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The four opponent powers

Practice Library

The four opponent powers

14 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • S2 - Turning Inward & Forgiving Ourselves David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026

    The session opens with a brief settling practice, then the teaching turns inward, tracing self-hatred to fusing bad behaviour with a fixed sense of self. David separates guilt from healthy regret, teaches the four opponent powers for addressing what we've done, and argues our deepest nature is pure, not our anger or shame. A guided practice follows, in which we meet negative self-talk as thought and close in self-forgiveness. Questions turn to ongoing hurt from a parent and why self-hatred is common in the West.

  • Session Three - Karma, Dukkha and the Spirit of Emergence David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded February 28, 2026

    David talks about the last two thoughts that turn the mind: karma, how our intentional actions shape our future, and dukkha, the unsatisfactoriness of constant seeking. He explains why reducing anger or attachment even slightly shows freedom is possible, and why the four lead to renunciation, or the spirit of emergence. Questions cover the four opponent powers for purifying karma, and children who recall past lives. In the closing practice we bring the day together and set an intention.

  • Session Three - Meeting the Emotion, and a Renewed Intention David Oromith · 65 minutes · recorded August 7, 2025

    Continuing from the previous session, David guides a practice of simply being with an emotion rather than observing or fixing it, drawing on Tsoknyi Rinpoche's handshake practice, resting attention with whatever feeling is present. The talk covers regret as an alternative to guilt and shame, the four opponent powers, and anger's three forms, outward, inward and passive. He answers questions on internalised anger, pausing during conflict and grief, and closes reading Mary Oliver's Wild Geese.

  • D3S1 - Loving Kindness, Refuge, and the Workings of Karma David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

    The morning's practice is loving kindness, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult. David presents refuge in the three jewels as an active direction we take rather than protection handed to us, contrasting it with money, reputation and other worldly refuges that cannot ultimately help. Karma follows, covering the ten non-virtues and the four opponent powers used to purify a negative action: regret, reliance, remedy and resolve.

  • Part One - Destructive Emotions, and an Antidote for Each Ondy Willson · 103 minutes · recorded October 5, 2024

    Spirituality with the religion stripped out, and emotions as the ground of ethics. The four opponent powers arrive by way of Atisha climbing down off his horse: take refuge, regret it, apply a remedy, resolve not to do it again. Then constructive and destructive emotions, a guided meditation that washes an anger out through the soles of the feet, and an antidote worked out for each: patience, empathy, forgiveness, gladness at another's good fortune.

  • Guided Meditation - Purification with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024

    The same four opponent powers, this time with Buddha Shakyamuni visualised on a jewelled throne in front of you. After regret and going for refuge, he comes to rest above your head, and white, red and blue light descends to purify body, speech and mind. It ends with resolve and a dedication.

  • Guided Meditation - Purification with Loving Kindness David Oromith · 18 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024

    The four opponent powers in order. You recall what you did that was harmful in body, speech and mind and generate sincere regret without concluding that you are a bad person, turn for help to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha or to the principles you hold, then use loving kindness as the remedy, and close by resolving what you can realistically give up.

  • Session 5 - Purifying Negative Karma - The Four Opponent Powers David Oromith · 94 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024

    After a settling meditation, David introduces collective karma and gives a concise summary of the course before turning to purification. He explains the four opponent powers, regret, reliance, remedy and resolve, distinguishing healthy regret from corrosive guilt, then leads a guided loving kindness meditation in which we apply all four steps. Questions cover a run of bad luck at work, whether places or mindsets carry negative karma, and how effective Vajrayana purification practice is alone.

  • A Helpful Alternative to Guilt & Shame David Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded February 25, 2024

    Mindfulness of breathing at the belly, practised with eyes at least partially open, with counting available for those who find it helpful. David addresses guilt from a Buddhist perspective, distinguishing it from healthy regret and describing how guilt fuses a harmful action with a sense of being a bad person. He sets out the four opponent powers of regret, reliance, remedy and resolve as a more workable response, alongside the Dalai Lama's answer to a question about self hatred.

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

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

  • D1S3 - Teaching the Four Factors Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 92 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

    A body scan run in reverse opens the session, then loving kindness extended from oneself to a benefactor, a friend, a stranger and all beings. Rejoicing in what is virtuous joins every practice from here on. Tenpa places the practice within the three vehicles and reads the short Mahayana sutra Teaching the Four Factors, in which the Buddha gives Maitreya the four opponent powers of regret, remedy, resolve and reliance. Regret is practical, not moralistic; guilt concludes that we are bad people.

  • Beyond Regret - Four Steps to Purifying Past Behaviours David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded October 16, 2023

    In this episode, David explores the transformative wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of the Four Opponent Powers. As tools for purifying negative karma, these four steps offer a pragmatic approach to understanding and amending past behaviours. Whether we'd like to purify negative karma or would like a more mindful way to address personal regrets, these Four Opponent Powers provide a structure for overcoming negative habits.

  • 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.

  • Short-Term Strategies Glen Svensson · 80 minutes

    What can be done now, while the long work of realising emptiness is still under way. Glen Svensson goes step by step through the six-step process running from ignorance to suffering and offers something workable at each point: questioning appearances, observing a pleasant or unpleasant feeling as it arises, the four opponent powers for harm already done, and acceptance, which does not mean resignation, for pain already arrived. In the guided practice we then work on attachment itself.

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