Shamatha (calm abiding)

163 teachings in the library cover this practice.

S3 - Introduction to Dzogchen David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded March 18, 2026
David calls Dzogchen the most accessible of the three, and the pinnacle in the Nyingma school. Great Perfection points not at something to strive for but at a nature already self-perfected, and where Mahamudra works up through ordinary mind, Dzogchen introduces rigpa from the start. Ground, path and fruition follow, with tekcho and the pointing out instructions a teacher may give. It closes with a practice in which we look for where thoughts happen, and a reflection called The Unbound Sky.
Guided Meditation - 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.
S2 - Introduction to Mahamudra David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded March 11, 2026
David sets out the path as a straight one, shamatha then vipashyana cutting through to pristine awareness, and Garchen Rinpoche's answer that Mahamudra alone is sufficient. Mahamudra takes the mind itself as its object rather than reasoning through the five aggregates, cutting the tree at its base. In an experiment David reads out, we rest attention as the flashlight rather than what it lights. It closes in the stillness of awareness while thoughts move, then asks where the mind is.
Overcoming Distraction in Daily Life David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded February 8, 2026
In the shamatha meditation on the breath at the nostrils we use counting and the image of a cat watching a mouse hole to find the balance between alertness and ease. David talks about distraction as a strategy for avoiding discomfort, why phones offer a quick dopamine hit, and how training attention builds a tolerance for stillness and simple pleasures.
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.
Morning Yoga - 25 August 2025 Manu Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded August 25, 2025
Manu opens in tabletop with cat and cow, then a wrist warm up shifting the weight and turning the fingers, thread the needle and three legged dog into warrior two, from where the feet step wider apart to settle into the stretch on each side. Kneeling follows, increasing the distance between the knees to open the hips. Then bridge, or the palms beside the head pushing the floor away, and figure four on each leg. Cushions and blankets for the Savasana.
D6S3 - Equanimity, and the Four Immeasurables Complete David Oromith · 93 minutes · recorded August 24, 2025
The last of the four immeasurables, taught first in some traditions and last in others. Equanimity is not about flattening our emotions, David says: you ride the ups and downs without changing your behaviour and people pleasing so that you get praised again tomorrow. We work through the petty categories we put people in, and how a stranger could be a best friend or a sworn enemy in a year's time as causes and conditions shift. The session opens with a demonstration of the kata offering ahead of tomorrow's ceremony.
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.
Morning Yoga - 23 August 2025 Manu Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded August 23, 2025
Manu opens seated with twists and forward folds over each leg, then a hip opener with the soles of the feet together. Tabletop wrist circles lead into heel presses, knee to elbow with the opposite arm reaching, three legged dog, a low lunge and a plank, then floor work taking each foot across to the other side, chest down. A seated twist, bridge lifted and lowered three times, then Savasana.
D5S3 - Empathetic Joy, and Delighting in the Good Fortune of Others David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025
The third immeasurable, and the most uplifting: being happy with someone rather than only for them, on the understanding that joy is not locked inside one person. David says this one comes to life out in the world, and tells of a low, isolated spell when he could not face going outside but could watch kids playing and a dog running after a ball from his window, and feel delight instead of the miserly mind asking why he did not have that. Questions afterwards on giving within our means, and on sustaining motivation when shamatha is not all or nothing.
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.
Morning Yoga - 22 August 2025 Manu Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025
Manu opens seated with neck rolls and arm stretches reaching behind the back, then thread the needle in tabletop. The main part of the class is a good bunch of sun salutations, standing to forward fold to plank to up dog to down dog and back to standing, with Manu going quiet so everyone follows their own breath and stops into child's pose when they have had enough. A standing balance with the foot resting on the opposite leg, never on the knee, and a reach for the opposite hand behind the back follow, before the class ends on the back with slow breathing out through the mouth.
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.
D4S2 - The Buddha's Instructions to Bahiya, and the Stages of Attention David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded August 21, 2025
A few lines the Buddha gave to Bahiya, who urgently wanted teachings, used here as preparation: in the seen let there be only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognized only the cognized, without labelling or identifying any of it. David then takes the first four of the nine stages shown in the elephant artwork, where the meditator chases a mind that is following the monkey of involuntary thoughts, and the powers, faults and antidotes that go with them.
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.
Morning Yoga - 21 August 2025 Manu Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded August 21, 2025
Manu leads cactus arms folded into chair pose, repeated three times, then wrist circles and cat and cow in tabletop. Cactus arms return in the lunge from three legged dog, and locust builds in stages, chest and arms lifted first, then chest, arms and legs together, repeated on each side with a rest between. Pigeon follows, and we go as deep as feels right, down to the elbows or resting the head on the arms, and the class closes with shoulder circles, a neck stretch and slow breathing lying down.
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.
D3S2 - The Classic Method at the Nostrils, and Vividness David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded August 20, 2025
The best known method of all, classic in the Theravada and also found in secular mindfulness: the sensations of air at the nostrils, as Buddhaghosa set it down. This is where vividness, the third quality, comes in, with the third of Lama Alan Wallace's balances, accentuating clarity without destabilising the mind. Narrowing the focus is not squeezing the mind through a straw. As the body calms it needs less oxygen, the breath becomes subtler, and the challenge is to attend to that.
D3S1 - Stability, and Counting the Breath at the Abdomen David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded August 20, 2025
The Burmese method, attention narrowed from the whole body to the rise and fall of the abdomen, and with it the second of the three qualities: stability. David offers counting as training wheels, useful for breaking a session down into this breath rather than a stretch of time with minutes to kill, and something to take off again once the practice steadies. He also reads Buddhaghosa, for whom mindfulness has the characteristic of remembering and the function of not forgetting, and Asanga, who calls it the non-forgetfulness of the mind with respect to a familiar object.
Morning Yoga - 20 August 2025 Manu Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded August 20, 2025
Manu begins seated with a few deep breaths, then gentle twists, folding forward over each leg and opening the hips with the feet together. Tabletop and a wrist warm-up lead into downward dog and three legged dog, then warrior two, a forward fold and spine stretches, on both sides. Cat and cow and two variations of child's pose come between the two sides, and a shoulder opener with the arms spread wide and then hugged in close closes the sequence before shavasana and a final upright posture with the hands at the chest.
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.
D2S2 - Mindfulness of Breathing at the Whole Body, and Why Relaxation Comes First David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded August 19, 2025
The first of the shamatha methods proper, following Asanga: attention on the sensations of the breath throughout the whole body rather than at one point. David makes the case for taking relaxation before stability and vividness, and for why a Western practitioner told to concentrate hard tends to clamp down, yank the mind back and get nowhere. He names the two failures to watch for, excitation and laxity, and why laxity, which runs from falling asleep to a dimness of attention that is not very sharp, is the harder of the two to describe.
D2S1 - Motivation, and the Fourfold Vision Quest David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded August 19, 2025
Intention is central to the whole path: not a quick scramble for something, but your own honest answer to what it means to live a rich and meaningful life. David paraphrases Shantideva, that all the happiness in the world comes from wishing happiness for all beings, works through Lama Alan Wallace's fourfold vision quest, and tells how the Buddha left his two teachers of samadhi because concentration alone was not liberation.
D2 Morning Practice - Settling Body, Speech and Mind in Their Natural States David Oromith · 49 minutes · recorded August 19, 2025
A guided meditation on settling body, speech and mind in their natural states, repeating the practice done the previous evening. The first twenty minutes are guided throughout: we drop awareness into tactile sensations in the body, releasing tension in the face, neck and shoulders, then settle the breath into its natural rhythm, letting go of past and future until the mind comes to rest. The second twenty minutes are practised alone. David asks practitioners to take their time rather than rush.
Morning Yoga - 19 August 2025 Manu Oromith · 37 minutes · recorded August 19, 2025
Manu opens standing with the breath before moving into tabletop for wrist circles and cat and cow. The flow builds through thread the needle, downward dog and three legged dog into a held plank, mirrored on both sides, with child's pose as the rest between rounds. A standing balance, the foot resting on the opposite leg above or below the knee and never on it, closes the moving part, then seated neck stretches, and on the back a knee drawn across to each side before a final stillness.
D1S2 - Body Scan: The One Practice That Is Only About Rest David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded August 18, 2025
The outlier of all the practices, in that it is not part of any sequence: a guided body scan that is really just about rest, with shavasana offered as a good posture for relaxation. David moves attention from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, asking for the tactile sensations themselves rather than a mental image or map of the body, and says this is the only one where it may be all right to have a little nap at the end.
D1S1 - Welcome, Noble Silence and the Shape of the Week David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded August 18, 2025
David opens the retreat Samadhi inherited from the Contemplative Consciousness Network (CCN), and lays out the week: shamatha in the mornings, the four immeasurables in the evenings, and silence in between. He explains what a practical silence actually asks of you, why it is a relief rather than a rule, and how to hold the sense of stillness between sessions rather than only inside them. The session closes with posture and a short settling meditation.
Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing, Knowing the Long and the Short Breath David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded August 6, 2025
Mindfulness of breathing taught as a skill rather than a result. Relaxation comes first, and when the mind wanders the instruction is to relax rather than try harder. Later David adds the Buddha's simple aid to staying engaged over time, noticing whether each breath is long or short without trying to change it.
Session One - Why Rejection Hits So Hard David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded August 6, 2025
David opens with a twenty minute guided shamatha practice, settling attention on the breath and noting its length. The talk sets out the five stages of an emotional episode: pre-episode state and intention, trigger, bodily and mental experience, behaviour and aftermath, distinguishing universal triggers like a sense of rejection from personal ones learned in childhood. He introduces the emotional diary for tracking these, and answers a question on anxiety about being anxious before the break.
Guided Meditation - Settling Body, Speech and Mind David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded June 18, 2025
Each out breath is taken as a chance to let go a little more, in the body and then in the mental commentary, until we rest attention on the in breath, the out breath and their rhythm. David then turns to introspection, noticing distraction quickly without tensing up, since distraction is not a failure, and lifting the mind when it sinks into dullness. It ends with your own most meaningful motivation.
D7S4 - The Foundations of Practice, and the Limits of Intellect Lama Alan · 42 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
A wide-angle survey of how Buddhist practice moves from the four foundations of mindfulness and calm abiding through the reasoning of Madhyamaka, and why Dzogchen then asks the practitioner to set all analysis aside once emptiness is realised. Lama Alan explains why pristine awareness can only be known by itself, never by perception or intellect, and recalls a Dzogchen text only coming alive once he received transmission from a teacher.
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.
D6S4 - Finding the Basis of Designation for the Self Lama Alan · 68 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Before returning to practice, Lama Alan explains why greater stability of attention supports deeper inquiry, comparing it to the way trained working memory has been shown to raise measured intelligence. The main teaching then works through Dudjom Lingpa's method of finding the basis on which we label something as I, using examples from a facial blemish to a house, a cup of tea and an electron, to show that nothing is ever identical with its label.
D5S4 - Galileo's Moons, and a Realisation Not Yet Stable Lama Alan · 59 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan uses Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter to show the difference between shamatha, simply noticing, and vipassana, noticing with inquiry into how something arises and fades. In the guided practice we extend this inquiry to thoughts and emotions arising in the mind. Returning to the text, he examines Dudjom Lingpa's admission that his realisation kept slipping, steady in practice but lost when he was frightened alone in the wilderness.
D4S5 - Bodhicitta's Stages and Whether Shamatha Comes First Lama Alan · 104 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Questions on whether one can enter the Bodhisattva path without shamatha lead Lama Alan through the stages of bodhicitta, from its first spontaneous arising to the irreversible form reinforced by wisdom. Wrathful teachers, one placing a boy unharmed in a bonfire, show ferocity as one of four compassionate modes of teaching. He explains why he critiques materialism, not materialists, and why Buddhists never chase people, as the newly enlightened Buddha let the first man he met walk away.
D4S4 - Full Shamatha, and Whether Consciousness Survives Death Lama Alan · 71 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
In the guided practice we narrow attention from the body to the space of the mind, before Lama Alan turns to what marks a full achievement of shamatha: a physical lightness and mental suppleness he traces through the ninth Karmapa, Atisha and Tsongkhapa. He argues shamatha, not vipassana or tantra, is the tool for testing whether consciousness continues after death, drawing on past life research.
D3S4 - Right Listening and the Limits of Watching Thoughts Lama Alan · 51 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
A retreat as a deliberate withdrawal to regroup, not an escape, and three flaws that make listening to teachings useless: a distracted mind, a leaky one, or one full of assumptions. Lama Alan explains how Dudjom Lingpa comes by the text's title, smearing himself with mud and feathers to make an impression, then describes watching thoughts pass like calves on a plain, useful for beginners but not enough on its own.
D6S1 - How View Transforms a Single Meditation Technique Lama Alan · 101 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The same meditation technique becomes shamatha, vipassana or Dzogchen depending on the view behind it. Lama Alan traces reification to an innate ignorance present from birth rather than acquired from culture, and explains why wrong views are the most destructive of unwholesome actions. Realising pristine awareness is a matter of degree, like seeing the moon through cloud, which is why questions turn to finding and trusting an authentic teacher.
D5S3 - The Space Between an Impulse and Acting On It Lama Alan · 102 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Drawing on William James and psychologist Paul Ekman, Lama Alan describes the brief gap between a desire or emotion arising and its becoming visible in speech or action, and why noticing that gap allows a wiser choice. In the guided practice we extend the observation of thoughts to this subtler layer of feeling. He traces Dudjom Lingpa's breakthrough, still coloured by subtle grasping, and distinguishes the substrate from the pristine awareness beneath it.
D5S2 - The Training This Text Assumes Lama Alan · 64 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan explains why this teaching comes at the end of a long monastic training, after years on epistemology and on emptiness, four of them on Madhyamaka alone, and why skipping it leaves only the appearance of understanding. In the guided practice we return to observing thoughts arise and release in the space of the mind. He shows how the same technique becomes a different practice depending on its motivation, then turns to Nagarjuna's argument against inherent arising.
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.
D3S1 - Refuge, Devotion and the Two Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 106 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The refuge and bodhicitta prayers, examined line by line, with the image of trusting a dentist to explain what taking refuge means. Lama Alan introduces guru yoga and a self-empowerment visualisation with Padmasambhava, then leads a breathing practice in which we let go of identifying with sensations as mine, using a scratched phone and an injured knee as examples. The session ends with the three common preliminaries: precious human life, impermanence and suffering.
D2S5 - Shamatha, Materialism and the Question of Rigpa Lama Alan · 101 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
A clarification that wealth, power and prestige are not faults in themselves, only where happiness is mistakenly sought. Lama Alan questions whether a materialist worldview can truly support ethical life, then explains why the Buddha and later masters insist shamatha remains indispensable even for those with deep realisation. The evening ends with a question on pristine awareness and the ground of reality, and a guided practice for settling into sleep.
D1S1 - Meeting Dudjom Lingpa's Text and Its Lineage Lama Alan · 89 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan tells the story of Dudjom Lingpa, the nineteenth century Tibetan master who received his teachings through visions and never had a living human teacher. He traces the short lineage carrying this text to him and sets the retreat's format. The session includes a guided practice in which we settle body, breath and mind, and closes with the text's opening lines, where Dudjom Lingpa describes waking into pristine awareness as the Buddha Samantabhadra.
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.
D6S2 - Merging Mind with Space, and What Shamatha Requires Lama Alan · 91 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
A guided practice of releasing awareness into open space, drawn from Dudjom Lingpa's Dzogchen texts, continues the sequence from the day before. Lama Alan describes the lasting effects of achieving shamatha, from vivid perception to lucid dreaming, and what it requires: a quiet environment, few desires, few activities, and companions with a similar practice. He ends by describing a Scottish property that could become a retreat centre.
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.
D5S3 - The Oscillation, and Not Rushing Pristine Awareness Lama Alan · 142 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan guides an oscillation practice, concentrating awareness and releasing it, then turns to Padmasambhava's instructions for directing awareness to the sky, either side, below, and the heart, without anything to visualize. He warns against being introduced to pristine awareness before genuine stillness arises, since it then becomes only a memory to be dogmatic about. A closing exercise on listening for a distant sound shows how attention can reach outward with no image at all.
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.
D4S2 - The Middle Stages of Settling the Mind Lama Alan · 80 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Continuing the practice of settling the mind in its natural state, Lama Alan works through the middle stages of attention, from patchy recovery after losing the object to the point where the mind stops wandering off but can still turn dull or complacent. He warns against mistaking this stability for full realisation, and closes by distinguishing shamatha from vipassana as complementary modes of attention rather than different objects.
D4S1 - Two Paths to Practice, and How Appearances Deceive Lama Alan · 116 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan contrasts the monastic route of cutting all ties with staying in the world, married or with children, and explains how to weed attachment out of a relationship while keeping the love that comes with it. He turns to why appearances of colour and self are always misleading, since nothing exists in the solid way it seems to, and answers those who say shamatha is no longer achievable by pointing to the Dalai Lama's own encouragement to practise it.
D3S3 - Combining Relaxation and Clarity in One Session Lama Alan · 128 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan shows how to combine mindfulness of breathing with shamatha focused on the mind, using the breath to relax and the mind practice to sharpen clarity, distinguishing two kinds of vividness: noticing subtler thoughts, and noticing them faster. He explains why letting the mind wander while staying aware can bring genuine creative insight, then answers a question on how much progress is possible without a long retreat.
D3S2 - Letting Thoughts Dissolve, or Cutting Them Off Lama Alan · 86 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Two ways of working with thoughts in shamatha: the soft approach of watching them dissolve, shown through the raven that finds no land and returns to the ship it flew from, as a thought returns to the mind, and the more active approach of cutting off each thought as it arises, likened to a swordsman deflecting arrows. Lama Alan explains why any composite thing carries the seeds of its own dissolution, and answers a question on releasing a recurring thought without indulging or fighting it.
D2S2 - Sensations of the Breath and the Bodyguard of Shamatha Lama Alan · 98 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Distinguishing the actual passage of air from the sensations it leaves at the nostrils, the final session on mindfulness of breathing covers how to stay with the target area through the pauses between breaths. Lama Alan tells the parable of the minister and his bodyguard to show why shamatha grounds vipassana, then answers questions on posture, including practising lying down for scoliosis or illness.
D2S1 - Hovering, Comparison, and the Five Obscurations Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan introduces hovering, staying aware of being aware rather than dissolving into the breath, and traces suffering to grasping at what is not I or mine and failing to recognise what we are, the trap behind both low self-esteem and its mirror, feeling superior to others. He sets out the five obscurations, craving, malice, dullness, agitation and uncertainty, and shows how factors that arise naturally through practice act as their antidotes.
D1S3 - Three Breathing Methods and the Ground of Becoming Lama Alan · 167 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan teaches three ways of following the breath, each with its own guided practice: full body awareness from Asanga, abdomen breathing from the Burmese tradition, and the classic Theravada focus at the nostrils with counting. He distinguishes mindfulness from introspection, the faculty that catches laxity and excitation, and describes the ground of becoming, the substrate the mind dissolves into in sleep and at death, reachable through shamatha.
D1S1 - Motivation, Hedonic Pleasure and Settling the Mind Lama Alan · 90 minutes · recorded June 4, 2025
Why we practice, before what we practice: Lama Alan distinguishes hedonic pleasure, which depends on circumstance, from genuine well-being that grows from within, and tells why the Buddha left a secure life in search of a path. He introduces the terms samadhi, shamatha and vikalpa, the obsessive, compulsive flow of thought meditation is meant to settle, closing with a guided practice of settling body, speech and mind in their natural state.
Training the Monkey Mind David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded February 23, 2025
David returns to shamatha, calm abiding meditation, using the image of a monkey mind jumping from thought to thought that must be gently, patiently returned to the breath rather than yanked back in frustration. He talks about why noticing distraction is a sign the practice is working, not failing, and about learning to be with boredom in meditation until stillness itself becomes something to appreciate rather than escape.
Session 5 - Diligence, Meditation & Wisdom David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025
A guided meditation on refuge and bodhicitta weaves earlier themes together: visualising the Buddha, taking refuge, the four immeasurables, and his light dissolving into one's heart. David covers the final three paramitas: joyful diligence, with its three kinds of enthusiasm and matching laziness, concentration and its nine stages towards shamatha, and wisdom as the direct insight into emptiness underlying all the others. A question asks what it means to ask the Buddha for guidance.
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.
D2S3 - Inner Solitude and the Impermanence of All Things David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Building on relaxation, David introduces stability in shamatha, using counting at the belly to steady attention. The verse on solitary places turns out to be less about the physical setting than about a mind not swept along by distraction, shown through an experiment in which most people chose an electric shock over fifteen minutes alone with their thoughts. Questions range from a noisy neighbourhood to attachment inside a loving relationship.
D2S4 - The Company We Keep and the Qualities of a Teacher David Oromith · 55 minutes · recorded November 29, 2024
Vividness is the third quality built into shamatha, achieved by narrowing attention to the breath at the nostrils. David turns to the verse on avoiding destructive company, using the image of a crystal taking on the colour of whatever cloth it rests on, then to the contrasting verse on cherishing spiritual friends and the qualities to look for in a teacher. Discussion covers balancing this against one's own wellbeing, and advice on meditating with the eyes open.
D6S1 - Diligence, Concentration and When to Step In David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
In this patient acceptance practice we ask what changes when a real conflict is met with acceptance, understanding and compassion rather than resistance. David covers enthusiastic diligence and its three kinds of laziness, then concentration as the union of shamatha and vipassana, the Buddha's key innovation. Questions turn on witnessing cruelty, whether to speak when nothing you say will change the person, and how much capacity we have to live out our values.
Session 3 - Mindfulness of the Mind David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded November 20, 2024
In the guided meditation on mindfulness of mind, eyes open in space, we count the breath before watching thoughts, memories and emotions arise, abide and dissolve without following or suppressing them. David contrasts passive witnessing in shamatha with discerningly recognising a lustful, hating or deluded mind here, using the Buddha's water and fire imagery for non-grasping. Questions cover guilt at doing nothing, locating anxiety in the body, and inquiry disturbing what it observes.
Session 1 - Mindfulness of the Body David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded October 31, 2024
This first session on mindfulness of the body opens with an extended teaching, tracing how the Buddha added inquiry to shamatha to found vipassana, and a cup shows how perception differs from concepts we add on top. In the body scan that follows, we take attention to sensations of solidity, moisture, temperature and motion, asking whether each is permanent, pleasant and truly ours. Afterwards the group discusses separating pain from sensation, and how calling something mine builds a false sense of ownership.
Mahamudra: How to Discover Our True Nature Robina Courtin · 133 minutes · recorded October 29, 2024
Ven. Robina Courtin teaches from Lama Yeshe's book of that name, which she edited, and from the Panchen Lama's root text behind it. She sets out the two modes of meditation, shamatha and special insight, then the two routes to emptiness: the analytical one that learns the theory first, and the mahamudra one whose only object of concentration is the mind itself. A short practice on posture and watching whatever arises follows, and questions run throughout.
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.
S2 - Counting for Stability, and the Nostrils for Clarity David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded October 29, 2024
Mindfulness of breathing at the abdomen, with two tools added: focusing with the in-breath and relaxing with the out, then a brief count of one to seven. In a second practice we narrow attention to the sensations at the nostrils, for clarity. David separates mindfulness from introspection and describes the early stages towards shamatha, where recovering from distraction more quickly can feel like getting worse. Questions cover posture, when and how long to practise, and memories surfacing as practice deepens.
S1 - Relaxation Comes First David Oromith · 71 minutes · recorded October 29, 2024
The session opens with settling body, speech and mind in their natural states, which is a preparation, then closes with mindfulness of breathing across the whole body, in which we note whether each breath is long or short. David explains what shamatha means and how excitation and dullness pull the attention in opposite directions. He takes the first of the three qualities, relaxation, and why trying harder only makes agitation worse. The two monks at the river carry the point about holding on.
Session 4 - Empathetic Joy David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded October 8, 2024
The session opens with a short settling practice, then the teaching on mudita, empathetic joy: rejoicing in another's happiness rather than only our own. David sets out what gets in its way, comparison, judgment, envy, using Sharon Salzberg's monkey stuck in tar. Questions cover noticing joy in small creatures and unexpected jealousy. In the long guided meditation we extend joy through a joyful friend, a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, closing with rejoicing in our own good qualities.
D2S2 - The Three Poisons Behind Our Reactions David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded August 31, 2024
In the shamatha practice we cultivate relaxation through mindfulness of breathing, with shavasana as one option. David works through the second verse, showing that leaving one's homeland is really about the three poisons of attachment, aversion and delusion, which travel with us wherever we go. Discussion covers anger at injustice, patient acceptance when a situation cannot be changed, and offering the victory to defuse an argument without needing to be right.
Day 1 - Introduction David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded August 24, 2024
The retreat opens with a meditation on settling body, speech and mind through relaxation, stillness and alertness. David then introduces the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas, telling the story of Gyelse Togme Zangpo giving his robes and blood to a diseased beggar, and outlines how the week will move through samatha, the four immeasurables and tonglen. He closes with the text's opening homage, on how emptiness and compassion stand together, and takes a question on how discussion will work.
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 the Mind as the Path David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded March 5, 2024
Opening with refuge and bodhicitta, we settle through the body and then drop the five senses entirely for the domain of thoughts, images and emotions. If that feels elusive, David has you deliberately make a thought, then keep watching the same place for whatever appears next. Attend to everything equally, including the commentary saying nothing is happening.
Reaching Shamatha and Taking the Mind as the Path David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded March 5, 2024
David guides a meditation on taking the mind as the path: letting thoughts be rather than following them, picturing an object such as a mug, then staying with the space once it dissolves. He reads Lama Alan's account of reaching shamatha, the pressure on the head, the rush of bliss, and the five obscurations overcome by the five jhana factors, with the story of the warrior, the minister and the unruly prince. Questions cover open eyes, a quietened mind, and visualisation for difficult memories.
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.
The Nine Stages (5-9) and Taking Appearances as the Path David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded February 28, 2024
David guides a cycling meditation from the Buddha's instructions to Bahiya: sight, sound and touch attended without labelling, eyes open, before turning to the mind and watching whatever arises. He then covers stages five to nine of shamatha, including the stage where suppressed memories and emotions surface and must simply be witnessed, not analysed. Questions cover floatiness and laxity, letting a mind that feels like it is floating away go safely, and whether practice changes who you are.
The Nine Stages (1-4) and Dzogchen Approach to Mindfulness of Breathing David Oromith · 65 minutes · recorded February 20, 2024
The guided meditation follows Lama Alan's Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing: we rest awareness openly with eyes open and only peripherally note the breath's rhythm rather than holding it as an object. David then works through the first four of the nine stages of shamatha, directed, continuous, resurgent and close attention, describing what is achieved at each and what still gets in the way. Discussion afterwards is brief, just a quick check on how the practice landed.
Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing at the Nostrils David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded February 1, 2024
The third of the breathing practices, with attention at the tips of the nostrils, wherever the passage of air is felt most distinctly, and the breathing left entirely natural. Counting comes in as light punctuation. For the last minutes David asks for enough closeness to notice the air cooler coming in and warmer going out.
Mindfulness & Introspection and Mindfulness of Breathing (Nostrils) David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded February 1, 2024
In the guided practice on mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils we track the change in temperature between the in breath and the out breath. David explains vividness as the third quality of attention, alongside relaxation and stability, and describes mindfulness as a rope holding the breath, introspection as the hook that notices when it slips. Questions cover lights and sensations arising in practice, working with pain, and how this differs from mindfulness in modern Vipassana.
Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing at the Abdomen David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded January 23, 2024
We narrow the attention to the abdomen, using a hand on the belly if the sensations seem faint at first. We then bring in two tools, an oscillation that rouses attention on the in-breath and relaxes on the out-breath, and counting the breaths. We relax when the mind is busy and rouse effort when it goes dull.
Etymologies, Why Mindfulness of Breathing, and Mindfulness of Breathing (Abdomen) David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded January 23, 2024
In the guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing at the abdomen we use the rise and fall of the belly and a count to seven to build stability after last week's relaxation. David explains the three qualities of shamatha as roots, trunk and foliage, walks through the etymologies of dharma, bhavana, samadhi and shamatha, then sets out why mindfulness of breathing suits a busy, ruminating mind. Questions cover needing a teacher, meditating amid noise, and adapting the practice with a cold.
Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing, Whole Body David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded January 16, 2024
A shortened settling of body, speech and mind, then awareness spread through the whole body until the rhythmic movements of the breath stand out, felt in the torso, arms and head as well as the belly. You simply note whether each breath is long or short, and meet distraction by relaxing rather than gripping tighter.
The Benefits of Improving Our Attention and Mindfulness of Breathing (Whole Body) David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded January 16, 2024
A guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing across the whole body, following a shortened settling of body, speech and mind, with David explaining why relaxation rather than forceful concentration is the foundation shamatha needs. He sets out the Buddha's four kinds of worldly happiness alongside the three genuine forms of well-being, then the everyday benefits of trained attention: less stress, better sleep, more enjoyment of ordinary moments. Questions address staying calm around family and over-focusing on the breath.
Guided Meditation - Settling Body, Speech and Mind in Their Natural States David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded January 9, 2024
The posture instructions come first, in detail, then three settlings. The body is held in relaxation, stillness and vigilance at once, the inner commentary is released with each out breath, and the mind is unburdened of hopes and worries until we rest awareness on the felt body. When it wanders, David asks you to relax deeper rather than try harder.
Introduction, the Pursuit of Happiness, and Settling Body, Speech & Mind in Their Natural States David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded January 9, 2024
The opening session of this shamatha module begins with a short intention setting and a full guided meditation on settling body, speech and mind in their natural states, in which we use the out breath to release thought and tension. David introduces shamatha itself and its Buddhist and pre-Buddhist roots, then draws on the Dalai Lama and Einstein to separate hedonic pleasure from genuine, cultivated well-being. Questions cover sleepiness during practice and an unusual shaky, cold sensation one student noticed.
The Noble Eightfold Path: Samadhi - Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded November 14, 2023
The session opens with ten to fifteen minutes of guided mindfulness of breathing to settle body and mind, before David turns to the second division of the path: right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. He works through the four strivings and the Buddha's image of a lute string tuned neither too tight nor too loose, then explains mindfulness as holding an object in mind, and describes samadhi and the obscurations that block it. Questions cover what to do when tiredness or stress makes practice hard.
Guided Meditation - White Light at the Heart Centre David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded November 12, 2023
Twenty one counted rounds steady the mind, then a glowing white orb appears at the centre of the chest, no bigger than a golf ball, at the level of the heart. It is enough to imagine it is there. David calls this the root of the mind, where it converges in deep dreamless sleep and at the end of a life, and asks for a loose focus and the sense of meditating from there rather than behind the eyes.
The Four Noble Truths: The Cessation and the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded October 24, 2023
The evening opens with ten minutes of mindfulness of breathing, and refuge and bodhicitta motivation before the teaching. David covers the third and fourth noble truths: cessation as extinguishing ignorance, attachment and aversion, using the sky and clouds to show why afflictions are temporary while peace and compassion are not, then the path via the Lam Rim's three scopes and the eightfold path's ethics, concentration and wisdom. A question asks the difference between nirvana and enlightenment.
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.
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.
Guided Meditation - Meeting a Difficulty with Inner Strength David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded June 19, 2022
Stillness of the body, the gaze and awareness, held until the rhythmic sensations of breathing rise up to meet you, with a count at each exhale if engagement slips. A current difficulty is invited in: I want it to be different, but this is the way it is right now. David points out a hundred per cent success rate at getting through every challenge so far, calls it a superhero mindset, and has you sit a little taller.
In Conversation with B. Alan Wallace - Looking Within and Exploring The Potentials of Consciousness David Oromith · Lama Alan · 64 minutes · recorded January 16, 2022
In this episode of The Samadhi Podcast, David is joined by his teacher, B. Alan Wallace. Lama Alan very kindly offers us his thoughts on the nature and potentials of consciousness, the importance of shamatha and contemplative inquiry, and his vision for the Centers for Contemplative Research.
Guided Meditation - Present Centring for Grounding and Relaxation David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded January 7, 2022
This is a guided meditation on present centring. This practice is designed to help us bring ourselves back into the present moment when we have become lost in worries of the future or resentments of the past. Present centring is a skill that we need to develop in order to live mindfully and purposefully.
D2S2 - Compassion, Not Despair, and the Small Adversities Lama Alan · 83 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace returns to a point he had passed over, on training in compassion, and gives Buddhaghosa's analysis of it and its false facsimile, despair, which looks like it and is not. Practise first with minor adversity, the text says, and it will gradually become easier. Whether a thing is agreeable or disagreeable is the way our minds apprehend it, as with a dentist's drill. Half an hour of questions follows, on shamatha and dzogchen and on why expressing a toxic emotion deepens the habituation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
D3S2 - Quantum Physics and the Dreamlike World Lama Alan · 124 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Against Stephen Hawking's picture of human beings as chemical scum on a little planet, Lama Alan Wallace says there is no happy middle ground between materialism and Dzogchen. He asks when anything actually came into existence, taking Mount Everest and the Higgs boson as his examples, then reads Niels Bohr and Schrodinger, who say physics cannot state what really exists, and living physicists who say space and time have gone. From the perspective of pristine awareness, this is not like a dream, it is one.
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.
D1S2 - Inner Solitude, and Three Ways Into Shamatha Lama Alan · 109 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Solitude comes first: Lama Alan Wallace calls inner solitude, retreat from the eight mundane concerns, at least as important as the outer and far harder to achieve. He works through the seven qualities of Vairochana's posture, with Gyatrul Rinpoche's advice to find a posture comfortable for you, then the vital points of speech and mind. Three shamatha methods follow: resting unfabricated, imagining a ruby red HUM at the heart, or gazing at a stick or pebble. In the closing practice we try all three.
Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 1 Lama Alan · 71 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
An hour of written questions from 300 participants. Lama Alan Wallace separates the substrate consciousness, individuated and conditioned, from primordial consciousness, and calls shamatha in an active daily way of life and shamatha in retreat complementary, each the preparation for the other. On choosing a teacher: are the teachings compatible with the gold standard, is the conduct in harmony with them, do you find them beneficial? On the red HUM at the heart, go gently and let it come to you.
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.
D4S1 - Searching for the Apprehending Mind Lama Alan · 127 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Chasing awareness back to its source, as a sunbeam is traced back to the sun, is the instruction here. Lama Alan Wallace distinguishes vipashyana, which entails inquiry, from the non-judgemental witnessing taught under that name, then puts the questions in Dudjom Rinpoche's commentary: where a thought arose, where it is now, where it ceases, who is the agent of joys and sorrows, and whether that mind has a beginning, end and interim. In the closing practice we put them to whatever arises in the mind.
D3S1 - The Demons Are Your Own Appearances Lama Alan · 122 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Whether shamatha must wait for full retreat is answered with an email from an elderly practitioner in a city flat, whose practice has continuity and bliss: right now we are in the optimal circumstances. Lama Alan Wallace turns to vipashyana, where Dudjom Rinpoche treats the whole external world through the demons we blame for obstructing us, and shows them to be appearing aspects of our own mind, empty yet vividly appearing, like a dream. He then guides a practice, opening all six doors of perception.
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.
D1S1 - The Homage and the Foundations Lama Alan · 127 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Lama Alan Wallace opens his commentary on Dudjom Rinpoche's five page manual, the first Dzogchen text Gyatrul Rinpoche taught him thirty one years ago. He works through the title and the homage to Dorje Drolo, and explains why resting in pristine awareness is the most ferocious response to the maras. Gyatrul Rinpoche's commentary supplies what the root text leaves out: the four revolutions in outlook, refuge and bodhicitta. It closes with a guided meditation on motivation.
How to Stop Thoughts in Meditation David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded April 22, 2020
In this episode, David addresses the question 'how to stop thinking 1000 thoughts during meditation?' Talking practically from his own experience and what's been taught by contemplatives for thousands of years, he explores key practices for those prone to rumination and suggests some helpful tips.
Guided Meditation - Settling the Body, Speech and Mind in their Natural States David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded April 7, 2020
This is a 15-minute guided meditation in which we engage in the practice of settling body, speech and mind in their natural states. This practice is a wonderful preparation for any meaningful endeavour and can be used as a meditation in itself or as a preliminary practice to a longer meditation session. The purpose of the practice is to settle the body, speech & mind with the three qualities of relaxation, stillness & clarity. By practising in this way, our mind will settle, and it's luminous, peaceful, blissful and nonconceptual nature will reveal itself.
D6S3 - The Brain Cannot Generate Consciousness, and Eva Natanya's Path Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 86 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Closing questions, then a final guided practice. Lama Alan argues that emergent properties of physical phenomena are always physical, so there is no evidence that the brain generates consciousness, and that technological access to the substrate consciousness would liberate nobody. Eva Natanya describes her path from Zen through the Gelug tradition into Vajrayana. She closes by leading his fourfold vision quest: what you long to become, what help you need, what must change in you, and what you will offer.
D5S3 - Simeon's Light, and the Clear Light of Death Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 96 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Eva Natanya tells Simeon the New Theologian's own story of being flooded with light while praying, and reads Gregory Palamas on deification as a grace no natural capacity can reach. In her guided practice the heart becomes a chamber of light, drawing in the suffering of others and sending it back transformed. Lama Alan then answers a question on dying with the Tibetan account step by step, from the senses imploding to the clear light, and compares heaven with the pure land of Amitabha.
D4S1 - Searching for the Mind, and Whether Shamatha Is Indispensable Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 122 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Lama Alan Wallace separates the Christian meanings of meditation and contemplation from the Buddhist ones, then leads a vipashyana practice from Padmasambhava: place the mind in the space in front of you and look for its shape, colour and size, and ask whether the mind that places and the mind placed are one or two. Eva Natanya agrees within a Buddhist context that no transformation is sustainable without shamatha, but not for the hesychast tradition, where dispassion is worked by the uncreated energies of the Trinity.
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.
D7S2 - Pointing Out Pristine Awareness Lama Alan · 59 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace gives one more reason for his research centre, a controlled experiment on past-life recall, and Michelle Alexander's New York Times column asking what if we are all coming back. The guided practice carries Yangthang Rinpoche's root text from shamatha through vipashyana into pointing out, the mind found to be neither existent nor non-existent, its emptiness the dharmakaya and its luminosity the sambhogakaya. He closes on the Vajra Essence, the ground frozen by dualistic grasping.
D6S2 - The Grand Finale of Shamatha Lama Alan · 62 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
A review fires Descartes, materialism and the Buddhist schools in turn on the way to Madhyamaka, before Lama Alan Wallace turns to what he calls the grand finale of shamatha without a sign. He guides awareness cast upward, to each side and downward through the space of awareness, then down into the heart, then released whole into space. Padmasambhava's text gives the indications of flawless shamatha, an oil lamp unmoved by wind, and warns against being introduced to pristine awareness too soon.
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.
D5S2 - Shamatha Without a Sign Lama Alan · 55 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
A guided 24 minute practice from Yangthang Rinpoche's root text on the view, meditation and conduct of Dzogchen. Turn awareness in upon that which is aware, follow no thought of past or future, and rest loosely without modifying anything. Lama Alan Wallace then reads the Vajira Sutta, the one place he has found in the Pali canon where the outer world is questioned: the nun answers Mara's who made you with the chariot that is only a word, but leaves suffering as real as it gets.
D4S5 - Why Shamatha Cannot Be Skipped, and Questions on Dying Lama Alan · 82 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace sets the physics notes aside and gives the rest of the retreat to Buddhadharma. He recounts asking the present Dudjom Rinpoche why hardly any Tibetans really teach shamatha, and is told they get bored and Westerners come for empowerments. Lucid dreaming that never questions the daytime reality changes nothing. No practice tonight: the hour goes to questions on karma in dreams, near death experience and dying sedated, closing with a burning coal melting through a cone of snow.
D4S4 - Introspection and the Black Box Lama Alan · 63 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace makes the case for introspection as a science, taking William James's three-pronged psychology and the way mathematicians corroborate what only they can perceive. A silent period follows, shamatha on the space of the mind turning into vipashyana once questions are posed. He then uses Dignaga and Dharmakirti's inference of fire from smoke to argue that the objective world is a black box, and cautions with Heisenberg against granting existence to what is unknowable in principle.
D4S3 - The Space of the Mind Lama Alan · 91 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace fills in the piece most easily overlooked in shamatha on the mind: when nothing arises, attend to the space itself. Mickey Mouse balanced on his head and the Big Dipper's imagined lines show that the space of the mind is not inside your head. In the guided practice we move from shamatha into vipashyana on where thoughts come from and dissolve. He then reads the physicist Henning Genz on real things as excitations of the vacuum, shapeless in itself until it takes on a shape.
D3S5 - False Awakenings and Dream Karma Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Thoreau on going to the woods to front only the essential facts of life, read out in full, then an unguided period, offered as half subduing thoughts breath by breath and half settling the mind in its natural state. The questions that follow take in false awakenings, one dreamer waking nine times over, and people certain they have achieved shamatha. Lama Alan Wallace gives the Buddha's answer on whether a non lucid dream accrues karma, and the experiment he wants run on where memories are held.
D2S1 - Substantial Causes, and the Telescope of Introspection Lama Alan · 110 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Substantial causes and cooperative conditions, a distinction from Dharmakirti that Lama Alan sets beside relativity theory: matter and space-time influence each other without transforming into each other. No brain event transforms into pleasure, so the substantial cause has to be mental. Shamatha is the telescope, vipashyana the astronomical observations. In the long guided practice we work through the tactile field into the space of the mind, where Maitripa's pith instructions take thoughts as the path.
D6S1 - Looking for the Observer Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The third phase on the way to shamatha without a sign, guided: we rest awareness in the space ahead with no object, then turn in upon the mind that is observing, probing closely then releasing. Lama Alan Wallace gives Tsongkhapa's pith instruction, focus on the sheer luminosity and cognisance of awareness, and grants Shantideva's point that a candle flame does not illuminate itself: awareness illuminates only the bundle just before it. Pull the observation out of observed, observation and observer, and all three go.
D5S1 - Watching Thoughts Like a Cowherd Lama Alan · 96 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
In settling the mind in its natural state, eyes softly open and the gaze vacant, we watch whatever rises in the space of the mind from the stillness of awareness, as Dudjom Lingpa's cowherd watches cattle from afar. Lama Alan Wallace reads Lerab Lingpa on what the practice yields, empty forms and a non-conceptual sense that nothing can harm the mind, and warns with the story of the student who reached shamatha and did nothing but enjoy it, before mapping the four kinds of mindfulness that lead there.
P1 - The View of the Great Perfection Lama Alan · 124 minutes · recorded January 1, 2017
Lama Alan gives the oral transmission and commentary to a Dzogchen text by Yangthang Rinpoche, who turned eighteen years in a Chinese concentration camp into an eighteen year retreat. Four preliminaries come first, all difficult to find: a human life, the spirit of emergence, a qualified guru, the sublime dharma. The view is not theory: stop looking outward, settle the mind in its natural state, then ask where awareness comes from, where it is located, where it goes. The session opens with a guided shamatha practice.
Part Five - Mindfulness, Alertness, and Difficulty as Incitement Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 123 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
The last of the verses. Mindfulness and alertness are the companions, and a sinking mind is the more dangerous fault because it can be mistaken for something profound. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo takes difficulty as the incitement rather than the obstacle, and a heavenly rebirth, with no incentive to practise, as a spiritual dead end. She names three kinds of laziness, including the one that says I am not worthy. Questions on trees, animal testing and addiction, then a short practice on the breath.
S3 - Non-Meditation and the Near Misses Lama Alan · 121 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Is the method shamatha, vipashyana or Dzogchen? Lama Alan answers that the same practice can be any of the three depending on who does it, then maps understanding, experience, realisation and confidence, realisation being nailing it and confidence countersinking it. The near misses: clinging to bliss, luminosity with grasping, and a non-conceptual openness with no lucidity of vipashyana in it. The session opens with a guided practice from Padmasambhava's Natural Liberation, ending in non-meditation.
Guided Meditation - Settling Body, Speech and Mind in Their Natural States Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace leads the three settlings in turn. You let awareness descend through the whole field of tactile sensation, releasing tension from shoulders, jaw and forehead until the body rests in relaxation, stillness and vigilance. Then you relinquish control of the breath and let the body breathe as if asleep, releasing involuntary thoughts with each out breath. Attention is finally held within the field of the body, like a horse in a corral, quietly observing whatever arises.
Establishing a Daily Practice, the Three Food Groups Lama Alan · 9 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace sets out a workable shape for daily practice: a morning session that opens with motivation, makes the mind serviceable through shamatha, then moves into the four immeasurables or tonglen, and an evening session that gathers the day back in. He describes the three food groups of a balanced practice, shamatha, something for the heart and something for wisdom, and encourages you to season the whole day with brief returns rather than sinking into routine.
Guided Meditation - Visualisation for Dream Yoga, Orbs of Light at the Throat and Heart Lama Alan · 21 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace teaches two visualisations for the night. You place a small, deep ruby red orb of light inside the throat and let your awareness descend into it and take its form, a gentle shamatha weighted towards relaxation and stability rather than vividness, which you carry into sleep for lucid dreaming. Lama Alan then moves the orb down to the heart as deep sapphire blue, for lucid dreamless sleep, closing with a dedication of merit.
Guided Meditation - Body Scan, Moving a Three-Dimensional Field of Awareness Through the Body Lama Alan · 41 minutes
Lama Alan moves a field of awareness slowly through the whole body, beginning as a small patch at the crown of the head and widening until it is three-dimensional. It travels down the head, arms, torso, legs and out to the toes, stabilising on each in breath and shifting on each out breath. Three faster sweeps follow, then the field opens to illuminate the whole body at once, with nothing added to what is sensed.
Guided Meditation - Settling the Mind in Its Natural State, with the Snorkelling Metaphor Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan uses a snorkelling metaphor to move you in stages from the breath to the mind itself. Floating on an air mattress, you rest in the tactile field; then you dip your face beneath the water and turn part of your attention to the space of the mind. Handhold released, thoughts, images and reactions to sounds become the whole object, observed without grasping and without distraction, attentive but not reactive.
Part One - Virtue, Dharma and the Path Lama Alan · 78 minutes
Lama Alan separates virtue, which anyone can practise and which can still end in burnout, from Dharma, which his mentor defined as engaging with reality in a way that leads to an enduring sense of well-being. Beyond both is marga, where there is no falling back. He quotes the Buddha's five analogies for a mind under the five obscurations: indebted, sick, in bonds, enslaved and lost in a desert track. In the parable of the king's son vipashyana is the minister and shamatha his bodyguard.
D1S4 - Mindfulness as Remembering, and Introspection as Quality Control Lama Alan · 76 minutes
The session opens with a twenty four minute guided practice in which we take the three qualities in order: whole body awareness for relaxation, the abdomen for stability, the nostrils for vividness. The word rendered as mindfulness means to recollect, and Lama Alan draws out three types: retrospective, recalling the instructions; present-centred, bearing the breath in mind; and prospective, knowing what to do when attention strays. Alongside it runs introspection, quality control that catches laxity and excitation.
D1S3 - William James on Attention, and the Shamatha Project Lama Alan · 67 minutes
William James held that each of us chooses, by our ways of attending, what sort of universe we appear to inhabit. Lama Alan turns that on narcissism and on low self-esteem, and on why a materialist and a contemplative find different things obviously real. James also thought sustained attention a fixed trait; the three month Shamatha Project, with seventy subjects, showed otherwise. Relaxation supports stability, stability supports vividness, and skipping a step ends in burnout.
Cognitive & Emotional Balance Glen Svensson · 90 minutes
The last two balances: cognitive balance, which is vipashyana seeing experience without projecting onto it, illustrated by the coiled rope mistaken for a snake, and emotional balance, which the compassion practices serve. Glen Svensson guides a nature of mind practice in which we search for where awareness is located, and then a tonglen. He then lays out how to integrate all four into daily life, and a review of one good act, one harmful act and one thing received before sleep.
Attentional Balance Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Attentional balance, the shamatha side of the model, where deficit shows up as laxity and hyperactivity as excitation, both met with mindfulness and introspection. Glen Svensson compares the full body, abdomen and nostril versions of mindfulness of breathing, and the merits of the breath, the mind and awareness as objects. Two guided practices: the rhythm of the breath with the emphasis on relax, release and return, then merging mind with space. Questions cover anxiety and mental afflictions held at an unconscious level.
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.
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.
Emptiness of Person Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
We turn attention to the person. In two guided practices we look for me, the meditator, first within the constant flow of physical and mental change, then by searching the body, the brain and the mind in turn. Glen Svensson describes some common experiences in this practice: being too confused to know where to look, which is a sign that more shamatha is needed; letting the intellectual mind answer instead of seeing through direct observation; and existential fear at not finding, which he says is usually a very good sign. A long reply covers integrating the practice into daily life.
Boundaries Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
How a line drawn to make sense of experience is turned into a boundary, and the six step process by which that grasping becomes attachment, aversion and suffering. Glen Svensson works through the two extremes of existence and non-existence towards Nagarjuna's middle way, and uses the lucid dream as his analogy for realising emptiness while awake. The session opens with a practice on the body as a dependent arising and closes by looking for the me in the flow of body and mind.
Searching for Self Glen Svensson · 74 minutes
The body scan returns unguided, at your own speed and in your own sequence. In a second practice we look for a self in the body, in the mind, and in the two together. Glen Svensson then opens the teaching on emptiness by reading Lama Alan Wallace on what is really there: what we know of the world is only appearances to the mind, and even physics, as Heisenberg put it, shows not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Not-Self Glen Svensson · 89 minutes
A guided practice covers all three levels of dukkha, ending with the question of whether any experience is completely free of the potential for suffering. Glen Svensson then calls renunciation a bad translation: the term means to move away from suffering, so it is the wish to be liberated from it, and to give up the eight worldly concerns rather than the eight worldly things. In a second practice we look for the autonomous me that seems to be a third thing alongside the body and the mind.
Impermanence Glen Svensson · 64 minutes
The teaching opens and closes with a guided body scan in which we move from the crown of the head to the tips of the toes on one question: is anything in the body stable, or is everything changing moment by moment? Glen Svensson sets out what vipashyana is, why shamatha has to underpin it, and the four distorted views it works on. Impermanence, he argues, is good news, and he gives the image of the kayak of mindfulness on the river of life, rather than grabbing at flowing water.
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.
Observing Emotions Glen Svensson · 75 minutes
Two guided practices: in the first we observe thoughts with the gaze raised against dullness and lowered against agitation, and in the second we turn to emotions, moods and reactions to whatever is pleasant or unpleasant. Glen Svensson explains the stages of release, from recognising a thought nakedly to self-release, the thief who finds an empty house. He maps four stages of progress, from a waterfall of thoughts to a still lake. Questions cover thoughts that vanish as soon as they are watched.
Observing the Mind Glen Svensson · 77 minutes
Bare attention comes first, a guided meditation in which we cycle through the visual, auditory, tactile and mental fields, in the seen only the seen. Glen Svensson then moves the object of shamatha from the breath to the mind itself, using Dudjom Lingpa's instruction to let thoughts be as they are rather than let them go. In a second guided practice we watch thoughts, emotions and memories arise and pass with the eyes partly open. Questions cover a noisy home and what to do when a full dream unfolds.
Mindfulness of Breathing (Nostrils) Glen Svensson · 90 minutes
In this practice we narrow our attention to the entrance of the nostrils, which is said to be very good for clarity of attention, as the breath grows subtle and forces closer attention. Glen Svensson explains the acquired sign, a mental image of the air element that replaces the sensations as practice deepens, and completes the nine stages up to attentional balance, using a guitar string for the fine tuning of focus. He describes the physical and mental pliancy that marks shamatha itself. Questions cover shavasana, and how far to go without a qualified teacher.
Mindfulness of Breathing (Abdomen) Glen Svensson · 76 minutes
The abdomen becomes the object, the sensations of its rising and lowering, and counting to ten at the end of each in-breath is offered midway as a short term aid to stability. Glen Svensson draws out the coarse, medium and subtle levels of laxity and excitation, and what to do according to how strong each is, then walks the first four of the nine stages, up to close attention. A second practice follows, in which we release on the out-breath and sharpen focus on the in-breath. A participant asks whether moving through all four in one meditation is normal.
Mindfulness of Breathing (Full Body) Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
We rest attention on any tactile sensation in the body connected with the in and out flow of the breath, with the emphasis on relaxation. Glen Svensson takes up Alan Wallace's point that mindfulness of breathing is universally emphasised for those especially prone to compulsive thinking: the sensations of the breath only happen in the present moment, so attention comes out of the thinking mind and into the body. In a second practice we notice the rhythm of the breath, long or short, deep or shallow.
Tools & Faults Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
In an opening practice we take the rhythm of the breath as our object, noticing whether it is long or short, deep or shallow. Glen Svensson names two tools, mindfulness holding the object and introspection checking that it is still held, and contrasts that older sense with Jon Kabat-Zinn's. The five faults and eight antidotes follow, from laziness to over-application. A second meditation is guided lying down in shavasana, and four weeks of homework are set before Shantideva's dedication verses close.
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.
Preparing Body & Mind Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Shamatha means calm abiding, and Glen Svensson opens by explaining why, if we want to achieve genuine happiness and well-being, shamatha practice is indispensable. He draws out the difference between pleasurable experience and genuine happiness, and where concentration fits among the three higher trainings. The seven point posture is worked through, then a fifteen minute guided meditation steps through preparing body, speech and mind. Questions cover meditating with a tremor, and whether shamatha is the first jhana.

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Shamatha (calm abiding)

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