Ethics and precepts

20 teachings in the library are about this.

D4S3 - Compassion, and Choosing Someone You Can Work With David Oromith · 92 minutes · recorded August 21, 2025
Compassion and loving kindness are two sides of the same coin, as Lama Alan Wallace puts it, but the flavour of the practice is different: here you attend to beings who are suffering, with the active mind that asks what can I do to help. David is practical about the hostile person, having had people go straight for Hitler or Putin and then say they could not wish him well, and suggests an annoying colleague. Afterwards, why brief practices more often beat one long block.
Session 3 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded June 26, 2025
Loving kindness and compassion are extended from self to a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person and finally a wide group, guided throughout as preparation for next week's tonglen practice. David works through verses five and six of the Eight Verses: offering the victory rather than retaliating, and viewing someone who wrongs us as a teacher, illustrated with the story of the borrowed baby. Members share how they tried the practice at home and at work.
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 4 - Ethics & Patience David Oromith · 85 minutes · recorded February 13, 2025
In the guided Tonglen practice we breathe in a loved one's suffering, then a wider crowd's, as dark smoke dissolved at the heart, and breathe out light and wellbeing in return. David turns to ethics as the foundation of practice, likening unruly behaviour to bashing holes in a leaking boat, then works through three kinds of patience: staying calm when provoked, accepting what cannot be changed, and being patient with slow progress. One shares how the quicksand image helped with her own anger.
Session 2 - Exploring Bodhicitta David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025
A guided practice weaves the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and an enemy. David explains how these four give rise to great compassion and then bodhicitta, and reads passages from the Dalai Lama on its benefits for health, relationships and facing an enemy without anger. Questions cover holding all beings in mind by caring for everyone we actually meet. A short closing meditation follows.
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.
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.
D6S3 - Completing the Text and Living It Day to Day David Oromith · 78 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
A guided meditation on equalizing self and other leads into bodhicitta and a reflection on the rarity of a human life. David completes the text with the practice of applying antidotes the moment an affliction arises, using the image of a car ignored until the wheels fall off. Discussion covers how the 37 practices map onto the Four Noble Truths, book recommendations, and how to keep the teachings alive once the retreat ends.
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 4 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Mind) & How Karma Ripens David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded July 30, 2024
After settling meditation and refuge, David shares Alan Wallace's teaching that the person who ripens our karma in a future life is not quite us, so even cruelty deserves compassion rather than blame. He completes the ten nonvirtues with the three mental ones, covetousness, malice and wrong views, then explains projecting and completing karma and what shapes the mind at death. Questions range over pure lands, evidence for rebirth, funerals, and the forty nine day bardo.
Session 3 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Four of Speech) David Oromith · 76 minutes · recorded July 16, 2024
The session opens with a short meditation in which we settle body and breath, before David explains what makes karma heavier or lighter: strength of intention, habit, planning, rejoicing, and whether precepts are held. He then works through lying, divisive speech, harsh speech and idle talk using the four branches of basis, attitude, action and completion. Questions cover polite excuses, withholding information from a parent, blunt honesty, and whether sarcasm in a family can be purified.
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.
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.
Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded November 28, 2023
This session opens with a short settling practice, slow breaths and recalling one's intention, before David explains what refuge means: trust in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, tested against experience, not a creed to sign up to. He works through the five lay vows, avoiding killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxicants, including his own view on vegetarianism. Questions cover confusion between centres and keeping a Christian upbringing alongside this path, before the ceremony itself.
The Noble Eightfold Path: Sīla - Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood David Oromith · 77 minutes · recorded November 7, 2023
The session opens with ten minutes of mindfulness of breathing, with refuge and bodhicitta motivation, and closes with a shorter practice. David works through sila from the Pali suttas: right speech and its five gates of truth, timing, affection, benefit and goodwill, right action on killing, stealing and sexual misconduct, and right livelihood's forbidden trades and a balanced income. Questions cover lying to protect a friend from hurt, and working somewhere that sells meat or alcohol.
D5S2 - Practise What Is Important Lama Alan · 81 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
The closing aphorisms, and the end of the transmission of the text. Lama Alan Wallace explains the distinctive ones: those who harm you, the ones to focus on, then your teachers, your parents and bodhisattvas, with whom both virtue and non-virtue are heavy. He works through practise what is important, do not be bound by distemper, and do not yearn for gratitude. Questions follow on whether to study or first work on your own mind, and from a monk facing conscription who may be sent to fight.
D5S1 - Criteria, Pledges and Precepts Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
The last three points together. Lama Alan Wallace gives the criteria that show the practice is working, a self-grasping that is diminishing, yourself as the chief of the two witnesses, never parting from a sense of well-being even when distracted, then the pledges, from keeping the commitments already taken to taking no delight in another's misfortune. He then guides a practice on the four immeasurables, bringing people to mind, asking why they could not be free and resolving to free them.
Part Three - Final Questions, then Refuge and the Five Precepts Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 43 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
Questions first: whether awakening differs for a woman, how to be selfless without becoming a doormat, and what diminishes ill will. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo describes the bodhisattva as a spiritual warrior rather than a wimp, points to Tara for fearless compassion, and offers humour as a seventh perfection. An eleven year old asks whether she saw snow leopards at her cave. It closes with the refuge ceremony and the five precepts, the Buddha as doctor, the Dharma as medicine, the Sangha as nurses.
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.

Ethics and precepts

Ethics and precepts

More by subject

Human Friendly Events

Ethics and precepts

Ethics and precepts

More by subject

Log In

Human Friendly Events