Practice Library

Bodhicitta practice

55 teachings in the library cover this practice.

• S2 - Introduction to Mahamudra David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded March 11, 2026

  David sets out the path as a straight one, shamatha then vipashyana cutting through to pristine awareness, and Garchen Rinpoche's answer that Mahamudra alone is sufficient. Mahamudra takes the mind itself as its object rather than reasoning through the five aggregates, cutting the tree at its base. In an experiment David reads out, we rest attention as the flashlight rather than what it lights. It closes in the stillness of awareness while thoughts move, then asks where the mind is.

• Guided Meditation - Avalokiteshvara, Visualisation and Mantra David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded March 5, 2026

  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 filling the space, then recite refuge and bodhicitta and contemplate the four immeasurables. The mantra comes with light purifying body, speech and mind, then the eight verses of training the mind, a dissolution into your heart, and dedication.

• Session One - What All of Us Want David Oromith · 95 minutes · recorded October 9, 2025

  The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body and mind, take refuge in the three jewels and arouse bodhicitta, before resting on mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils. David opens this three week series on his own text, Heart Advice from a Foolish Practitioner, telling how the verses came to him on retreat, then works through mindfulness, compassion, wisdom, ethics and patience. Questions cover why seeing yourself as lowest is not self-contempt, and how patience coexists with anger at real injustice.

• Guided Meditation - Buddha Visualisation, Refuge and Bodhicitta David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded September 17, 2025

  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 sentient beings all around and arouse bodhicitta. White light from the Buddha purifies you, and at the end the Buddha dissolves into that light and into you.

• S3 - Teachers, Etiquette, and Devotion with Discernment David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded September 17, 2025

  In the guided meditation we visualise the Buddha as indivisible from our own teacher, going for refuge and arousing bodhicitta before the talk begins. David covers etiquette in a dharma hall, the three types of unreceptive vessel, and how to address a teacher by title. He explains the three levels of viewing a teacher, from emissary to embodiment of Buddha nature, and warns devotion must stay discerning rather than treating every action as perfect. A question compares Tibetan and Zen shrines.

• D4S5 - Bodhicitta's Stages and Whether Shamatha Comes First Lama Alan · 104 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

  Questions on whether one can enter the Bodhisattva path without shamatha lead Lama Alan through the stages of bodhicitta, from its first spontaneous arising to the irreversible form reinforced by wisdom. Wrathful teachers, one placing a boy unharmed in a bonfire, show ferocity as one of four compassionate modes of teaching. He explains why he critiques materialism, not materialists, and why Buddhists never chase people, as the newly enlightened Buddha let the first man he met walk away.

• D3S5 - Working with Emotional Triggers, and a Wide-Ranging Q&A Lama Alan · 116 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

  Catching a difficult emotion before it takes hold, using a psychologist's advice on spotting triggers early. Lama Alan takes questions ranging widely: clarity in falling asleep and dreaming, why appearances and awareness depend on each other, and the three kinds of bodhicitta known as shepherd, navigator and king. He closes weighing reports of yogis who show no bodily decay after death as evidence against materialism.

• D5S3 - The Space Between an Impulse and Acting On It Lama Alan · 102 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

  Drawing on William James and psychologist Paul Ekman, Lama Alan describes the brief gap between a desire or emotion arising and its becoming visible in speech or action, and why noticing that gap allows a wiser choice. In the guided practice we extend the observation of thoughts to this subtler layer of feeling. He traces Dudjom Lingpa's breakthrough, still coloured by subtle grasping, and distinguishes the substrate from the pristine awareness beneath it.

• D3S1 - Refuge, Devotion and the Two Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 106 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025

  The refuge and bodhicitta prayers, examined line by line, with the image of trusting a dentist to explain what taking refuge means. Lama Alan introduces guru yoga and a self-empowerment visualisation with Padmasambhava, then leads a breathing practice in which we let go of identifying with sensations as mine, using a scratched phone and an injured knee as examples. The session ends with the three common preliminaries: precious human life, impermanence and suffering.

• Guided Meditation - Taking Refuge and Generating Bodhicitta David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded June 11, 2025

  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 beings, and you contemplate what the Buddha, the teachings and the community mean to you before going for refuge. It closes with white light received at the heart and passed on to all of them.

• Session 1 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded June 11, 2025

  This first session on the Eight Verses of Training the Mind opens with a guided meditation on settling the body, taking refuge and generating bodhicitta. David gives the lineage of Geshe Langri Thangpa, reads the text, then works through the first two verses: cherishing all beings as the basis of practice and happiness, and taking the humble position rather than seeing ourselves as important. Stories of Atisha and Drom Tonpa illustrate humility, and questions cover therapeutic lying and patience.

• D3S1 - Radiant Purity, and What Obscures It Lama Alan · 122 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025

  Awareness is naturally luminous and cognizant, and Lama Alan distinguishes this radiant purity from anger, dullness or craving, which pass across it like clouds across the sun, never touching its nature. He explains why refuge is earned trust, not demanded belief, and why motivation, especially bodhicitta, decides whether a practice counts as Dharma. After the ninefold breathing exercise, the group rests in that awareness as thoughts surface and dissolve.

• Guided Meditation - Refuge and Bodhicitta with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025

  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, contemplate the four immeasurables, then rouse bodhicitta. The Buddha finally dissolves into golden light and merges into your heart, and light then radiates out from you to every being.

• 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.

• Guided Meditation - Tonglen David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded February 13, 2025

  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 good you have. It widens to a crowd with the same pain, then to hunger, thirst and homelessness, and David keeps saying the light is never burdened.

• Session 4 - Ethics & Patience David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded February 13, 2025

  In the guided Tonglen practice we breathe in a loved one's suffering, then a wider crowd's, as dark smoke dissolved at the heart, and breathe out light and wellbeing in return. David turns to ethics as the foundation of practice, likening unruly behaviour to bashing holes in a leaking boat, then works through three kinds of patience: staying calm when provoked, accepting what cannot be changed, and being patient with slow progress. One shares how the quicksand image helped with her own anger.

• 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.

• 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.

• Session 1 - Introduction David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded January 22, 2025

  The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle the body, then a contemplation on the rarity and preciousness of this human life. David defines the Mahayana path against the Theravada and introduces bodhicitta, using the similes of gold buried in rubbish and dirt suspended in water to show that our afflictions are not fixed but can be removed. Questions from the group explore whether kindness can pass to others without deliberate intention. A brief closing meditation follows.

• Guided Meditation - Repaying Kindness with Affectionate Love David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  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 environment around you. Gratitude turns into a wish to repay it by using this precious human life for others. David then asks for a vast gathering of beings visualised around you, friends, strangers and those you find difficult, held in affectionate love and great compassion.

• Guided Meditation - Recognising the Kindness of All Beings David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  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, the silly faces made just to raise a smile, the hands held through first steps, the words repeated until you could form them. Each stage is extended to all beings across countless lives. It closes on this life, and on the food, clothing and home that come from others' work.

• Guided Meditation - The Beginningless Continuum of Mind David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  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 traced back through birth to the first consciousness of a foetus, which must have had its own prior cause. Since the lives are countless, so are the mothers, and David asks you to see every being you meet as one of them.

• D5S2 - The Emptiness of Self and the Nature of Awareness David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  David guides a practice of watching thoughts arise and dissolve without following them, a step toward resting in awareness itself. He turns to absolute bodhicitta, using a plant pot and an empty bank balance to show how self and things are labels placed over shifting causes and conditions rather than solid entities. Questions cover rebirth, relationships, and resting in pristine awareness.

• D4S4 - Bodhicitta's Final Steps, and Meeting Ordinary Scorn David Oromith · 55 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  The final meditation in this sequence combines the great resolve, the wish to free all beings, with the four immeasurables to complete bodhicitta. David turns to verse seventeen, on honouring someone who looks down on us out of arrogance rather than compete for status, and takes questions on where this shades into self-deprecation, whether the bodhisattva vow sounds egotistical, and where limited time is best spent, closing with the girl and the starfish: your bit is worth doing however small.

• D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  The session opens with a practice of mudita in which we delight in the good fortune of a friend, a stranger and someone we find difficult. David completes the seven point instruction on cause and effect, from recognising kindness to the great resolve, then explains why self-cherishing is the root of misery and how tonglen exchanges it for others. Questions turn to where kindness tips into people pleasing, and whether karma means we should not intervene in someone else's suffering.

• 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.

• D3S2 - Compassion Practice and the Two Paths to Bodhicitta David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024

  Compassion follows loving kindness as the second immeasurable, wishing others free of suffering rather than simply well. David explains why happiness chased through possessions never truly satisfies, using the story of buying a Dyson vacuum as a teenager expecting lasting contentment from it. Bodhicitta, the wish for enlightenment to benefit all beings, is introduced alongside two routes to it: seeing all beings as having once been one's mother, or exchanging self with others.

• Session 4 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Mind) & How Karma Ripens David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded July 30, 2024

  After settling meditation and refuge, David shares Alan Wallace's teaching that the person who ripens our karma in a future life is not quite us, so even cruelty deserves compassion rather than blame. He completes the ten nonvirtues with the three mental ones, covetousness, malice and wrong views, then explains projecting and completing karma and what shapes the mind at death. Questions range over pure lands, evidence for rebirth, funerals, and the forty nine day bardo.

• Session 2 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Body) David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded July 16, 2024

  In the short guided meditation we combine bare attention on the body with breath counting, refuge and bodhicitta. David sets out the four things needed for a complete negative karmic act, the basis, the attitude, the deed and its completion, then works through killing, stealing and unwise sexual behaviour, weighing pests, vegetarianism, euthanasia and abortion along the way. Questions cover suicide, whether all beings incur equal karma, and taking a puppy from its mother.

• Session 1 - An Overview & Introduction to Karma David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded July 7, 2024

  In the guided meditation on refuge and bodhicitta we count fourteen rounds of breath and visualise the Buddha and the three jewels. David lays out the basic law of karma: intention in the mind is what makes an act virtuous or non-virtuous, and karma is definite, expandable, never arises without its cause, and its seeds are never lost. He also touches on what continues between lives. Questions range from free will to why kindness does not stop hard things happening.

• Exploring Aversion David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded April 24, 2024

  The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body, speech and mind, then refuge and bodhicitta. David turns from attachment to aversion, tracing it from subtle irritation to hatred, and shows how the mind exaggerates an unpleasant contact into a caricature, the three headed green monster. He distinguishes constructive from destructive anger and sets out the four enlightened activities: peaceful, enriching, powerful and wrathful. Questions range across assertiveness, martial arts and the Buddhist view of war.

• The Antidotes to Attachment and Navigating Loss David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded April 17, 2024

  The session opens with a short guided meditation in which we settle body, speech and mind, with refuge and bodhicitta. David completes his look at antidotes to attachment: non-attachment, contentment, gratitude and generosity, using the image of a bird resting on an open palm. He turns to loss, telling the story of Kisa Gotami and the mustard seed, and separates the cognitive work of understanding impermanence from the compassion grief itself needs. Questions bring up chronic illness, bipolar and the loss of a parent.

• Exploring Attachment David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded April 9, 2024

  A short settling meditation on the breath with refuge and bodhicitta, before David defines attachment: how it exaggerates an object's appeal, filters out its downsides and grasps to acquire or keep it. He traces its reach into possessions, appearance and relationships, and tells the story of the nun and the cat, showing how one small wish can spiral into an elaborate life. Discussion covers attachment versus need, jealousy and grief, including whether loving someone means being attached to them.

• Guided Meditation - Taking the Mind as the Path David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded March 5, 2024

  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 has you deliberately make a thought, then keep watching the same place for whatever appears next. Attend to everything equally, including the commentary saying nothing is happening.

• 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 Noble Eightfold Path: Sīla - Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood David Oromith · 77 minutes · recorded November 7, 2023

  The session opens with ten minutes of mindfulness of breathing, with refuge and bodhicitta motivation, and closes with a shorter practice. David works through sila from the Pali suttas: right speech and its five gates of truth, timing, affection, benefit and goodwill, right action on killing, stealing and sexual misconduct, and right livelihood's forbidden trades and a balanced income. Questions cover lying to protect a friend from hurt, and working somewhere that sells meat or alcohol.

• 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.

• D1S2 - Attentional Intelligence, and Let the Mystery Be Revealed Lama Alan · 82 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

  Atisha's aphorism, once stability is achieved let the mystery be revealed, and why shamatha comes before the cultivation of ultimate bodhicitta. Lama Alan Wallace sets out conation, ethical intelligence and attentional intelligence in turn, and pictures our modern mind as a telescope mounted on a galloping camel in a sandstorm. The guided practice is mindfulness of breathing, felt throughout the whole body, and we note whether each breath is long or short, with introspection watching the attention.

• 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.

• D2S1 - View All Phenomena as Dreamlike Lama Alan · 86 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

  Ultimate bodhicitta, and Atisha's aphorism that all phenomena are dreamlike. Lama Alan Wallace takes apart naive realism and metaphysical realism, arguing that colours, sounds and thoughts are nowhere in physical space and that quantum physics has already discredited the world we assumed was out there, with lucid dreaming as the working example. In the guided practice we observe the sixth domain, mental perception, then follow the Buddha's counsel that in the seen there be just the seen.

• Tong-Len and Loving-Kindness David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded September 5, 2021

  A Tonglen visualisation: a radiant orb of light at the heart absorbs the suffering of yourself, then loved ones, then the wider world on each in breath, and breathes out loving kindness on each out breath. David explains why this giving and taking practice is an antidote to self cherishing, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of realising we are the traffic too. He connects the practice to bodhicitta, the wish to help all beings rather than only ourselves.

• D1S1 - The Homage and the Foundations Lama Alan · 127 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021

  Lama Alan Wallace opens his commentary on Dudjom Rinpoche's five page manual, the first Dzogchen text Gyatrul Rinpoche taught him thirty one years ago. He works through the title and the homage to Dorje Drolo, and explains why resting in pristine awareness is the most ferocious response to the maras. Gyatrul Rinpoche's commentary supplies what the root text leaves out: the four revolutions in outlook, refuge and bodhicitta. It closes with a guided meditation on motivation.

• Healing Trauma Through Meditation and R.A.I.N. - In Conversation with Charlotte Adle David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded July 10, 2020

  In this episode, we are joined by Charlotte Adler of Bodhicitta Lifeworks. Charlotte is a healer, therapeutic counsellor, and meditation guide and has spent the last 13 years or so helping women to deal with all aspects of recovery in the aftermath of addiction and trauma. Extensive studies in Buddhist Psychology plus time spent in Northern India practising both yoga and meditation, have led her to her current position, offering, with the greatest joy, accessible Dharma workshops and guided meditation to retreatants at all levels of study and practice. Charlotte was kind enough to share her thoughts and experience of meditation, Buddhism, healing trauma through meditation, and R.A.I.N. To listen to her guided meditation on R.A.I.N. click here.

• Part One - Atisha's Root Verses, and Taming the Monkey Mind Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 137 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016

  Atisha's Lojong root verses, taken one line at a time. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo opens with why Atisha mattered in eleventh century Tibet, where the emphasis had gone to powers and he brought it back to refuge and bodhicitta, then reads the text aloud as an oral transmission. Realising selflessness needs a healthy sense of self first, she argues, since it is the ego that walks the path towards its own dissolution. Taming the monkey mind, observing the mind at all times, and living in disharmony with the world.

• S1 - Cracking Open the Egg of Unawareness Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016

  The session opens with a twenty four minute practice on awareness of awareness. Lama Alan begins his transmission of Mipham Rinpoche's A Lamp to Dispel Darkness with who a village tantric practitioner has to be: an authentic motivation, bodhicitta and insight into emptiness. Then the fool's gold, the muddled consciousness of dwelling in the substrate, a space devoid of appearances, which yogis have conflated with realisation generation after generation, and why unawareness is what lets confusion in.

• 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 - Generating Bodhicitta, Widening the Field from Yourself Outwards Lama Alan · 26 minutes

  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 and breathing out loving kindness, then extend that field to those immediately around you, the wider community and all beings. Lama Alan then reflects on how interdependent your material and spiritual flourishing is, and the practice culminates in bodhicitta: may I awaken in order to free every being.

• Part Three - Emptiness, Bodhicitta and Buddha Nature Lama Alan · 81 minutes

  How the second turning follows from the first. Lama Alan traces the argument from the nun Vajira, who reduces a chariot to a label and with it everything else, through Nagasena and King Milinda to the Heart Sutra, where the aggregates are empty of inherent nature too. He gives the reason for the bodhisattva's turn, the father who is last out of the burning house, and what is needed to reach the path of accumulation. The third turning and Buddha nature follow, and Dzogchen the final point.

• Tong-len (Taking & Giving) Glen Svensson · 88 minutes

  Tonglen, giving and taking, practised twice: first for ourselves and a friend, then we choose one mental affliction to dissolve and one quality to cultivate, before opening out to others. Glen Svensson compares the traditional black rock of self-cherishing with the light at the heart he prefers, warning against holding the smoke to punish yourself. The aspiration to take the suffering and give happiness is the key, and once learnt it can be done on a single breath as you approach a difficult person.

• Exchanging Self with Others Glen Svensson · 78 minutes

  The second method for cultivating bodhicitta, historically called the secret method because it was considered too profound and difficult for the normal person, though Glen Svensson thinks that may be the reverse now, since it tackles self-cherishing head-on. The session opens with great loving kindness, and in a second practice we reflect on the disadvantages of a me first attitude from our own past. He cites a study in which people who use the words I, me and mine a lot had a 35 per cent greater risk of heart attack.

• Great Compassion Glen Svensson · 83 minutes

  Bodhicitta, the aspiration for enlightenment for the benefit of others, and the first of the two main methods for cultivating it: the seven cause and effect, running from seeing everyone as your mother through altruistic intention to that aspiration itself. Glen Svensson explains that great compassion is not simply an aspiration, as loving kindness and compassion are in the four immeasurables, but actively helping mother sentient beings, much more proactive. In the guided practice we draw blessings in on the in-breath and radiate the light of great compassion out on the out-breath.

• Equanimity Glen Svensson · 85 minutes

  Equanimity as an unbiased mind, undoing the habit of sorting people into friends, strangers and so-called enemies by how they seem to affect us. In the guided practice we step into the perspective of a stranger, a loved one and a difficult person in turn, then back out again. Glen Svensson shows how each of the four immeasurables acts as the antidote to the near enemy of another, so they are best practised as a package. He closes with the four opponent powers and an end of day review of one negative action, one good one and one thing received with gratitude.

• Mindfulness of Breathing (Full Body) Glen Svensson · 78 minutes

  We rest attention on any tactile sensation in the body connected with the in and out flow of the breath, with the emphasis on relaxation. Glen Svensson takes up Alan Wallace's point that mindfulness of breathing is universally emphasised for those especially prone to compulsive thinking: the sensations of the breath only happen in the present moment, so attention comes out of the thinking mind and into the body. In a second practice we notice the rhythm of the breath, long or short, deep or shallow.

More by practice

• Shamatha (calm abiding) 163
• Compassion (karuna) 155
• Loving kindness (metta) 118
• Mindfulness of breathing 89
• Dzogchen 88
• Open presence 79
• Vipashyana (insight) 77
• The four immeasurables 76
• Visualisation 45
• Lojong (mind training) 34
• Vajrasattva purification 25
• Mahamudra 23
• Tonglen 23
• Analytical meditation 20
• Body scan and body awareness 20
• Empathetic joy (mudita) 20
• Mantra 20
• Equanimity 19
• Settling the mind in its natural state 17
• The four applications of mindfulness 17
• Guru yoga 13
• The four opponent powers 13
• Awareness of awareness 10
• Qi gong 9
• Yoga (asana) 8
• Refuge 6
• Deity yoga 5
• Settling body, speech and mind 5
• Feeling tone (vedana) 3
• Journalling and reflection 2
• Walking meditation 2
• Phowa 1