Practice Library

Perception and projection

13 teachings in the library are about this.

• D4S2 - Wisdom, and What We Take Home David Oromith · 60 minutes · recorded August 10, 2026

  The session opens with a short practice in which we breathe in gratitude and compassion and breathe out anxieties and doubts. David turns to the last of the six perfections, wisdom, and to ignorance, the not knowing underneath attachment and aversion. He talks about impermanence, about the causes of happiness being inside rather than out there, and about holding the labels we put on ourselves more lightly. A longer practice of 21 breaths follows, in which we bring appreciation to body, home and relationships.

• Has Worrying Ever Stopped the Disaster? David Oromith · 10 minutes · recorded November 24, 2025

  David talks about anxiety as the mind trying to predict and control an uncertain future, generating countless what-ifs. He asks, did our anxiety ever actually prevent the disaster? He names patterns to watch, such as catastrophising and personalisation, and suggests being with uncertainty, so we find an uncomfortable feeling is not the end of the world.

• D7S3 - The Bardo as a Cinema, and Deities as Your Own Mind Lama Alan · 67 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

  The sense of moving from one life to the next in the bardo, compared to watching from inside a cinema: vivid, but never taking you anywhere. Lama Alan explains why Buddhas and their pure realms are displays of your own pristine awareness rather than places to travel to, and why emptiness must be realised before resting in open awareness or the insight will not hold. A guided practice continues the shift from calm abiding toward inverting awareness onto the observer.

• D6S1 - How View Transforms a Single Meditation Technique Lama Alan · 101 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

  The same meditation technique becomes shamatha, vipassana or Dzogchen depending on the view behind it. Lama Alan traces reification to an innate ignorance present from birth rather than acquired from culture, and explains why wrong views are the most destructive of unwholesome actions. Realising pristine awareness is a matter of degree, like seeing the moon through cloud, which is why questions turn to finding and trusting an authentic teacher.

• Guided Meditation - The Buddha's Words to Bahiya, Investigating Projection and the Sense of Self David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded April 3, 2025

  Following the Buddha's brief instructions to Bahiya, David takes the domains of experience one at a time, touch first, then sights, sounds and thoughts, attending to each with nothing added. Even the mental map of where a sensation sits is something you have put there. It closes by opening to all six domains at once and asking whether sensations are known is enough, with no I anywhere in it.

• The True Meaning of Non-Attachment and How It Sets You Free David Oromith · 53 minutes · recorded September 26, 2021

  David starts by saying what non-attachment is not: coldness, indifference, giving up relationships or pleasure, pointing to the Dalai Lama's own tears and laughter as evidence. He shows how attachment adds projection and expectation onto people and things, illustrated by a monitor smashed in the wind, causing disappointment the world did not create. The talk closes with a guided mindfulness of breathing in which we contemplate where attachment shows up in life. Questions cover forgiveness and boundaries.

• Guided Meditation - Open Presence, Approached Through the Buddha's Words to Bahiya Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Lama Alan Wallace leads you through the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, taking first the visual field, then sounds, then tactile sensations, then the movements of the mind, and in each one letting the seen be just the seen. You observe appearances arising in space with no outside, no inside and no owner. Like a bale of hay whose cord is cut, your awareness then unravels in all directions into open presence, sustained in silence.

• 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 - Open Awareness of the Six Senses, Noting Patterns of Causality Lama Alan · 22 minutes

  You open your awareness to all six sense fields and rest there without distraction or grasping. Rather than simply noting what arises, Lama Alan invites a wider view, watching how one appearance gives rise to another, a thought to an emotion, a sensation to a thought. There is no mechanism to find, only patterns of dependence. You let the will stay passive, taking no ownership, and the session continues in silence.

• Guided Meditation - Vipashyana, Searching the Mind for Shape, Size and Location Lama Alan · 24 minutes

  With the body settled and your eyes partly open, Lama Alan asks you to place your mind in the space before you, then look for whatever it was you placed. Is there a single entity that thinks, remembers and perceives? Is it the same from moment to moment? The inquiry narrows to one question: if the mind exists it must have characteristics, so does it have shape, size or location? It ends with you still searching, in silence.

• Guided Meditation - Body Scan, Moving a Three-Dimensional Field of Awareness Through the Body Lama Alan · 41 minutes

  Lama Alan moves a field of awareness slowly through the whole body, beginning as a small patch at the crown of the head and widening until it is three-dimensional. It travels down the head, arms, torso, legs and out to the toes, stabilising on each in breath and shifting on each out breath. Three faster sweeps follow, then the field opens to illuminate the whole body at once, with nothing added to what is sensed.

• D2S2 - In the Seen, Just the Seen Lama Alan · 46 minutes

  The Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, in the seen let there be just the seen, becomes a twenty four minute guided practice. We take attention in turn to the visual, auditory, tactile and mental fields, with as little projection as possible. Of everything that appears we then ask whether any of it is unchanging, a true cause of happiness, actually yours, or actually you. Lama Alan follows with a challenge to materialism, arguing that nothing we directly experience is located in physical space.

• D2S1 - Unawareness and Delusion, the Real and the Imaginary Lama Alan · 83 minutes

  Cognitive intelligence is telling what reality is presenting from what we project upon it. Lama Alan begins with unawareness and delusion, the twofold root of suffering, then a reflection a camera focuses two metres behind the mirror, a Big Dipper only mental consciousness can see, and a face on Mars. He closes on three points: taking the impermanent for permanent, what is not a true source of happiness for one, and what is not I or mine for I and mine. Teaching only, no practice in this part.

More by subject

• Anger and aversion 143
• Attachment and craving 123
• The nature of mind 93
• Emptiness 84
• The bodhisattva path 81
• Anxiety and fear 79
• Death and dying 77
• Distraction and attention 73
• Sleep and rest 66
• Buddhist psychology 59
• Illness and pain 57
• Karma 57
• Teacher and student 56
• Habits and change 53
• Genuine happiness and wellbeing 52
• Patience, forbearance and acceptance 50
• Impermanence 46
• Relaxation 43
• Gratitude and appreciation 42
• Relationships and family 38
• Motivation and intention 37
• Tantra and Vajrayana 37
• Depression and low mood 32
• Dream yoga 32
• Comparison and self-cherishing 31
• Dreams and sleep 31
• Guilt and regret 28
• Self-criticism and shame 28
• Work and daily life 28
• Rebirth and continuity 26
• Lineage and tradition 23
• Buddha nature 22
• The four noble truths 22
• Ethics and precepts 21
• Stress and burnout 21
• Emotional balance 19
• Generosity and dana 18
• Forgiveness 17
• Consciousness and science 15
• The six perfections (paramitas) 15
• Enthusiastic effort (virya) 14
• Sangha and community 14
• The eight worldly concerns 14
• The four thoughts that turn the mind 14
• Grief and loss 13
• Dependent origination 12
• Refuge 11
• Not-self (anatta) 10
• Attentional balance 9
• Ecology and the climate 7
• Cognitive balance 6
• Nature and the outdoors 6
• The eightfold path 5
• Peace and conflict 4
• The sixfold matrix of mental balance 4
• Introspection and self-monitoring 3
• Secular mindfulness 3
• Self-compassion 3
• Symbolism and iconography 3
• Spiritual materialism and bypassing 1
• The three marks of existence 1