is what lets confusion in.

  • Guided Meditation - Awareness of Awareness Released into Open Presence Lama Alan · 24 minutes

    You begin with the movements of the mind, attending to thoughts and images without distraction or grasping, then shift to the space they emerge from and ask whether that vacuity is simply nothing or a kind of something. Lama Alan then turns your awareness back upon itself, resting in the sheer event of knowing, and describes how this practice pursued intently implodes into the substrate consciousness. Finally the cord is cut and you rest in open presence.

  • Guided Meditation - Open Presence, Approached Through the Buddha's Words to Bahiya Lama Alan · 25 minutes

    Lama Alan Wallace leads you through the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, taking first the visual field, then sounds, then tactile sensations, then the movements of the mind, and in each one letting the seen be just the seen. You observe appearances arising in space with no outside, no inside and no owner. Like a bale of hay whose cord is cut, your awareness then unravels in all directions into open presence, sustained in silence.

  • Guided Meditation - Open Awareness of the Six Senses, Noting Patterns of Causality Lama Alan · 22 minutes

    You open your awareness to all six sense fields and rest there without distraction or grasping. Rather than simply noting what arises, Lama Alan invites a wider view, watching how one appearance gives rise to another, a thought to an emotion, a sensation to a thought. There is no mechanism to find, only patterns of dependence. You let the will stay passive, taking no ownership, and the session continues in silence.

  • Part Four - The Fourth Time, and a Laboratory for Contemplatives Lama Alan · 51 minutes

    In the guided practice we settle into awareness of awareness and then turn to inquiry: look for the observer, and find that it has no shape, colour, size or location, yet cannot be called non-existent either. He then has you rest in the emptiness of your own mind and open all six sense doors. Lama Alan explains ground, path and fruition, and the fourth time reached by way of the present moment. He describes the contemplative centre he is creating in Tuscany, and answers a question on reincarnation.

  • 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.

  • Nature of Mind Glen Svensson · 79 minutes

    The mind itself becomes the object. Glen Svensson takes the shamatha practice of resting in awareness and adds questioning to it, which is what carries it over into vipashyana: who is releasing, who is concentrating, who is resting? He maps the three levels of Mahamudra and the nine vehicles of Dzogchen onto coarse mind, substrate consciousness and pristine awareness, and defines mind as that which is clear and knowing.

  • 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.

  • Merging Mind with Space Glen Svensson · 80 minutes

    Awareness is directed up, right, left and down into space, then to the centre of the chest and out in all directions, loosening the sense that it is something small inside the head. Glen Svensson sets out what Buddhism means by mind: its definition as clear and knowing, the six consciousnesses, and the coarse, subtle and very subtle levels. He warns how easily stillness is mistaken for insight into emptiness. A second practice adds Padmasambhava's questioning, and we alternate looking with rest.

  • Resting in Awareness Glen Svensson · 76 minutes

    In the three-part guided practice we move from observing thoughts, to the space in which they arise, to releasing appearances altogether. Glen Svensson then introduces resting in awareness, the shamatha practice with no object but awareness itself, using Padmasambhava's instructions on gaze, relaxation and correcting laxity or excitation, and guides it in full. Tilopa's six words of advice follow. Questions ask whether thoughts vanish once observed, and what counts as distraction here.

  • Open Awareness Glen Svensson · 85 minutes

    The last session of the day opens with a further guided observing of thoughts, then Glen Svensson sets out three levels of mind, the coarse mind, the substrate consciousness reached in shamatha, and pristine awareness. He works through the six prerequisites for shamatha training, quoting Tsongkhapa on a supportive place and Steve Jobs on remembering death. The closing practice is open awareness, widening to sensory as well as mental events, introduced with Viktor Frankl on the space between stimulus and response.

  • Qualities & Objects Glen Svensson · 80 minutes

    The teaching opens and closes with a guided practice on sensations of the breath throughout the body, with the out-breath used to release tension. Glen Svensson sets out the three qualities being cultivated, relaxation, stability and clarity, using Alan Wallace's image of the roots, trunk and foliage of a tree, and reads his account of trying too hard on retreat in India. He then compares the objects available, from the breath to observing the mind, awareness of awareness and a mental image of the Buddha.

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