Buddha nature

20 teachings in the library are about this.

Session Two - The Natural Warmth of Awareness David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded July 21, 2026
In two guided practices we rest in awareness of awareness and then let warmth in on the in breath, without it feeling manufactured. Between them David reads Tsoknyi Rinpoche on essence love, and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on our being something jewel-like rather than worthless. Gold covered in dirt is plunged into the water of awareness rather than scrubbed, and the frightened, contracted part of us is warmed like ice rather than broken with a hammer. It closes on a question about bliss, and a dedication.
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.
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.
S3 - Teachers, Etiquette, and Devotion with Discernment David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded September 17, 2025
In the guided meditation we visualise the Buddha as indivisible from our own teacher, going for refuge and arousing bodhicitta before the talk begins. David covers etiquette in a dharma hall, the three types of unreceptive vessel, and how to address a teacher by title. He explains the three levels of viewing a teacher, from emissary to embodiment of Buddha nature, and warns devotion must stay discerning rather than treating every action as perfect. A question compares Tibetan and Zen shrines.
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.
Session Three - Perception, Emptiness and Clarity of Mind David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded April 3, 2025
Teaching only this week, with no guided meditation until the close. David examines how appearances such as colour or a table are constructed by the senses and mind rather than known directly, drawing on Guy Armstrong and Donald Hoffman's account of perception, before describing mind as the union of emptiness, clarity and compassionate responsiveness, or Buddha nature. The session ends with an eyes open meditation in which we rest in awareness without an object, then questions on that practice.
Session Two - The Thread That Continues David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded March 26, 2025
The evening opens with a brief settling meditation, then David works through written questions on emptiness: the four point analysis for locating a self, the example of a liver, and how a personal self, a subtle continuum of consciousness and Buddha nature relate across lifetimes, drawn out through the dream analogy. Discussion runs throughout, and it closes with a guided practice on the instruction that seeing is only seeing, hearing as only hearing, across all six senses.
Our Essential Nature is Basic Goodness David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded March 16, 2025
In this meditation we imagine the mind as a clear, spacious sky, with each thought, memory or emotion arising and passing like a cloud, observed without getting drawn in. David talks about the Buddhist teaching that our afflictions, anger, jealousy, confusion, are temporary clouds passing over a basic goodness that is always there, our Buddha nature. He explains why recognising this in ourselves lets us recognise it even in people who challenge us, since their harmful behaviour comes from the same fear.
Guided Meditation - This Precious Human Life David Oromith · 24 minutes · recorded January 22, 2025
David begins from Buddha nature, the clear mind said to be present in everyone and impossible to lose or damage, then works through how rarely the conditions to recognise it come together: a human birth at all, the time and the inclination to practise, teachers, books and people who support you. It ends in going for refuge and a resolve to use this life well.
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.
Part Two - The Spiritual Warrior, and the Mind Training Commitments Ondy Willson · 98 minutes · recorded October 26, 2024
The spiritual warrior is on an inner crusade, not one aimed at anybody else. The tantric view that we are already enlightened and held back by a small idea of ourselves, a long visualisation that breaks the rock of ego around Buddha nature, fear as the thing that blocks courage, and the commitments of the seven point mind training read through and argued over.
Building Resilience David Oromith · 32 minutes · recorded July 21, 2024
In the visualisation meditation we imagine a pure white light at the centre of the chest expanding to fill the body, representing our own goodness and Buddha nature. David answers a longstanding question on building resilience, describing it as returning to balance rather than never losing it, and names self awareness, self compassion and meditation as the key supports. He closes on starting small, with today's ordinary challenges, rather than waiting for a crisis to test us.
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.
D3S3 - Extending It to a Benefactor Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The first move away from oneself, to a benefactor, someone we respect and are grateful to, and someone who is still alive. Michael Lobsang Tenpa answers a practitioner who cannot wish happiness on people who make lots of people die and suffer, then defines what makes loving kindness immeasurable and then great. He sets out the two readings of Buddha nature, an acorn to be grown or a tree already there, and how Milarepa got that wrong before meeting Marpa.
D2S5 - Questions, and Essence Love Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023
An evening given over to questions: basic goodness without conceit, holding all beings in mind without being overwhelmed, vegetarianism without arrogance, phrases that feel mechanical, how Buddha nature can be severed, and what to do on witnessing harm when neither passivity nor impulse will serve. Michael Lobsang Tenpa explains Tsoknyi Rinpoche's term essence love, and the okayness a Himalayan grandmother radiates. The practice at the end is Shantideva's verses of dedication.
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.
D6S2 - The Uncreated Light of Tabor Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 117 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Eva Natanya reads Gregory Palamas on the Transfiguration, where Christ became nothing he was not but showed the disciples what he had always been, and on the difference between God's essence, which no creature can share, and the uncreated energies, which divinise the saints. In the practice the breath is taken as divinising energy, and the innermost heart cries one line of prayer. Lama Alan replies with a bouquet of lotuses, taking up her point that human means something different in each tradition.
Guided Meditation - Tonglen, Sending and Receiving on Both Breaths Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan takes tonglen through its full two-way cycle. You begin with yourself, breathing in the suffering you are vulnerable to and its inner causes, breathing out from the orb of light at your heart the wish that you flourish. You then let attention rove and settle where it will, on a loved one, a difficult person or a community, moving on like a bee from flower to flower. If attention scatters, you return to the breath and begin again.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, Radiating Light from the Heart Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace turns from present sensation to imagination, inviting you to envision your own flourishing in detail: what you would love your life to become, and the deeper wishes beneath that. You picture the pure ground of your awareness as a small orb of white light at the heart, radiating through your whole being with each out-breath. The light then flows to a dear friend, and to someone whose voice you would be glad to hear.
Part Three - Emptiness, Bodhicitta and Buddha Nature Lama Alan · 81 minutes
How the second turning follows from the first. Lama Alan traces the argument from the nun Vajira, who reduces a chariot to a label and with it everything else, through Nagasena and King Milinda to the Heart Sutra, where the aggregates are empty of inherent nature too. He gives the reason for the bodhisattva's turn, the father who is last out of the burning house, and what is needed to reach the path of accumulation. The third turning and Buddha nature follow, and Dzogchen the final point.

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