Practice Library

Refuge

11 teachings in the library are about this.

• Session Three - Refuge, and the Three Higher Trainings David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded November 3, 2025

  Refuge is confidence born of experience rather than blind faith, and David uses the trust we place in an airline pilot to say why. He completes the text with the three higher trainings of ethics, mental balance and wisdom, and closes on the parable of the unruly prince, the wise minister and the strong warrior.

• 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.

• D3S1 - Refuge, Devotion and the Two Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 106 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

  The refuge and bodhicitta prayers, examined line by line, with the image of trusting a dentist to explain what taking refuge means. Lama Alan introduces guru yoga and a self-empowerment visualisation with Padmasambhava, then leads a breathing practice in which we let go of identifying with sensations as mine, using a scratched phone and an injured knee as examples. The session ends with the three common preliminaries: precious human life, impermanence and suffering.

• Session 1 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded June 11, 2025

  This first session on the Eight Verses of Training the Mind opens with a guided meditation on settling the body, taking refuge and generating bodhicitta. David gives the lineage of Geshe Langri Thangpa, reads the text, then works through the first two verses: cherishing all beings as the basis of practice and happiness, and taking the humble position rather than seeing ourselves as important. Stories of Atisha and Drom Tonpa illustrate humility, and questions cover therapeutic lying and patience.

• Session 5 - Diligence, Meditation & Wisdom David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025

  A guided meditation on refuge and bodhicitta weaves earlier themes together: visualising the Buddha, taking refuge, the four immeasurables, and his light dissolving into one's heart. David covers the final three paramitas: joyful diligence, with its three kinds of enthusiasm and matching laziness, concentration and its nine stages towards shamatha, and wisdom as the direct insight into emptiness underlying all the others. A question asks what it means to ask the Buddha for guidance.

• 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 1 - An Overview & Introduction to Karma David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded July 7, 2024

  In the guided meditation on refuge and bodhicitta we count fourteen rounds of breath and visualise the Buddha and the three jewels. David lays out the basic law of karma: intention in the mind is what makes an act virtuous or non-virtuous, and karma is definite, expandable, never arises without its cause, and its seeds are never lost. He also touches on what continues between lives. Questions range from free will to why kindness does not stop hard things happening.

• Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded November 28, 2023

  This session opens with a short settling practice, slow breaths and recalling one's intention, before David explains what refuge means: trust in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, tested against experience, not a creed to sign up to. He works through the five lay vows, avoiding killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxicants, including his own view on vegetarianism. Questions cover confusion between centres and keeping a Christian upbringing alongside this path, before the ceremony itself.

• 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.

• Guided Meditation - Refuge, Bodhicitta and Guru Yoga, Resting in Awareness of Awareness Lama Alan · 23 minutes

  You bring to mind an enlightened being in whom you feel deep trust, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha until you have become a refuge for others, and arouse bodhicitta as your motivation. Lama Alan then invites you to see that being as your own guru, receiving rays of light that transmute body, speech and mind until the guru dissolves into your heart. Releasing the visualisation, you rest in awareness of awareness.

• 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.

More by subject

• Anger and aversion 143
• Attachment and craving 124
• 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 60
• 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
• Perception and projection 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
• 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