Anger and aversion

140 teachings in the library are about this.

Throw Guilt Out - You Are Not Your Worst Moments David Oromith · 3 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A short extract. Guilt and shame never get around to the behaviour, only to what a bad person you are, so David argues for throwing them out altogether. Tibetan has no word for this kind of guilt; the nearest is intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.
Guided Meditation - Releasing a Resentment David Oromith · 14 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A resentment you are still carrying comes to mind, and the hurt of it is acknowledged first. David then turns to where that person's behaviour came from, their own pain and confusion, and to the difference between a person and their mental afflictions, without agreeing the action was okay. Hand on the belly or chest, the words are to the extent I am able, I release, I let go. It closes on deep breaths, released through the mouth.
Three Habits for a Happier Life David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
In the loving kindness practice we move outward from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger, a difficult person and finally all beings. David talks about three simple daily habits for counteracting negativity: wishing others well, rejoicing in their good fortune, and harvesting joy from small pleasures, and invites everyone to try all three for a week as an experiment.
S1 - Looking Outward & Letting Go of Others’ Hurt David Oromith · 67 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
The session opens with a breathing meditation to settle the group, before David turns to resentment, drawing on the Buddha's teaching that harbouring old hurt keeps suffering alive after the event itself. He separates the person from their behaviour, using a mother's patience with a difficult child and Shantideva's stick and the hand that swings it, closing with the two arrows and the Dalai Lama on what forgiveness is not. A guided practice follows, in which we name a real resentment and choose to release it.
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.
We Cant Always Get What We Want (And That’s All Right) David Oromith · 60 minutes · recorded February 25, 2026
The session opens with a short breathing practice in which we set an intention rather than a fixed outcome, and closes with a practice in which we invite the same gentle acceptance toward a lingering mood. David distinguishes wanting from attachment to a fixed result, using a noisy meditation and stuck traffic to show why disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality. He cites Shantideva: a problem with no solution is not worth being upset about. Questions touch a friendship with an unwell friend, and needs versus wants.
Guided Meditation - What Anger Does, an Analytical Meditation David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded February 11, 2026
A contemplation rather than a settling practice. Recalling an occasion when anger took over, you examine not the story but what the anger did to your tone, your face and your thinking, then what it left behind and what it cost. David asks what it promised and whether it delivered, has you imagine a steadier response, and closes with a determination.
Session Three - Restraint Without Suppression David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded February 11, 2026
In the guided meditation we invite in a memory of anger, tracing what it cost and how a calmer response might have gone. David works through the Buddha's sutta on anger, its seven things pleasing to an enemy, from bad sleep to reputational harm, then four remedies: restraint, discernment, persistence and right view. He tells the anger eating demon story and reads verses on speech and blame. Questions cover the inner enemy as harsh imagery, and how anger builds until it feels like possession.
Guided Meditation - Meeting a Small Irritation David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded January 28, 2026
David asks you to bring to mind a small recent irritation, nothing traumatic, and to find where it lands in the body, a tightening or a heat you can name. When an urge to speak arises, you pause for one slow breath. He calls it heat and space: the feeling is real, and it is one part of a bigger field. Goodwill phrases close it.
Session Two - What Patience Actually Means David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded January 28, 2026
The session opens with a guided heat and space meditation in which we bring a small recent irritation to mind and track where it lands in the body, before widening into spaciousness and phrases of goodwill. David turns to the sutta of Sakka to show patience is not passivity but a mindful, chosen restraint, backed by verses on non aversion and the story of a maid who provokes her mistress into striking her. Questions cover staying calm at the time but doubting it after, and finding compassion for a difficult sibling.
Session One - Not Debating the Insult David Oromith · 76 minutes · recorded January 21, 2026
The evening opens with a guided meditation on feeling tones in which we notice sensations as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, before David turns to the Insult Sutta, where the Buddha refuses an insult hurled at him, letting it hang in the air rather than debating it. David draws out why retaliation only escalates and what it means to stay calm without suppressing feeling. The group discusses whether restraint reads as weakness, and why anger flares more easily at family than at work.
Session One - Three Kinds of Worry David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded November 24, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we reset body, speech and mind through mindfulness of breathing, and a second practice in which we watch thoughts arise and pass, labelling them without following them. David sets out three kinds of worry, appropriate, productive and toxic rumination, drawing on an account of the amygdala, then turns to the Buddhist view that anxiety is rooted in fear of impermanence and a wish for control we never really have. He closes on radical acceptance, distinguished from passivity.
Session Two - Enthusiasm, People Pleasing and Contemplation David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded October 15, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we drop from body sensation into resting in bare awareness itself, then continues through generosity, joyful effort and concentration among the six perfections. David explains the three kinds of giving, why generosity is spoiled by wanting something back, and pictures contentment and gratitude as floating in a reservoir, before setting out the three levels of wisdom: study, contemplation and meditation. Questions cover where generosity shades into people pleasing.
Session One - What All of Us Want David Oromith · 95 minutes · recorded October 9, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body and mind, take refuge in the three jewels and arouse bodhicitta, before resting on mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils. David opens this three week series on his own text, Heart Advice from a Foolish Practitioner, telling how the verses came to him on retreat, then works through mindfulness, compassion, wisdom, ethics and patience. Questions cover why seeing yourself as lowest is not self-contempt, and how patience coexists with anger at real injustice.
S2 - Applying the Path Where You Are David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded September 10, 2025
The session opens with a twenty minute guided meditation on the preciousness of human life, drawing on the Dalai Lama's reflection to arouse gratitude and resolve. David turns to self-reliance: the Buddha's advice to Ananda to be your own island, balanced against relying on teachers, and uses the leaking boat and the bike with stabilisers to explain ethics, calm and wisdom. Questions cover leaving a toxic WhatsApp group and noticing calmer reactions over time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Session Two - The Sacred Pause David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded August 7, 2025
The session opens with a review of the emotional diary from the previous talk, before turning to working with a trigger once noticed. David draws on Shantideva's image of the piece of wood and Jack Kornfield's sacred pause to show how a brief pause, even one breath, interrupts an automatic reaction, and offers a breathing technique to calm the nervous system. He closes with a guided RAIN meditation, recognising, allowing, investigating and nurturing a difficult emotion, and takes questions on anger and trauma.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness and Compassion David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded June 26, 2025
You begin with yourself, attended to as you would a dear friend, breathing in the wish for happiness and breathing out the wish to be free of pain. The same wishes go to a loved one, a stranger, then someone you are in conflict with, cutting past what differs to what is the same. It ends wide, holding those who cause suffering alongside those who suffer, in a Buddha's eye view that is neither pity nor judgement.
Session 3 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded June 26, 2025
Loving kindness and compassion are extended from self to a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person and finally a wide group, guided throughout as preparation for next week's tonglen practice. David works through verses five and six of the Eight Verses: offering the victory rather than retaliating, and viewing someone who wrongs us as a teacher, illustrated with the story of the borrowed baby. Members share how they tried the practice at home and at work.
Session 2 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded June 18, 2025
This second session opens with a twenty minute meditation in which we settle body and mind, then recite the eight verses together. David works through the third verse on watching the mind and applying antidotes to afflictions, then the fourth on cherishing difficult people as a rare chance to practise compassion. A poll shows self cherishing can hide inside low self esteem as much as pride. Questions cover compassion versus empathy, accepting compliments, and giving victory to others.
D6S3 - Why Dzogchen Practice Is Simply Waking Up Lama Alan · 89 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan traces how mental afflictions such as anger and pride do not simply vanish upon realisation but melt into the five wisdoms, and offers a third translation of Dzogchen, the Great Encompassment, alongside the more familiar Great Perfection and Great Completion. He describes the false cave of appearances, likening ordinary experience to a non-lucid dream, and says the entire task of Dzogchen practice comes down to one thing: waking up.
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.
D3S1 - Radiant Purity, and What Obscures It Lama Alan · 122 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Awareness is naturally luminous and cognizant, and Lama Alan distinguishes this radiant purity from anger, dullness or craving, which pass across it like clouds across the sun, never touching its nature. He explains why refuge is earned trust, not demanded belief, and why motivation, especially bodhicitta, decides whether a practice counts as Dharma. After the ninefold breathing exercise, the group rests in that awareness as thoughts surface and dissolve.
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part Two) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded May 7, 2025
This second session opens with a gentle practice in which we breathe space and compassion around whatever despair, anger or fear arises when facing the world's crises. David then maps the Eightfold Path onto engaged action, from authentic view and speech through to effort, and reads several of Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts on non-attachment to views, speech and livelihood. Questions cover the ethics of the arms trade during the war in Ukraine and how to pass on values to children without imposing them.
Random Acts of Kindness David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded May 4, 2025
In the loving kindness meditation we extend the wish for genuine wellbeing from ourselves outward to a loved one, a stranger and finally someone we find difficult. David talks about noticing the small kindnesses that rarely make the news, from a stranger helping push a stuck car free of mud to holding a door open, and about practising one small act of generosity a day while letting go of any need for thanks.
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part One) David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded May 1, 2025
The first of two sessions opens with a twenty minute guided meditation from Lama Rod Owens in which we attend to sensations of earth, air, water and fire in the body before extending that awareness to the natural world. David sets out the bodhisattva's aspiration to benefit all beings, drawing on the Buddha's own example and the Dalai Lama's idea of universal responsibility. Questions range across grief at ecological crisis to a member's own difficult family situation.
Session Two - The Thread That Continues David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded March 26, 2025
The evening opens with a brief settling meditation, then David works through written questions on emptiness: the four point analysis for locating a self, the example of a liver, and how a personal self, a subtle continuum of consciousness and Buddha nature relate across lifetimes, drawn out through the dream analogy. Discussion runs throughout, and it closes with a guided practice on the instruction that seeing is only seeing, hearing as only hearing, across all six senses.
Our Essential Nature is Basic Goodness David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded March 16, 2025
In this meditation we imagine the mind as a clear, spacious sky, with each thought, memory or emotion arising and passing like a cloud, observed without getting drawn in. David talks about the Buddhist teaching that our afflictions, anger, jealousy, confusion, are temporary clouds passing over a basic goodness that is always there, our Buddha nature. He explains why recognising this in ourselves lets us recognise it even in people who challenge us, since their harmful behaviour comes from the same fear.
Session 4 - Ethics & Patience David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded February 13, 2025
In the guided Tonglen practice we breathe in a loved one's suffering, then a wider crowd's, as dark smoke dissolved at the heart, and breathe out light and wellbeing in return. David turns to ethics as the foundation of practice, likening unruly behaviour to bashing holes in a leaking boat, then works through three kinds of patience: staying calm when provoked, accepting what cannot be changed, and being patient with slow progress. One shares how the quicksand image helped with her own anger.
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.
Session 1 - Introduction David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded January 22, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle the body, then a contemplation on the rarity and preciousness of this human life. David defines the Mahayana path against the Theravada and introduces bodhicitta, using the similes of gold buried in rubbish and dirt suspended in water to show that our afflictions are not fixed but can be removed. Questions from the group explore whether kindness can pass to others without deliberate intention. A brief closing meditation follows.
Session 2 - Practices for Inner Joy David Oromith · 71 minutes · recorded January 19, 2025
The session opens with a short meditation on gratitude in which we notice where appreciation is felt in the body. David then describes three doorways to joy: living kindly, the calm that meditation brings, and a settled confidence he calls the joy of knowing, alongside practices of empathetic joy, rejoicing and harvesting delight from ordinary moments. Questions cover keeping compassion for others in balance with self-care, and what to do on waking in a low mood. It closes with a guided harvesting joy practice.
D5S3 - Non-Attachment, Generosity and the Roots of Ethics David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Desire and aversion are treated as appearances without solid existence, like a rainbow that can be admired but never grasped, or the death of a child in a dream. David works through the three kinds of generosity, giving materially, offering protection, and offering the Dharma, then turns to ethical discipline as the foundation the whole path rests on, using a leaking boat as the image for a mind not yet guarded by good conduct.
D5S1 - Meeting Deprivation, Prosperity, Anger and Craving David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
A practice of bare attention across the senses builds toward resting in awareness itself. David works through verses on facing deprivation and prosperity without losing heart, then turns to anger and craving, using the image of salty water to show how craving only deepens thirst. The group asks about rumination, anxiety and turning anger at oneself into compassion.
D4S3 - Responding to Disgrace, Disparagement and Betrayal David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
After a meditation on affectionate love and compassion for all beings, David works through three verses of the text: meeting disgrace with kindness rather than argument, responding to public disparagement by offering the victory instead of escalating, and continuing to care for someone who turns on us after we have helped them. He explains cognitive fusion, treating bad behaviour as a person's whole identity, and takes questions on living this out at work.
D4S2 - Everyone's Kindness, and Hard Questions About Rebirth David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The session opens with a guided contemplation, continuing the previous one, in which we dwell on the care shown to us since birth, through learning to walk and talk, to the ordinary kindnesses that sustain daily life. A long discussion follows on the evidence and doubts around rebirth, including a mathematical objection to universal motherhood. David then turns to using suffering on the path, the image of the two arrows, and the RAIN practice for working with rising anger.
D4S1 - The Continuum of Mind and Turning Loss into Practice David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
In this meditation we trace the mind back moment by moment to show it is beginningless, so every being has at some point been our mother or carer. David turns to using loss and theft on the path, drawing on karma and compassion for what drives someone to steal, and the story of Gyalse Togme dedicating his stolen robes to the thieves who took them. Questions cover lingering sadness in a practitioner of many years and whether dedication lessens a thief's karma.
D3S4 - Equanimity and Tonglen, Two Meditations in Practice David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Two guided meditations fill this hour. The first is equanimity, in which we work with a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, to separate love from the grip of attachment. The second is tonglen: we breathe in the pain of someone we love as dark smoke, extinguished at a point of light in the heart, then send back everything good in return. David addresses the fear that tonglen means taking on suffering, and whether the same ignorance applies to animals.
D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The session opens with a practice of mudita in which we delight in the good fortune of a friend, a stranger and someone we find difficult. David completes the seven point instruction on cause and effect, from recognising kindness to the great resolve, then explains why self-cherishing is the root of misery and how tonglen exchanges it for others. Questions turn to where kindness tips into people pleasing, and whether karma means we should not intervene in someone else's suffering.
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.
D5S4 - The Three Kinds of Patience, and a Farmer's 77 Problems David Oromith · 50 minutes · recorded November 29, 2024
The session opens with a brief practice of resting in awareness, before David turns to kshanti, patience in its fuller sense, transforming hardship rather than gritting your teeth through it. He covers patience with people who harm us, with the ordinary ups and downs of life, illustrated by the farmer with 77 problems whose real problem is his belief that he should have none, and with the slow pace of our own progress. The group asks whether he has met anyone who claims to be enlightened.
The Path of Wisdom and Compassion Thubten Chodron · 119 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
Ven. Thubten Chodron argues that the mind is not the brain, drawing on her exchanges with reductionist scientists at the Mind and Life meetings. She describes the periscope of I, me and mine through which everything is filtered, so that the same words only sting when aimed at us. Most of the talk works through the Eight Verses of Training the Mind with the Dalai Lama's commentary from Approaching the Buddhist Path, dwelling on the first five and reading the rest for transmission.
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 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 - 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.
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.
Spiritual Rebellion: Mindfulness with Attitude Ondy Willson · 117 minutes · recorded September 28, 2024
Ondy Willson introduces her book and the work behind it: the influences of Buddhism, of her own life, and of twenty years teaching mindfulness in the public and private sectors. She sets out the key ideas of a spiritual practice, and how they can give contemporary life meaning and purpose without requiring a religion. With a reading, a meditation, and questions.
The Story of the Anger-Eating Demon David Oromith · 10 minutes · recorded September 28, 2024
In this episode, David shares the classic Buddhist parable of the 'anger-eating demon' and some ways of interpreting this story, and approaching our difficult emotions and experiences in a different way for greater wellbeing and ease in daily life.
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.
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.
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.
Session 4 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Mind) & How Karma Ripens David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded July 30, 2024
After settling meditation and refuge, David shares Alan Wallace's teaching that the person who ripens our karma in a future life is not quite us, so even cruelty deserves compassion rather than blame. He completes the ten nonvirtues with the three mental ones, covetousness, malice and wrong views, then explains projecting and completing karma and what shapes the mind at death. Questions range over pure lands, evidence for rebirth, funerals, and the forty nine day bardo.
Session 2 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Body) David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded July 16, 2024
In the short guided meditation we combine bare attention on the body with breath counting, refuge and bodhicitta. David sets out the four things needed for a complete negative karmic act, the basis, the attitude, the deed and its completion, then works through killing, stealing and unwise sexual behaviour, weighing pests, vegetarianism, euthanasia and abortion along the way. Questions cover suicide, whether all beings incur equal karma, and taking a puppy from its mother.
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 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.
Ignorance & Emptiness David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded June 4, 2024
The session opens with a brief guided meditation to settle the breath, before David turns to ignorance as the root of attachment and aversion, and to emptiness, the lack of inherent existence in people and things. He uses the cup, the car taken apart and the dream state to show how things exist only dependently, not as solid separate entities. Questions range widely: perception and the shared lamp, applying emptiness when someone is hurtful, and how to love someone who lacks inherent existence.
Three Types of Patience & Self-Cherishing David Oromith · 67 minutes · recorded May 22, 2024
After a short meditation in which we settle the breath, David sets out the three traditional types of patience: not retaliating when harmed, voluntarily accepting difficulty, and patience with the Dharma itself while still learning it. He explores self-cherishing through mundane examples, the last parking space, the electric car charging queue, and the Dalai Lama's wise versus foolish selfish. Questions cover self-care, a barber's story of self-cherishing hidden inside helping, and patience with oneself.
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.
Aversion and Patient-Acceptance David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded May 7, 2024
The evening opens with ten minutes counting the breath and extending loving-kindness. David returns to the Dalai Lama's Beyond Religion to show attachment and aversion turn destructive only when out of proportion, then sets out patient acceptance through acceptance, understanding, compassion and fortitude, using the spark and fuel image and the two arrows. Questions cover a job left out of aversion, indifference as a near enemy of equanimity, and looking after oneself.
Exploring Aversion David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded April 24, 2024
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body, speech and mind, then refuge and bodhicitta. David turns from attachment to aversion, tracing it from subtle irritation to hatred, and shows how the mind exaggerates an unpleasant contact into a caricature, the three headed green monster. He distinguishes constructive from destructive anger and sets out the four enlightened activities: peaceful, enriching, powerful and wrathful. Questions range across assertiveness, martial arts and the Buddhist view of war.
Exploring Attachment David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded April 9, 2024
A short settling meditation on the breath with refuge and bodhicitta, before David defines attachment: how it exaggerates an object's appeal, filters out its downsides and grasps to acquire or keep it. He traces its reach into possessions, appearance and relationships, and tells the story of the nun and the cat, showing how one small wish can spiral into an elaborate life. Discussion covers attachment versus need, jealousy and grief, including whether loving someone means being attached to them.
Introduction & the Bhavachakra David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded April 2, 2024
The opening session of a module on the three poisons, with a settling meditation on the breath and refuge before David introduces the bhavachakra, the wheel of life, as a map for the weeks ahead. He explains the three animals at its centre, ignorance, attachment and aversion, and how they drive karma and rebirth through the six realms and twelve links. No separate practice follows. Discussion ranges from craving versus healthy desire to letting go of possessions and fear of the future.
Unconditional Love for Friends, Strangers & Enemies David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded March 31, 2024
In the sky gazing meditation we observe thoughts and feelings as clouds passing through the open space of awareness, without judging or identifying with them. For Easter, David talks about love as a theme common to most traditions, explaining loving kindness and compassion as two sides of one wish, and the three categories we quietly sort people into: those we like, those we are indifferent to, and those we oppose. The discussion turns to what stops our love reaching further, and whether it should.
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.
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.
D3S3 - Signs of Purification, and Vase Breathing Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024
Giving and taking is widened to friends, strangers and enemies, and to the three kinds of suffering. Tenpa relays Lama Zopa Rinpoche's daily minimum, enough to keep negative seeds from multiplying, and warns against visualising internal organs. He reads the dream signs of purification, and the real sign, afflictions becoming weaker, citing Ven. Thubten Chodron on her first three month retreat. Garchen Rinpoche's instruction on the channels and winds follows, vase breathing guided and the inner practice read out.
D2S4 - Preparing for Death, and the Three Cleansings Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024
Purification as preparation for dying, opening with death and impermanence and the seven branch practice. Tenpa defines the pair of words that recur in these texts, misdeeds and obscurations, the second meaning here the factors that trigger afflictions and thoughts that block meditation. The commentary he quotes likens the practice to surgery rather than slow medicine, and to aiming at one problem such as anger. The long guided practice runs the whole text, with the hundred syllable mantra and the three cleansings.
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.
D5S3 - Beginning with a Mild Enemy Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The difficult person, started deliberately small, someone only mildly unpleasant rather than anyone you truly hate. Michael Lobsang Tenpa separates ill will, which he answers with fierce compassion, from the irritation that comes from our inability to control someone. He lays out the four conditions that contribute to cultivating the four immeasurables, and passes on a gesture Garchen Rinpoche describes in a great yogi, raising a hand while thinking may all beings benefit.
D5S2 - Choosing a Stranger Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The stranger, said to be 99 percent of all beings, and how to choose one when you can barely picture anybody you feel neutral about. Michael Lobsang Tenpa lays out the circles to be used later today and tomorrow, from your own body out through Lampeter and Wales to the planet, and the three levels of loving kindness in wisdom practice. A distracting sound, or a flashback that surfaces while walking, can be turned into loving kindness for a few seconds before returning to the object.
D4S5 - The Neutral Person, and Questions Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The neutral person joins the sequence, someone you neither like nor dislike but still know. Most of the session is then questions. One asks whether the Dalai Lama allows that a machine could be conscious; Michael Lobsang Tenpa rules out mind arising from matter, then reads the exchange in Gentle Bridges. Others cover how to help without controlling, mindfulness and ageing, and the phrases producing no feeling at all. A short practice and a threefold dedication close.
D4S3 - Near Enemy and Far Enemy Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 64 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
Largely unguided at the start: Michael Lobsang Tenpa cues only the preparation, the main part and the conclusion, and leaves everyone to steer their own practice. The teaching rests on the four kinds of balance from Alan Wallace and Paul Ekman's Cultivating Emotional Balance, and on the Visuddhimagga, where loving kindness fails when it produces selfish affection, its near enemy, and succeeds when it makes ill will subside. A fully guided practice follows, then loving touch and loving gaze for the breaks.
D5S1 - Building a Circle of Inspiration Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
How to keep the practice alive. Michael Lobsang Tenpa suggests a eudaimonic journal, a book of the antidotes that work for you personally, and a mandala of inspiration made of images, scents, music, quotes and inspiring practitioners. He tells of Sharon Salzberg asking the Dalai Lama whether to teach loving kindness for oneself first, since so many people suffer from self-hatred, which he did not understand. The closing practice runs from oneself to a benefactor, a friend, a neutral person and all beings.
The Noble Eightfold Path: Prajñā - Right View, Right Resolve David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 22, 2023
This session starts with a brief settling meditation, with refuge and bodhicitta, before turning to the wisdom division of the path. David takes right view as knowledge of the four noble truths and the Kalama Sutta's advice to test a teaching by its results, then turns to right resolve as work at the level of thought, the Buddha noticing craving or ill will arise and letting it subside. Questions range from whether studying philosophy is wasted time to why compassion for others comes more easily than for ourselves.
Turning Everyday Life into Dharma Practice David Oromith · 53 minutes · recorded November 6, 2023
No formal meditation until the close, a ten minute practice in which we harvest joy through the five senses and gratitude for this life. The talk is on turning everyday life into practice: difficult people become opportunities for patience and compassion, chores are done with mindful awareness rather than boredom, and pleasant experience is enjoyed with gratitude rather than craving more. Listeners share their own struggles, including a difficult mother and mindful eating with the television on.
Recognising The Kindness of All Sentient Beings David Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded November 5, 2023
In mindfulness of breathing at the abdomen we count each in-breath from one to seven, with guidance for a wandering mind or a dull, sinking one. David leads a contemplation on the kindness we have received throughout life: a mother's care, parents and teachers, farmers and strangers who make daily life possible, and this community itself. He draws out how recognising this kindness fills us with gratitude and a wish to repay it by offering the same kindness to others.
Interdependence in Difficult Circumstances David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded October 29, 2023
In the body scan we move attention through the whole body, before David talks about interdependence, using the familiar image of a cup of coffee and the vast, uncountable web of people behind it. He explains why blaming a single cause, a late bus, a slow computer, a frozen laptop, misses the many conditions that actually produced a difficult situation, and why a broader view, looking from every angle as the Dalai Lama suggests, helps us respond with less anger and more realism.
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.
Transforming Adversity: Navigating Through Difficult Times David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded October 12, 2023
The session opens with a brief settling of breath and body, before David works through the Buddha's story of the farmer's seventy seven problems and the hidden seventy eighth, expecting to have none at all. He covers acceptance, the stories that fuel our reactions to triggers, and ways to reframe a difficulty, drawing on the group's own examples of corporate pressure and a distressing house sale, then closes with SOS practices for calming the body.
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 2: Compassion (Karuna): Cultivating a genuine concern for the sufferings of others and compassionate action David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded June 15, 2023
The session opens with a short breathing meditation to settle the group, before David turns to compassion, karuna, the wish for others to be free of suffering. He names its near enemy, despair, drawing on his own past depression while working on mental health wards, and its far enemy, cruelty, and why compassion must lead to action rather than pity or anger. Questions cover rudeness at work and a wedding venue caught in protests. The session closes with a meditation in which we extend the wish through self, loved one, neutral and difficult person.
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.
Being 'Intelligently Selfish' & Tonglen David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded May 9, 2023
In the tonglen practice of sending and receiving we breathe in a loved one's pain as dark smoke that dissolves at a point of light in the heart, then breathe out comfort and good qualities in return, before extending the same practice to crowds of strangers and the wider world. David explains the Dalai Lama's idea of intelligent selfishness, that working for others' welfare is what actually brings happiness, and describes using tonglen in the face of grief, illness and everyday conflict.
Week 4: When We’re Blamed or Harmed - Transforming Self-Cherishing (23 March 2023) David Oromith · 74 minutes · recorded March 23, 2023
This closing session opens with a practice of resting in open, non-reactive awareness of body, sight and sound, before David turns to self-cherishing, the habitual sense that my comfort and my losses matter more than anyone else's. He traces it through everyday scenes, a parking space, the last loaf of bread, and sets out equalising self and others as the corrective, citing Shantideva on cherishing others. Questions cover recognising ego in colleagues and guarding against burnout.
Week 3: When Things Go Wrong - Transforming Anger (16 March 2023) David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded March 16, 2023
The evening opens with a guided breathing meditation, before David turns to aversion, attachment's mirror image, which exaggerates the faults in whoever has upset us until we react to what he calls a three headed green monster rather than the person in front of us. He explains patience as accepting what is rather than resisting it, and compassion as redirecting anger toward the person's suffering. Questions cover staying calm around an angry colleague, and the session closes with a short loving kindness meditation.
Week 1: Introduction to Mind Training - Rising to the Challenge (2 March 2023) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded March 3, 2023
This new course on lojong, Buddhist mind training, opens with a short relaxation meditation to settle the group. David explains that we cannot stop difficulties happening, only stop them robbing us of our peace, using the spark, fuel and flame image and Shantideva's line: if there is a solution why worry, and if there is none why worry. Questions explore turning anger into compassion, separating regret from guilt, and the habit of rehearsing arguments that never go as planned.
The Six Paramitas - Protecting Our Practice (Ethical Discipline) David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded January 29, 2023
In this mahamudra style meditation we visualise the mind as a clear sky and each thought or emotion as a cloud passing through it, observed rather than followed. David turns to the second paramita, ethical discipline, describing it not as rules imposed from outside but as a fence protecting a young seedling, a fledgling practice easily undone by an outburst of anger the moment we step off the cushion. He talks about how avoiding harm builds the trust that relationships and genuine wellbeing rest on.
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.
S2 - Attachment and Aversion, and the Spark and the Fuel David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded January 19, 2023
The evening opens with a short guided meditation in which we settle into the body and breath. David then explains attachment and aversion as habits of mind that exaggerate things, using the spark, fuel and flame image and the story of the nun who ends up with a cow to show how solving one craving creates another. A second guided practice follows, mindfulness of breathing at the abdomen with counting. Questions cover expectation, frustration with practice, and whether to let thoughts go or work with them.
Cultivating Wholesome Emotions David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded January 8, 2023
The session opens with a body scan to settle the room into stillness, before we rest attention on the breath, with counting to hold focus for the twenty minute practice. David talks about deliberately cultivating wholesome states such as love, compassion and joy, not only managing difficult emotions as they arise. Drawing on the Dalai Lama, he explains how love strengthens our immunity to anger, compassion prevents cruelty, and empathetic joy counters jealousy.
Dealing with Stressful Situations David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded December 19, 2022
In this episode, David addresses a question about how to deal with stressful situations. Firstly, he explores the internal causes of stress and frustration from a Buddhist perspective, and then looks at some opposing minds that can bring us greater peace and wellbeing in such turbulent times. Minds such as acceptance, understanding, and compassion can help us handle stressful situations with greater ease.
Embodying the Qualities of Tara Thubten Chodron · 105 minutes · recorded November 5, 2022
Ven. Thubten Chodron works through the poem on Tara who liberates from the eight dangers, taken from her book How to Free Your Mind. Pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, distorted views, miserliness, attachment and doubt each get an image and an antidote, with stories from her own life against each one. Her argument is that Tara protects by teaching, not by fixing us from outside. The talk closes with a guided visualisation of Tara in green light with her mantra.
Green Tara Thubten Chodron · 13 minutes · recorded November 5, 2022
A guided visualisation, short and complete in itself. Tara is imagined in the space in front of you, on a lotus and a flat moon disc, her body made of green light, one leg tucked in and one stepping out into the world. You make a request in your own words for protection from the eight dangers, and green light flows from her heart into you and everyone around you. Her mantra is chanted alongside the visualisation, Tara dissolves into your heart, and the merit is dedicated.
Failure and Guilt David Oromith · 36 minutes · recorded October 23, 2022
The meditation this week is soothing and relaxing: we ease tension through a body scan before settling attention at the nostrils with a count to seven. David turns to failure and guilt, building on last week's talk on attachment. He explains that Tibetan has no word for guilt, only one that translates as intelligent regret that decides to do things differently, and offers this as the way through failure without turning it into self-hatred.
Responding to Bad News or a Difficulty David Oromith · 36 minutes · recorded June 19, 2022
Slow, extended exhales calm the body before we open into stillness, inviting in a current difficulty and meeting it with resilience rather than resistance. David talks about how to respond when bad news arrives, prompted by news that he and Manu must leave their home. He describes stepping back to observe aversion rather than acting from it, then using lojong reframing once the emotion has settled.
Preventing Burnout and Cultivating Emotional Balance Eve Ekman · 109 minutes · recorded June 16, 2022
Burnout in three layers, emotional exhaustion, a lost sense that the work matters, and cynicism, and how to keep an open heart without being pulled under by it. Eve Ekman reports her study of a hundred medical residents tracking their emotions twice a day, who turned out to be reporting enjoyment in half the moments they logged. Emotion granularity, pro-social emotions and fierce compassion follow as the remedies. The morning opens with a brief embodied practice adapted from Tsoknyi Rinpoche.
Dealing with Difficult People David Oromith · 57 minutes · recorded May 11, 2022
This talk on dealing with difficult people opens with a short guided practice in which we settle attention into the breath. David argues the person is a trigger but not the whole cause, our own grasping and self-cherishing complete it, and separates the external problem, needing boundaries or action, from the internal one, needing patience and compassion. He returns to depressive Danny as a running example, and questions cover trauma, cheating, and how far compassion extends to someone malicious.
Awakening the Being Mind and Natural Intuition David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded April 17, 2022
In this meditation you bring a real, unresolved difficulty into stillness rather than think it over, examining where it registers in the body and what beliefs surround it, with a question from Viktor Frankl along the way. David talks about how constructive thinking curdles into rumination fed by aversion, using his own dread of a difficult client meeting as an example. He contrasts the overthinking mind with the quieter, more intuitive one that can actually solve things.
Anger-Eating Demon David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded March 13, 2022
The meditation is a gratitude practice: we picture sunrise and settle into appreciation for the breath, the body, the mind and the people around us, closing with a few spoken affirmations. David tells the story of the anger eating demon, who grows monstrous with every threat and shrinks with every kindness. He draws out the lesson for anger at people, physical pain and unpleasant emotions alike, that what we resist persists and what we welcome softens.
The Mirror-Like Mind and Five Obscurations David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded March 6, 2022
The practice is a full loving kindness meditation: we extend from ourself through someone loved, someone neutral and someone difficult, out to all beings. David talks about the mind as a mirror or a still pool, reflecting reality but tinted by whatever is mixed into it. He works through the five classical obscurations, desire as coloured water, ill will as boiling water, dullness as algae, agitation as ripples, and doubt as mud, each one clouding what we actually see.
Aversion in Response to Tragedy David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded February 27, 2022
In the meditation we return to relaxation, noticing what changes in the body with each in and out breath, counting for focus, and closing with gratitude for this life. Responding to the war in Ukraine, David talks about telling anger apart from compassion, both arising from seeing suffering. He explains that anger's object is someone to hurt while compassion's object is those in pain, and that only compassion is genuinely active and helpful.
D1S2 - Dispensing with Aversion to Adversity Lama Alan · 76 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Adversity can only become the path if two things happen, and Lama Alan Wallace takes both: dropping the attitude of utter aversion to it, then finding a sense of well-being that holds even when things go badly. He distinguishes suffering itself, which is a symptom, from the mental afflictions that cause it, and repeats Shantideva's point that despondency helps neither what can be remedied nor what cannot. Day one ends with a guided practice of settling the mind in its natural state.
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.
D1S2 - Attentional Intelligence, and Let the Mystery Be Revealed Lama Alan · 82 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Atisha's aphorism, once stability is achieved let the mystery be revealed, and why shamatha comes before the cultivation of ultimate bodhicitta. Lama Alan Wallace sets out conation, ethical intelligence and attentional intelligence in turn, and pictures our modern mind as a telescope mounted on a galloping camel in a sandstorm. The guided practice is mindfulness of breathing, felt throughout the whole body, and we note whether each breath is long or short, with introspection watching the attention.
D1S1 - Whatever Attitude You Cultivate Grows Stronger Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace opens with gratitude to his teachers, then, following Gyatrul Rinpoche's commentary, says who the text is for: those who put genuine well-being above mundane pleasure. The homage follows, then the text's first lines, on how a mind habituated to dwelling on suffering turns the most insignificant circumstance into great distress, and that depression comes from the mind and not the brain. The session closes with a guided twenty minute practice of settling body, speech and mind in the natural state.
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.
Dealing with Frustration David Oromith · 14 minutes · recorded June 22, 2020
In this episode, David explores a common emotion that many of us experience on a regular basis: frustration. Frustration comes from non-acceptance and our ‘grasping’ at our expectations. It comes from not wanting things to be a certain way and being unable to accept things the way they are. But, as we'll see, frustration is not an inherent part of our mind and is something we can reduce and remove altogether. The Buddha offered a range of simple methods to calm ourselves and let go of our frustrations so that we’re not so irritated and angry throughout the day, and to help us transform our minds completely.
D2S3 - Awareness of Awareness, Dying Lucidly, and Loving Kindness Lama Alan · 85 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Nothing could persuade you that you are not conscious, and Lama Alan takes that as his starting point. He describes the substrate consciousness, then guides awareness of awareness, released into space on the out-breath and inverted upon itself on the in-breath. What the dying process holds for anyone who stays lucid follows. The session closes with loving kindness, an aspiration rather than an emotion, with the near enemy Buddhaghosa names in the Path of Purification, self-centred attachment.
D1S3 - Relaxation Before Stability, and What Makes a Desire Afflictive Lama Alan · 115 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
What separates a strong desire from an afflictive one. Lama Alan defines craving and attachment as decontextualising their object and rooted in misapprehension, so even a little is toxic, and treats hostility and hatred the same way, quoting Bhikkhu Bodhi that there are times for moral outrage. He puts relaxation, stability and vividness in that order, since concentration without relaxation burns people out. The guided practice is mindfulness of breathing, whole body first, then the abdomen.
D1S1 - Are You Human? The Three Poisons and the Substrate Lama Alan · 100 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The opening evening is teaching only, with no practice. Lama Alan Wallace starts from a Pali Canon exchange in which the brahmin Dona asks the Buddha whether he is a god, a spirit or a human, is told no to each, and hears the reply, I am awake. He works through the three poisons of the mind, and the dualistic grasping that is the taproot of craving and hatred, runs the ten Buddhist analogies for illusion, and lays out the substrate and substrate consciousness.
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.
Part Three - Final Questions, then Refuge and the Five Precepts Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 43 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Questions first: whether awakening differs for a woman, how to be selfless without becoming a doormat, and what diminishes ill will. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo describes the bodhisattva as a spiritual warrior rather than a wimp, points to Tara for fearless compassion, and offers humour as a seventh perfection. An eleven year old asks whether she saw snow leopards at her cave. It closes with the refuge ceremony and the five precepts, the Buddha as doctor, the Dharma as medicine, the Sangha as nurses.
Part Two - The Perfections Turned Around, and Questions on Anger Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 80 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
The verses continue through the perfections, each definition undercutting the usual way of looking at it. The supreme generosity is non-attachment, the supreme ethical conduct is to pacify one's mind, the supreme patience is to take the lowest place, and the supreme effort is letting go of activity. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo tells of Atisha keeping a rude attendant as his teacher of patience. Questions follow on teachers charging for Dharma and on whether anger ever serves a good cause.
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 - Compassion, Attending to the Core Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace turns compassion towards the roots of suffering rather than its symptoms. You recall times when delusion, craving or hostility dominated your mind, and with each in-breath you draw that darkness into an orb of light at the heart, dissolving it and imagining yourself free. You then rehearse future situations that would once have triggered the same patterns. It closes by extending the same wish to someone you have known to be heavily afflicted.
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.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, the Four Aspirations from I to We Lama Alan · 22 minutes
After several quiet minutes settling the mind in its natural state, Lama Alan draws on what the Dalai Lama calls the deepest impulse of the heart: caring whether you suffer or flourish. You breathe a fourfold aspiration, to be free of hatred and ill will, of physical pain, of anxiety, and to be well and happy. Then the I becomes we, and the same four wishes widen through the room, the city and outwards in every direction.
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.
Tong-len (Taking & Giving) Glen Svensson · 88 minutes
Tonglen, giving and taking, practised twice: first for ourselves and a friend, then we choose one mental affliction to dissolve and one quality to cultivate, before opening out to others. Glen Svensson compares the traditional black rock of self-cherishing with the light at the heart he prefers, warning against holding the smoke to punish yourself. The aspiration to take the suffering and give happiness is the key, and once learnt it can be done on a single breath as you approach a difficult person.
Exchanging Self with Others Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
The second method for cultivating bodhicitta, historically called the secret method because it was considered too profound and difficult for the normal person, though Glen Svensson thinks that may be the reverse now, since it tackles self-cherishing head-on. The session opens with great loving kindness, and in a second practice we reflect on the disadvantages of a me first attitude from our own past. He cites a study in which people who use the words I, me and mine a lot had a 35 per cent greater risk of heart attack.
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.
Empathetic Joy Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Empathetic joy, mudita, as the corrective to the modern obsessive focus on the negative. Glen Svensson turns cognitive fusion on ourselves to explain low self-esteem and the difference between useful regret and useless guilt, and advises praising a behaviour rather than a person. In the guided practice we rejoice in another's good fortune and virtues, then travel the timeline of our life recalling every kindness received. He closes with the four thoughts that turn the mind.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Emptiness Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
A guided search for the me who is relaxing the body and focusing the mind, ending in the merely labelled me. Glen Svensson lays out the three ways things exist dependently, through causes and conditions, parts and labelling, using a seed becoming a sprout, a star that can as easily be counted as eighteen lines, and a pen that is a chewing stick to a dog. In a second practice we search for the body among its parts.
Suffering Glen Svensson · 75 minutes
We move mindfulness from the body to the mind, with a guided practice in which we watch thoughts, emotions and memories against the question of whether anything in the mind is stable and unchanging. Glen Svensson introduces the four noble truths and the word dukkha, whose etymology is a bad hole, an axle that never fitted its wheel. In a second practice we ask of a pleasant experience whether it is really in the nature of happiness. He tells of a retreat in Spain where repetitive food began to taste better once craving subsided.

Anger and aversion

Anger and aversion

More by subject

Human Friendly Events

Anger and aversion

Anger and aversion

More by subject

Log In

Human Friendly Events