Attachment and craving

116 teachings in the library are about this.

Session Two - From Need to Care, and the Open Palm David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded July 18, 2026
David shifts the basis of a relationship from need to care, then reads Thich Nhat Hanh on loving in such a way that the person you love feels free. Contentment and gratitude come in as the medicine for attachment, and equanimity as the open palm rather than the fist closed around a songbird that has landed in it. David then guides a practice in which we turn towards the fear of things changing with reassurance rather than argument, and wish a loved one free. It closes on the group's own reflections.
Session One - What Attachment Is, and Where It Hides David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded July 18, 2026
David separates attachment from genuine love, quoting Venerable Robina Courtin that attachment is I-based and love other-based, and that the two are stirred together like milk and water. He traces it to the feeling of not being enough: in being liked, in being right, and in the roles we hold on to, his own being the tech person on the ward until others arrived who could do it too. In the guided practice we set the two side by side for a loved one and a friend. It closes on the fear of abandonment underneath.
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.
Ryokan and the Moon David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded February 1, 2026
The meditation is an inquiry into awareness itself, in which we release thoughts, feelings and sensations to rest in what remains when everything else is set aside. David tells the Zen story of Ryokan and the thief who found nothing worth stealing, and talks about how giving away his only robe reveals that real wealth, unlike possessions, cannot be stolen or given away.
Attachment & Love in Relationships David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded January 25, 2026
In the open awareness practice we move through the body, sound and the mind, meeting each with acceptance rather than resistance. David talks about the difference between Buddhist love and attachment, describing the sentimentality that sees a partner or friend as perfect and the possessiveness that needs to control them, and how genuine love wants their happiness regardless.
Ask Yourself This Question David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded November 2, 2025
Mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils, with counting to help steady a wandering mind. David suggests that instead of always asking what practice to add, we should ask what we are already doing that perpetuates our suffering, pointing to the twenty years many of us will spend scrolling on our phones and Venerable Robina's comment about clean hoarders.
Session Two - Enthusiasm, People Pleasing and Contemplation David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded October 15, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we drop from body sensation into resting in bare awareness itself, then continues through generosity, joyful effort and concentration among the six perfections. David explains the three kinds of giving, why generosity is spoiled by wanting something back, and pictures contentment and gratitude as floating in a reservoir, before setting out the three levels of wisdom: study, contemplation and meditation. Questions cover where generosity shades into people pleasing.
D7S1 - The Whole Sequence in One Session, and Carrying It Home David Oromith · 128 minutes · recorded August 25, 2025
The closing session, and the longest of the week: the whole sequence run through in one unbroken practice, from the breath through the movements of the mind to awareness itself. David draws on a teaching Lama Alan and Eva Natanya gave in June on the four modes of mindfulness, and on why observing the mind and observing awareness can be understood as one practice. He ends on lojong, and on the person at work who need not cost you the patience you came here to build.
D6S3 - Equanimity, and the Four Immeasurables Complete David Oromith · 93 minutes · recorded August 24, 2025
The last of the four immeasurables, taught first in some traditions and last in others. Equanimity is not about flattening our emotions, David says: you ride the ups and downs without changing your behaviour and people pleasing so that you get praised again tomorrow. We work through the petty categories we put people in, and how a stranger could be a best friend or a sworn enemy in a year's time as causes and conditions shift. The session opens with a demonstration of the kata offering ahead of tomorrow's ceremony.
D6S2 - Seeking What Is Aware, and the Nine-Round Breathing David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded August 23, 2025
The same practice, with one question folded in: occasionally seek out what is that consciousness that is concentrating, then release the question back into non-doing. David sets out the three levels of mind this tradition works with, the ordinary psyche, the substrate consciousness that shamatha dissolves into, and pristine awareness, and is careful to promise nothing. The session also teaches the nine-round breathing as a preparation, without the elaborate visualisations.
D6S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign: Awareness of Awareness David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded August 23, 2025
The perfection of not doing, the one method with nothing to hold: we rest attention in its own nature, simply being aware of being aware, with no object at all. David reads Padmasambhava on shamatha without a sign and returns to the three words, relax, release and no return. He also reads Lama Alan on why solitude is found distressing, that without distractions we come face to face with our own minds with no buffer zone and no escape, and on the six prerequisites for this kind of training.
D5S3 - Empathetic Joy, and Delighting in the Good Fortune of Others David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025
The third immeasurable, and the most uplifting: being happy with someone rather than only for them, on the understanding that joy is not locked inside one person. David says this one comes to life out in the world, and tells of a low, isolated spell when he could not face going outside but could watch kids playing and a dog running after a ball from his window, and feel delight instead of the miserly mind asking why he did not have that. Questions afterwards on giving within our means, and on sustaining motivation when shamatha is not all or nothing.
D5S2 - Taking the Mind as the Path: Doing Even Less David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025
A second session with the same method, to get a bit more familiarity with it before moving on. David reads Lama Alan: in each of the two shamatha methods so far the practice involves doing less and less, and here you are doing even less, no longer preferring thoughts to be absent. He reads him again on how this quality of awareness lets the mind heal and unknot itself as resentment, craving and arrogance come up in a space of loving presence, and answers one participant caught between resting in awareness and attending to thoughts, and another who feels dullness and a sense of falling with the eyes closed.
D3S3 - Loving Kindness Through the Classic Sequence, and Its Near Enemy David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded August 20, 2025
Loving kindness outwards now, through the classic sequence of loved one, neutral person and difficult person, and on to all beings. Quoting Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, loving kindness says I love you, therefore I want you to be happy, while attachment, its near enemy, says I love you because you make me happy. It may look like love and act like love, but there are strings attached. Questions afterwards cover hypnagogic imagery mistaken for meditative experience, and how to learn to practise without guidance.
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 4 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded July 2, 2025
In tonglen we begin with a short visualisation of receiving love, then breathe in a loved one's suffering as a dark cloud, transform it at the heart, and send back well-being, widening out to groups: guided throughout. David covers verse seven, on secretly taking on others' pain, and verse eight on the eight worldly concerns and emptiness, illustrated with bread that is empty of breadness. Tessa asks about research into benefits for others; Michelle raises clutter and body image.
Session 2 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded June 18, 2025
This second session opens with a twenty minute meditation in which we settle body and mind, then recite the eight verses together. David works through the third verse on watching the mind and applying antidotes to afflictions, then the fourth on cherishing difficult people as a rare chance to practise compassion. A poll shows self cherishing can hide inside low self esteem as much as pride. Questions cover compassion versus empathy, accepting compliments, and giving victory to others.
D3S3 - Seeing Through the Guru, and Boundless Compassion Lama Alan · 103 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The substrate consciousness as a homing pigeon's coop, the place awareness returns to in sleep and in death. A breath practice leads into a guru yoga visualisation in which we trace devotion through lineage to our own pristine awareness. Lama Alan covers seeing Dharma companions through their Buddha nature rather than faults, cultivating compassion free of a mother's partiality, and what it means to receive a siddhi, in the lama who healed him with a stone heated in meditation.
D2S3 - The Buddha's Breathing Practice as a Source of Joy Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The Buddha's own instructions on mindfulness of breathing, moving from long and short breath to attending to the whole body, with Lama Alan's account of his own breath settling to around fifteen cycles a minute in retreat. He describes a quiet enjoyment of the practice itself, a source of wellbeing that costs nothing. The second and third foundation stones follow: reflecting on death, and what it means to stop clinging to this life alone.
D6S3 - Atisha on Perception, and Closing the Retreat Lama Alan · 67 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan opens with Atisha's teaching that extrasensory perception depends on shamatha, illustrated with siddhis he has seen and Russell Targ's remote-viewing research. He contrasts the effortful path of tantric practice with the Dzogchen alternative: resting body, speech, and mind in complete inactivity until the mind settles of itself. The retreat closes with a four-part loving-kindness meditation in which we dedicate merit to the group's shared aims.
D4S1 - Two Paths to Practice, and How Appearances Deceive Lama Alan · 116 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan contrasts the monastic route of cutting all ties with staying in the world, married or with children, and explains how to weed attachment out of a relationship while keeping the love that comes with it. He turns to why appearances of colour and self are always misleading, since nothing exists in the solid way it seems to, and answers those who say shamatha is no longer achievable by pointing to the Dalai Lama's own encouragement to practise it.
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.
D2S1 - Hovering, Comparison, and the Five Obscurations Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
Lama Alan introduces hovering, staying aware of being aware rather than dissolving into the breath, and traces suffering to grasping at what is not I or mine and failing to recognise what we are, the trap behind both low self-esteem and its mirror, feeling superior to others. He sets out the five obscurations, craving, malice, dullness, agitation and uncertainty, and shows how factors that arise naturally through practice act as their antidotes.
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part Two) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded May 7, 2025
This second session opens with a gentle practice in which we breathe space and compassion around whatever despair, anger or fear arises when facing the world's crises. David then maps the Eightfold Path onto engaged action, from authentic view and speech through to effort, and reads several of Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts on non-attachment to views, speech and livelihood. Questions cover the ethics of the arms trade during the war in Ukraine and how to pass on values to children without imposing them.
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.
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.
D5S3 - Non-Attachment, Generosity and the Roots of Ethics David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Desire and aversion are treated as appearances without solid existence, like a rainbow that can be admired but never grasped, or the death of a child in a dream. David works through the three kinds of generosity, giving materially, offering protection, and offering the Dharma, then turns to ethical discipline as the foundation the whole path rests on, using a leaking boat as the image for a mind not yet guarded by good conduct.
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.
D5S1 - Meeting Deprivation, Prosperity, Anger and Craving David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
A practice of bare attention across the senses builds toward resting in awareness itself. David works through verses on facing deprivation and prosperity without losing heart, then turns to anger and craving, using the image of salty water to show how craving only deepens thirst. The group asks about rumination, anxiety and turning anger at oneself into compassion.
D3S4 - Equanimity and Tonglen, Two Meditations in Practice David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Two guided meditations fill this hour. The first is equanimity, in which we work with a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, to separate love from the grip of attachment. The second is tonglen: we breathe in the pain of someone we love as dark smoke, extinguished at a point of light in the heart, then send back everything good in return. David addresses the fear that tonglen means taking on suffering, and whether the same ignorance applies to animals.
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.
D2S3 - Inner Solitude and the Impermanence of All Things David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
Building on relaxation, David introduces stability in shamatha, using counting at the belly to steady attention. The verse on solitary places turns out to be less about the physical setting than about a mind not swept along by distraction, shown through an experiment in which most people chose an electric shock over fifteen minutes alone with their thoughts. Questions range from a noisy neighbourhood to attachment inside a loving relationship.
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 3 - Mindfulness of the Mind David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded November 20, 2024
In the guided meditation on mindfulness of mind, eyes open in space, we count the breath before watching thoughts, memories and emotions arise, abide and dissolve without following or suppressing them. David contrasts passive witnessing in shamatha with discerningly recognising a lustful, hating or deluded mind here, using the Buddha's water and fire imagery for non-grasping. Questions cover guilt at doing nothing, locating anxiety in the body, and inquiry disturbing what it observes.
Session 2 - Mindfulness of Feelings David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 13, 2024
In the guided meditation on mindfulness of feelings, eyes partly open, we note the pleasant, unpleasant or neutral tone in sounds, bodily sensations and thoughts, without moving to ease discomfort. David draws on the Buddha's teaching on vedana and the image of a songbird held too tightly, and explains why we tend to ignore neutral feelings until boredom turns them unpleasant. Questions cover whether attending closely to pain eases it or makes it worse, and adjusting to unfamiliar calm.
Befriending the Mind Natalia Bojanic · 178 minutes · recorded November 9, 2024
Natalia Bojanic on the attitudes that make mindfulness possible: curiosity, non-striving, letting be and letting go, and generosity, offered as antidotes to boredom, agitation, aversion and doubt. Two thirds experiential, with guided meditations, mindful walking and stretching, journalling and discussion.
Guided Meditation - Equanimity David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024
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 basis of aversion to someone hostile. You then set all three in front of you and ask whether any deserves suffering more than another.
Session 5 - Equanimity David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024
The teaching turns to equanimity, upekka, the balance underlying loving kindness, compassion and joy. David distinguishes it from flat indifference, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of relating differently to knee pain, and explains why acceptance means acknowledging what is, not condoning it. Questions bring stories of grief for a missed friendship and a man at peace with terminal illness. In the meditation we extend loving kindness equally to a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult.
Navigating People Pleasing David Oromith · 11 minutes · recorded October 11, 2024
In this episode, David explores the roots of people pleasing and how it ties into Buddhist teachings on attachment and the need for approval. He shares insights on recognising this behaviour and offers practical ways to cultivate inner confidence and self-worth, freeing ourselves from the cycle of external validation.
Spiritual Rebellion: Mindfulness with Attitude Ondy Willson · 117 minutes · recorded September 28, 2024
Ondy Willson introduces her book and the work behind it: the influences of Buddhism, of her own life, and of twenty years teaching mindfulness in the public and private sectors. She sets out the key ideas of a spiritual practice, and how they can give contemporary life meaning and purpose without requiring a religion. With a reading, a meditation, and questions.
Session 1 - Loving-Kindness (part one) David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded September 11, 2024
David guides a loving-kindness meditation directed entirely at oneself: recalling a kind action, naming a quality worth admiring, then arousing the wish to be at ease, well and happy, and joyful. He explains why metta is a yearning rather than an emotion, and traces its near enemy, self-centred attachment, and its far enemy, malice, reading from the Metta Sutta. Several members speak openly about how hard they found turning kindness towards themselves.
D2S2 - The Three Poisons Behind Our Reactions David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded August 31, 2024
In the shamatha practice we cultivate relaxation through mindfulness of breathing, with shavasana as one option. David works through the second verse, showing that leaving one's homeland is really about the three poisons of attachment, aversion and delusion, which travel with us wherever we go. Discussion covers anger at injustice, patient acceptance when a situation cannot be changed, and offering the victory to defuse an argument without needing to be right.
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.
The Twelve Dependent Links of Origination David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024
In the twenty minute guided meditation on emptiness we search body and mind for a findable self and rest in its absence. David then sets out the twelve links of dependent origination, from ignorance through craving to birth and death, using the traditional images of the blind grandmother and the potter's wheel to show how the whole cycle turns and how it can be reversed. Questions cover whether the six realms are literal or metaphors and what, if anything, continues from one life to the next.
Session 3 - Empathetic Joy & Equanimity David Oromith · 58 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024
In the guided practice in empathetic joy we rejoice in our own good qualities, a loved one's happiness, and the kindness of strangers. David describes mudita as harder to sustain than it looks, distinguishes it from envy and cynicism, and tells how seeking joy in a local park helped him through depression. He then teaches equanimity, showing how we sort people into loved, neutral and disliked, and how true equanimity extends equal warmth to all three, unlike the flat indifference that mimics it.
Session 1 - Loving-Kindness David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded June 9, 2024
Two guided loving kindness practices: a short reflection on our own good qualities, then the full meditation, in which we extend well wishes from ourselves through a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult. David explains loving kindness as a wish rather than a feeling, distinguishes it from attachment dressed as love and from malice, and tells the story of the Dalai Lama's puzzlement at Western self-contempt.
Ignorance & Emptiness David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded June 4, 2024
The session opens with a brief guided meditation to settle the breath, before David turns to ignorance as the root of attachment and aversion, and to emptiness, the lack of inherent existence in people and things. He uses the cup, the car taken apart and the dream state to show how things exist only dependently, not as solid separate entities. Questions range widely: perception and the shared lamp, applying emptiness when someone is hurtful, and how to love someone who lacks inherent existence.
Three Types of Patience & Self-Cherishing David Oromith · 67 minutes · recorded May 22, 2024
After a short meditation in which we settle the breath, David sets out the three traditional types of patience: not retaliating when harmed, voluntarily accepting difficulty, and patience with the Dharma itself while still learning it. He explores self-cherishing through mundane examples, the last parking space, the electric car charging queue, and the Dalai Lama's wise versus foolish selfish. Questions cover self-care, a barber's story of self-cherishing hidden inside helping, and patience with oneself.
Aversion and Patient-Acceptance David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded May 7, 2024
The evening opens with ten minutes counting the breath and extending loving-kindness. David returns to the Dalai Lama's Beyond Religion to show attachment and aversion turn destructive only when out of proportion, then sets out patient acceptance through acceptance, understanding, compassion and fortitude, using the spark and fuel image and the two arrows. Questions cover a job left out of aversion, indifference as a near enemy of equanimity, and looking after oneself.
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.
Introduction & the Bhavachakra David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded April 2, 2024
The opening session of a module on the three poisons, with a settling meditation on the breath and refuge before David introduces the bhavachakra, the wheel of life, as a map for the weeks ahead. He explains the three animals at its centre, ignorance, attachment and aversion, and how they drive karma and rebirth through the six realms and twelve links. No separate practice follows. Discussion ranges from craving versus healthy desire to letting go of possessions and fear of the future.
Gratitude & Appreciation David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded February 18, 2024
The meditation is a gratitude practice: we begin with the breath and the heartbeat before widening out to the room, the home and the people we are grateful for. David explains why gratitude and contentment are natural antidotes to craving: when the heart already feels full, there is nothing left to grasp for. He recommends keeping some form of gratitude practice, however simple, calling it one of the few habits nobody regrets starting.
Reducing Attachment Whilst Still Enjoying Hedonic Happiness David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded February 4, 2024
In the body scan meditation, good for relaxation and well suited to lying down, we move attention slowly through the whole body. David talks about the difference between worldly happiness, which is real and fine to enjoy, and the lasting well-being that comes only from within. He shares a story of holding a bird loosely on an open palm rather than gripping it in a fist, showing how to enjoy life's pleasures without grasping at them, in the world but not of it.
Mindfulness & Introspection and Mindfulness of Breathing (Nostrils) David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded February 1, 2024
In the guided practice on mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils we track the change in temperature between the in breath and the out breath. David explains vividness as the third quality of attention, alongside relaxation and stability, and describes mindfulness as a rope holding the breath, introspection as the hook that notices when it slips. Questions cover lights and sensations arising in practice, working with pain, and how this differs from mindfulness in modern Vipassana.
Introduction, the Pursuit of Happiness, and Settling Body, Speech & Mind in Their Natural States David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded January 9, 2024
The opening session of this shamatha module begins with a short intention setting and a full guided meditation on settling body, speech and mind in their natural states, in which we use the out breath to release thought and tension. David introduces shamatha itself and its Buddhist and pre-Buddhist roots, then draws on the Dalai Lama and Einstein to separate hedonic pleasure from genuine, cultivated well-being. Questions cover sleepiness during practice and an unusual shaky, cold sensation one student noticed.
The Four-Fold Vision Quest David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded January 7, 2024
A visionary loving kindness meditation built around four questions: what your own flourishing would look like, what you need from the world to get there, how you would love to change, and what you have to offer others. David talks about the difference between craving, which the Buddha named as the root of suffering, and wholesome aspiration, tracing how aspiration, confidence, motivation and intention lead to action, using the choice between an assignment and a box set as an example.
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.
Exploring Attachment: a Dharma Cafe David Oromith · 36 minutes · recorded November 15, 2023
Attachment, and why the mind soon tires of whatever it wanted. David tells Ajahn Brahm's story of the nun whose patched robe led to a cat, a cow, a field and a boy, and asks what her real problem actually was. He talks about the attachment loop, and asks what our own behaviour says we believe rather than what we know. This first Dharma Cafe opens with twenty four minutes of guided practice, mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils with counting from one to seven, and open discussion follows.
Turning Everyday Life into Dharma Practice David Oromith · 53 minutes · recorded November 6, 2023
No formal meditation until the close, a ten minute practice in which we harvest joy through the five senses and gratitude for this life. The talk is on turning everyday life into practice: difficult people become opportunities for patience and compassion, chores are done with mindful awareness rather than boredom, and pleasant experience is enjoyed with gratitude rather than craving more. Listeners share their own struggles, including a difficult mother and mindful eating with the television on.
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.
Harvesting Joy and Simplifying Life David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded October 22, 2023
A meditation called Harvesting Joy, in which we cycle through the five senses to notice small, ordinary delights in touch, sight, sound, smell and taste. David explains that this is not hedonism: it helps us appreciate what we already have rather than always craving something bigger or better, which is how attachment tends to work. He talks about simplifying daily life, cutting back on extra stimulation, so the mental space it frees can go towards relationships and practice instead.
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.
The Spread Of Buddhism: Three Main Branches of Practice David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded September 19, 2023
This session opens with a short settling meditation and a going for refuge, then David traces how Buddhism divided into Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, using the mustard seed story to show how one teaching suits different people, and a burning building image to contrast liberation with the bodhisattva's wish to help others out too. He explains nirvana against full enlightenment, and the guru bond distinctive to Vajrayana. Questions cover chanting and finding a teacher without turning sectarian.
Our Need to Be Liked & Approved Of David Oromith · 34 minutes · recorded September 17, 2023
In the meditation on the sky-like nature of mind we watch thoughts arise and pass like clouds while resting in the clear, spacious awareness beneath them. David talks about our need to be liked and approved of, seen in social media validation, peer pressure and people-pleasing at work, and why tying self-worth to others' opinions is such shaky ground. He offers loving kindness towards ourselves, reflecting on impermanence and the Dalai Lama's reminder that we carry Buddha nature.
Judging and Trying to Fix Others David Oromith · 27 minutes · recorded July 2, 2023
In the meditation we watch the mind with the eyes open, observing thoughts arise and pass like clouds in the sky or passers-by in the street, without following after them. David talks about our habit of judging others for not living as we think they should, and the difference between holding space for someone and trying to fix them. He tells the story of a mother at a retreat who realised that simply showing up and listening mattered more to her daughter than any amount of advice.
Week 4: Equanimity (Upekkha): Finding balance and serenity with others and amidst life’s ups and downs David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded June 29, 2023
The session closes the four immeasurables series with equanimity, upekkha, opening with a settling breath meditation and returning at the end to the classic practice in which we bring a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult to mind in turn, wishing each equally well. David distinguishes true equanimity from indifference and from attachment. Questions cover boundaries with a difficult colleague, confrontation, and a cooled friendship.
Week 1: Loving-kindness (Metta): Cultivating an open heart and goodwill towards all beings David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded June 9, 2023
The evening opens with a short settling meditation, followed later by a full loving-kindness practice in which we move from self to a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult, closing with the Buddha's words on boundless love. David explains metta as a wish rather than a feeling, and names its near enemy, self-centred attachment, and its far enemy, ill will, using the image of a mosaic buried under concrete. Sarah describes how a small act of kindness turned round a strained work relationship.
Cultivating Joy David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded April 30, 2023
We settle into stillness with an open awareness meditation, before turning to a recent moment of real joy, wishing that same happiness for every being and extending empathetic joy to good news witnessed in others. David talks about why Buddhism deliberately cultivates joy rather than only addressing suffering, naming empathetic joy, the practice of wishing pleasure universally shared, and the joy that comes from a settled mind and from wisdom itself.
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 3: When Things Go Wrong - Transforming Anger (16 March 2023) David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded March 16, 2023
The evening opens with a guided breathing meditation, before David turns to aversion, attachment's mirror image, which exaggerates the faults in whoever has upset us until we react to what he calls a three headed green monster rather than the person in front of us. He explains patience as accepting what is rather than resisting it, and compassion as redirecting anger toward the person's suffering. Questions cover staying calm around an angry colleague, and the session closes with a short loving kindness meditation.
Week 2: When We Don’t Get What We Want - Transforming Disappointment (9 March 2023) David Oromith · 72 minutes · recorded March 10, 2023
The session opens and closes with a guided practice in which we settle awareness into the body, then count breaths at the nostrils in a breathing meditation. David looks at why we suffer when we cannot get what we want, tracing it to attachment's habit of exaggerating what a thing will give us. He tells the story of the nun who ended up needing a cow, and offers non-attachment, contentment and gratitude as the antidote. Questions range from technology frustrations to attachment versus ordinary worry.
S2 - Attachment and Aversion, and the Spark and the Fuel David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded January 19, 2023
The evening opens with a short guided meditation in which we settle into the body and breath. David then explains attachment and aversion as habits of mind that exaggerate things, using the spark, fuel and flame image and the story of the nun who ends up with a cow to show how solving one craving creates another. A second guided practice follows, mindfulness of breathing at the abdomen with counting. Questions cover expectation, frustration with practice, and whether to let thoughts go or work with them.
Embodying the Qualities of Tara Thubten Chodron · 105 minutes · recorded November 5, 2022
Ven. Thubten Chodron works through the poem on Tara who liberates from the eight dangers, taken from her book How to Free Your Mind. Pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, distorted views, miserliness, attachment and doubt each get an image and an antidote, with stories from her own life against each one. Her argument is that Tara protects by teaching, not by fixing us from outside. The talk closes with a guided visualisation of Tara in green light with her mantra.
Letting Go of Our Expectations (Live Talk) David Oromith · 11 minutes · recorded October 25, 2022
The talk is from one of our weekly online guided meditation & discussion groups. The topic of discussion is 'expectations' - how our attachment causes us to grasp onto certain outcomes and thus results in us becoming upset when these expectations are not met. We invite you to join us live on Sundays to share in the guided meditation and discussion.
Failure and Guilt David Oromith · 36 minutes · recorded October 23, 2022
The meditation this week is soothing and relaxing: we ease tension through a body scan before settling attention at the nostrils with a count to seven. David turns to failure and guilt, building on last week's talk on attachment. He explains that Tibetan has no word for guilt, only one that translates as intelligent regret that decides to do things differently, and offers this as the way through failure without turning it into self-hatred.
Letting Go of Our Expectations David Oromith · 36 minutes · recorded October 16, 2022
This week's meditation is an inquiry practice: we move through the body's earth, water, fire and air elements, asking whether any sensation is stable, pleasant or truly ours. David talks about expectation as the foundation of failure, the advice the Dalai Lama once gave his own teacher. He distinguishes wholesome aspiration from attachment, and explains how gratitude and contentment let expectation fall away.
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.
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.
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.
The True Meaning of Non-Attachment and How It Sets You Free David Oromith · 53 minutes · recorded September 26, 2021
David starts by saying what non-attachment is not: coldness, indifference, giving up relationships or pleasure, pointing to the Dalai Lama's own tears and laughter as evidence. He shows how attachment adds projection and expectation onto people and things, illustrated by a monitor smashed in the wind, causing disappointment the world did not create. The talk closes with a guided mindfulness of breathing in which we contemplate where attachment shows up in life. Questions cover forgiveness and boundaries.
Dealing with Frustration David Oromith · 14 minutes · recorded June 22, 2020
In this episode, David explores a common emotion that many of us experience on a regular basis: frustration. Frustration comes from non-acceptance and our ‘grasping’ at our expectations. It comes from not wanting things to be a certain way and being unable to accept things the way they are. But, as we'll see, frustration is not an inherent part of our mind and is something we can reduce and remove altogether. The Buddha offered a range of simple methods to calm ourselves and let go of our frustrations so that we’re not so irritated and angry throughout the day, and to help us transform our minds completely.
The Key to Happy, Healthy & Loving Relationships David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded June 17, 2020
In this episode, David talks about love and attachment, and the key to happy, healthy and loving relationships from a Buddhist perspective. For a lot of us, if someone was to ask us "what would make your relationship with your partner better?" our answer would be something that our partner should do differently. It may even be a whole list that we have prepared. But as we venture on the path of meditation and self-inquiry, we realise that, as with everything, our relationships are subjective and the happiness, joy and love we seek must come from within. By bringing love and joy to the world and avoiding the extremes of aversion and craving, we can have happy, healthy and loving relationships with everyone we meet.
D3S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 123 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Lama Alan Wallace turns awareness in upon awareness itself, the method the Buddha called the most profound of the shamatha practices, and traces where it leads: the mind dissolving into the substrate consciousness, which is often mistaken for nirvana. He guides a practice of inverting awareness on the in breath and releasing it into open space on the out breath, then asks who the meditator is. Eva Natanya asks about the different levels of mystery, and which of them can be known.
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.
D5S3 - Awareness of Awareness Lama Alan · 88 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace takes up shamatha without a sign, awareness of awareness, which the Buddha counted among the ten kasinas and the subtlest of the methods Padmasambhava teaches. We use an oscillation of arousing the attention and releasing it into space, and three things mean you are doing it incorrectly: distraction, grasping, and losing clarity. Conduct between sessions follows: rely upon unwavering mindfulness, picking thought up and putting it down like a knife and fork.
D2S3 - Awareness of Awareness, Dying Lucidly, and Loving Kindness Lama Alan · 85 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Nothing could persuade you that you are not conscious, and Lama Alan takes that as his starting point. He describes the substrate consciousness, then guides awareness of awareness, released into space on the out-breath and inverted upon itself on the in-breath. What the dying process holds for anyone who stays lucid follows. The session closes with loving kindness, an aspiration rather than an emotion, with the near enemy Buddhaghosa names in the Path of Purification, self-centred attachment.
D1S4 - Materialism as a Learned Delusion, and Innate Self-Grasping Lama Alan · 59 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Ignorance and delusion as the taproot from which the other afflictions grow. Lama Alan separates delusions we acquire from our surroundings from those we are born with, and argues that materialism, the view that a person is nothing but a brain, is an acquired one, quoting Huxley in 1869 and Donald Hoffman on how little has changed since. The innate one is grasping at a separate, autonomous self. We narrow attention to the breath at the nostrils, with counting to ten offered as trainer wheels.
D1S3 - Relaxation Before Stability, and What Makes a Desire Afflictive Lama Alan · 115 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
What separates a strong desire from an afflictive one. Lama Alan defines craving and attachment as decontextualising their object and rooted in misapprehension, so even a little is toxic, and treats hostility and hatred the same way, quoting Bhikkhu Bodhi that there are times for moral outrage. He puts relaxation, stability and vividness in that order, since concentration without relaxation burns people out. The guided practice is mindfulness of breathing, whole body first, then the abdomen.
D1S1 - Are You Human? The Three Poisons and the Substrate Lama Alan · 100 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The opening evening is teaching only, with no practice. Lama Alan Wallace starts from a Pali Canon exchange in which the brahmin Dona asks the Buddha whether he is a god, a spirit or a human, is told no to each, and hears the reply, I am awake. He works through the three poisons of the mind, and the dualistic grasping that is the taproot of craving and hatred, runs the ten Buddhist analogies for illusion, and lays out the substrate and substrate consciousness.
P2 - Meditation, Conduct and Dying Well Lama Alan · 139 minutes · recorded January 1, 2017
Yangthang Rinpoche's text is blunt: without the view there is no meditation, only a cheap imitation of it, and poor preparation for death. The session opens with a guided practice in which we probe the mind for its colour, origin, location and destination. He works through meditation and conduct, the nine kinds of activity to be released, guru yoga and the four empowerments, why clinging to bliss, luminosity or non-conceptuality casts you into the desire, form and formless realms, and how to recognise the ground at death.
Part Two - The Perfections Turned Around, and Questions on Anger Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 80 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
The verses continue through the perfections, each definition undercutting the usual way of looking at it. The supreme generosity is non-attachment, the supreme ethical conduct is to pacify one's mind, the supreme patience is to take the lowest place, and the supreme effort is letting go of activity. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo tells of Atisha keeping a rude attendant as his teacher of patience. Questions follow on teachers charging for Dharma and on whether anger ever serves a good cause.
S3 - Non-Meditation and the Near Misses Lama Alan · 121 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Is the method shamatha, vipashyana or Dzogchen? Lama Alan answers that the same practice can be any of the three depending on who does it, then maps understanding, experience, realisation and confidence, realisation being nailing it and confidence countersinking it. The near misses: clinging to bliss, luminosity with grasping, and a non-conceptual openness with no lucidity of vipashyana in it. The session opens with a guided practice from Padmasambhava's Natural Liberation, ending in non-meditation.
Guided Meditation - Equanimity, Even Care for the Neutral, the Dear and the Difficult Lama Alan · 26 minutes
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 you see how transient the relationship is and how constantly that person, like you, wishes for happiness. With an orb of light at your heart you breathe in the darkness of their suffering and breathe out loving kindness, closing on the difficult person set free.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Breathing In the Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 25 minutes
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 rather than in circumstances: delusion, craving and hostility. Using only the in-breath, you draw those afflictions in as a dark cloud and dissolve them in the light at your heart, imagining the enduring peace. You close by wishing the same freedom for someone heavily afflicted.
Guided Meditation - Compassion, Attending to the Core Causes of Suffering Lama Alan · 25 minutes
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 in-breath you draw that darkness into an orb of light at the heart, dissolving it and imagining yourself free. You then rehearse future situations that would once have triggered the same patterns. It closes by extending the same wish to someone you have known to be heavily afflicted.
Guided Meditation - A Body Scan of Feeling Tone, Pleasant, Unpleasant and Neutral Lama Alan · 25 minutes
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 it feels pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. You stay still, and when the impulse to shift arises you examine the feeling behind it. The scan then opens to the whole body, where you ask how feelings arise and dissolve, and whether you can attend without grasping or preference.
Guided Meditation - The Three Marks of Existence, from Recollection to Direct Inquiry Lama Alan · 13 minutes
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 grasped what is not yours as I and mine. You then turn to the space of the mind and put the same three questions to experience. Is anything here unchanging? Is any appearance a real well of happiness or suffering? Does anything carry the mark of I?
D1S2 - The Fourfold Vision Quest, and What Free Will Means Lama Alan · 67 minutes
We cultivate wise desire through imagination, rather than by quieting the mind. Lama Alan guides a twenty four minute fourfold vision quest, after the Native American tradition: what would make you truly happy, what would you love to receive from the world, how would you love to transform, and what would you love to offer. Then addiction to sensory and intellectual stimulation, craving and attachment, and free will defined as making choices conducive to one's own and others' good. Questions turn to rebirth and resurrection.
Cognitive & Emotional Balance Glen Svensson · 90 minutes
The last two balances: cognitive balance, which is vipashyana seeing experience without projecting onto it, illustrated by the coiled rope mistaken for a snake, and emotional balance, which the compassion practices serve. Glen Svensson guides a nature of mind practice in which we search for where awareness is located, and then a tonglen. He then lays out how to integrate all four into daily life, and a review of one good act, one harmful act and one thing received before sleep.
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.
Dealing with Anger Glen Svensson · 81 minutes
Anger, defined here as always carrying the intention to harm, and why Buddhism recommends patience and compassion in its place rather than a right amount of anger at the right time. Glen Svensson guides a practice on occasions when you got angry, on criticism valid and invalid, and on dissecting the irritating person until words are only sounds. He then introduces cognitive fusion, fusing a person and their behaviour into one thing, which turns rejection of an act into attack on the person.
Compassion Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
Compassion, karuna, as the wish for ourselves and others to be free of suffering and its causes, which means understanding dukkha at three levels: unpleasant experience, the change in our pleasant experiences, and the potential for suffering that a mind contaminated by mental afflictions always carries. In the guided practice we draw suffering in as black smoke to be dissolved at the heart, moving from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen Svensson reads from Matthieu Ricard on why compassion burnout is really empathy fatigue.
Dealing with Attachment Glen Svensson · 72 minutes
Attachment is the near enemy of loving kindness, and Glen Svensson defines it as a mental factor that exaggerates an object's attractiveness and wants to hold on to it. In the guided practice you bring to mind a person or thing you cling to, loosen the grip, then look directly at the attachment itself. Glen dispels the common misconceptions that attachment is needed to enjoy things, to have relationships or to be creative, describing how ordinary food grew tastier during a long retreat as his craving subsided.
Loving Kindness Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Loving kindness, maitri, is defined by Glen Svensson as an aspiration rather than an emotion: the wish for ourselves and others to have happiness and its causes. Two guided practices: in the first we cultivate it for ourselves through reflections on our own deepest aspirations, and in the second we extend it in stages to a friend, a stranger and a difficult person. Glen distinguishes pleasure from genuine happiness and names its causes as ethics, concentration and wisdom.
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.
Stages of Progress Glen Svensson · 88 minutes
Where this practice leads. Glen Svensson maps the four results, stream enterer through to arhat, against the ten fetters, then the five paths, the ten grounds, and the difference between the mental afflictions that block liberation and the subtler stains of ignorance that block enlightenment. A closing practice, taken from Padmasambhava, turns the search on awareness itself: where is it located, has it a shape, a size, an edge?
Boundaries Glen Svensson · 85 minutes
How a line drawn to make sense of experience is turned into a boundary, and the six step process by which that grasping becomes attachment, aversion and suffering. Glen Svensson works through the two extremes of existence and non-existence towards Nagarjuna's middle way, and uses the lucid dream as his analogy for realising emptiness while awake. The session opens with a practice on the body as a dependent arising and closes by looking for the me in the flow of body and mind.
Not-Self Glen Svensson · 89 minutes
A guided practice covers all three levels of dukkha, ending with the question of whether any experience is completely free of the potential for suffering. Glen Svensson then calls renunciation a bad translation: the term means to move away from suffering, so it is the wish to be liberated from it, and to give up the eight worldly concerns rather than the eight worldly things. In a second practice we look for the autonomous me that seems to be a third thing alongside the body and the mind.
Suffering Glen Svensson · 75 minutes
We move mindfulness from the body to the mind, with a guided practice in which we watch thoughts, emotions and memories against the question of whether anything in the mind is stable and unchanging. Glen Svensson introduces the four noble truths and the word dukkha, whose etymology is a bad hole, an axle that never fitted its wheel. In a second practice we ask of a pleasant experience whether it is really in the nature of happiness. He tells of a retreat in Spain where repetitive food began to taste better once craving subsided.
Impermanence Glen Svensson · 64 minutes
The teaching opens and closes with a guided body scan in which we move from the crown of the head to the tips of the toes on one question: is anything in the body stable, or is everything changing moment by moment? Glen Svensson sets out what vipashyana is, why shamatha has to underpin it, and the four distorted views it works on. Impermanence, he argues, is good news, and he gives the image of the kayak of mindfulness on the river of life, rather than grabbing at flowing water.
Preparing Body & Mind Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Shamatha means calm abiding, and Glen Svensson opens by explaining why, if we want to achieve genuine happiness and well-being, shamatha practice is indispensable. He draws out the difference between pleasurable experience and genuine happiness, and where concentration fits among the three higher trainings. The seven point posture is worked through, then a fifteen minute guided meditation steps through preparing body, speech and mind. Questions cover meditating with a tremor, and whether shamatha is the first jhana.

Attachment and craving

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