Practice Library

Vajrasattva purification

25 teachings in the library cover this practice.

• Throw Guilt Out - You Are Not Your Worst Moments David Oromith · 3 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026

  A short extract. Guilt and shame never get around to the behaviour, only to what a bad person you are, so David argues for throwing them out altogether. Tibetan has no word for this kind of guilt; the nearest is intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.

• S2 - Turning Inward & Forgiving Ourselves David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026

  The session opens with a brief settling practice, then the teaching turns inward, tracing self-hatred to fusing bad behaviour with a fixed sense of self. David separates guilt from healthy regret, teaches the four opponent powers for addressing what we've done, and argues our deepest nature is pure, not our anger or shame. A guided practice follows, in which we meet negative self-talk as thought and close in self-forgiveness. Questions turn to ongoing hurt from a parent and why self-hatred is common in the West.

• 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 Three - Meeting the Emotion, and a Renewed Intention David Oromith · 65 minutes · recorded August 7, 2025

  Continuing from the previous session, David guides a practice of simply being with an emotion rather than observing or fixing it, drawing on Tsoknyi Rinpoche's handshake practice, resting attention with whatever feeling is present. The talk covers regret as an alternative to guilt and shame, the four opponent powers, and anger's three forms, outward, inward and passive. He answers questions on internalised anger, pausing during conflict and grief, and closes reading Mary Oliver's Wild Geese.

• D3S1 - Loving Kindness, Refuge, and the Workings of Karma David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

  The morning's practice is loving kindness, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult. David presents refuge in the three jewels as an active direction we take rather than protection handed to us, contrasting it with money, reputation and other worldly refuges that cannot ultimately help. Karma follows, covering the ten non-virtues and the four opponent powers used to purify a negative action: regret, reliance, remedy and resolve.

• Part One - Destructive Emotions, and an Antidote for Each Ondy Willson · 103 minutes · recorded October 5, 2024

  Spirituality with the religion stripped out, and emotions as the ground of ethics. The four opponent powers arrive by way of Atisha climbing down off his horse: take refuge, regret it, apply a remedy, resolve not to do it again. Then constructive and destructive emotions, a guided meditation that washes an anger out through the soles of the feet, and an antidote worked out for each: patience, empathy, forgiveness, gladness at another's good fortune.

• Guided Meditation - Purification with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024

  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, and white, red and blue light descends to purify body, speech and mind. It ends with resolve and a dedication.

• Guided Meditation - Purification with Loving Kindness David Oromith · 18 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024

  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 for help to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha or to the principles you hold, then use loving kindness as the remedy, and close by resolving what you can realistically give up.

• Session 5 - Purifying Negative Karma - The Four Opponent Powers David Oromith · 94 minutes · recorded July 31, 2024

  After a settling meditation, David introduces collective karma and gives a concise summary of the course before turning to purification. He explains the four opponent powers, regret, reliance, remedy and resolve, distinguishing healthy regret from corrosive guilt, then leads a guided loving kindness meditation in which we apply all four steps. Questions cover a run of bad luck at work, whether places or mindsets carry negative karma, and how effective Vajrayana purification practice is alone.

• A Helpful Alternative to Guilt & Shame David Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded February 25, 2024

  Mindfulness of breathing at the belly, practised with eyes at least partially open, with counting available for those who find it helpful. David addresses guilt from a Buddhist perspective, distinguishing it from healthy regret and describing how guilt fuses a harmful action with a sense of being a bad person. He sets out the four opponent powers of regret, reliance, remedy and resolve as a more workable response, alongside the Dalai Lama's answer to a question about self hatred.

• D3S4 - The Inner Practice and the Mala Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  Garchen Rinpoche's inner practice, in full: Vajrasattva father and mother above the crown, the short mantra garland revolving, nectar running down the lotus stem into the central channel and out through every pore to all beings. Tenpa explains why this purifies although the four opponent powers are not named in it, and is no substitute for the practice that does. Then the mala, how it is held, which way the beads are drawn, how a round is counted. A ten minute loving kindness meditation closes the retreat.

• D3S3 - Signs of Purification, and Vase Breathing Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  Giving and taking is widened to friends, strangers and enemies, and to the three kinds of suffering. Tenpa relays Lama Zopa Rinpoche's daily minimum, enough to keep negative seeds from multiplying, and warns against visualising internal organs. He reads the dream signs of purification, and the real sign, afflictions becoming weaker, citing Ven. Thubten Chodron on her first three month retreat. Garchen Rinpoche's instruction on the channels and winds follows, vase breathing guided and the inner practice read out.

• D3S2 - Tonglen, and Vajrasattva as Guru Yoga Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  Giving and taking, guided from a past and future self out to one being in need, a group, then all beings, the light given out as Vajrasattva's body, mantra syllables, vajra and bell. Tenpa adds the healing adaptations, nectar heavy, warming or cooling, then shows how Vajrasattva practice itself can serve as guru yoga, the mantra recited in the manner of supplication and the nectar granting the four empowerments as it fills the four chakras. An empowerment is needed only to visualise yourself as the deity.

• D2S4 - Preparing for Death, and the Three Cleansings Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  Purification as preparation for dying, opening with death and impermanence and the seven branch practice. Tenpa defines the pair of words that recur in these texts, misdeeds and obscurations, the second meaning here the factors that trigger afflictions and thoughts that block meditation. The commentary he quotes likens the practice to surgery rather than slow medicine, and to aiming at one problem such as anger. The long guided practice runs the whole text, with the hundred syllable mantra and the three cleansings.

• D2S3 - Why We Use Images, and the Hundred Syllable Mantra Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  Love as a purifier first, from Garchen Rinpoche, then compassion practice again. Trouble with visualising gets a plain answer: a vague image is enough, and no mental imagery at all is no bar. A Nyingma translator supplies the four components this practice needs, positive images, positive thoughts, positive feelings and trust, the last explained through a washing machine we do not doubt. Tenpa then reads Lama Zopa Rinpoche's short Vajrasattva text line by line, and introduces the hundred syllable mantra.

• D2S2 - What Is Actually Being Purified Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  Compassion first, for everyone in the retreat, then for all beings. Tenpa quotes Garchen Rinpoche: what is to be purified is nothing but self grasping, and a single teardrop of compassion purifies negativities accumulated in aeons. He sets the discovery and cultivation views of buddha nature side by side. A second full practice uses the short mantra and the style revealed by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok at Larung Gar. An emailed question on guilt when recalling misdeeds is answered: acknowledge it, then shape the energy into regret.

• D3S1 - Questions on Visualisation and Images Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 91 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  The fourfold vision quest opens the day, now with an orb of light at the heart or navel. Tenpa then answers four questions sent in by participants: what to do with little aptitude for visualising, where the syllable hum and its mantra garland belong inside Vajrasattva's body, whether he can be kept in front rather than above the crown, and what counts as creating images, from hand made tsatsas to 3D printing. A brief text by Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro closes the morning.

• D2S1 - Vajrasattva in the Space Before Us Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 89 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

  The morning begins again with the fourfold vision quest, then a recap of day one. Tenpa turns to Vajrasattva himself: the snow white body, a vajra at his heart, a bell at his left hip, and white as the colour of pacifying activity. He reads the aspiration Vajrasattva made while on the path, that beings be purified merely by hearing his name or reciting the hundred syllable mantra. A guided practice follows: Vajrasattva in the space in front, the four opponent powers and the six syllable mantra.

• D1S4 - Regret, Rejoice, Dedicate, and Six Remedial Actions Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 67 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

  Tenpa lays out a daily frame: threefold and fivefold aspirations in the morning, and at night a review that regrets, purifies, rejoices and dedicates. A guided practice starts the four powers with reliance, not regret, then remedy and resolve, with loving kindness for all beings as the remedy. Six kinds of remedial action follow, from the fourth Shechen Gyaltsab's commentary: reciting buddhas' names, making images, circumambulation, reciting sutras and tantras, mantras and meditating on emptiness.

• D1S3 - Teaching the Four Factors Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 92 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

  A body scan run in reverse opens the session, then loving kindness extended from oneself to a benefactor, a friend, a stranger and all beings. Rejoicing in what is virtuous joins every practice from here on. Tenpa places the practice within the three vehicles and reads the short Mahayana sutra Teaching the Four Factors, in which the Buddha gives Maitreya the four opponent powers of regret, remedy, resolve and reliance. Regret is practical, not moralistic; guilt concludes that we are bad people.

• D1S2 - Why Purification Came West, and Inviting the Lineage Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

  Tenpa traces how three month Vajrasattva retreats came to be offered to Western practitioners from the 1970s, a tradition begun by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and restates the key points of body, speech and mind. Loving kindness is guided for oneself, then for everyone on the retreat, then for all beings. The teaching turns to supplicating the lineage, and to mepa, the appreciation that Vajrayana rests on. A second practice invites that inspiration as light and nectar entering through the crown.

• D1S1 - Motivation as Protection, and the Fourfold Vision Quest Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 90 minutes · recorded January 6, 2024

  The retreat opens with introductions, then two guided practices. The first settles body, speech and mind in their natural states; the second is the fourfold vision quest, four questions about flourishing, the support needed, how one must change and what one offers, each answered with 'may it be so'. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains why a vast and kind motivation is itself a protection, drawing on Viktor Frankl and on Tibetan teachers who kept their sanity through years in concentration camps.

• Beyond Regret - Four Steps to Purifying Past Behaviours David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded October 16, 2023

  In this episode, David explores the transformative wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of the Four Opponent Powers. As tools for purifying negative karma, these four steps offer a pragmatic approach to understanding and amending past behaviours. Whether we'd like to purify negative karma or would like a more mindful way to address personal regrets, these Four Opponent Powers provide a structure for overcoming negative habits.

• 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.

• Short-Term Strategies Glen Svensson · 80 minutes

  What can be done now, while the long work of realising emptiness is still under way. Glen Svensson goes step by step through the six-step process running from ignorance to suffering and offers something workable at each point: questioning appearances, observing a pleasant or unpleasant feeling as it arises, the four opponent powers for harm already done, and acceptance, which does not mean resignation, for pain already arrived. In the guided practice we then work on attachment itself.

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
• Bodhicitta practice 55
• Visualisation 45
• Lojong (mind training) 34
• 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