The bodhisattva path

80 teachings in the library are about this.

Guided Meditation - Avalokiteshvara, Visualisation and Mantra David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded March 5, 2026
A full Avalokiteshvara practice led line by line. You visualise the four armed form of compassion, with friends and family beside you, difficult people in front and all beings filling the space, then recite refuge and bodhicitta and contemplate the four immeasurables. The mantra comes with light purifying body, speech and mind, then the eight verses of training the mind, a dissolution into your heart, and dedication.
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.
Session Two - Enthusiasm, People Pleasing and Contemplation David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded October 15, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we drop from body sensation into resting in bare awareness itself, then continues through generosity, joyful effort and concentration among the six perfections. David explains the three kinds of giving, why generosity is spoiled by wanting something back, and pictures contentment and gratitude as floating in a reservoir, before setting out the three levels of wisdom: study, contemplation and meditation. Questions cover where generosity shades into people pleasing.
Guided Meditation - Buddha Visualisation, Refuge and Bodhicitta David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded September 17, 2025
Shakyamuni Buddha visualised in the space in front of you, felt as a presence rather than seen clearly, and inseparable from your own teachers. You go for refuge, then turn to the sentient beings all around and arouse bodhicitta. White light from the Buddha purifies you, and at the end the Buddha dissolves into that light and into you.
S1 - Refuge in Good Company David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded September 3, 2025
Loving kindness is directed towards spiritual friends: early influences, one particular friend, the wider sangha and the lineage of teachers, guided throughout. David explores why the Buddha called admirable friendship the whole of the path, using the story of the monk Magiya, then covers sangha's pitfalls, groupthink, cliques, cult-like devotion and overdependence, and the qualities of authentic friendship. Michelle compares Samadhi to another group; Tracy asks where the community gathers.
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.
Session 3 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded June 26, 2025
Loving kindness and compassion are extended from self to a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person and finally a wide group, guided throughout as preparation for next week's tonglen practice. David works through verses five and six of the Eight Verses: offering the victory rather than retaliating, and viewing someone who wrongs us as a teacher, illustrated with the story of the borrowed baby. Members share how they tried the practice at home and at work.
Session 2 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded June 18, 2025
This second session opens with a twenty minute meditation in which we settle body and mind, then recite the eight verses together. David works through the third verse on watching the mind and applying antidotes to afflictions, then the fourth on cherishing difficult people as a rare chance to practise compassion. A poll shows self cherishing can hide inside low self esteem as much as pride. Questions cover compassion versus empathy, accepting compliments, and giving victory to others.
D4S5 - Bodhicitta's Stages and Whether Shamatha Comes First Lama Alan · 104 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Questions on whether one can enter the Bodhisattva path without shamatha lead Lama Alan through the stages of bodhicitta, from its first spontaneous arising to the irreversible form reinforced by wisdom. Wrathful teachers, one placing a boy unharmed in a bonfire, show ferocity as one of four compassionate modes of teaching. He explains why he critiques materialism, not materialists, and why Buddhists never chase people, as the newly enlightened Buddha let the first man he met walk away.
D5S1 - Six Domains of Practice, and Why Mind Is Not the Brain Lama Alan · 119 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Morning devotions and mantra lead into a guided practice in which we move through the six domains of experience, from sight and sound to the space of the mind alone. Lama Alan works through Dudjom Lingpa's dream teaching from Padmasambhava on the stages of realisation, using ice and water, night and day, to distinguish ordinary mind from pristine awareness, then argues that mental events are correlated with brain activity but never transform into it.
Guided Meditation - Taking Refuge and Generating Bodhicitta David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded June 11, 2025
A long settling of the body first, and a count of twenty one breaths. Then the Buddha is imagined in front of you, inseparable from your own teachers and surrounded by all other beings, and you contemplate what the Buddha, the teachings and the community mean to you before going for refuge. It closes with white light received at the heart and passed on to all of them.
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.
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part Two) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded May 7, 2025
This second session opens with a gentle practice in which we breathe space and compassion around whatever despair, anger or fear arises when facing the world's crises. David then maps the Eightfold Path onto engaged action, from authentic view and speech through to effort, and reads several of Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts on non-attachment to views, speech and livelihood. Questions cover the ethics of the arms trade during the war in Ukraine and how to pass on values to children without imposing them.
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part One) David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded May 1, 2025
The first of two sessions opens with a twenty minute guided meditation from Lama Rod Owens in which we attend to sensations of earth, air, water and fire in the body before extending that awareness to the natural world. David sets out the bodhisattva's aspiration to benefit all beings, drawing on the Buddha's own example and the Dalai Lama's idea of universal responsibility. Questions range across grief at ecological crisis to a member's own difficult family situation.
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 Three - Perception, Emptiness and Clarity of Mind David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded April 3, 2025
Teaching only this week, with no guided meditation until the close. David examines how appearances such as colour or a table are constructed by the senses and mind rather than known directly, drawing on Guy Armstrong and Donald Hoffman's account of perception, before describing mind as the union of emptiness, clarity and compassionate responsiveness, or Buddha nature. The session ends with an eyes open meditation in which we rest in awareness without an object, then questions on that practice.
Session Two - The Thread That Continues David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded March 26, 2025
The evening opens with a brief settling meditation, then David works through written questions on emptiness: the four point analysis for locating a self, the example of a liver, and how a personal self, a subtle continuum of consciousness and Buddha nature relate across lifetimes, drawn out through the dream analogy. Discussion runs throughout, and it closes with a guided practice on the instruction that seeing is only seeing, hearing as only hearing, across all six senses.
Session One - Looking for the Chairness David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded March 19, 2025
The session opens with a settling meditation on the breath, with refuge and bodhichitta for those who want them. David introduces emptiness as the absence of a findable, independent essence, taking a wooden chair apart to ask where the chairness is. A guided analysis then searches body and mind for the 'I' that gets embarrassed or offended. Questions cover non-duality and the worry that emptiness is nihilism.
Guided Meditation - Refuge and Bodhicitta with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025
Beginning from how rare this human life is, David has you visualise Shakyamuni Buddha in the space before you, with all other beings gathered around. You recite the words of refuge, contemplate the four immeasurables, then rouse bodhicitta. The Buddha finally dissolves into golden light and merges into your heart, and light then radiates out from you to every being.
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.
Session 4 - Ethics & Patience David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded February 13, 2025
In the guided Tonglen practice we breathe in a loved one's suffering, then a wider crowd's, as dark smoke dissolved at the heart, and breathe out light and wellbeing in return. David turns to ethics as the foundation of practice, likening unruly behaviour to bashing holes in a leaking boat, then works through three kinds of patience: staying calm when provoked, accepting what cannot be changed, and being patient with slow progress. One shares how the quicksand image helped with her own anger.
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.
Session 2 - Exploring Bodhicitta David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025
A guided practice weaves the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and an enemy. David explains how these four give rise to great compassion and then bodhicitta, and reads passages from the Dalai Lama on its benefits for health, relationships and facing an enemy without anger. Questions cover holding all beings in mind by caring for everyone we actually meet. A short closing meditation follows.
Session 1 - Introduction David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded January 22, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle the body, then a contemplation on the rarity and preciousness of this human life. David defines the Mahayana path against the Theravada and introduces bodhicitta, using the similes of gold buried in rubbish and dirt suspended in water to show that our afflictions are not fixed but can be removed. Questions from the group explore whether kindness can pass to others without deliberate intention. A brief closing meditation follows.
Day 7 - Closing Discussion David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded January 6, 2025
The final morning revisits the fourfold vision quest meditation, held with loving kindness: what would bring true happiness, what is needed from others, how to transform, and what to offer the world. The group recites all 37 verses together as a closing contemplation, then breaks into small groups on which practice has landed most and what gets in the way, from workplace frustration to a longing for solitary practice. David closes with long life prayers and Shantideva's dedication.
Guided Meditation - Repaying Kindness with Affectionate Love David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The kindness you have received is counted up: parents, teachers, friends, strangers who helped once, and the people who grow the food, maintain the infrastructure and care for the environment around you. Gratitude turns into a wish to repay it by using this precious human life for others. David then asks for a vast gathering of beings visualised around you, friends, strangers and those you find difficult, held in affectionate love and great compassion.
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.
D5S3 - Non-Attachment, Generosity and the Roots of Ethics David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Desire and aversion are treated as appearances without solid existence, like a rainbow that can be admired but never grasped, or the death of a child in a dream. David works through the three kinds of generosity, giving materially, offering protection, and offering the Dharma, then turns to ethical discipline as the foundation the whole path rests on, using a leaking boat as the image for a mind not yet guarded by good conduct.
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.
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.
D4S4 - Bodhicitta's Final Steps, and Meeting Ordinary Scorn David Oromith · 55 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The final meditation in this sequence combines the great resolve, the wish to free all beings, with the four immeasurables to complete bodhicitta. David turns to verse seventeen, on honouring someone who looks down on us out of arrogance rather than compete for status, and takes questions on where this shades into self-deprecation, whether the bodhisattva vow sounds egotistical, and where limited time is best spent, closing with the girl and the starfish: your bit is worth doing however small.
D4S3 - Responding to Disgrace, Disparagement and Betrayal David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
After a meditation on affectionate love and compassion for all beings, David works through three verses of the text: meeting disgrace with kindness rather than argument, responding to public disparagement by offering the victory instead of escalating, and continuing to care for someone who turns on us after we have helped them. He explains cognitive fusion, treating bad behaviour as a person's whole identity, and takes questions on living this out at work.
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.
D4S1 - The Continuum of Mind and Turning Loss into Practice David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
In this meditation we trace the mind back moment by moment to show it is beginningless, so every being has at some point been our mother or carer. David turns to using loss and theft on the path, drawing on karma and compassion for what drives someone to steal, and the story of Gyalse Togme dedicating his stolen robes to the thieves who took them. Questions cover lingering sadness in a practitioner of many years and whether dedication lessens a thief's karma.
D3S4 - Equanimity and Tonglen, Two Meditations in Practice David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Two guided meditations fill this hour. The first is equanimity, in which we work with a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, to separate love from the grip of attachment. The second is tonglen: we breathe in the pain of someone we love as dark smoke, extinguished at a point of light in the heart, then send back everything good in return. David addresses the fear that tonglen means taking on suffering, and whether the same ignorance applies to animals.
D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The session opens with a practice of mudita in which we delight in the good fortune of a friend, a stranger and someone we find difficult. David completes the seven point instruction on cause and effect, from recognising kindness to the great resolve, then explains why self-cherishing is the root of misery and how tonglen exchanges it for others. Questions turn to where kindness tips into people pleasing, and whether karma means we should not intervene in someone else's suffering.
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.
D2S3 - Inner Solitude and the Impermanence of All Things David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Building on relaxation, David introduces stability in shamatha, using counting at the belly to steady attention. The verse on solitary places turns out to be less about the physical setting than about a mind not swept along by distraction, shown through an experiment in which most people chose an electric shock over fifteen minutes alone with their thoughts. Questions range from a noisy neighbourhood to attachment inside a loving relationship.
D5S4 - The Three Kinds of Patience, and a Farmer's 77 Problems David Oromith · 50 minutes · recorded November 29, 2024
The session opens with a brief practice of resting in awareness, before David turns to kshanti, patience in its fuller sense, transforming hardship rather than gritting your teeth through it. He covers patience with people who harm us, with the ordinary ups and downs of life, illustrated by the farmer with 77 problems whose real problem is his belief that he should have none, and with the slow pace of our own progress. The group asks whether he has met anyone who claims to be enlightened.
D2S4 - The Company We Keep and the Qualities of a Teacher David Oromith · 55 minutes · recorded November 29, 2024
Vividness is the third quality built into shamatha, achieved by narrowing attention to the breath at the nostrils. David turns to the verse on avoiding destructive company, using the image of a crystal taking on the colour of whatever cloth it rests on, then to the contrasting verse on cherishing spiritual friends and the qualities to look for in a teacher. Discussion covers balancing this against one's own wellbeing, and advice on meditating with the eyes open.
D6S3 - Completing the Text and Living It Day to Day David Oromith · 78 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
A guided meditation on equalizing self and other leads into bodhicitta and a reflection on the rarity of a human life. David completes the text with the practice of applying antidotes the moment an affliction arises, using the image of a car ignored until the wheels fall off. Discussion covers how the 37 practices map onto the Four Noble Truths, book recommendations, and how to keep the teachings alive once the retreat ends.
D6S2 - Self-Cherishing, Honest Speech and Healthy Boundaries David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
In a meditation on exchanging self-cherishing for cherishing others we weigh putting our own happiness first against treating everyone's welfare as equal. David covers examining one's own faults rather than gossiping about others, when raising real harm differs from criticism born of jealousy, and speech that passes tests of being true, kind and well timed. Questions turn on boundaries, forgiveness and self-neglect.
D6S1 - Diligence, Concentration and When to Step In David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
In this patient acceptance practice we ask what changes when a real conflict is met with acceptance, understanding and compassion rather than resistance. David covers enthusiastic diligence and its three kinds of laziness, then concentration as the union of shamatha and vipassana, the Buddha's key innovation. Questions turn on witnessing cruelty, whether to speak when nothing you say will change the person, and how much capacity we have to live out our values.
D3S2 - Compassion Practice and the Two Paths to Bodhicitta David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
Compassion follows loving kindness as the second immeasurable, wishing others free of suffering rather than simply well. David explains why happiness chased through possessions never truly satisfies, using the story of buying a Dyson vacuum as a teenager expecting lasting contentment from it. Bodhicitta, the wish for enlightenment to benefit all beings, is introduced alongside two routes to it: seeing all beings as having once been one's mother, or exchanging self with others.
D6S4 - One Useful Word and a Vision for the Sangha David Oromith · 43 minutes · recorded November 27, 2024
The retreat closes with a final guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing. David reflects on the Buddha's saying that one useful word outweighs a thousand useless ones, and shares his hope that the teachings help people become insiders pursuing happiness without harming others or the planet. He also describes his aspiration to build an eco-retreat centre in Wales. The session ends with the group's thanks and closing offerings.
D2S2 - The Three Poisons Behind Our Reactions David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded August 31, 2024
In the shamatha practice we cultivate relaxation through mindfulness of breathing, with shavasana as one option. David works through the second verse, showing that leaving one's homeland is really about the three poisons of attachment, aversion and delusion, which travel with us wherever we go. Discussion covers anger at injustice, patient acceptance when a situation cannot be changed, and offering the victory to defuse an argument without needing to be right.
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.
Day 1 - Introduction David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded August 24, 2024
The retreat opens with a meditation on settling body, speech and mind through relaxation, stillness and alertness. David then introduces the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas, telling the story of Gyelse Togme Zangpo giving his robes and blood to a diseased beggar, and outlines how the week will move through samatha, the four immeasurables and tonglen. He closes with the text's opening homage, on how emptiness and compassion stand together, and takes a question on how discussion will work.
An Introduction to the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas David Oromith · 42 minutes · recorded July 10, 2024
David explains bodhichitta and what makes someone a bodhisattva, and places the 37 Practices among the four classic lojong texts. Most of the evening is the life of Gyalse Tokme Zangpo, born in 1295 in central Tibet and orphaned young, hailed a second Asanga at nineteen. Too quiet and humble to attract patrons, he refused to perform village rituals for offerings and wrote these verses instead. The retreat on the text is in the library as a one week course.
Compassionate Choices: Non-Harm, Vegetarianism and Veganism in Buddhism (David Oromith) David Oromith · 53 minutes · recorded January 18, 2024
This talk opens with a brief pause to set an intention rather than an extended practice. David sets out how vegetarianism and veganism are treated across Buddhist traditions: the Theravada threefold purity, which permits meat offered without suspicion of killing, against Mahayana sutras such as the Lankavatara, where the Buddha rejects meat eating outright. He describes his own move from vegetarian to vegan, then turns to the scale of factory farming and asks what compassion demands of us now.
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 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.
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.
The Six Paramitas - Wisdom (Prajñā) David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded March 5, 2023
In this questioning meditation we examine the body itself, asking whether contact with a chair or the outline we call our body holds anything genuinely solid or permanent. In the final talk of this series on the six paramitas, David turns to wisdom, prajna, and the labels we add on top of raw experience: why a sound is not inherently annoying, why food becomes rubbish the moment it hits the bin, and why our stories about a broken cup or an inconsiderate neighbour are what actually cause our suffering.
The Six Paramitas - Mental Stability (Samadhi/Concentration) David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded February 26, 2023
In this mindfulness of breathing practice we follow the rhythmic sensations of breath throughout the body, with a gentle count to seven offered as a way to hold concentration. David turns to the fifth paramita, samadhi, the organisation's namesake, meaning to unify the mind with what it attends to. He describes the four qualities of deep concentration, peaceful, sublime, blissful, and able to quell afflictions on the spot, and how poor attention leaves us stressed and at the mercy of our own thoughts.
The Six Paramitas - Enthusiastic Perseverance David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded February 5, 2023
A fourfold vision quest puts four questions to us in turn: what would bring genuine flourishing, what we would want to receive from the world, how we would love to transform, and what we have to offer, and we breathe life into each answer as an aspiration. David talks about the fourth paramita, enthusiastic perseverance, and what sustains it: confidence built from experience, clarity about our intentions, taking delight in the progress already made, and the fortitude to keep going when the path gets difficult.
The Six Paramitas - Protecting Our Practice (Ethical Discipline) David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded January 29, 2023
In this mahamudra style meditation we visualise the mind as a clear sky and each thought or emotion as a cloud passing through it, observed rather than followed. David turns to the second paramita, ethical discipline, describing it not as rules imposed from outside but as a fence protecting a young seedling, a fledgling practice easily undone by an outburst of anger the moment we step off the cushion. He talks about how avoiding harm builds the trust that relationships and genuine wellbeing rest on.
The Six Paramitas - Patient Acceptance David Oromith · 26 minutes · recorded January 22, 2023
After counting the breath to settle the mind, you bring to mind a scenario that regularly frustrates you and meet it with understanding, acceptance and fortitude rather than resistance. David talks about the third paramita, patient acceptance, defining it simply as accepting whatever arises, having given up the idea that it should be otherwise. Using the example of being stuck in traffic, he explains why resisting what cannot be changed only compounds the suffering.
The Six Paramitas - Generosity David Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded January 15, 2023
In this visualisation we walk through an ordinary day and imagine bringing generosity into it: giving materially, giving time or expertise, offering a kind word. David opens a six week series on the paramitas with the first, generosity, describing three kinds, material giving, sharing the dharma, and offering fearlessness to those who are afraid, and why true generosity means being willing to give up what we are actually attached to, not just what we no longer want.
Self-Cherishing vs Cherishing Others David Oromith · 37 minutes · recorded May 8, 2022
In the classic loving kindness practice we move from ourself to someone loved, someone neutral and someone we find difficult. David talks about self-cherishing, the mind's habit of placing our own comfort above everyone else's, from wanting the fastest lane to the last item in the shop. He explains the Mahayana shift towards cherishing others instead, quoting Shantideva that all happiness comes from this and all suffering from self-focus alone.
D6S2 - The Four Yogas of Mahamudra Lama Alan · 98 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
The four yogas, single-pointedness, freedom from elaboration, one taste and non-meditation, and how each maps onto the paths and grounds of a bodhisattva. Lama Alan Wallace reads Atisha's images of realisation complete but not manifesting, the lion cub in the womb whose three strengths are all there and the garuda inside its shell, and describes the mother and child clear light meeting at death. Questions close the retreat, among them what to do when a teacher's conduct has harmed students.
D5S2 - Practise What Is Important Lama Alan · 81 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
The closing aphorisms, and the end of the transmission of the text. Lama Alan Wallace explains the distinctive ones: those who harm you, the ones to focus on, then your teachers, your parents and bodhisattvas, with whom both virtue and non-virtue are heavy. He works through practise what is important, do not be bound by distemper, and do not yearn for gratitude. Questions follow on whether to study or first work on your own mind, and from a monk facing conscription who may be sent to fight.
D6S2 - The Uncreated Light of Tabor Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 117 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Eva Natanya reads Gregory Palamas on the Transfiguration, where Christ became nothing he was not but showed the disciples what he had always been, and on the difference between God's essence, which no creature can share, and the uncreated energies, which divinise the saints. In the practice the breath is taken as divinising energy, and the innermost heart cries one line of prayer. Lama Alan replies with a bouquet of lotuses, taking up her point that human means something different in each tradition.
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.
D2S2 - Christ's Infinite Intention, and the Doorkeepers of the Heart Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 122 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Eva Natanya answers the challenge left from the morning by arguing that Christ's intention was infinite in the way a bodhisattva's merit is, so anyone throughout space and time whose heart is open receives it, and that an eternal hell could only follow an infinite bad deed. In the practice you bring your own death to mind, treating this as your last meditation. She then works through Hesychios the Priest on the types of watchfulness that keep the heart clear even of thoughts that appear to be good.
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.
Part Four - What a Thought Is, and Choosing a Teacher Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 133 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Two ways of working with the mind, the controlling one and the letting go one, and why a wild horse has to be tamed before it can be trained. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo explains that meditation is not blanking out but asking what a thought is and who is aware, sets out the eight consciousnesses of the mind-only school, and shows how generosity without wisdom stays bound by subject, action and object. A long section follows on choosing a teacher, and on not postponing practice while waiting for one.
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.
Lojong, the Eight Verses of Mind Training Lama Alan · 28 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace works through the Eight Verses of Mind Training of Langri Tangpa, verse by verse. You learn to hold others supremely dear, to seek out their virtues rather than their faults, to catch a mental affliction the moment it stirs, and to treat difficult people as rare treasure. The closing verses turn to tonglen and to freeing practice from the eight worldly concerns and from grasping at a reality he describes as dreamlike.
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.
Guided Meditation - Generating Bodhicitta, Widening the Field from Yourself Outwards Lama Alan · 26 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace guides a steadily widening field of care. You visualise an orb of pristine white light at your heart, breathing in your own obscurations to be extinguished there and breathing out loving kindness, then extend that field to those immediately around you, the wider community and all beings. Lama Alan then reflects on how interdependent your material and spiritual flourishing is, and the practice culminates in bodhicitta: may I awaken in order to free every being.
Part Three - Emptiness, Bodhicitta and Buddha Nature Lama Alan · 81 minutes
How the second turning follows from the first. Lama Alan traces the argument from the nun Vajira, who reduces a chariot to a label and with it everything else, through Nagasena and King Milinda to the Heart Sutra, where the aggregates are empty of inherent nature too. He gives the reason for the bodhisattva's turn, the father who is last out of the burning house, and what is needed to reach the path of accumulation. The third turning and Buddha nature follow, and Dzogchen the final point.
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.
Loving Kindness Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Loving kindness, maitri, is defined by Glen Svensson as an aspiration rather than an emotion: the wish for ourselves and others to have happiness and its causes. Two guided practices: in the first we cultivate it for ourselves through reflections on our own deepest aspirations, and in the second we extend it in stages to a friend, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen distinguishes pleasure from genuine happiness and names its causes as ethics, concentration and wisdom.
Stages of Progress Glen Svensson · 88 minutes
Where this practice leads. Glen Svensson maps the four results, stream enterer through to arhat, against the ten fetters, then the five paths, the ten grounds, and the difference between the mental afflictions that block liberation and the subtler stains of ignorance that block enlightenment. A closing practice, taken from Padmasambhava, turns the search on awareness itself: where is it located, has it a shape, a size, an edge?
Impermanence Glen Svensson · 64 minutes
The teaching opens and closes with a guided body scan in which we move from the crown of the head to the tips of the toes on one question: is anything in the body stable, or is everything changing moment by moment? Glen Svensson sets out what vipashyana is, why shamatha has to underpin it, and the four distorted views it works on. Impermanence, he argues, is good news, and he gives the image of the kayak of mindfulness on the river of life, rather than grabbing at flowing water.
Mindfulness of Breathing (Full Body) Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
We rest attention on any tactile sensation in the body connected with the in and out flow of the breath, with the emphasis on relaxation. Glen Svensson takes up Alan Wallace's point that mindfulness of breathing is universally emphasised for those especially prone to compulsive thinking: the sensations of the breath only happen in the present moment, so attention comes out of the thinking mind and into the body. In a second practice we notice the rhythm of the breath, long or short, deep or shallow.
Preparing Body & Mind Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Shamatha means calm abiding, and Glen Svensson opens by explaining why, if we want to achieve genuine happiness and well-being, shamatha practice is indispensable. He draws out the difference between pleasurable experience and genuine happiness, and where concentration fits among the three higher trainings. The seven point posture is worked through, then a fifteen minute guided meditation steps through preparing body, speech and mind. Questions cover meditating with a tremor, and whether shamatha is the first jhana.

The bodhisattva path

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