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The four applications of mindfulness

Practice Library

The four applications of mindfulness

17 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Guided Meditation - Contemplating the Four Elements David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded May 1, 2025

    Starting from the weight of the body on the seat, David moves through earth, air with the breath, water, then fire, each first felt as plain sensation and then recognised as the same element in the world outside. It closes with a read passage on how the matter of your body has been ocean, birds, trees and moss, and will be again.

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

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

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

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

  • Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of the Mind David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded November 20, 2024

    You steady the attention with a count of twenty one breaths, then the eyes open a little and the gaze rests vacantly as you turn to the space of the mind. David asks you to watch how a thought begins, how it lasts and how it ends, whether any of it feels like yours, and finally whether anything there can be called I.

  • 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.

  • Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Feelings David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded November 13, 2024

    With the eyes at least partly open, we notice the plain pleasantness, unpleasantness or neither that comes with each sound and sensation. When a feeling prompts you to move you hold still and watch it instead: how it begins, where it sits, how it ends. It widens at the close to the feelings alongside thoughts.

  • Session 2 - Mindfulness of Feelings David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 13, 2024

    In the guided meditation on mindfulness of feelings, eyes partly open, we note the pleasant, unpleasant or neutral tone in sounds, bodily sensations and thoughts, without moving to ease discomfort. David draws on the Buddha's teaching on vedana and the image of a songbird held too tightly, and explains why we tend to ignore neutral feelings until boredom turns them unpleasant. Questions cover whether attending closely to pain eases it or makes it worse, and adjusting to unfamiliar calm.

  • Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of the Body David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded October 31, 2024

    Bare attention on the whole field of bodily sensation, then a close inspection of it element by element: firmness, moisture, warmth, movement. Of each one David asks whether anything in it is stable, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant from its own side, and whether anything says it is yours.

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

  • Why Do We Feel The Need To Control Everything? David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded May 23, 2021

    In a vipassana practice on the feelings arising with the five senses, eyes held partly open, we examine whether a sound or sensation is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and whether that feeling belongs to us at all. Taking up a question from the previous week, David explores why we feel such a strong need to control our surroundings, tracing it to an old survival instinct and the belief that a perfect external world is needed to be happy. We already have the resilience to meet what goes wrong.

  • Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Feelings David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded December 4, 2020

    This is a guided meditation on the second close application of mindfulness - mindfulness of feelings (Skt. vedana). The four close applications of mindfulness (Skt. smrityupasthana; Pali. satipatthana) are the bedrock of the Buddha's teachings on vipashyana, and as the Buddha described them: the direct path to nirvana. In this guided practice we attend closely to the different types of feelings (pleasure, displeasure, and indifference) arising in relation to sensations from our five physical senses and we carefully pose questions and inspect the very nature of these feelings.

  • Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Feeling Tone Across the Five Senses Lama Alan · 23 minutes

    Lama Alan opens your awareness to the five physical senses, sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, resting in bare attention with the mental domain set aside. The practice then moves to the second application of mindfulness: not the sensations but the feeling tone that comes with them, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. When an urge to move arises you stay still and study the discomfort behind it. You end by asking whether these feelings are in any way yours.

  • 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.

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