The four noble truths

22 teachings in the library are about this.

D7S1 - The Three Marks of Existence in Everyday Examples Lama Alan · 118 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan works through the three marks of existence: impermanence, illustrated by a ship that has had every plank replaced yet is still called the same boat; dukkha, the disappointment of expecting another person to be the source of our happiness; and not-self, shown by asking what in the body or mind is truly you, down to a cell phone that belongs to no one until it is claimed.
What Can Buddhism Offer During an Eco-Crisis (Lama Alan Wallace) Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded April 1, 2025
Lama Alan Wallace on our ecological crises seen through the four noble truths, and the transformation of mind and culture the situation asks for.
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.
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.
Session 1 - Mindfulness of the Body David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded October 31, 2024
This first session on mindfulness of the body opens with an extended teaching, tracing how the Buddha added inquiry to shamatha to found vipassana, and a cup shows how perception differs from concepts we add on top. In the body scan that follows, we take attention to sensations of solidity, moisture, temperature and motion, asking whether each is permanent, pleasant and truly ours. Afterwards the group discusses separating pain from sensation, and how calling something mine builds a false sense of ownership.
The Twelve Dependent Links of Origination David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024
In the twenty minute guided meditation on emptiness we search body and mind for a findable self and rest in its absence. David then sets out the twelve links of dependent origination, from ignorance through craving to birth and death, using the traditional images of the blind grandmother and the potter's wheel to show how the whole cycle turns and how it can be reversed. Questions cover whether the six realms are literal or metaphors and what, if anything, continues from one life to the next.
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 Noble Eightfold Path: Prajñā - Right View, Right Resolve David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 22, 2023
This session starts with a brief settling meditation, with refuge and bodhicitta, before turning to the wisdom division of the path. David takes right view as knowledge of the four noble truths and the Kalama Sutta's advice to test a teaching by its results, then turns to right resolve as work at the level of thought, the Buddha noticing craving or ill will arise and letting it subside. Questions range from whether studying philosophy is wasted time to why compassion for others comes more easily than for ourselves.
The Four Noble Truths: The Cessation and the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded October 24, 2023
The evening opens with ten minutes of mindfulness of breathing, and refuge and bodhicitta motivation before the teaching. David covers the third and fourth noble truths: cessation as extinguishing ignorance, attachment and aversion, using the sky and clouds to show why afflictions are temporary while peace and compassion are not, then the path via the Lam Rim's three scopes and the eightfold path's ethics, concentration and wisdom. A question asks the difference between nirvana and enlightenment.
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.
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 - Four Revolutions in Outlook Lama Alan · 93 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace opens the retreat with Atisha, the Indian master behind the Seven-Point Mind Training, and the text's first point, train in the preliminaries. He recasts the four thoughts that turn the mind as four revolutions in outlook, a rare human life, death, suffering and the consequences of our actions, and asks whether you are hanging ornaments on the tree of your life or transplanting it. He then leads a twenty minute guided practice in which we settle body, speech and mind in their natural states.
D1S1 - Buddhism as Contemplative Science Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 121 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Lama Alan Wallace argues that religion, philosophy and science are Eurocentric categories that do not fit Buddhism, and presents the four noble truths as testable claims rather than beliefs. He leads a guided practice in which we settle body, speech and mind in their natural states, watching the movements of the mind from stillness. He quotes Shantideva on remaining still like a piece of wood, and Eva Natanya asks whether Christianity could adapt to Buddhism as it has to Plato and Darwin.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Breathing In the Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan begins from the flow of caring that runs through every choice you make, then imbues it with insight. He reasons through why the true causes of suffering lie in the mind rather than in circumstances: delusion, craving and hostility. Using only the in-breath, you draw those afflictions in as a dark cloud and dissolve them in the light at your heart, imagining the enduring peace. You close by wishing the same freedom for someone heavily afflicted.
Guided Meditation - Compassion, Attending to the Core Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace turns compassion towards the roots of suffering rather than its symptoms. You recall times when delusion, craving or hostility dominated your mind, and with each in-breath you draw that darkness into an orb of light at the heart, dissolving it and imagining yourself free. You then rehearse future situations that would once have triggered the same patterns. It closes by extending the same wish to someone you have known to be heavily afflicted.
Compassion Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
Compassion, karuna, as the wish for ourselves and others to be free of suffering and its causes, which means understanding dukkha at three levels: unpleasant experience, the change in our pleasant experiences, and the potential for suffering that a mind contaminated by mental afflictions always carries. In the guided practice we draw suffering in as black smoke to be dissolved at the heart, moving from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen Svensson reads from Matthieu Ricard on why compassion burnout is really empathy fatigue.
Emptiness of Person Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
We turn attention to the person. In two guided practices we look for me, the meditator, first within the constant flow of physical and mental change, then by searching the body, the brain and the mind in turn. Glen Svensson describes some common experiences in this practice: being too confused to know where to look, which is a sign that more shamatha is needed; letting the intellectual mind answer instead of seeing through direct observation; and existential fear at not finding, which he says is usually a very good sign. A long reply covers integrating the practice into daily life.
Emptiness Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
A guided search for the me who is relaxing the body and focusing the mind, ending in the merely labelled me. Glen Svensson lays out the three ways things exist dependently, through causes and conditions, parts and labelling, using a seed becoming a sprout, a star that can as easily be counted as eighteen lines, and a pen that is a chewing stick to a dog. In a second practice we search for the body among its parts.
Searching for Self Glen Svensson · 74 minutes
The body scan returns unguided, at your own speed and in your own sequence. In a second practice we look for a self in the body, in the mind, and in the two together. Glen Svensson then opens the teaching on emptiness by reading Lama Alan Wallace on what is really there: what we know of the world is only appearances to the mind, and even physics, as Heisenberg put it, shows not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
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.
Suffering Glen Svensson · 75 minutes
We move mindfulness from the body to the mind, with a guided practice in which we watch thoughts, emotions and memories against the question of whether anything in the mind is stable and unchanging. Glen Svensson introduces the four noble truths and the word dukkha, whose etymology is a bad hole, an axle that never fitted its wheel. In a second practice we ask of a pleasant experience whether it is really in the nature of happiness. He tells of a retreat in Spain where repetitive food began to taste better once craving subsided.

The four noble truths

The four noble truths

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