Genuine happiness and wellbeing

48 teachings in the library are about this.

Guided Meditation - Arousing Aspiration for Practice David Oromith · 18 minutes · recorded May 19, 2026
David asks why you joined the session tonight, and beneath that what draws you to practice at all, with time to sit rather than grab the most obvious answer. Then a moment when something on the path worked, and a person whose practice you admire or trust, on the thought that if they can do this then perhaps it is not beyond you. It closes looking forward, at what a calmed mind would change, with no shoulds and no pressure.
Guided Meditation - Rejoicing in Your Own Life and the Good in the World David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded April 19, 2026
Rejoicing starts with your own life history, with any goodness received from the world and any brought to it, however small. Then someone you care about at a moment of their excitement, their joy felt as your own and breathed in, with the phrase may your good fortune continue. It widens to people who inspire you and to the communities working for those in need, then to anyone you envy or resent, and comes back to you.
Teaching & Meditation for the International Day of Peace 2025 David Oromith · 38 minutes · recorded September 21, 2025
David marks the International Day of Peace, a day for committing to peace above our differences. The loving kindness practice comes first, and we widen from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger and someone we are in conflict with, then to all beings in the words of the Metta Sutta. The talk sets the Dalai Lama on inner peace coming first, and closes on Wangari Maathai's hummingbird carrying drops of water to a forest fire, doing the best it can.
D8S5 - The Retreat's Closing Visualisation and Dedication Lama Alan · 42 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The retreat's closing guided practice, a fourfold visualisation on flourishing: what genuine happiness looks like now, what is needed from the world to reach it, how one would like to grow, and what one would most want to offer others. Lama Alan pictures light radiating from the heart with each aspiration, dedicates whatever benefit has come from the week, and closes with thanks to those who organised the retreat. The group offers him a verse of gratitude in return.
D1S2 - The Coal Burning Plant, and Genuine Unhappiness Lama Alan · 97 minutes · recorded June 5, 2025
The image is a coal burning plant that must be switched off before solar panels can work: hedonic pursuits crowd out the genuine well-being meditation cultivates. Lama Alan applies the same logic to suffering, contrasting solitary confinement with a yogi's cave, same conditions but opposite minds. Questions range from fatigue and rest between sessions to a devotee told repeatedly it is even better to practise Dharma, ending with the value of retreat.
D1S1 - Motivation, Hedonic Pleasure and Settling the Mind Lama Alan · 90 minutes · recorded June 4, 2025
Why we practice, before what we practice: Lama Alan distinguishes hedonic pleasure, which depends on circumstance, from genuine well-being that grows from within, and tells why the Buddha left a secure life in search of a path. He introduces the terms samadhi, shamatha and vikalpa, the obsessive, compulsive flow of thought meditation is meant to settle, closing with a guided practice of settling body, speech and mind in their natural state.
Random Acts of Kindness David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded May 4, 2025
In the loving kindness meditation we extend the wish for genuine wellbeing from ourselves outward to a loved one, a stranger and finally someone we find difficult. David talks about noticing the small kindnesses that rarely make the news, from a stranger helping push a stuck car free of mud to holding a door open, and about practising one small act of generosity a day while letting go of any need for thanks.
Session 1 - Mindfulness of the Body David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded October 31, 2024
This first session on mindfulness of the body opens with an extended teaching, tracing how the Buddha added inquiry to shamatha to found vipassana, and a cup shows how perception differs from concepts we add on top. In the body scan that follows, we take attention to sensations of solidity, moisture, temperature and motion, asking whether each is permanent, pleasant and truly ours. Afterwards the group discusses separating pain from sensation, and how calling something mine builds a false sense of ownership.
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.
Guided Meditation - Gratitude and Appreciation David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded February 18, 2024
Gratitude is generated deliberately, first for the breath, then for the heartbeat, then for this human body and the unique mind without which there would be no experience. David quotes a teacher: as long as we are breathing, there is more right here than there is wrong. It widens to the room and its sounds, the home, hot water and a fridge, the people behind everything you own, and the planet. The last minutes are your own.
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.
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.
D4S2 - Loving Kindness for a Friend Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
The step to someone close, a partner, a sibling, a best friend, where the practice gets harder. Michael Lobsang Tenpa shows how the wish quietly turns conditional, may you be happy but only with me, and asks people to hold that person's flourishing steady even with themselves removed from the picture. He is clear that this does not mean tolerating harmful behaviour, and that healthy boundaries and loving kindness belong together.
D5S1 - Building a Circle of Inspiration Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024
How to keep the practice alive. Michael Lobsang Tenpa suggests a eudaimonic journal, a book of the antidotes that work for you personally, and a mandala of inspiration made of images, scents, music, quotes and inspiring practitioners. He tells of Sharon Salzberg asking the Dalai Lama whether to teach loving kindness for oneself first, since so many people suffer from self-hatred, which he did not understand. The closing practice runs from oneself to a benefactor, a friend, a neutral person and all beings.
D2S1 - Loving Kindness for Oneself Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 61 minutes · recorded December 11, 2023
Loving kindness proper begins, and the object for the whole day is oneself. After the four questions, Michael Lobsang Tenpa guides tenderness crystallising into the wish, may I be happy and have the causes of happiness, and explains why the Indo-Tibetan wording adds those causes where the Pali sometimes starts with the simpler may I be happy. He also corrects a common error: the object of concentration is the being, not the phrases. Walking meditation pairs one step with one aspiration.
Guided Meditation - Harvesting Joy, Finding Delight in the Ordinary David Oromith · 10 minutes · recorded November 6, 2023
The body first, searched for anything pleasant in it, comfort in the seat, clothes against the skin, the soothing rhythm of the breath. The eyes then open at least partly, for whatever is delightful to see, and after that whatever is delightful to hear, birds, wind chimes, or the relative silence. We let awareness roam the five senses, harvesting the small and trivial and multiplying it. It closes on gratitude for this precious human life and a dedication.
D1S1 - The Four Questions, and Two Kinds of Happiness Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 62 minutes · recorded August 25, 2023
The practice that opens every day here, a vision quest of four questions: how you envision genuine flourishing, what support it needs, how you would have to change, and what gift you want to offer. Michael Lobsang Tenpa then revisits a distinction Lama Alan quotes but did not invent: hedonic happiness, whose kinds and their flip sides are the eight worldly concerns, and the eudaimonic wellbeing that comes from the inside. It closes with harvesting joy, finding what is pleasant in each sense.
Connecting to Communities for Genuine Wellbeing Ondy Willson · 116 minutes · recorded May 4, 2023
Ondy Willson asks whether our trouble with anxiety and depression is partly a symptom of isolation, and answers by working outwards from the self to the communities around it. She sets out what Freud, Jung and Thich Nhat Hanh made of the self, then how conditioning hardens into habit and tendency, and which constructive emotions serve as antidotes. The rest is the effort connection takes, and what headphones, video calls and social media quietly cost us. Three guided practices run through.
The Six Paramitas - Enthusiastic Perseverance David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded February 5, 2023
A fourfold vision quest puts four questions to us in turn: what would bring genuine flourishing, what we would want to receive from the world, how we would love to transform, and what we have to offer, and we breathe life into each answer as an aspiration. David talks about the fourth paramita, enthusiastic perseverance, and what sustains it: confidence built from experience, clarity about our intentions, taking delight in the progress already made, and the fortitude to keep going when the path gets difficult.
The Six Paramitas - Protecting Our Practice (Ethical Discipline) David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded January 29, 2023
In this mahamudra style meditation we visualise the mind as a clear sky and each thought or emotion as a cloud passing through it, observed rather than followed. David turns to the second paramita, ethical discipline, describing it not as rules imposed from outside but as a fence protecting a young seedling, a fledgling practice easily undone by an outburst of anger the moment we step off the cushion. He talks about how avoiding harm builds the trust that relationships and genuine wellbeing rest on.
Four Aspects of Mental Balance Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded August 29, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace argues that modern psychology mistakes symptoms such as depression and anxiety for disorders, and looks outward for causes that are primarily inward. Drawing on the Nalanda tradition, he sets out four kinds of mental balance, conative, attentional, cognitive and emotional, each able to fail through deficit, hyperactivity or dysfunction. It is exposition throughout, with no guided practice. Questions cover his fourfold vision quest and compassion in wartime.
The Mirror-Like Mind and Five Obscurations David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded March 6, 2022
The practice is a full loving kindness meditation: we extend from ourself through someone loved, someone neutral and someone difficult, out to all beings. David talks about the mind as a mirror or a still pool, reflecting reality but tinted by whatever is mixed into it. He works through the five classical obscurations, desire as coloured water, ill will as boiling water, dullness as algae, agitation as ripples, and doubt as mud, each one clouding what we actually see.
D1S2 - Attentional Intelligence, and Let the Mystery Be Revealed Lama Alan · 82 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Atisha's aphorism, once stability is achieved let the mystery be revealed, and why shamatha comes before the cultivation of ultimate bodhicitta. Lama Alan Wallace sets out conation, ethical intelligence and attentional intelligence in turn, and pictures our modern mind as a telescope mounted on a galloping camel in a sandstorm. The guided practice is mindfulness of breathing, felt throughout the whole body, and we note whether each breath is long or short, with introspection watching the attention.
D1S1 - Whatever Attitude You Cultivate Grows Stronger Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022
Lama Alan Wallace opens with gratitude to his teachers, then, following Gyatrul Rinpoche's commentary, says who the text is for: those who put genuine well-being above mundane pleasure. The homage follows, then the text's first lines, on how a mind habituated to dwelling on suffering turns the most insignificant circumstance into great distress, and that depression comes from the mind and not the brain. The session closes with a guided twenty minute practice of settling body, speech and mind in the natural state.
The Keys to Happiness in Daily Life David Oromith · 13 minutes · recorded March 31, 2021
In this episode, David talks about the keys to happiness in daily life. By taking the time to understand and cultivate the three pillars of genuine wellbeing identified by contemplatives for generations, we can simplify our daily practice and make progress every day towards a happy and meaningful life.
Genuine Happiness David Oromith · 15 minutes · recorded March 16, 2020
In this episode, David introduces the Samadhi Podcast and discusses a core Buddhist theme: Genuine Happiness. The desire to be happy and free from any form of discomfort or suffering is a desire common to all sentient beings; from small insects to animals, to humans. But, despite this desire and all our efforts, have we really found the happiness, fulfilment and contentment that we seek? Why does this happiness seem so elusive?
D1S3 - Mindfulness of Breathing, East and West Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 95 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Lama Alan Wallace separates hedonia, the pleasure we get from the world, from eudaimonia. He guides a mindfulness of breathing practice built on the Buddha's potter's wheel analogy, noting only whether each breath is long or short. The in breath arouses the attention and the out breath relaxes it. Eva Natanya then finds the parallel practice in the Hesychast fathers, and answers St Gregory Palamas's instruction to restrain the breath with St Gregory of Sinai: press the lips gently together, never impede the nasal breathing.
D6S1 - Convergence, Not Conversion Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 128 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Convergence rather than conversion is Lama Alan Wallace's theme for the closing day, and where the two traditions find deep common ground is in love and compassion. He works through the four immeasurables, then guides a practice with an orb of light at the heart, drawing in darkness on the in breath and sending out loving kindness on the out breath, widening from oneself to one person and on to every being. Eva Natanya warns how easily one's own pristine awareness becomes a possession of the ego.
D2S1 - The Dzogchen Answer to Suffering Lama Alan · Eva Natanya · 122 minutes · recorded January 1, 2020
Lama Alan Wallace gives the Dzogchen answer to why we suffer: we grasp at a body and mind that are neither I nor mine, and fail to recognise awareness that is already signless, boundless and all luminous. In the guided practice we rest in the awareness of being aware, eyes open, without identifying with whatever arises. Eva Natanya raises past lives as the elephant in the room, and is asked what becomes of those who lived before Christ if salvation is a one time offer.
D2S4 - Four Questions on Flourishing, and What Free Will Means Lama Alan · 75 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Tibetan has no words for self-loathing or low self-esteem, and Lama Alan begins loving kindness where it is easiest, with yourself. Four questions follow: your own flourishing, what you would love to receive, how you would love to transform, and what to offer, each aroused with the breath and imagined as already so. Then the Buddha's three kinds of genuine well-being for the contemplative, from ethics, samadhi and wisdom, and free will as the ability to act in ways conducive to one's own and others' well-being.
D1S1 - Hedonia, Eudaimonia and Where the Causes Lie Lama Alan · 76 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Two kinds of happiness, and only one can grow and deepen. Lama Alan separates hedonia, any pleasure depending on a pleasant stimulus, from eudaimonia, a well-being that cannot be bought or sold, drawing on Socrates, Aristotle, Einstein and John Stuart Mill. He introduces conation, our faculty of desire and aspiration, and asks how intelligently we choose what we want. Teaching only, no practice, closing on principal causes, contributing conditions, and evident, subtle and very subtle causes.
Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy, Rejoicing in Others' Virtues and Your Own Lama Alan · 24 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace guides the third of the four immeasurables, empathetic joy. You bring to mind someone whose good cheer and well-being you know well, then someone whose kindness, generosity and wisdom visibly benefit others, and with each out-breath you send light from your heart, rejoicing in their happiness and their virtues. You then turn inwards, delighting in your own past joys and your own goodness, before releasing all objects into open knowing.
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 - 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 - 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.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Neutral Person and Someone You Find Difficult Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace carries the sequence of loving kindness out to a neutral person, someone you know but barely notice. You picture them vividly, even imagine being them, and offer the four aspirations breath by breath. Then you bring to mind someone you find disagreeable and examine the cartoon you have made of them. Looking past behaviour to the wish for happiness beneath it, you extend the same aspirations, then open in every direction to all beings.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness, the Four Aspirations from I to We Lama Alan · 22 minutes
After several quiet minutes settling the mind in its natural state, Lama Alan draws on what the Dalai Lama calls the deepest impulse of the heart: caring whether you suffer or flourish. You breathe a fourfold aspiration, to be free of hatred and ill will, of physical pain, of anxiety, and to be well and happy. Then the I becomes we, and the same four wishes widen through the room, the city and outwards in every direction.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Loved One, Asking What They Long For Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan asks you to bring to mind one person you hold dear and to attend closely to what they long for: what obstructs their happiness, and how they picture it. With each out breath you send the breath of loving kindness, wishing them free of every encumbrance and imagining them realising their heart's desire. The session then closes resting within the field of your own body, present to sensation without grasping.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Genuine Happiness Lama Alan · 26 minutes
You begin by envisioning genuine happiness: a well-being with roots deep enough to survive praise and ridicule, gain and loss, kindness and cruelty from others. Lama Alan invites you to imagine that capacity already within you, visualised as a radiant orb of white light at your heart, and with each out breath to send its rays through your whole being. The field then widens to everyone around you, before a closing rest.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself at Your Worst and at Your Best Lama Alan · 25 minutes
Lama Alan turns loving kindness towards yourself, in two directions at once. You recall a day when your mind was in turmoil and your behaviour at its worst, then look past the affliction to the person underneath who only ever wanted to be happy, and wish them free. Then you recall yourself at your best, kind and patient, and wish that person well too. The session closes by releasing every thought.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Flourishing, Receiving and Offering Lama Alan · 26 minutes
Loving kindness begins with yourself. Lama Alan asks you to envision your own wellbeing, then to picture all you would love to receive from other people and the natural world, flowing in as effortlessly as the breath. You consider which habits you would love to be free of and which qualities you would love to be endowed with, then what you would love to offer the world. The session closes with a moment of simple presence.
Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for Oneself, Envisioning Freedom and Fulfilment Lama Alan · 23 minutes
Lama Alan turns loving kindness inwards, towards yourself. You ask what you most wish for and have not yet found, what is missing, and what stands in the way of your own wellbeing, seeing clearly that you are not those habits and states of mind. With each out breath you arouse the yearning to be free of them and to find genuine happiness, envisioning that freedom and fulfilment realised here and now.
D2S4 - Unhappiness From Within, and the Ambrosial Dwelling Lama Alan · 83 minutes
Genuine unhappiness, with no external referent, comes from the mind you brought into that room, Tsongkhapa's observation set beside a friend who called nine months of solitude a river of gold. Mindfulness of breathing is the one method the Buddha recommends for minds chronically caught up in rumination, and his account of where it leads runs peaceful, sublime, ambrosial, with arisen afflictions getting no footing. A guided practice follows, and he closes on the research centre being built in Tuscany.
D1S1 - Conative Intelligence, and Two Kinds of Happiness Lama Alan · 69 minutes
Conation, the faculty of desire and intention, opens Lama Alan's four intelligences, each of which can run to deficit, excess or dysfunction, a grid from Tibetan and Ayurvedic medicine. He sets Einstein, who compared happiness as an absolute aim to the ambitions of a pig, against the Dalai Lama's refrain that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness, and turns to the wisdom traditions' hedonia, what we get from the world, and eudaimonia, what we bring to it. Teaching only, no practice.
Motivational Balance Glen Svensson · 74 minutes
The final module opens with the fourfold model of wellbeing from Lama Alan Wallace and Shauna Shapiro's article on mental balance, and the first of its four: motivational balance, which corresponds to the preliminary practices. Glen Svensson works through its imbalances of deficit, hyperactivity and dysfunction. One guided practice is on settling body, speech and mind, a second on whether trying to manipulate the things around us is an effective strategy. Mindfulness alone, he warns, can make matters worse.
Empathetic Joy Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
Empathetic joy, mudita, as the corrective to the modern obsessive focus on the negative. Glen Svensson turns cognitive fusion on ourselves to explain low self-esteem and the difference between useful regret and useless guilt, and advises praising a behaviour rather than a person. In the guided practice we rejoice in another's good fortune and virtues, then travel the timeline of our life recalling every kindness received. He closes with the four thoughts that turn the mind.
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.
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.

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