Calendar

The four immeasurables

Practice Library

The four immeasurables

76 teachings in the library cover this practice.

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

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

  • Guided Meditation - Rejoicing in Your Own Life and the Good in the World David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded April 19, 2026

    Rejoicing starts with your own life history, with any goodness received from the world and any brought to it, however small. Then someone you care about at a moment of their excitement, their joy felt as your own and breathed in, with the phrase may your good fortune continue. It widens to people who inspire you and to the communities working for those in need, then to anyone you envy or resent, and comes back to you.

  • Guided Meditation - Avalokiteshvara, Visualisation and Mantra David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded March 5, 2026

    A full Avalokiteshvara practice led line by line. You visualise the four armed form of compassion, with friends and family beside you, difficult people in front and all beings filling the space, then recite refuge and bodhicitta and contemplate the four immeasurables. The mantra comes with light purifying body, speech and mind, then the eight verses of training the mind, a dissolution into your heart, and dedication.

  • 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 - Refuge and Bodhicitta with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025

    Beginning from how rare this human life is, David has you visualise Shakyamuni Buddha in the space before you, with all other beings gathered around. You recite the words of refuge, contemplate the four immeasurables, then rouse bodhicitta. The Buddha finally dissolves into golden light and merges into your heart, and light then radiates out from you to every being.

  • 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.

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

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

  • Session 2 - Exploring Bodhicitta David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025

    A guided practice weaves the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and an enemy. David explains how these four give rise to great compassion and then bodhicitta, and reads passages from the Dalai Lama on its benefits for health, relationships and facing an enemy without anger. Questions cover holding all beings in mind by caring for everyone we actually meet. A short closing meditation follows.

  • D4S4 - Bodhicitta's Final Steps, and Meeting Ordinary Scorn David Oromith · 55 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

    The final meditation in this sequence combines the great resolve, the wish to free all beings, with the four immeasurables to complete bodhicitta. David turns to verse seventeen, on honouring someone who looks down on us out of arrogance rather than compete for status, and takes questions on where this shades into self-deprecation, whether the bodhisattva vow sounds egotistical, and where limited time is best spent, closing with the girl and the starfish: your bit is worth doing however small.

  • Guided Meditation - Equanimity David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024

    Before levelling the three people, David has you look at your grip on each: the attachment mixed into love for someone dear, the reasons behind indifference to a stranger, the basis of aversion to someone hostile. You then set all three in front of you and ask whether any deserves suffering more than another.

  • Session 5 - Equanimity David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024

    The teaching turns to equanimity, upekka, the balance underlying loving kindness, compassion and joy. David distinguishes it from flat indifference, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of relating differently to knee pain, and explains why acceptance means acknowledging what is, not condoning it. Questions bring stories of grief for a missed friendship and a man at peace with terminal illness. In the meditation we extend loving kindness equally to a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult.

  • Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy (Mudita) David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded October 8, 2024

    Taking delight in the good fortune of others, starting with someone whose good cheer is infectious, then a loved one, a stranger receiving good news, and the people whose success would normally twist your heart. It turns inward near the end, to rejoicing in your own small kindnesses and in the teachers behind them.

  • 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.

  • Guided Meditation - Compassion (Karuna) David Oromith · 27 minutes · recorded September 24, 2024

    Compassion begins here with yourself, under two claims David sets down first: that suffering is a temporary affliction rather than who you are, and that everyone wants to be free of it. You then work outward through someone struggling, a loved one, someone you give little thought to, someone whose behaviour you find hard, and finally everyone.

  • Session 3 - Compassion David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded September 24, 2024

    In compassion practice we move from ourselves through a suffering acquaintance, a loved one, a stranger and finally someone acting cruelly, wishing each free of suffering and its causes. David distinguishes compassion from its near enemies, grief and pity, describing how despair once fed his own depression working in mental health wards, and why compassion stays active rather than overwhelmed. Members discuss compassion fatigue, burnout and caring for an ageing parent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Session 1 - Loving-Kindness (part one) David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded September 11, 2024

    David guides a loving-kindness meditation directed entirely at oneself: recalling a kind action, naming a quality worth admiring, then arousing the wish to be at ease, well and happy, and joyful. He explains why metta is a yearning rather than an emotion, and traces its near enemy, self-centred attachment, and its far enemy, malice, reading from the Metta Sutta. Several members speak openly about how hard they found turning kindness towards themselves.

  • 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.

  • Session Four - Questions and Discussion David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024

    Questions and discussion following the four immeasurables retreat, closing with a short dedication rather than a practice. David takes questions on book recommendations, on aiming for progress rather than perfection, and on telling harmless joy from joy that should not be rejoiced in. He discusses keeping compassion separate from the need for boundaries against harmful behaviour, and advises a participant on staying positive amid a negative community, before closing on catching envy early.

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

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

  • Session 2 - Compassion David Oromith · 57 minutes · recorded June 10, 2024

    In the guided compassion meditation we move from ourselves through a loved one, a neutral person and someone in conflict, wishing each freedom from suffering. David distinguishes compassion from despair, its near enemy, describing his own depression while working in mental health services. He draws on the Dalai Lama and a visit to a man living amid hoarded possessions to show empathy turning into active care rather than paralysis. A question on karma is held over for later.

  • Session 1 - Loving-Kindness David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded June 9, 2024

    Two guided loving kindness practices: a short reflection on our own good qualities, then the full meditation, in which we extend well wishes from ourselves through a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult. David explains loving kindness as a wish rather than a feeling, distinguishes it from attachment dressed as love and from malice, and tells the story of the Dalai Lama's puzzlement at Western self-contempt.

  • Choose Compassion David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded January 28, 2024

    In the meditation on the four immeasurables, built from loving kindness, we extend first to ourselves, then to someone we love, someone neutral and someone we find difficult, each time imagining them free of suffering and rejoicing in their happiness. David shares two quotes from the Dalai Lama on the practical benefits of compassion, and talks about how the divide we draw between us and them closes the heart. He asks that when we meet unkindness, we choose kindness anyway.

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

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

  • D1S4 - Appreciation, Empathy and Tenderness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 64 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023

    Three qualities that feed loving kindness before it starts. Stillness and the tactile waves are practised again first, then Michael Lobsang Tenpa works through appreciation, the quality usually translated as devotion, empathy in its cognitive and affective forms as Matthieu Ricard sets them out in Altruism, and tsewa, the basic warmheartedness he calls the stem cell of all four immeasurables. The hour of practice before dinner is spent looking at beings with eyes of caring.

  • Week 4: Equanimity (Upekkha): Finding balance and serenity with others and amidst life’s ups and downs David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded June 29, 2023

    The session closes the four immeasurables series with equanimity, upekkha, opening with a settling breath meditation and returning at the end to the classic practice in which we bring a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult to mind in turn, wishing each equally well. David distinguishes true equanimity from indifference and from attachment. Questions cover boundaries with a difficult colleague, confrontation, and a cooled friendship.

  • Week 1: Loving-kindness (Metta): Cultivating an open heart and goodwill towards all beings David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded June 9, 2023

    The evening opens with a short settling meditation, followed later by a full loving-kindness practice in which we move from self to a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult, closing with the Buddha's words on boundless love. David explains metta as a wish rather than a feeling, and names its near enemy, self-centred attachment, and its far enemy, ill will, using the image of a mosaic buried under concrete. Sarah describes how a small act of kindness turned round a strained work relationship.

  • S3 - The Four Immeasurables, and Empathetic Joy Against Loneliness David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded January 26, 2023

    The session opens with a brief meditation on the breath, before David turns to the four immeasurables: loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, practices for countering loneliness and low mood. He works through each, warning that reciting the words is not yet the mind itself, then leads a guided metta meditation in which we extend kindness through a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult. Questions turn to forgiveness, cognitive fusion and using longer exhales to calm the body.

  • Guided Meditation - Compassion (karuṇā) David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded December 5, 2022

    This is a guided meditation on Compassion (karuṇā in Sanskrit). Compassion is one of the Four Immeasurables, a rich compilation of practices that open the heart, counter the distortions in our relationships with ourselves and deepens our relationship with others. The essential nature of compassion is a yearning for the person we are directing our attention to be free of suffering. The object of one's compassion may be oneself, another human being, an animal, or any other sentient being.

  • D3S2 - Near Enemies, and Tonglen Mounted on the Breath Lama Alan · 85 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    Teaching and questions, no guided practice. Lama Alan Wallace works through the near enemies of the four immeasurables, taken from Buddhaghosa's Path of Purification, self-centred attachment posing as loving kindness, despair as compassion, then the progression in tonglen, starting with your own mother and later mounted on the breath, and the aphorism begin the sequence of taking with yourself. A young father asks whether to put family responsibilities aside for a long retreat.

  • D5S1 - Criteria, Pledges and Precepts Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    The last three points together. Lama Alan Wallace gives the criteria that show the practice is working, a self-grasping that is diminishing, yourself as the chief of the two witnesses, never parting from a sense of well-being even when distracted, then the pledges, from keeping the commitments already taken to taking no delight in another's misfortune. He then guides a practice on the four immeasurables, bringing people to mind, asking why they could not be free and resolving to free them.

  • D4S1 - Blame Everything on One Culprit Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    Lama Alan Wallace explains the two week gap, a perforated intestine and six days in hospital, then takes up the third point, transforming adversity into the path. In Buddhaghosa's framework he names despair, apathy and delight in one's own good fortune as near enemies of compassion, impartiality and empathetic joy, and works through the aphorism blame everything on one culprit, with Shantideva on self-grasping as the great demon. In the guided practice we cultivate the four immeasurables as the four greats.

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

    This is a guided meditation on Loving-Kindness (maitrī in Sanskrit). Loving Kindness is the first of the Four Immeasurables, a rich compilation of practices that open the heart, counter the distortions in our relationships with ourselves and deepens our relationship with others. The essential nature of loving-kindness is a yearning that the person we are directing our attention to be well and happy. The object of one's loving-kindness may be oneself, another human being, an animal, or any other sentient being. May everyone be free of enmity. May everyone be free of affliction. May everyone be free of anxiety. May everyone be well and happy.

  • D6S1 - Convergence, Not Conversion Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 128 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020

    Convergence rather than conversion is Lama Alan Wallace's theme for the closing day, and where the two traditions find deep common ground is in love and compassion. He works through the four immeasurables, then guides a practice with an orb of light at the heart, drawing in darkness on the in breath and sending out loving kindness on the out breath, widening from oneself to one person and on to every being. Eva Natanya warns how easily one's own pristine awareness becomes a possession of the ego.

  • 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 - Equanimity, Even Care for the Neutral, the Dear and the Difficult Lama Alan · 26 minutes

    Lama Alan Wallace guides the last of the four immeasurables, equanimity. You bring to mind a neutral person, then someone dear, then someone you find difficult, and in each case you see how transient the relationship is and how constantly that person, like you, wishes for happiness. With an orb of light at your heart you breathe in the darkness of their suffering and breathe out loving kindness, closing on the difficult person set free.

  • Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy, Rejoicing in Others' Virtues and Your Own Lama Alan · 24 minutes

    Lama Alan Wallace guides the third of the four immeasurables, empathetic joy. You bring to mind someone whose good cheer and well-being you know well, then someone whose kindness, generosity and wisdom visibly benefit others, and with each out-breath you send light from your heart, rejoicing in their happiness and their virtues. You then turn inwards, delighting in your own past joys and your own goodness, before releasing all objects into open knowing.

  • Guided Meditation - Compassion, Beginning with Your Own Suffering Lama Alan · 26 minutes

    Compassion is the heartfelt wish to be free of suffering and its causes, and Lama Alan Wallace begins with your own. You weigh how much mental suffering you have already borne and how little control you have over circumstances, then imagine freedom as an orb of white light at the heart. With each in-breath you draw in the darkness of past and future suffering and dissolve it there. You then do the same for others, closing in simple awareness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • 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.

  • Great Compassion Glen Svensson · 83 minutes

    Bodhicitta, the aspiration for enlightenment for the benefit of others, and the first of the two main methods for cultivating it: the seven cause and effect, running from seeing everyone as your mother through altruistic intention to that aspiration itself. Glen Svensson explains that great compassion is not simply an aspiration, as loving kindness and compassion are in the four immeasurables, but actively helping mother sentient beings, much more proactive. In the guided practice we draw blessings in on the in-breath and radiate the light of great compassion out on the out-breath.

  • Equanimity Glen Svensson · 85 minutes

    Equanimity as an unbiased mind, undoing the habit of sorting people into friends, strangers and so-called enemies by how they seem to affect us. In the guided practice we step into the perspective of a stranger, a loved one and a difficult person in turn, then back out again. Glen Svensson shows how each of the four immeasurables acts as the antidote to the near enemy of another, so they are best practised as a package. He closes with the four opponent powers and an end of day review of one negative action, one good one and one thing received with gratitude.

  • Dealing with Anger Glen Svensson · 81 minutes

    Anger, defined here as always carrying the intention to harm, and why Buddhism recommends patience and compassion in its place rather than a right amount of anger at the right time. Glen Svensson guides a practice on occasions when you got angry, on criticism valid and invalid, and on dissecting the irritating person until words are only sounds. He then introduces cognitive fusion, fusing a person and their behaviour into one thing, which turns rejection of an act into attack on the person.

  • Compassion Glen Svensson · 85 minutes

    Compassion, karuna, as the wish for ourselves and others to be free of suffering and its causes, which means understanding dukkha at three levels: unpleasant experience, the change in our pleasant experiences, and the potential for suffering that a mind contaminated by mental afflictions always carries. In the guided practice we draw suffering in as black smoke to be dissolved at the heart, moving from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen Svensson reads from Matthieu Ricard on why compassion burnout is really empathy fatigue.

  • Dealing with Attachment Glen Svensson · 72 minutes

    Attachment is the near enemy of loving kindness, and Glen Svensson defines it as a mental factor that exaggerates an object's attractiveness and wants to hold on to it. In the guided practice you bring to mind a person or thing you cling to, loosen the grip, then look directly at the attachment itself. Glen dispels the common misconceptions that attachment is needed to enjoy things, to have relationships or to be creative, describing how ordinary food grew tastier during a long retreat as his craving subsided.

  • Loving Kindness Glen Svensson · 78 minutes

    Loving kindness, maitri, is defined by Glen Svensson as an aspiration rather than an emotion: the wish for ourselves and others to have happiness and its causes. Two guided practices: in the first we cultivate it for ourselves through reflections on our own deepest aspirations, and in the second we extend it in stages to a friend, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen distinguishes pleasure from genuine happiness and names its causes as ethics, concentration and wisdom.

  • Summary of Practice Glen Svensson · 81 minutes

    The last session draws the four modules together and turns to how to integrate the practice into daily life: shamatha first thing and vipashyana after it, the body scan for impermanence, brief moments of questioning appearances, and an evening review of one negative thing done, one positive thing done, and one thing received. In the guided loving kindness practice we work outwards from a sphere of light at the heart. Glen Svensson also distinguishes an autonomous self from an inherently existent one.

  • 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.

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