Patience, forbearance and acceptance

46 teachings in the library are about this.

Throw Guilt Out - You Are Not Your Worst Moments David Oromith · 3 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A short extract. Guilt and shame never get around to the behaviour, only to what a bad person you are, so David argues for throwing them out altogether. Tibetan has no word for this kind of guilt; the nearest is intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.
Guided Meditation - Releasing a Resentment David Oromith · 14 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
A resentment you are still carrying comes to mind, and the hurt of it is acknowledged first. David then turns to where that person's behaviour came from, their own pain and confusion, and to the difference between a person and their mental afflictions, without agreeing the action was okay. Hand on the belly or chest, the words are to the extent I am able, I release, I let go. It closes on deep breaths, released through the mouth.
S1 - Looking Outward & Letting Go of Others’ Hurt David Oromith · 67 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
The session opens with a breathing meditation to settle the group, before David turns to resentment, drawing on the Buddha's teaching that harbouring old hurt keeps suffering alive after the event itself. He separates the person from their behaviour, using a mother's patience with a difficult child and Shantideva's stick and the hand that swings it, closing with the two arrows and the Dalai Lama on what forgiveness is not. A guided practice follows, in which we name a real resentment and choose to release it.
S2 - Turning Inward & Forgiving Ourselves David Oromith · 73 minutes · recorded March 22, 2026
The session opens with a brief settling practice, then the teaching turns inward, tracing self-hatred to fusing bad behaviour with a fixed sense of self. David separates guilt from healthy regret, teaches the four opponent powers for addressing what we've done, and argues our deepest nature is pure, not our anger or shame. A guided practice follows, in which we meet negative self-talk as thought and close in self-forgiveness. Questions turn to ongoing hurt from a parent and why self-hatred is common in the West.
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 - What Anger Does, an Analytical Meditation David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded February 11, 2026
A contemplation rather than a settling practice. Recalling an occasion when anger took over, you examine not the story but what the anger did to your tone, your face and your thinking, then what it left behind and what it cost. David asks what it promised and whether it delivered, has you imagine a steadier response, and closes with a determination.
Session Two - What Patience Actually Means David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded January 28, 2026
The session opens with a guided heat and space meditation in which we bring a small recent irritation to mind and track where it lands in the body, before widening into spaciousness and phrases of goodwill. David turns to the sutta of Sakka to show patience is not passivity but a mindful, chosen restraint, backed by verses on non aversion and the story of a maid who provokes her mistress into striking her. Questions cover staying calm at the time but doubting it after, and finding compassion for a difficult sibling.
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.
Guided Meditation - Befriending Anxiety David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded November 24, 2025
A low-level worry or grievance is invited to the surface, whatever shouts loudest, and located in the body as a felt sense, with the palm of the right hand over the chest to signify kindness. You then breathe space around the feeling with a deep in breath, neither suppressing nor indulging it, before warmth and compassion are brought in, supporting yourself as you would a friend. It closes with slow breathing, in for five and out for seven.
Session One - Three Kinds of Worry David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded November 24, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we reset body, speech and mind through mindfulness of breathing, and a second practice in which we watch thoughts arise and pass, labelling them without following them. David sets out three kinds of worry, appropriate, productive and toxic rumination, drawing on an account of the amygdala, then turns to the Buddhist view that anxiety is rooted in fear of impermanence and a wish for control we never really have. He closes on radical acceptance, distinguished from passivity.
Acceptance or Action? David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded November 23, 2025
In the practice of open, non-reactive presence with the body, sound and mind we release any need to change what arises. Prompted by a question from a previous session, David talks about acceptance and agency together, using the serenity prayer and Mel Robbins' let them theory to show that accepting what we cannot control does not mean giving up our own response.
Guided Meditation - Sitting with a Difficult Emotion as a Hurting Friend David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded October 26, 2025
A recent worry or difficult emotion is brought up from under the surface and held as if it were a hurting friend. David asks for no fixing and no dialogue, only hello. We follow how it maps across the body, a swirling, a tightening, a pressure, then the narratives and memories, listened to rather than believed. When the mind starts problem solving, the exhale lengthens. It closes on three energetic breaths sighed out through the mouth.
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.
Session One - What All of Us Want David Oromith · 95 minutes · recorded October 9, 2025
The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body and mind, take refuge in the three jewels and arouse bodhicitta, before resting on mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils. David opens this three week series on his own text, Heart Advice from a Foolish Practitioner, telling how the verses came to him on retreat, then works through mindfulness, compassion, wisdom, ethics and patience. Questions cover why seeing yourself as lowest is not self-contempt, and how patience coexists with anger at real injustice.
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.
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.
Session 1 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded June 11, 2025
This first session on the Eight Verses of Training the Mind opens with a guided meditation on settling the body, taking refuge and generating bodhicitta. David gives the lineage of Geshe Langri Thangpa, reads the text, then works through the first two verses: cherishing all beings as the basis of practice and happiness, and taking the humble position rather than seeing ourselves as important. Stories of Atisha and Drom Tonpa illustrate humility, and questions cover therapeutic lying and patience.
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.
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.
D4S3 - Responding to Disgrace, Disparagement and Betrayal David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
After a meditation on affectionate love and compassion for all beings, David works through three verses of the text: meeting disgrace with kindness rather than argument, responding to public disparagement by offering the victory instead of escalating, and continuing to care for someone who turns on us after we have helped them. He explains cognitive fusion, treating bad behaviour as a person's whole identity, and takes questions on living this out at work.
D4S1 - The Continuum of Mind and Turning Loss into Practice David Oromith · 90 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024
In this meditation we trace the mind back moment by moment to show it is beginningless, so every being has at some point been our mother or carer. David turns to using loss and theft on the path, drawing on karma and compassion for what drives someone to steal, and the story of Gyalse Togme dedicating his stolen robes to the thieves who took them. Questions cover lingering sadness in a practitioner of many years and whether dedication lessens a thief's karma.
D5S4 - The Three Kinds of Patience, and a Farmer's 77 Problems David Oromith · 50 minutes · recorded November 29, 2024
The session opens with a brief practice of resting in awareness, before David turns to kshanti, patience in its fuller sense, transforming hardship rather than gritting your teeth through it. He covers patience with people who harm us, with the ordinary ups and downs of life, illustrated by the farmer with 77 problems whose real problem is his belief that he should have none, and with the slow pace of our own progress. The group asks whether he has met anyone who claims to be enlightened.
D6S1 - Diligence, Concentration and When to Step In David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024
In this patient acceptance practice we ask what changes when a real conflict is met with acceptance, understanding and compassion rather than resistance. David covers enthusiastic diligence and its three kinds of laziness, then concentration as the union of shamatha and vipassana, the Buddha's key innovation. Questions turn on witnessing cruelty, whether to speak when nothing you say will change the person, and how much capacity we have to live out our values.
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.
Relax & Go Easy On Yourself David Oromith · 28 minutes · recorded September 15, 2024
A settling meditation that moves from the body into gratitude for the day ahead, then into setting a simple intention for how to show up. David talks about the pressure practitioners put on themselves to progress quickly, drawing on his own teacher's account of burnout among devoted students, and argues that consistency matters more than intensity. He closes with the reminder that patience with our own practice is itself a form of patient acceptance.
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.
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.
Radical Acceptance David Oromith · 29 minutes · recorded April 14, 2024
In this meditation we rest attention lightly in present moment experience across all five senses, without labelling or elaborating on what arises. David reads a passage on living peacefully alongside what irritates us, then works through two questions for any difficulty: can this be changed, and if so is it worth changing. He talks about the cost of pushing away what we cannot alter, and offers patient acceptance, understanding, compassion and fortitude as the way through.
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.
Four Aspects of Patient-Acceptance David Oromith · 13 minutes · recorded October 29, 2023
In this episode, David explores kshanti, or patient-acceptance, a pivotal concept in Buddhism. This approach is more than mere tolerance or passive resignation. Instead, it is a wholehearted embracing of our reality in those situations we cannot change. In this audio we look closely at four aspects of patient-acceptance: acceptance, understanding, love, and fortitude, seeing how they collectively form a resilient mindset that keeps us anchored amid life's storms.
Guided Meditation on Patient-Acceptance David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded October 29, 2023
This is a guided meditation on patient-acceptance, which accompanies the previous episode 43. Using the power of our imagination, we see how approaching challenges with Acceptance, Understanding, Love, and Fortitude, ultimately empower us and bring us greater wellbeing in difficult circumstances.
Transforming Adversity: Navigating Through Difficult Times David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded October 12, 2023
The session opens with a brief settling of breath and body, before David works through the Buddha's story of the farmer's seventy seven problems and the hidden seventy eighth, expecting to have none at all. He covers acceptance, the stories that fuel our reactions to triggers, and ways to reframe a difficulty, drawing on the group's own examples of corporate pressure and a distressing house sale, then closes with SOS practices for calming the body.
Acceptance and Seeing Life as Like a River David Oromith · 16 minutes · recorded October 9, 2023
In this episode, David explores the profound analogy of seeing life as like a river, and how this view highlights impermanence, acceptance, and the importance of living life in a flexible, fluid way. From understanding the nature of life's rapids to finding serenity in its gentle flows, David discusses how we can embrace the present and navigate life's ever-changing currents with grace and acceptance.
Week 3: Empathetic Joy (Mudita): Sharing in the joy and happiness of others David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded June 22, 2023
After checking in on the week's practice of loving kindness and compassion, David turns to mudita, joy at others' happiness, naming its near enemies, envy and cynicism, and using the image of a monkey stuck in tar for how comparison and judgement trap us. He describes noticing joy in daily life and on social media rather than resenting it. Questions move into acceptance and childhood hurt before a closing meditation in which we recall loved ones' joy and everyday kindness seen out in the world.
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.
The Six Paramitas - Patient Acceptance David Oromith · 26 minutes · recorded January 22, 2023
After counting the breath to settle the mind, you bring to mind a scenario that regularly frustrates you and meet it with understanding, acceptance and fortitude rather than resistance. David talks about the third paramita, patient acceptance, defining it simply as accepting whatever arises, having given up the idea that it should be otherwise. Using the example of being stuck in traffic, he explains why resisting what cannot be changed only compounds the suffering.
Acceptance and Seeing Life As Like a River David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded July 3, 2022
Five slow breaths and a body scan lead into open awareness, where we welcome whatever arises, sound, sensation or thought, without labelling it good or bad. David develops the image of life as a river, sometimes gentle, sometimes turbulent, always flowing, using his and Manu's own house move as an example. He talks about the difference between accepting the current and fighting it, and finding what choice remains when nothing else can change.
Guided Meditation - Meeting a Difficulty with Inner Strength David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded June 19, 2022
Stillness of the body, the gaze and awareness, held until the rhythmic sensations of breathing rise up to meet you, with a count at each exhale if engagement slips. A current difficulty is invited in: I want it to be different, but this is the way it is right now. David points out a hundred per cent success rate at getting through every challenge so far, calls it a superhero mindset, and has you sit a little taller.
Dealing with Difficult People David Oromith · 57 minutes · recorded May 11, 2022
This talk on dealing with difficult people opens with a short guided practice in which we settle attention into the breath. David argues the person is a trigger but not the whole cause, our own grasping and self-cherishing complete it, and separates the external problem, needing boundaries or action, from the internal one, needing patience and compassion. He returns to depressive Danny as a running example, and questions cover trauma, cheating, and how far compassion extends to someone malicious.
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.
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.
Lojong, the Eight Verses of Mind Training Lama Alan · 28 minutes
Lama Alan Wallace works through the Eight Verses of Mind Training of Langri Tangpa, verse by verse. You learn to hold others supremely dear, to seek out their virtues rather than their faults, to catch a mental affliction the moment it stirs, and to treat difficult people as rare treasure. The closing verses turn to tonglen and to freeing practice from the eight worldly concerns and from grasping at a reality he describes as dreamlike.
Guided Meditation - Compassion, Beginning with Your Own Suffering Lama Alan · 26 minutes
Compassion is the heartfelt wish to be free of suffering and its causes, and Lama Alan Wallace begins with your own. You weigh how much mental suffering you have already borne and how little control you have over circumstances, then imagine freedom as an orb of white light at the heart. With each in-breath you draw in the darkness of past and future suffering and dissolve it there. You then do the same for others, closing in simple awareness.
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.
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.

Patience, forbearance and acceptance

Patience, forbearance and acceptance

More by subject

Human Friendly Events

Patience, forbearance and acceptance

Patience, forbearance and acceptance

More by subject

Log In

Human Friendly Events