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Mahamudra

Practice Library

Mahamudra

23 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • Session One - Awareness Is Already Here David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded July 14, 2026

    In two guided meditations we rest attention in bare awareness, first noticing the knowing behind sounds and sensations, then meeting bodily discomfort the same way. David draws on Mahamudra and Dzogchen for a way of meeting difficult emotions that is neither suppressing, avoiding, indulging nor fixing, using the image of sky and cloud and Mingyur Rinpoche's panic suspended in awareness. Questions cover using imagery as a support and resting in awareness when emotions arrive tangled together.

  • S3 - Introduction to Dzogchen David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded March 18, 2026

    David calls Dzogchen the most accessible of the three, and the pinnacle in the Nyingma school. Great Perfection points not at something to strive for but at a nature already self-perfected, and where Mahamudra works up through ordinary mind, Dzogchen introduces rigpa from the start. Ground, path and fruition follow, with tekcho and the pointing out instructions a teacher may give. It closes with a practice in which we look for where thoughts happen, and a reflection called The Unbound Sky.

  • Guided Meditation - Mahamudra, Resting in Awareness While Thoughts Move David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded March 11, 2026

    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 clouds it. You rest in the stillness of being aware while thoughts keep arising, noticed but not merged with, and near the end David asks where the mind actually is.

  • 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.

  • S1 - The Path of Vajrayana David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded March 5, 2026

    David places Vajrayana in context, as a branch of the Mahayana that throws nothing out and makes no sense without renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness beneath it. Then deity yoga, where the ordinary self dissolves into emptiness and is visualised as Tara or Avalokiteshvara, taking the fruit as the path. Empowerment brings lifelong commitments, and seeing the teacher as a Buddha is no licence to ignore red flags. The evening closes with a public Avalokiteshvara practice, with mantra likened to a lullaby.

  • Mahamudra: How to Discover Our True Nature Robina Courtin · 133 minutes · recorded October 29, 2024

    Ven. Robina Courtin teaches from Lama Yeshe's book of that name, which she edited, and from the Panchen Lama's root text behind it. She sets out the two modes of meditation, shamatha and special insight, then the two routes to emptiness: the analytical one that learns the theory first, and the mahamudra one whose only object of concentration is the mind itself. A short practice on posture and watching whatever arises follows, and questions run throughout.

  • 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.

  • D6S2 - The Four Yogas of Mahamudra Lama Alan · 98 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    The four yogas, single-pointedness, freedom from elaboration, one taste and non-meditation, and how each maps onto the paths and grounds of a bodhisattva. Lama Alan Wallace reads Atisha's images of realisation complete but not manifesting, the lion cub in the womb whose three strengths are all there and the garuda inside its shell, and describes the mother and child clear light meeting at death. Questions close the retreat, among them what to do when a teacher's conduct has harmed students.

  • D5S2 - Practise What Is Important Lama Alan · 81 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    The closing aphorisms, and the end of the transmission of the text. Lama Alan Wallace explains the distinctive ones: those who harm you, the ones to focus on, then your teachers, your parents and bodhisattvas, with whom both virtue and non-virtue are heavy. He works through practise what is important, do not be bound by distemper, and do not yearn for gratitude. Questions follow on whether to study or first work on your own mind, and from a monk facing conscription who may be sent to fight.

  • D4S2 - The Five Powers and Dying Lama Alan · 86 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    Accumulating merit and purifying obscurations by the four remedial powers, why Atisha counsels offerings to spirits, which Lama Alan Wallace defends by arguing that the physical world is not hermetically sealed against the non-physical, and offerings to the Dharma protectors. Then the five powers for one life and the same five for dying, of which Atisha says there is no more wondrous counsel on dying than this. Questions on brain and mind correlations, lucid dreaming and whether the self is a composite. No guided practice.

  • D3S2 - Near Enemies, and Tonglen Mounted on the Breath Lama Alan · 85 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    Teaching and questions, no guided practice. Lama Alan Wallace works through the near enemies of the four immeasurables, taken from Buddhaghosa's Path of Purification, self-centred attachment posing as loving kindness, despair as compassion, then the progression in tonglen, starting with your own mother and later mounted on the breath, and the aphorism begin the sequence of taking with yourself. A young father asks whether to put family responsibilities aside for a long retreat.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • D6S1 - Atisha's Mahamudra, the View Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    The retreat leaves the mind training for Atisha's own root text on mahamudra, his pith instructions on connate union, the lineage traced back through Naropa and Tilopa. Lama Alan Wallace gives Atisha's view: the mind's essential nature is its lack of origination, cessation and duration, its manifest nature is luminosity, and the two have never been apart. The practice is Atisha's own instruction, do not modify, do not block, do not think, do not practise, once all uncertainty has been cut off.

  • D5S1 - Criteria, Pledges and Precepts Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    The last three points together. Lama Alan Wallace gives the criteria that show the practice is working, a self-grasping that is diminishing, yourself as the chief of the two witnesses, never parting from a sense of well-being even when distracted, then the pledges, from keeping the commitments already taken to taking no delight in another's misfortune. He then guides a practice on the four immeasurables, bringing people to mind, asking why they could not be free and resolving to free them.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 3 Lama Alan · 93 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021

    Appearances are handled differently in shamatha, where attention is selective, and in open presence, where it is not, and that difference opens the last hour of questions. Lama Alan Wallace tells a student with no teacher nearby to let the text itself be her lama, relays Karma Chagme on Mahamudra and Dzogchen being one as far as trekcho, and says fear of the mind dissolving means you are really getting somewhere. He ends by giving the oral transmission of the root text in English for the first time.

  • D6S3 - Looking for the Mind That Thinks Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019

    Vipashyana on the nature of the mind, guided from the pith instructions of a fourteenth century mahamudra master: what colour, shape or gender has the mind that observes, and where does it arise, abide and cease? Lama Alan Wallace turns from that unfindability to how things do exist, taking the Higgs boson: in dependence upon prior causes and conditions, on its attributes, and finally on conceptual designation. He brings in Wheeler and DeWitt: no observer, and time falls out of the equations.

  • Nature of Mind Glen Svensson · 79 minutes

    The mind itself becomes the object. Glen Svensson takes the shamatha practice of resting in awareness and adds questioning to it, which is what carries it over into vipashyana: who is releasing, who is concentrating, who is resting? He maps the three levels of Mahamudra and the nine vehicles of Dzogchen onto coarse mind, substrate consciousness and pristine awareness, and defines mind as that which is clear and knowing.

  • Part III: Approaching the Great Perfection Ian Baker · 197 minutes

    Ian Baker turns from landscape to the six yogas of Naropa, read through a seminar Chogyam Trungpa gave in the 1970s: illusory body, inner fire, karma mudra, clear light, dream, transference of consciousness and the bardos. He tells the story of the prince who believed in neither islands nor princesses nor God, and sets Longchenpa beside Milarepa, for whom nothing compares with the yoga of inner fire. Questions follow on Mahamudra and Dzogchen, kundalini and tummo, and ethics for Vajrayana in the West.

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