Rebirth and continuity

25 teachings in the library are about this.

Session 4 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded July 2, 2025
In tonglen we begin with a short visualisation of receiving love, then breathe in a loved one's suffering as a dark cloud, transform it at the heart, and send back well-being, widening out to groups: guided throughout. David covers verse seven, on secretly taking on others' pain, and verse eight on the eight worldly concerns and emptiness, illustrated with bread that is empty of breadness. Tessa asks about research into benefits for others; Michelle raises clutter and body image.
D4S4 - Full Shamatha, and Whether Consciousness Survives Death Lama Alan · 71 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
In the guided practice we narrow attention from the body to the space of the mind, before Lama Alan turns to what marks a full achievement of shamatha: a physical lightness and mental suppleness he traces through the ninth Karmapa, Atisha and Tsongkhapa. He argues shamatha, not vipassana or tantra, is the tool for testing whether consciousness continues after death, drawing on past life research.
D3S2 - Guru Devotion Across the Three Vehicles Lama Alan · 71 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Whether the universe rises to meet genuine effort toward wellbeing, or whether realisation simply depends on luck, training or momentum from past lives. In this breathing practice we explore the body's capacity to heal and not getting caught in the grip of emotion. Lama Alan sets out three ways of relating to a teacher, from the Buddha's emissary to the Vajrayana view of guru as Buddha, and how each can curdle into idolatry if misunderstood.
Session Four - Impermanence Makes Rebirth Possible David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded April 14, 2025
This final session on emptiness opens with a guided Awareness of Awareness practice, eyes open, with Padmasambhava's question of what is aware dropped in gently. The rest is a live question and answer from emails sent during the week: why impermanence is what makes rebirth possible, how karma explains a joy that seems to come from nowhere, and what is aware once no self can be found. David also covers the unsettling shaken feeling as insight deepens, and the difference between mind and conscience.
Session 3 - Cultivating Bodhicitta & Generosity David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded February 5, 2025
In the guided meditation we work through the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for cultivating bodhicitta, recognising all beings as having once been a mother, then building gratitude, loving-kindness and great resolve. David contrasts this with the equalising and exchanging method, then turns to the first paramita, generosity, described as a state of mind rather than an act, using the story of a poor woman's simple offering to the Buddha. Questions cover how expectation can quietly poison giving.
Guided Meditation - This Precious Human Life David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded January 22, 2025
David begins from Buddha nature, the clear mind said to be present in everyone and impossible to lose or damage, then works through how rarely the conditions to recognise it come together: a human birth at all, the time and the inclination to practise, teachers, books and people who support you. It ends in going for refuge and a resolve to use this life well.
Guided Meditation - Recognising the Kindness of All Beings David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Beginning again from the recognition that every being has been your mother, we go through the kindness itself: the nine painstaking months carried, the night feeds, the bathing, the silly faces made just to raise a smile, the hands held through first steps, the words repeated until you could form them. Each stage is extended to all beings across countless lives. It closes on this life, and on the food, clothing and home that come from others' work.
Guided Meditation - The Beginningless Continuum of Mind David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
We turn attention to the thing we call mind, where nothing static can be found, only moment to moment processes, a thought arising one moment and passing the next. The continuum is traced back through birth to the first consciousness of a foetus, which must have had its own prior cause. Since the lives are countless, so are the mothers, and David asks you to see every being you meet as one of them.
D5S2 - The Emptiness of Self and the Nature of Awareness David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
David guides a practice of watching thoughts arise and dissolve without following them, a step toward resting in awareness itself. He turns to absolute bodhicitta, using a plant pot and an empty bank balance to show how self and things are labels placed over shifting causes and conditions rather than solid entities. Questions cover rebirth, relationships, and resting in pristine awareness.
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.
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.
D2S1 - Verse One: The Precious Human Life David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded August 31, 2024
Meditation posture comes first, then a Fourfold Vision Quest contemplation on what would bring lasting meaning and what to offer the world. David turns to the first verse, on making full use of a rare and precious human life, covering the eight freedoms, ten endowments and the three stages of study, reflection and meditation. Questions cover turning demanding work into practice and the story of tolerating harm from lice, which comes down to capacity, since faked patience is not practice.
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.
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.
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.
The Four Noble Truths: The Causes (Origin) of Suffering David Oromith · 78 minutes · recorded October 10, 2023
The session begins with a short ten minute practice on the breath, with refuge and bodhicitta. David turns to the second noble truth, contrasting craving in the Theravada with ignorance and karma in the Mahayana, and uses a cup and a bank account to explain emptiness and dependent origination. Questions range across karma, rebirth, labels and identity, and using emptiness to loosen attachment to people we love.
D2S2 - Examine the Character of Unborn Awareness Lama Alan · 88 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Atisha turns the enquiry back on the observer: examine the character of unborn awareness. Lama Alan Wallace asks when exactly a human mind comes into existence and when it ceases, answers that we define it and nature does not, and that in the Madhyamaka view the emptiness of your own mind is nirvana. In the guided practice we rest in awareness of awareness, then thrust that attention into the mind that is aware. Questions follow on choosing a shamatha method and on evidence for rebirth.
D1S1 - The Homage and the Foundations Lama Alan · 127 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Lama Alan Wallace opens his commentary on Dudjom Rinpoche's five page manual, the first Dzogchen text Gyatrul Rinpoche taught him thirty one years ago. He works through the title and the homage to Dorje Drolo, and explains why resting in pristine awareness is the most ferocious response to the maras. Gyatrul Rinpoche's commentary supplies what the root text leaves out: the four revolutions in outlook, refuge and bodhicitta. It closes with a guided meditation on motivation.
D3S3 - The Jesus Prayer Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Eva Natanya takes the Jesus prayer apart word by word, from its root in the parable of the tax collector to the Greek Father Silouan spoke to her the week before, arguing that eleison is not simply mercy but hesed, the divine energy by which God gives the gift of himself: Lord, grant us what you are. A short guided prayer of the heart follows. In the questions, Lama Alan explains why compassion plays the prominent role in Buddhism that forgiveness plays in Christianity.
D2S1 - The Dzogchen Answer to Suffering Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 122 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Lama Alan Wallace gives the Dzogchen answer to why we suffer: we grasp at a body and mind that are neither I nor mine, and fail to recognise awareness that is already signless, boundless and all luminous. In the guided practice we rest in the awareness of being aware, eyes open, without identifying with whatever arises. Eva Natanya raises past lives as the elephant in the room, and is asked what becomes of those who lived before Christ if salvation is a one time offer.
D2S5 - Evening Questions on Mind and Memory Lama Alan · 89 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
One silent period, each person following whichever method of mindfulness of breathing benefits them most. The rest of the evening goes to written questions. Lama Alan Wallace argues that memories are stored in the substrate consciousness rather than the brain, since your apps are not stored in your keyboard. He gives consciousness two defining characteristics, making appearances manifest and knowing, and calls panpsychism, integrated information theory included, the last gasp of materialism.
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 Four - The Fourth Time, and a Laboratory for Contemplatives Lama Alan · 51 minutes
In the guided practice we settle into awareness of awareness and then turn to inquiry: look for the observer, and find that it has no shape, colour, size or location, yet cannot be called non-existent either. He then has you rest in the emptiness of your own mind and open all six sense doors. Lama Alan explains ground, path and fruition, and the fourth time reached by way of the present moment. He describes the contemplative centre he is creating in Tuscany, and answers a question on reincarnation.
D1S2 - The Fourfold Vision Quest, and What Free Will Means Lama Alan · 67 minutes
We cultivate wise desire through imagination, rather than by quieting the mind. Lama Alan guides a twenty four minute fourfold vision quest, after the Native American tradition: what would make you truly happy, what would you love to receive from the world, how would you love to transform, and what would you love to offer. Then addiction to sensory and intellectual stimulation, craving and attachment, and free will defined as making choices conducive to one's own and others' good. Questions turn to rebirth and resurrection.
Session 1 - 'Imagination' Vesna A. Wallace · 38 minutes
Vesna A. Wallace argues that in tantric Buddhism the imagined is not ultimately less real than what the senses report, and that what practice makes imaginable surpasses David Hume's mere logical possibility. She then works through three early twentieth century Mongolian ritual texts from the Kalachakra tradition: one performed for a person who has died, praying for their rebirth in Shambhala, one on how to recite a tantra, and one joining that recitation to guru yoga. A lecture throughout, with no guided practice.

Rebirth and continuity

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