Practice Library

Guided meditations

119 guided meditations in the Samadhi Practice Library, with guided instruction you can follow.

Practices you can sit down and do, led the whole way through. Most run between fifteen and thirty minutes, and they range from settling the breath to loving kindness, tonglen, Mahamudra and Dzogchen.

• Guided Meditation - Awareness of Awareness Through Sound, Body and Mind Eyes open and the gaze resting in space, sounds are noticed arriving on their own, then the difference between a sound and the awareness of it: sounds come and go, what knows them
• Guided Meditation - Simply Being with the Urge to Be Busy Refuge and bodhicitta open it, then the body is given permission to come to rest in stillness, the fidgeting and habitual moving being the evening's subject. The breathing slows, a
• Guided Meditation - Arousing Aspiration for Practice David asks why you joined the session tonight, and beneath that what draws you to practice at all, with time to sit rather than grab the most obvious answer. Then a moment when som
• Guided Meditation - Rejoicing in Your Own Life and the Good in the World Rejoicing starts with your own life history, with any goodness received from the world and any brought to it, however small. Then someone you care about at a moment of their excite
• Guided Meditation - Releasing a Resentment A resentment you are still carrying comes to mind, and the hurt of it is acknowledged first. David then turns to where that person's behaviour came from, their own pain and confusi
• Guided Meditation - Forgiving Ourselves and Letting Go of the Past A piece of negative self-talk is brought to mind and held there. David shows the mind as a brilliant storyteller, building a whole identity from one thing you said or did, then shi
• Guided Meditation - Dzogchen, Looking for Where Thoughts Happen Practised with the eyes at least partly open and the gaze soft. David has you look for where your thoughts actually happen, using an imagined oak tree, a distant lawnmower, the fee
• Guided Meditation - Mahamudra, Resting in Awareness While Thoughts Move David reads instructions from a Gelug Kagyu Mahamudra root text and comments as he goes, beginning with the seven-fold posture and the difference between awareness itself and what
• Guided Meditation - Avalokiteshvara, Visualisation and Mantra 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 fill
• Guided Meditation - What Anger Does, an Analytical Meditation A contemplation rather than a settling practice. Recalling an occasion when anger took over, you examine not the story but what the anger did to your tone, your face and your think
• Guided Meditation - Meeting a Small Irritation David asks you to bring to mind a small recent irritation, nothing traumatic, and to find where it lands in the body, a tightening or a heat you can name. When an urge to speak ari
• Guided Meditation - Feeling Tones, Pleasant, Unpleasant and Neutral A feeling tone is not an emotion. It is the plain sense of something being pleasant, unpleasant or neither, and it is attached to everything you perceive. We move attention freely
• Guided Meditation - Befriending Anxiety A low-level worry or grievance is invited to the surface, whatever shouts loudest, and located in the body as a felt sense, with the palm of the right hand over the chest to signif
• Guided Meditation - Sitting with a Difficult Emotion as a Hurting Friend A recent worry or difficult emotion is brought up from under the surface and held as if it were a hurting friend. David asks for no fixing and no dialogue, only hello. We follow ho
• Guided Meditation - From the Breath to Awareness of Awareness It starts with settling body, speech and mind, dropping the grasping and planning rather than the thoughts themselves, and stabilising on the breath. Then it turns: you are asked w
• Guided Meditation - Buddha Visualisation, Refuge and Bodhicitta 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
• Guided Meditation - Precious Human Life, Motivation and Responsibility Tension drained away on the out breath, then a contemplation built around the Dalai Lama's words about a precious human life. You recall the freedom and leisure you have, and the k
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness and Appreciation for Spiritual Friends Loving kindness turned towards the people who keep a practice alive. David starts with early influences, anyone who showed you kindness and led you towards the spiritual life, then
• D2 Morning Practice - Settling Body, Speech and Mind in Their Natural States A guided meditation on settling body, speech and mind in their natural states, repeating the practice done the previous evening. The first twenty minutes are guided throughout: we
• D1S2 - Body Scan: The One Practice That Is Only About Rest The outlier of all the practices, in that it is not part of any sequence: a guided body scan that is really just about rest, with shavasana offered as a good posture for relaxation
• Guided Meditation - Meeting Emotion in the Body with Loving Awareness If an emotion is already here you work with that, and if not you recall a recent episode of worry or frustration, then let the memory go and stay with the waves of feeling in the b
• Guided Meditation - RAIN, Recognise, Allow, Investigate and Nurture You bring to mind a real memory of being triggered, let it play out until the emotion is actually here, then pause it and work through recognising what you feel, allowing it withou
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing, Knowing the Long and the Short Breath Mindfulness of breathing taught as a skill rather than a result. Relaxation comes first, and when the mind wanders the instruction is to relax rather than try harder. Later David a
• Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Beginning with Receiving Love Begins with a preliminary practice of receiving. Bring to mind someone who has wished you real love, and feel it arriving like warm sunshine. Only then does the exchange start: we
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness and Compassion You begin with yourself, attended to as you would a dear friend, breathing in the wish for happiness and breathing out the wish to be free of pain. The same wishes go to a loved on
• Guided Meditation - Settling Body, Speech and Mind Each out breath is taken as a chance to let go a little more, in the body and then in the mental commentary, until we rest attention on the in breath, the out breath and their rhyt
• Guided Meditation - Taking Refuge and Generating Bodhicitta 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 be
• Guided Meditation - Meeting Our Feelings About the World with Compassion David invites the worries about the state of the world that you usually keep at arm's length, and asks where they actually live in the body. You then breathe space around the feeli
• Guided Meditation - Contemplating the Four Elements Starting from the weight of the body on the seat, David moves through earth, air with the breath, water, then fire, each first felt as plain sensation and then recognised as the sa
• Guided Meditation - The Nature of Awareness Extra time goes to the body first, each out breath releasing more tension and whatever has caught your attention. Then the eyes open, the gaze rests vacantly in the space ahead and
• Guided Meditation - The Buddha's Words to Bahiya, Investigating Projection and the Sense of Self Following the Buddha's brief instructions to Bahiya, David takes the domains of experience one at a time, touch first, then sights, sounds and thoughts, attending to each with noth
• Guided Meditation - The Buddha's Words to Bahiya, Bare Awareness of the Six Senses Taking the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, David works through the senses one at a time, body sensations, sight with the eyes open, sound, taste and smell, then mental activity, dr
• Guided Meditation - The Four Point Analysis of the Self David asks you to arouse the gut sense of I, the one that flares when you feel embarrassed or offended, then to test whether it can be found: first inside the body and mind, then s
• Guided Meditation - Refuge and Bodhicitta with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation 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
• Guided Meditation - Tonglen One person you love is in pain, and their pain is imagined as dark smoke you breathe in towards a point of light at your heart, where it is extinguished. You breathe out everything
• Guided Meditation - The Four Immeasurables Woven Together The four familiar stages, yourself, someone you love, someone you have no strong feelings about and someone hostile, but with an extra move at each one. After wishing them happines
• Guided Meditation - This Precious Human Life David begins from Buddha nature, the clear mind said to be present in everyone and impossible to lose or damage, then works through how rarely the conditions to recognise it come t
• Guided Meditation - Repaying Kindness with Affectionate Love 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
• Guided Meditation - Recognising the Kindness of All Beings 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, th
• Guided Meditation - The Beginningless Continuum of Mind 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
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Phenomena The eyes stay open and each out-breath is used to let go of grasping, until awareness is open to all six domains at once, noting whatever arrives without preference. You then move
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of the Mind You steady the attention with a count of twenty one breaths, then the eyes open a little and the gaze rests vacantly as you turn to the space of the mind. David asks you to watch h
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Feelings With the eyes at least partly open, we notice the plain pleasantness, unpleasantness or neither that comes with each sound and sensation. When a feeling prompts you to move you hol
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of the Body Bare attention on the whole field of bodily sensation, then a close inspection of it element by element: firmness, moisture, warmth, movement. Of each one David asks whether anythi
• Guided Meditation - Equanimity Before levelling the three people, David has you look at your grip on each: the attachment mixed into love for someone dear, the reasons behind indifference to a stranger, the basi
• Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy (Mudita) Taking delight in the good fortune of others, starting with someone whose good cheer is infectious, then a loved one, a stranger receiving good news, and the people whose success w
• Guided Meditation - Compassion (Karuna) Compassion begins here with yourself, under two claims David sets down first: that suffering is a temporary affliction rather than who you are, and that everyone wants to be free o
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, Widening the Circle Loving kindness widened one person at a time: yourself, someone whose life you admire, a close friend, then someone you feel nothing about either way, and finally a person who wish
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself Loving kindness for yourself, beginning where many find it awkward: recalling a kind thing you did, naming a quality you like in yourself, and asking what those who love you would
• Guided Meditation - Purification with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation The same four opponent powers, this time with Buddha Shakyamuni visualised on a jewelled throne in front of you. After regret and going for refuge, he comes to rest above your head
• Guided Meditation - Purification with Loving Kindness The four opponent powers in order. You recall what you did that was harmful in body, speech and mind and generate sincere regret without concluding that you are a bad person, turn
• Guided Meditation - Looking for the Inherently Existing I The sense of I is picked out first: not the hands and not the thoughts, but the one who feels happy when praised and offended when insulted, central, fixed, standing apart. If it e
• Guided Meditation - Awareness of Awareness Practised with the eyes at least partly open and the gaze resting softly in the space in front of you. With each out breath David asks you to release all thought, all grasping, all
• Guided Meditation - Taking the Mind as the Path Opening with refuge and bodhicitta, we settle through the body and then drop the five senses entirely for the domain of thoughts, images and emotions. If that feels elusive, David
• Guided Meditation - Taking Appearances as the Path David begins with twenty one counted breaths, then turns you towards whatever is appearing: the visual field in front of your partly open eyes, then sound, then the whole tactile f
• Guided Meditation - The Dzogchen Approach to Mindfulness of Breathing The breath taken by releasing rather than by holding on. With the eyes partly open and the gaze resting vacantly in space, each out-breath lets go of tension and of thinking, until
• Guided Meditation - Gratitude and Appreciation Gratitude is generated deliberately, first for the breath, then for the heartbeat, then for this human body and the unique mind without which there would be no experience. David qu
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing at the Nostrils The third of the breathing practices, with attention at the tips of the nostrils, wherever the passage of air is felt most distinctly, and the breathing left entirely natural. Coun
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing at the Abdomen We narrow the attention to the abdomen, using a hand on the belly if the sensations seem faint at first. We then bring in two tools, an oscillation that rouses attention on the in-
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Breathing, Whole Body A shortened settling of body, speech and mind, then awareness spread through the whole body until the rhythmic movements of the breath stand out, felt in the torso, arms and head a
• Guided Meditation - Settling Body, Speech and Mind in Their Natural States The posture instructions come first, in detail, then three settlings. The body is held in relaxation, stillness and vigilance at once, the inner commentary is released with each ou
• Guided Meditation - White Light at the Heart Centre Twenty one counted rounds steady the mind, then a glowing white orb appears at the centre of the chest, no bigger than a golf ball, at the level of the heart. It is enough to imagi
• Guided Meditation - Harvesting Joy, Finding Delight in the Ordinary The body first, searched for anything pleasant in it, comfort in the seat, clothes against the skin, the soothing rhythm of the breath. The eyes then open at least partly, for what
• Guided Meditation - Cultivating Generosity 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 sho
• Green Tara A guided visualisation, short and complete in itself. Tara is imagined in the space in front of you, on a lotus and a flat moon disc, her body made of green light, one leg tucked i
• Guided Meditation - Meeting a Difficulty with Inner Strength Stillness of the body, the gaze and awareness, held until the rhythmic sensations of breathing rise up to meet you, with a count at each exhale if engagement slips. A current diffi
• Guided Meditation - Settling Body, Speech and Mind in Their Natural States Lama Alan Wallace leads the three settlings in turn. You let awareness descend through the whole field of tactile sensation, releasing tension from shoulders, jaw and forehead unti
• Guided Meditation - Refuge, Bodhicitta and Guru Yoga, Resting in Awareness of Awareness 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 y
• Guided Meditation - Awareness of Awareness Released into Open Presence You begin with the movements of the mind, attending to thoughts and images without distraction or grasping, then shift to the space they emerge from and ask whether that vacuity is
• Guided Meditation - Open Presence, Approached Through the Buddha's Words to Bahiya Lama Alan Wallace leads you through the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, taking first the visual field, then sounds, then tactile sensations, then the movements of the mind, and in
• Guided Meditation - Visualisation for Dream Yoga, Orbs of Light at the Throat and Heart Lama Alan Wallace teaches two visualisations for the night. You place a small, deep ruby red orb of light inside the throat and let your awareness descend into it and take its form
• Guided Meditation - Generating Bodhicitta, Widening the Field from Yourself Outwards 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
• Guided Meditation - Equanimity, Even Care for the Neutral, the Dear and the Difficult Lama Alan Wallace guides the last of the four immeasurables, equanimity. You bring to mind a neutral person, then someone dear, then someone you find difficult, and in each case yo
• Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy, Rejoicing in Others' Virtues and Your Own Lama Alan Wallace guides the third of the four immeasurables, empathetic joy. You bring to mind someone whose good cheer and well-being you know well, then someone whose kindness,
• Guided Meditation - Tonglen for the Aged, the Ill and the Dying Lama Alan directs tonglen through three groups in turn: those worn by old age, those living with physical or mental illness, and those close to death. For each you imagine being in
• Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Sending and Receiving on Both Breaths Lama Alan takes tonglen through its full two-way cycle. You begin with yourself, breathing in the suffering you are vulnerable to and its inner causes, breathing out from the orb o
• Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Breathing In the Causes of Suffering 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 r
• Guided Meditation - Compassion, Attending to the Core Causes of Suffering 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
• Guided Meditation - Compassion, Beginning with Your Own Suffering Compassion is the heartfelt wish to be free of suffering and its causes, and Lama Alan Wallace begins with your own. You weigh how much mental suffering you have already borne and
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, Radiating Light from the Heart Lama Alan Wallace turns from present sensation to imagination, inviting you to envision your own flourishing in detail: what you would love your life to become, and the deeper wish
• Guided Meditation - Unconditional Loving Kindness, Beginning with Yourself at Your Worst Can you love yourself at your worst? Lama Alan Wallace begins here, asking you to recall an episode of your own regrettable behaviour and to distinguish the person from the afflict
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Neutral Person and Someone You Find Difficult Lama Alan Wallace carries the sequence of loving kindness out to a neutral person, someone you know but barely notice. You picture them vividly, even imagine being them, and offer
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, the Four Aspirations from I to We After several quiet minutes settling the mind in its natural state, Lama Alan draws on what the Dalai Lama calls the deepest impulse of the heart: caring whether you suffer or flou
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Loved One, Asking What They Long For Lama Alan asks you to bring to mind one person you hold dear and to attend closely to what they long for: what obstructs their happiness, and how they picture it. With each out bre
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Genuine Happiness 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 y
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself at Your Worst and at Your Best Lama Alan turns loving kindness towards yourself, in two directions at once. You recall a day when your mind was in turmoil and your behaviour at its worst, then look past the affl
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Flourishing, Receiving and Offering Loving kindness begins with yourself. Lama Alan asks you to envision your own wellbeing, then to picture all you would love to receive from other people and the natural world, flow
• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Freedom and Fulfilment Lama Alan turns loving kindness inwards, towards yourself. You ask what you most wish for and have not yet found, what is missing, and what stands in the way of your own wellbeing,
• Guided Meditation - Open Awareness of the Six Senses, Noting Patterns of Causality You open your awareness to all six sense fields and rest there without distraction or grasping. Rather than simply noting what arises, Lama Alan invites a wider view, watching how
• Guided Meditation - The Nature of Mental Events, How Thoughts Arise and Dissolve With the gaze vacant and the mind settled in its natural state, you turn to the field of the mind and inspect the events arising there. Lama Alan asks how thoughts and images emerg
• Guided Meditation - A Body Scan of Feeling Tone, Pleasant, Unpleasant and Neutral Lama Alan leads a scan of the whole body, moving a field of awareness from the crown through head, arms, torso and legs, noting at each place not the sensation itself but whether i
• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Feeling Tone Across the Five Senses Lama Alan opens your awareness to the five physical senses, sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, resting in bare attention with the mental domain set aside. The practice then move
• Guided Meditation - The Three Marks of Existence, from Recollection to Direct Inquiry Lama Alan begins with a review of your own past: times you held something fleeting as though it were durable, took a person or place to be the true source of your happiness, or gra
• Guided Meditation - Vipashyana, Searching the Mind for Shape, Size and Location With the body settled and your eyes partly open, Lama Alan asks you to place your mind in the space before you, then look for whatever it was you placed. Is there a single entity t
• Guided Meditation - Vipashyana, Searching for the Mind That Observes Lama Alan turns awareness back on itself and asks what the mind actually is. Having directed attention to the space of the body, you invert it and inspect whatever was doing the di
• Guided Meditation - Body Scan, Moving a Three-Dimensional Field of Awareness Through the Body Lama Alan moves a field of awareness slowly through the whole body, beginning as a small patch at the crown of the head and widening until it is three-dimensional. It travels down
• Guided Meditation - Settling the Mind in Its Natural State, with the Snorkelling Metaphor Lama Alan uses a snorkelling metaphor to move you in stages from the breath to the mind itself. Floating on an air mattress, you rest in the tactile field; then you dip your face b