Motivation and intention

32 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.
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.
Guided Meditation - Precious Human Life, Motivation and Responsibility David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded September 10, 2025
Tension drained away on the out breath, then a contemplation built around the Dalai Lama's words about a precious human life. You recall the freedom and leisure you have, and the kindness received from countless beings, and let that gratitude turn into responsibility and a determination held alongside joy. If it fades, go back to the contemplation.
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.
Guided Meditation - Settling Body, Speech and Mind David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded June 18, 2025
Each out breath is taken as a chance to let go a little more, in the body and then in the mental commentary, until we rest attention on the in breath, the out breath and their rhythm. David then turns to introspection, noticing distraction quickly without tensing up, since distraction is not a failure, and lifting the mind when it sinks into dullness. It ends with your own most meaningful motivation.
D4S5 - Bodhicitta's Stages and Whether Shamatha Comes First Lama Alan · 104 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Questions on whether one can enter the Bodhisattva path without shamatha lead Lama Alan through the stages of bodhicitta, from its first spontaneous arising to the irreversible form reinforced by wisdom. Wrathful teachers, one placing a boy unharmed in a bonfire, show ferocity as one of four compassionate modes of teaching. He explains why he critiques materialism, not materialists, and why Buddhists never chase people, as the newly enlightened Buddha let the first man he met walk away.
D5S2 - The Training This Text Assumes Lama Alan · 64 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan explains why this teaching comes at the end of a long monastic training, after years on epistemology and on emptiness, four of them on Madhyamaka alone, and why skipping it leaves only the appearance of understanding. In the guided practice we return to observing thoughts arise and release in the space of the mind. He shows how the same technique becomes a different practice depending on its motivation, then turns to Nagarjuna's argument against inherent arising.
D4S1 - Motivation, Guru Devotion and Entering the Path Lama Alan · 89 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
The evening opens with a retranslated line from the liturgy, then Lama Alan offers 'taste of the town' as an image for a week's sampling of Dzogchen. Mindfulness of breathing is guided through relaxation balanced with effort, and questions turn to receiving a teacher's blessing without becoming dependent on it. He begins the root text: ethics as the foundation, and the steps of solitude and guru supplication that open the path.
D1S1 - Meeting Dudjom Lingpa's Text and Its Lineage Lama Alan · 89 minutes · recorded June 12, 2025
Lama Alan tells the story of Dudjom Lingpa, the nineteenth century Tibetan master who received his teachings through visions and never had a living human teacher. He traces the short lineage carrying this text to him and sets the retreat's format. The session includes a guided practice in which we settle body, breath and mind, and closes with the text's opening lines, where Dudjom Lingpa describes waking into pristine awareness as the Buddha Samantabhadra.
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.
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.
Caring for Yourself While Caring for Others (David Oromith) David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded January 26, 2025
This Insight Timer talk for carers opens with a short body based meditation on motivation. David sets out three levels of burnout, emotional exhaustion, loss of meaning, and depersonalization, with the antidote to each, then turns to universal compassion, naming despair as compassion's near enemy and describing the friend based thought experiment for self compassion. Carers share their own motivations and advice throughout, and this first part ends with a loving kindness meditation.
Guided Meditation - Repaying Kindness with Affectionate Love David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
The kindness you have received is counted up: parents, teachers, friends, strangers who helped once, and the people who grow the food, maintain the infrastructure and care for the environment around you. Gratitude turns into a wish to repay it by using this precious human life for others. David then asks for a vast gathering of beings visualised around you, friends, strangers and those you find difficult, held in affectionate love and great compassion.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Guided Meditation - Cultivating Generosity David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded January 15, 2023
You sharpen the mind with twenty one rounds of breath, three lots of seven, and then its creativity is put to work. David asks for a picture of a typical day, where you go, the shops or errands, the people you meet, and for generosity imagined into it: something material, your time, your expertise, a kind word. Their response is imagined too, and the warmth of giving with nothing wanted back. It closes on an intention to carry that into ordinary days.
Uncovering Contemplative Creativity Tashi Mannox · 109 minutes · recorded October 12, 2022
Creativity as a contemplative practice, and the responsibility Tashi Mannox gives artists to lift people rather than pour out their angst. He describes the sacred proportions behind thangka painting and Tibetan calligraphy, and breaks creativity into three parts: energy, playfulness and ornament. Copying crumbling manuscripts during a four year retreat taught him that whatever was unresolved in his mind showed up in the line, so meditation comes first. Questions cover learning without a teacher.
D1S1 - The Homage and the Foundations Lama Alan · 127 minutes · recorded January 1, 2021
Lama Alan Wallace opens his commentary on Dudjom Rinpoche's five page manual, the first Dzogchen text Gyatrul Rinpoche taught him thirty one years ago. He works through the title and the homage to Dorje Drolo, and explains why resting in pristine awareness is the most ferocious response to the maras. Gyatrul Rinpoche's commentary supplies what the root text leaves out: the four revolutions in outlook, refuge and bodhicitta. It closes with a guided meditation on motivation.
S1 - Cracking Open the Egg of Unawareness Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016
The session opens with a twenty four minute practice on awareness of awareness. Lama Alan begins his transmission of Mipham Rinpoche's A Lamp to Dispel Darkness with who a village tantric practitioner has to be: an authentic motivation, bodhicitta and insight into emptiness. Then the fool's gold, the muddled consciousness of dwelling in the substrate, a space devoid of appearances, which yogis have conflated with realisation generation after generation, and why unawareness is what lets confusion in.
Establishing a Daily Practice, the Three Food Groups Lama Alan · 9 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace sets out a workable shape for daily practice: a morning session that opens with motivation, makes the mind serviceable through shamatha, then moves into the four immeasurables or tonglen, and an evening session that gathers the day back in. He describes the three food groups of a balanced practice, shamatha, something for the heart and something for wisdom, and encourages you to season the whole day with brief returns rather than sinking into routine.
Guided Meditation - Refuge, Bodhicitta and Guru Yoga, Resting in Awareness of Awareness Lama Alan · 23 minutes
You bring to mind an enlightened being in whom you feel deep trust, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha until you have become a refuge for others, and arouse bodhicitta as your motivation. Lama Alan then invites you to see that being as your own guru, receiving rays of light that transmute body, speech and mind until the guru dissolves into your heart. Releasing the visualisation, you rest in awareness of awareness.
Guided Meditation - Generating Bodhicitta, Widening the Field from Yourself Outwards Lama Alan · 26 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace guides a steadily widening field of care. You visualise an orb of pristine white light at your heart, breathing in your own obscurations to be extinguished there and breathing out loving kindness, then extend that field to those immediately around you, the wider community and all beings. Lama Alan then reflects on how interdependent your material and spiritual flourishing is, and the practice culminates in bodhicitta: may I awaken in order to free every being.
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 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.
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.
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.
Mindfulness of Breathing (Full Body) Glen Svensson · 78 minutes
We rest attention on any tactile sensation in the body connected with the in and out flow of the breath, with the emphasis on relaxation. Glen Svensson takes up Alan Wallace's point that mindfulness of breathing is universally emphasised for those especially prone to compulsive thinking: the sensations of the breath only happen in the present moment, so attention comes out of the thinking mind and into the body. In a second practice we notice the rhythm of the breath, long or short, deep or shallow.
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.

Motivation and intention

Motivation and intention

More by subject

Human Friendly Events

Motivation and intention

Motivation and intention

More by subject

Log In

Human Friendly Events