Tantra and Vajrayana

37 teachings in the library are about this.

S3 - Introduction to Dzogchen David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded March 18, 2026
David calls Dzogchen the most accessible of the three, and the pinnacle in the Nyingma school. Great Perfection points not at something to strive for but at a nature already self-perfected, and where Mahamudra works up through ordinary mind, Dzogchen introduces rigpa from the start. Ground, path and fruition follow, with tekcho and the pointing out instructions a teacher may give. It closes with a practice in which we look for where thoughts happen, and a reflection called The Unbound Sky.
S2 - Introduction to Mahamudra David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded March 11, 2026
David sets out the path as a straight one, shamatha then vipashyana cutting through to pristine awareness, and Garchen Rinpoche's answer that Mahamudra alone is sufficient. Mahamudra takes the mind itself as its object rather than reasoning through the five aggregates, cutting the tree at its base. In an experiment David reads out, we rest attention as the flashlight rather than what it lights. It closes in the stillness of awareness while thoughts move, then asks where the mind is.
S1 - The Path of Vajrayana David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded March 5, 2026
David places Vajrayana in context, as a branch of the Mahayana that throws nothing out and makes no sense without renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness beneath it. Then deity yoga, where the ordinary self dissolves into emptiness and is visualised as Tara or Avalokiteshvara, taking the fruit as the path. Empowerment brings lifelong commitments, and seeing the teacher as a Buddha is no licence to ignore red flags. The evening closes with a public Avalokiteshvara practice, with mantra likened to a lullaby.
D8S4 - The Substrate Trap, and the Moon Behind the Clouds Lama Alan · 37 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Why resting in substrate consciousness, however blissful and still, is not yet realisation of pristine awareness, since dharmakaya is non-dual with space itself rather than one mind or many. Lama Alan answers questions on reading Dudjom Lingpa's text without prior empowerment, and on what a first glimpse of rigpa is worth, using the image of the moon seen through thinning cloud rather than mistaking it for full realisation. He closes by encouraging the group not to dwell on unworthiness.
D8S3 - Distinguishing Mind from Primordial Awareness Lama Alan · 72 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan lays out three ways an ordinary mind gets mistaken for pristine awareness, from simply observing thoughts to resting in a substrate consciousness that feels blissful and still but is not yet realisation. He uses lucid dreaming to explain how recognising appearances as empty works the same way, then turns to the difference between conditioned and primordial consciousness, weighing in on the debate over what happens to an arhat at death.
D8S2 - The Text's Closing Verses, and Acquiring Confidence Lama Alan · 55 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The commentary reaches the end of Dudjom Lingpa's prose, tracing his own progress through the stages of realisation and the closing dedication verses of the text. Lama Alan explains why realising emptiness must go all the way down, likened to a nail driven flush with wood against one hammered below the surface, and why seeing the self as constructed rather than inherently existent makes choosing to see oneself as a Buddha a genuine option.
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.
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.
D2S1 - The Liturgy, and Whether Dzogchen Must Wait Lama Alan · 95 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The morning liturgy is recited once in Tibetan, once in English and once in silence, neither abandoned nor performed by rote. A guided Dzogchen practice follows, in which we rest awareness in stillness while attending to the fluctuations in the space of the body. The text then opens with Dudjom Lingpa stating plainly what he has realised, and the question Lama Alan spends the session on is whether Dzogchen must wait until the generation and completion stages are finished.
Part Two - The Spiritual Warrior, and the Mind Training Commitments Ondy Willson · 98 minutes · recorded October 26, 2024
The spiritual warrior is on an inner crusade, not one aimed at anybody else. The tantric view that we are already enlightened and held back by a small idea of ourselves, a long visualisation that breaks the rock of ego around Buddha nature, fear as the thing that blocks courage, and the commitments of the seven point mind training read through and argued over.
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.
D3S2 - Tonglen, and Vajrasattva as Guru Yoga Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024
Giving and taking, guided from a past and future self out to one being in need, a group, then all beings, the light given out as Vajrasattva's body, mantra syllables, vajra and bell. Tenpa adds the healing adaptations, nectar heavy, warming or cooling, then shows how Vajrasattva practice itself can serve as guru yoga, the mantra recited in the manner of supplication and the nectar granting the four empowerments as it fills the four chakras. An empowerment is needed only to visualise yourself as the deity.
D1S2 - Why Purification Came West, and Inviting the Lineage Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024
Tenpa traces how three month Vajrasattva retreats came to be offered to Western practitioners from the 1970s, a tradition begun by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and restates the key points of body, speech and mind. Loving kindness is guided for oneself, then for everyone on the retreat, then for all beings. The teaching turns to supplicating the lineage, and to mepa, the appreciation that Vajrayana rests on. A second practice invites that inspiration as light and nectar entering through the crown.
The Four Noble Truths: The Truth of Suffering David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded October 3, 2023
The session opens with a short guided meditation in which we ground awareness in the body, followed by refuge and bodhicitta. David opens the first noble truth using a doctor's diagnosis as the model, and the story of the nun whose patched robe leads her to a cat, a cow and a field. He sets out the three types of suffering, gross pain, the suffering of change, and pervasive conditioned existence. Questions cover addiction and letting go of attachment to pleasurable moments.
The Spread Of Buddhism: Three Main Branches of Practice David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded September 19, 2023
This session opens with a short settling meditation and a going for refuge, then David traces how Buddhism divided into Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, using the mustard seed story to show how one teaching suits different people, and a burning building image to contrast liberation with the bodhisattva's wish to help others out too. He explains nirvana against full enlightenment, and the guru bond distinctive to Vajrayana. Questions cover chanting and finding a teacher without turning sectarian.
D6S3 - The Brain Cannot Generate Consciousness, and Eva Natanya's Path Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 86 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Closing questions, then a final guided practice. Lama Alan argues that emergent properties of physical phenomena are always physical, so there is no evidence that the brain generates consciousness, and that technological access to the substrate consciousness would liberate nobody. Eva Natanya describes her path from Zen through the Gelug tradition into Vajrayana. She closes by leading his fourfold vision quest: what you long to become, what help you need, what must change in you, and what you will offer.
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.
D2S3 - Mental Afflictions, and Whether You Need a Guru Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
In the vipashyana practice on the mind itself we count the breath to ten, then watch what disturbs the mind's equilibrium, asking whether any mental event is stable, satisfying or yours. Answering questions afterwards, Lama Alan repeats the Dalai Lama's answer on needing a guru: no, but it can save you a lot of time. Eva Natanya adds Gregory of Sinai's warning against practising without a spiritual father. Grief at a child's death, Lama Alan says, is a symptom and not a mental affliction.
S3 - Questions on Guru Yoga and Lineage Eva Natanya · 59 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Questions put to Eva Natanya, starting with where to begin reading in the hesychast tradition: the Philokalia, and the contemporary writing of Father Silouan. She answers at length on whether a Christian can practise Dzogchen ngondro with Christ as root lama, and why she would keep a visualisation as it was transmitted while holding guru and yidam as inseparable. Further answers cover how lineage and authorisation work, and what the words Buddha, guru and lama actually carry.
S2 - Christ as Yidam Eva Natanya · 90 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Eva Natanya takes the phrase from the Council of Chalcedon, without confusion and without division, and asks what it means to hold Christ as yidam as well as guru. She reads briefly from the chapter on obedience in The Ladder of Divine Ascent, setting John Climacus on examining a spiritual father and then not judging him beside the Lamrim instruction to list a teacher's good qualities and never begin a list of faults. The session closes with a guided meditation on the light at the heart.
S1 - Levels of Devotion to the Teacher Eva Natanya · 98 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Devotion has a lot to do with listening, and Eva Natanya opens with a fifteen minute meditation on the elements and on the heart's own deepest plea. The teaching sets out how the teacher is regarded in the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana, and where reifying a teacher turns reverence into idolatry. She compares committing to a yidam with falling in love, since one does not get to choose the form. She closes with a guided visualisation in which we bring our own teacher to mind as light.
P2 - Meditation, Conduct and Dying Well Lama Alan · 139 minutes · recorded January 1, 2017
Yangthang Rinpoche's text is blunt: without the view there is no meditation, only a cheap imitation of it, and poor preparation for death. The session opens with a guided practice in which we probe the mind for its colour, origin, location and destination. He works through meditation and conduct, the nine kinds of activity to be released, guru yoga and the four empowerments, why clinging to bliss, luminosity or non-conceptuality casts you into the desire, form and formless realms, and how to recognise the ground at death.
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.
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.
Nature of Mind Glen Svensson · 79 minutes
The mind itself becomes the object. Glen Svensson takes the shamatha practice of resting in awareness and adds questioning to it, which is what carries it over into vipashyana: who is releasing, who is concentrating, who is resting? He maps the three levels of Mahamudra and the nine vehicles of Dzogchen onto coarse mind, substrate consciousness and pristine awareness, and defines mind as that which is clear and knowing.
Part III: Unifying Insight and Action Ian Baker · 152 minutes
The view carried into conduct, around Chatral Rinpoche's instruction that action should not be lost in the view, nor the view lost when acting. Ian Baker reads the mahasiddha Siddharajni on the inner fire burning the chakra deities, and places tummo as the foundation of the six yogas. Asked about his practice, he describes lungom, a wind meditation of held breath and running in the Scottish forest, gazing at the sky until the mind moves. Questions take in doubt as a path, and Kali as Troma Nakmo.
Part II: Perfecting the Path Ian Baker · 150 minutes
Turning from view to practice, Ian Baker reads Dudjom Rinpoche's instructions for mountain retreat on how thoughts liberate themselves: first like meeting someone you already know, then a snake unbinding itself, finally a thief in an empty house. The longest stretch is korde rushen, the Dzogchen preliminaries: acting out the six realms as psychodrama, clearing them along the central channel with om ah hung, then the secret practices of body, voice and mind. Trekcho, togal and dark retreat are described rather than taught.
Part I: Refining the View Ian Baker · 158 minutes
Ian Baker traces how Dzogchen developed, from early formulations close to Chan through their absorption into mainstream Tibetan tantric Buddhism. He reads the view from images of Samantabhadra and Padmasambhava, and describes his own training under Chatral Rinpoche, who sent him to a cave for a month with a bag of tsampa. Before there was Dzogchen there was Sahajayana, Saraha's innate bliss. A talk and questions, no guided practice, closing with a request to find a poem or song expressing the view.
Part IV: Nourishing the Subtle Body Ian Baker · 197 minutes
Chulen, the Tibetan word for rasayana, substances that support practice and realisation, is the subject here. Ian Baker reads out a treasure text describing five magical herbs said to grow in the womb of the goddess Vajrayogini in lower Pemako, then traces herbal medicine as one of five means of attaining siddhi through the Abhidharmakosha and Patanjali, mercury in the Kalachakra, and what soma was. Practical examples follow, from onion juice and honey for inner fire to shilajit in long retreat, then an hour of questions.
Part III: Approaching the Great Perfection Ian Baker · 197 minutes
Ian Baker turns from landscape to the six yogas of Naropa, read through a seminar Chogyam Trungpa gave in the 1970s: illusory body, inner fire, karma mudra, clear light, dream, transference of consciousness and the bardos. He tells the story of the prince who believed in neither islands nor princesses nor God, and sets Longchenpa beside Milarepa, for whom nothing compares with the yoga of inner fire. Questions follow on Mahamudra and Dzogchen, kundalini and tummo, and ethics for Vajrayana in the West.
Part II: Outer and Inner Pilgrimage in Dzogchen Tantra Ian Baker · 193 minutes
The route continues past the waterfall into lower Pemako, now in Arunachal Pradesh, up the Yangsang Chu, which the Tibetan texts describe as the uterine channel of Vajrayogini. Ian Baker describes the Adi and Mishmi communities and the Adi shamans, then turns to tummo, the postures that open the lower gates, and merging the mind stream with the sound of a waterfall. He closes with the search with the amchi Sherab for five magical plants named in the texts. The discussion asks who tantric practice suits.
Mind & Mandalas - Part Three Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · Ian Baker · 62 minutes
Questions from those listening. Eva Natanya gives Tsongkhapa's answer to why realising emptiness alone is not enough: living beings need form, and a Buddha must be able to manifest in form. Ian Baker takes the objection that visualisation is a flight simulator rather than a flight, and agrees it can become a trap. Lama Alan Wallace sets out what Atisha and Tsongkhapa said about consort practice, who it is not for, and how badly it has been abused. He closes on Dudjom Lingpa's Buddhahood Without Meditation, and how much effort it takes to reach the effortless.
Mind & Mandalas - Part Two Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · Ian Baker · 93 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace replies to both presentations with a single image, Samantabhadra as the personification of one's own pristine awareness, and argues that guru yoga, not deity generation, is the one indispensable support for Dzogchen. He traces what each vehicle does with the mental afflictions, from counteracting them to their revealing their true face. Ian Baker brings in Milarepa and Yeshe Tsogyal on tummo, Lama Alan Wallace turns to quantum physics and space-time being doomed, and Eva Natanya closes on mind and the vital energies being of one nature but distinct in function.
Mind & Mandalas - Part One Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · Ian Baker · 88 minutes
Ian Baker opens with an illustrated tour of the mandala, from scroll paintings and sand mandalas to Borobudur, Samye and Mount Kailash, then inward to the chakras and the mandala of the completion stage. Eva Natanya answers from Tsongkhapa's Guhyasamaja commentaries: it is the wisdom realising emptiness that arises as the deity, never an ordinary sense of identity made to look like a Buddha. They close on how practices born outside monasticism were absorbed into it. Teaching and dialogue, with no guided practice.
Session 3 - Q&A Vesna A. Wallace · 46 minutes
Questions to Vesna A. Wallace after the two talks. She explains why the mirror here is a prognostic mirror rather than a dusty one to be cleaned, and why the elements are ultimately five lights of a Buddha's wisdom. Other answers cover how elaborate visualisation diminishes the habitual propensities of samsara while staying a conceptual bridge, why ordinary bliss differs from the bliss of nirvana only in being conditioned, and how brain and mind differ. She closes on drawing the side channels into the central channel.
Session 2 - 'Perception' Vesna A. Wallace · 41 minutes
Perception in the Kalachakra system, where the chakras, the channels and the vital energies shape what can be seen at all. Vesna A. Wallace traces how the waking, dreaming, deep sleep and blissful states arise from drops in the forehead, throat, heart and navel chakras, then follows the six phase yoga through its night time and daytime signs to the image of emptiness. She draws on the Stainless Light commentary and its account of the five eyes. A presentation only, with no practice.
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.

Tantra and Vajrayana

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