Practice Library

The six perfections (paramitas)

15 teachings in the library are about this.

• D4S2 - Wisdom, and What We Take Home David Oromith · 60 minutes · recorded August 10, 2026

  The session opens with a short practice in which we breathe in gratitude and compassion and breathe out anxieties and doubts. David turns to the last of the six perfections, wisdom, and to ignorance, the not knowing underneath attachment and aversion. He talks about impermanence, about the causes of happiness being inside rather than out there, and about holding the labels we put on ourselves more lightly. A longer practice of 21 breaths follows, in which we bring appreciation to body, home and relationships.

• D4S1 - Concentration, and Balancing Effort With Relaxation David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded August 10, 2026

  The morning opens with mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils, with relaxation, stability and the counting. David turns to concentration, the fifth of the six perfections, and what gets in the way: excitation, the scattered mind, and laxity, the dullness that can feel like meditation. He talks about balancing effort with relaxation, and about mindfulness as the guard at the gate and introspection as the manager checking on it. In a second practice we attend to sight, sound and mind, then harvest joy.

• D3S2 - Joyful Effort, and the Three Kinds of Laziness David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded August 9, 2026

  Awareness itself is the object to begin with: sensations, then sounds, then thoughts, turning the attention back each time to the awareness that knows them, resting in the sky rather than the clouds. David then talks about joyful effort, and about switching the reward by asking why you want to do a thing and, afterwards, whether you are glad you did it. The three kinds of laziness follow: the wish for your own comfort, faintheartedness, and the busyness of worldly things.

• D3S1 - Patience and Acceptance, and the Spark and the Fuel David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded August 9, 2026

  In the breathing practice we move up to the tips of the nostrils, the finest object so far, with clarity built on relaxation and stability rather than at their expense. David then talks about patience: the thing outside is the spark, but our own mind is the fuel, and much of the pain is the added belief that this should not be happening. The four aspects are acceptance, understanding, compassion and fortitude, and the session closes with a practice in which we bring a real difficulty to mind and meet it with each one.

• D2S2 - Ethical Conduct, and Loving Kindness David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded August 8, 2026

  In mindfulness of breathing we move to the sensations at the belly, with two extras to help focus, closer attention on the in breath and looseness on the out breath, plus counting one to seven. The teaching takes the second perfection, sila, ethical conduct, as the foundation for everything else, and it comes down to avoid harm and do good. Loving kindness follows, a mode of attending rather than an emotion, practised from yourself out to a loved one, a stranger, someone difficult and all beings.

• D2S1 - Generosity, Contentment and Gratitude David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded August 8, 2026

  The session opens with twenty minutes of mindfulness of breathing in which we release distractions with every out breath. David then begins the six perfections with the first, dana, generosity, which he describes as an attitude rather than always handing things over, and why expecting something back spoils it. He covers the three kinds of giving, material things, fearlessness and the teachings, then contentment and gratitude as antidotes to attachment. It closes with a practice called harvesting joy.

• D1S1 - Welcome, and Happiness as an Inside Job David Oromith · 47 minutes · recorded August 7, 2026

  David opens with the practical shape of the retreat and his encouragement not to busy yourself between sessions. He talks about the theme, habits of happy people, and why the happiness we really seek is an inside job rather than something the outside world delivers. He introduces the six perfections as what the sessions will work through. Meditation postures are described, then a practice on the breath that ends with your own motivation for being here.

• 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.

• 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 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.

• 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.

• Guided Meditation - Cultivating Generosity David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded January 15, 2023

  You sharpen the mind with twenty one rounds of breath, three lots of seven, and then its creativity is put to work. David asks for a picture of a typical day, where you go, the shops or errands, the people you meet, and for generosity imagined into it: something material, your time, your expertise, a kind word. Their response is imagined too, and the warmth of giving with nothing wanted back. It closes on an intention to carry that into ordinary days.

More by subject

• Anger and aversion 143
• Attachment and craving 123
• 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 59
• 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
• Enthusiastic effort (virya) 14
• Sangha and community 14
• The eight worldly concerns 14
• The four thoughts that turn the mind 14
• Grief and loss 13
• Perception and projection 13
• Dependent origination 12
• Refuge 11
• 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