Shantideva
20 teachings in the library draw on this text.
- S1 - Looking Outward & Letting Go of Others’ Hurt David Oromith · 67 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
The session opens with a breathing meditation to settle the group, before David turns to resentment, drawing on the Buddha's teaching that harbouring old hurt keeps suffering alive after the event itself. He separates the person from their behaviour, using a mother's patience with a difficult child and Shantideva's stick and the hand that swings it, closing with the two arrows and the Dalai Lama on what forgiveness is not. A guided practice follows, in which we name a real resentment and choose to release it.
- We Cant Always Get What We Want (And That’s All Right) David Oromith · 60 minutes · recorded February 25, 2026
The session opens with a short breathing practice in which we set an intention rather than a fixed outcome, and closes with a practice in which we invite the same gentle acceptance toward a lingering mood. David distinguishes wanting from attachment to a fixed result, using a noisy meditation and stuck traffic to show why disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality. He cites Shantideva: a problem with no solution is not worth being upset about. Questions touch a friendship with an unwell friend, and needs versus wants.
- D2S1 - Motivation, and the Fourfold Vision Quest David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded August 19, 2025
Intention is central to the whole path: not a quick scramble for something, but your own honest answer to what it means to live a rich and meaningful life. David paraphrases Shantideva, that all the happiness in the world comes from wishing happiness for all beings, works through Lama Alan Wallace's fourfold vision quest, and tells how the Buddha left his two teachers of samadhi because concentration alone was not liberation.
- Session Two - The Sacred Pause David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded August 7, 2025
The session opens with a review of the emotional diary from the previous talk, before turning to working with a trigger once noticed. David draws on Shantideva's image of the piece of wood and Jack Kornfield's sacred pause to show how a brief pause, even one breath, interrupts an automatic reaction, and offers a breathing technique to calm the nervous system. He closes with a guided RAIN meditation, recognising, allowing, investigating and nurturing a difficult emotion, and takes questions on anger and trauma.
- 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.
- How Caring for Others Enhances Wellbeing David Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded April 7, 2024
A classic mindfulness of breathing practice at the belly, with counting offered as an aid to sustained attention. David reflects on Shantideva's teaching that self-centredness is the root of misery and care for others the root of joy, illustrated with the parking space and the borrowed thirty pounds, where the outcome is identical but the experience of giving feels entirely different from the experience of loss. He connects this to the natural human need for community and connection.
- D3S5 - Why the Benefactor Comes First Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
Questions, at length. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains why the loving kindness others radiate barely reaches us, using the image of a bowl turned upside down under the sun, and what happiness might mean for a bird. He says why the benefactor is chosen before a friend, because nothing is expected in return, and why Buddhaghosa requires an object who is alive to reach shamatha through loving kindness. The closing practice is framed by the three excellences, and the dedication carries Shantideva's verse.
- D2S5 - Questions, and Essence Love Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023
An evening given over to questions: basic goodness without conceit, holding all beings in mind without being overwhelmed, vegetarianism without arrogance, phrases that feel mechanical, how Buddha nature can be severed, and what to do on witnessing harm when neither passivity nor impulse will serve. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains Tsoknyi Rinpoche's term essence love, and the okayness a Himalayan grandmother radiates. The practice at the end is Shantideva's verses of dedication.
- Week 4: When We’re Blamed or Harmed - Transforming Self-Cherishing (23 March 2023) David Oromith · 74 minutes · recorded March 23, 2023
This closing session opens with a practice of resting in open, non-reactive awareness of body, sight and sound, before David turns to self-cherishing, the habitual sense that my comfort and my losses matter more than anyone else's. He traces it through everyday scenes, a parking space, the last loaf of bread, and sets out equalising self and others as the corrective, citing Shantideva on cherishing others. Questions cover recognising ego in colleagues and guarding against burnout.
- Week 1: Introduction to Mind Training - Rising to the Challenge (2 March 2023) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded March 3, 2023
This new course on lojong, Buddhist mind training, opens with a short relaxation meditation to settle the group. David explains that we cannot stop difficulties happening, only stop them robbing us of our peace, using the spark, fuel and flame image and Shantideva's line: if there is a solution why worry, and if there is none why worry. Questions explore turning anger into compassion, separating regret from guilt, and the habit of rehearsing arguments that never go as planned.
- 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.
- D1S2 - Dispensing with Aversion to Adversity Lama Alan · 76 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Adversity can only become the path if two things happen, and Lama Alan Wallace takes both: dropping the attitude of utter aversion to it, then finding a sense of well-being that holds even when things go badly. He distinguishes suffering itself, which is a symptom, from the mental afflictions that cause it, and repeats Shantideva's point that despondency helps neither what can be remedied nor what cannot. Day one ends with a guided practice of settling the mind in its natural state.
- D4S1 - Blame Everything on One Culprit Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace explains the two week gap, a perforated intestine and six days in hospital, then takes up the third point, transforming adversity into the path. In Buddhaghosa's framework he names despair, apathy and delight in one's own good fortune as near enemies of compassion, impartiality and empathetic joy, and works through the aphorism blame everything on one culprit, with Shantideva on self-grasping as the great demon. In the guided practice we cultivate the four immeasurables as the four greats.
- D3S1 - Self-Centredness and Tonglen Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Relative bodhicitta, and Shantideva's claim that self-centredness is a root of all suffering while caring for others more than oneself is a root of all happiness. Lama Alan Wallace traces the causes of suffering from the shravakayana through to dzogchen, then turns on Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents for teaching learned helplessness, and Francis Bacon's wish to put nature on the rack, which he calls psychopathic. The guided practice is tonglen with a loved one, a despised person and a neutral person.
- 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.
- D6S1 - Looking for the Observer Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The third phase on the way to shamatha without a sign, guided: we rest awareness in the space ahead with no object, then turn in upon the mind that is observing, probing closely then releasing. Lama Alan Wallace gives Tsongkhapa's pith instruction, focus on the sheer luminosity and cognisance of awareness, and grants Shantideva's point that a candle flame does not illuminate itself: awareness illuminates only the bundle just before it. Pull the observation out of observed, observation and observer, and all three go.
- D3S1 - Free Will, and the Three Qualities of a Student Lama Alan · 107 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
In a detailed preamble Lama Alan Wallace argues that the dispute over free will is the wrong question, and offers Shantideva's counsel to remain like a piece of wood when the mind comes under a mental affliction. The practice that follows is a fourth approach to mindfulness of breathing, from the Dzogchen side: we rest awareness in its own place, knowing itself while the breath is noticed peripherally. He names the three qualities that make a suitable vessel: open-minded, perceptive, eager to practise.
- D2S3 - Between the Spark and the Flame Lama Alan · 58 minutes
Emotional balance, drawn from Lama Alan's work with the affective psychologist Paul Ekman: the seven emotions expressed the same way in every culture, and the refractory period in which no contrary evidence can get in. Shantideva's counsel to be like a piece of wood when you see your mind is dominated by an affliction stands beside Ekman's advice never to conflate contemptible behaviour with the person doing it. Noticing an emotion before it is expressed is where choice becomes possible.
- Stillness in Motion Glen Svensson · 91 minutes
Resting in stillness while watching the movements of the mind, a practice Glen Svensson draws from Dudjom Lingpa, combines the two objects used earlier in the course. He reviews all four modules, sets shamatha inside Lama Alan Wallace and Shauna Shapiro's fourfold model of mental balance, and advises on when and how long to practise, on triggers for daily mindfulness, and reviewing the day before sleep. A guided open awareness practice follows. The course closes with the Shantideva dedication.
- Tools & Faults Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
In an opening practice we take the rhythm of the breath as our object, noticing whether it is long or short, deep or shallow. Glen Svensson names two tools, mindfulness holding the object and introspection checking that it is still held, and contrasts that older sense with Jon Kabat-Zinn's. The five faults and eight antidotes follow, from laziness to over-application. A second meditation is guided lying down in shavasana, and four weeks of homework are set before Shantideva's dedication verses close.