Guilt and regret

28 teachings in the library are about this.

Session One - The Inner Critic, Guilt and Regret David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded September 26, 2026
David talks about the inner critic, which holds us to standards we would never set for anyone else and often hides behind perfectionism or never being able to rest. He explains why guilt and shame are about the actor, not the action, while with regret we see the mistake and resolve to do things differently. In the loving kindness practice, drawn from Sharon Salzberg, we recall a kind thing we have done, a quality we admire in ourselves, and what someone who loves us would say.
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 - Forgiving Ourselves and Letting Go of the Past David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A piece of negative self-talk is brought to mind and held there. David shows the mind as a brilliant storyteller, building a whole identity from one thing you said or did, then shifts the ground from thinking the thought to noticing you are having it. Grace comes next, for being human, and the words to the extent I am able, I forgive myself, I release. It closes with a hand on the chest and wishes to be kind to yourself.
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.
Dealing with Feelings of Regret David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded March 8, 2026
In the meditation we use slow breathing and full body awareness to settle body and mind, releasing whatever is on your mind with each out breath. David talks about the difference between healthy regret and corrosive guilt or shame, and sets out the four Rs from the Indo-Tibetan tradition: regret, rely or remind, remedy and resolve, as a way to work with feelings of regret.
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.
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.
D2S1 - Hovering, Comparison, and the Five Obscurations Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan introduces hovering, staying aware of being aware rather than dissolving into the breath, and traces suffering to grasping at what is not I or mine and failing to recognise what we are, the trap behind both low self-esteem and its mirror, feeling superior to others. He sets out the five obscurations, craving, malice, dullness, agitation and uncertainty, and shows how factors that arise naturally through practice act as their antidotes.
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.
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.
Session 3 - Mindfulness of the Mind David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded November 20, 2024
In the guided meditation on mindfulness of mind, eyes open in space, we count the breath before watching thoughts, memories and emotions arise, abide and dissolve without following or suppressing them. David contrasts passive witnessing in shamatha with discerningly recognising a lustful, hating or deluded mind here, using the Buddha's water and fire imagery for non-grasping. Questions cover guilt at doing nothing, locating anxiety in the body, and inquiry disturbing what it observes.
Guided Meditation - 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.
Gratitude & Appreciation David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded February 18, 2024
The meditation is a gratitude practice: we begin with the breath and the heartbeat before widening out to the room, the home and the people we are grateful for. David explains why gratitude and contentment are natural antidotes to craving: when the heart already feels full, there is nothing left to grasp for. He recommends keeping some form of gratitude practice, however simple, calling it one of the few habits nobody regrets starting.
D2S2 - What Is Actually Being Purified Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024
Compassion first, for everyone in the retreat, then for all beings. Tenpa quotes Garchen Rinpoche: what is to be purified is nothing but self grasping, and a single teardrop of compassion purifies negativities accumulated in aeons. He sets the discovery and cultivation views of buddha nature side by side. A second full practice uses the short mantra and the style revealed by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok at Larung Gar. An emailed question on guilt when recalling misdeeds is answered: acknowledge it, then shape the energy into regret.
D1S4 - Regret, Rejoice, Dedicate, and Six Remedial Actions Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 67 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024
Tenpa lays out a daily frame: threefold and fivefold aspirations in the morning, and at night a review that regrets, purifies, rejoices and dedicates. A guided practice starts the four powers with reliance, not regret, then remedy and resolve, with loving kindness for all beings as the remedy. Six kinds of remedial action follow, from the fourth Shechen Gyaltsab's commentary: reciting buddhas' names, making images, circumambulation, reciting sutras and tantras, mantras and meditating on emptiness.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Guilt and regret

Guilt and regret

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