Practice Library

The eight worldly concerns

10 teachings in the library are about this.

• Session Two - From Need to Care, and the Open Palm David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded July 18, 2026

  David shifts the basis of a relationship from need to care, then reads Thich Nhat Hanh on loving in such a way that the person you love feels free. Contentment and gratitude come in as the medicine for attachment, and equanimity as the open palm rather than the fist closed around a songbird that has landed in it. David then guides a practice in which we turn towards the fear of things changing with reassurance rather than argument, and wish a loved one free. It closes on the group's own reflections.

• Ryokan and the Moon David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded February 1, 2026

  The meditation is an inquiry into awareness itself, in which we release thoughts, feelings and sensations to rest in what remains when everything else is set aside. David tells the Zen story of Ryokan and the thief who found nothing worth stealing, and talks about how giving away his only robe reveals that real wealth, unlike possessions, cannot be stolen or given away.

• 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 5 - Equanimity David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024

  The teaching turns to equanimity, upekka, the balance underlying loving kindness, compassion and joy. David distinguishes it from flat indifference, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of relating differently to knee pain, and explains why acceptance means acknowledging what is, not condoning it. Questions bring stories of grief for a missed friendship and a man at peace with terminal illness. In the meditation we extend loving kindness equally to a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult.

• Spiritual Rebellion: Mindfulness with Attitude Ondy Willson · 117 minutes · recorded September 28, 2024

  Ondy Willson introduces her book and the work behind it: the influences of Buddhism, of her own life, and of twenty years teaching mindfulness in the public and private sectors. She sets out the key ideas of a spiritual practice, and how they can give contemporary life meaning and purpose without requiring a religion. With a reading, a meditation, and questions.

• Our Need to Be Liked & Approved Of David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded September 17, 2023

  In the meditation on the sky-like nature of mind we watch thoughts arise and pass like clouds while resting in the clear, spacious awareness beneath them. David talks about our need to be liked and approved of, seen in social media validation, peer pressure and people-pleasing at work, and why tying self-worth to others' opinions is such shaky ground. He offers loving kindness towards ourselves, reflecting on impermanence and the Dalai Lama's reminder that we carry Buddha nature.

• D1S1 - The Four Questions, and Two Kinds of Happiness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023

  The practice that opens every day here, a vision quest of four questions: how you envision genuine flourishing, what support it needs, how you would have to change, and what gift you want to offer. Michael Lobsang Tenpa then revisits a distinction Lama Alan quotes but did not invent: hedonic happiness, whose kinds and their flip sides are the eight worldly concerns, and the eudaimonic wellbeing that comes from the inside. It closes with harvesting joy, finding what is pleasant in each sense.

• 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 - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Genuine Happiness Lama Alan · 26 minutes

  You begin by envisioning genuine happiness: a well-being with roots deep enough to survive praise and ridicule, gain and loss, kindness and cruelty from others. Lama Alan invites you to imagine that capacity already within you, visualised as a radiant orb of white light at your heart, and with each out breath to send its rays through your whole being. The field then widens to everyone around you, before a closing rest.

• Not-Self Glen Svensson · 89 minutes

  A guided practice covers all three levels of dukkha, ending with the question of whether any experience is completely free of the potential for suffering. Glen Svensson then calls renunciation a bad translation: the term means to move away from suffering, so it is the wish to be liberated from it, and to give up the eight worldly concerns rather than the eight worldly things. In a second practice we look for the autonomous me that seems to be a third thing alongside the body and the mind.

More by subject

• Anger and aversion 140
• Attachment and craving 116
• The nature of mind 92
• Emptiness 84
• The bodhisattva path 80
• Anxiety and fear 78
• Death and dying 76
• Distraction and attention 70
• Sleep and rest 66
• Buddhist psychology 59
• Illness and pain 57
• Karma 56
• Teacher and student 56
• Habits and change 50
• Genuine happiness and wellbeing 48
• Patience, forbearance and acceptance 46
• Relaxation 41
• Impermanence 40
• Gratitude and appreciation 38
• Tantra and Vajrayana 37
• Relationships and family 35
• Depression and low mood 32
• Dream yoga 32
• Motivation and intention 32
• Dreams and sleep 31
• Comparison and self-cherishing 27
• Guilt and regret 27
• Work and daily life 26
• Rebirth and continuity 25
• Self-criticism and shame 24
• Lineage and tradition 23
• The four noble truths 22
• Stress and burnout 21
• Buddha nature 20
• Ethics and precepts 20
• Emotional balance 19
• Forgiveness 17
• Generosity and dana 16
• Consciousness and science 15
• Sangha and community 14
• Enthusiastic effort (virya) 13
• Dependent origination 12
• Grief and loss 11
• Perception and projection 11
• Refuge 11
• The four thoughts that turn the mind 11
• Attentional balance 8
• Not-self (anatta) 8
• The six perfections (paramitas) 8
• Ecology and the climate 7
• Nature and the outdoors 6
• Cognitive balance 5
• The eightfold path 5
• Peace and conflict 4
• The sixfold matrix of mental balance 4
• Secular mindfulness 3
• Symbolism and iconography 3
• Introspection and self-monitoring 1
• Spiritual materialism and bypassing 1
• The three marks of existence 1