Practice Library

Sangha and community

14 teachings in the library are about this.

• Session Three - Refuge, and the Three Higher Trainings David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded November 3, 2025

  Refuge is confidence born of experience rather than blind faith, and David uses the trust we place in an airline pilot to say why. He completes the text with the three higher trainings of ethics, mental balance and wisdom, and closes on the parable of the unruly prince, the wise minister and the strong warrior.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness and Appreciation for Spiritual Friends David Oromith · 20 minutes · recorded September 3, 2025

  Loving kindness turned towards the people who keep a practice alive. David starts with early influences, anyone who showed you kindness and led you towards the spiritual life, then one particular spiritual friend, then your wider Sangha, and finally the lineage of teachers behind your own teacher. Each is appreciated, then wished well.

• S1 - Refuge in Good Company David Oromith · 87 minutes · recorded September 3, 2025

  Loving kindness is directed towards spiritual friends: early influences, one particular friend, the wider sangha and the lineage of teachers, guided throughout. David explores why the Buddha called admirable friendship the whole of the path, using the story of the monk Magiya, then covers sangha's pitfalls, groupthink, cliques, cult-like devotion and overdependence, and the qualities of authentic friendship. Michelle compares Samadhi to another group; Tracy asks where the community gathers.

• Guided Meditation - Taking Refuge and Generating Bodhicitta David Oromith · 21 minutes · recorded June 11, 2025

  A long settling of the body first, and a count of twenty one breaths. Then the Buddha is imagined in front of you, inseparable from your own teachers and surrounded by all other beings, and you contemplate what the Buddha, the teachings and the community mean to you before going for refuge. It closes with white light received at the heart and passed on to all of them.

• Guided Meditation - Refuge and Bodhicitta with a Shakyamuni Buddha Visualisation David Oromith · 25 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025

  Beginning from how rare this human life is, David has you visualise Shakyamuni Buddha in the space before you, with all other beings gathered around. You recite the words of refuge, contemplate the four immeasurables, then rouse bodhicitta. The Buddha finally dissolves into golden light and merges into your heart, and light then radiates out from you to every being.

• Session 5 - Diligence, Meditation & Wisdom David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025

  A guided meditation on refuge and bodhicitta weaves earlier themes together: visualising the Buddha, taking refuge, the four immeasurables, and his light dissolving into one's heart. David covers the final three paramitas: joyful diligence, with its three kinds of enthusiasm and matching laziness, concentration and its nine stages towards shamatha, and wisdom as the direct insight into emptiness underlying all the others. A question asks what it means to ask the Buddha for guidance.

• 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.

• D2S4 - The Company We Keep and the Qualities of a Teacher David Oromith · 55 minutes · recorded November 29, 2024

  Vividness is the third quality built into shamatha, achieved by narrowing attention to the breath at the nostrils. David turns to the verse on avoiding destructive company, using the image of a crystal taking on the colour of whatever cloth it rests on, then to the contrasting verse on cherishing spiritual friends and the qualities to look for in a teacher. Discussion covers balancing this against one's own wellbeing, and advice on meditating with the eyes open.

• D6S4 - One Useful Word and a Vision for the Sangha David Oromith · 43 minutes · recorded November 27, 2024

  The retreat closes with a final guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing. David reflects on the Buddha's saying that one useful word outweighs a thousand useless ones, and shares his hope that the teachings help people become insiders pursuing happiness without harming others or the planet. He also describes his aspiration to build an eco-retreat centre in Wales. The session ends with the group's thanks and closing offerings.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 One - Atisha's Root Verses, and Taming the Monkey Mind Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 137 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016

  Atisha's Lojong root verses, taken one line at a time. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo opens with why Atisha mattered in eleventh century Tibet, where the emphasis had gone to powers and he brought it back to refuge and bodhicitta, then reads the text aloud as an oral transmission. Realising selflessness needs a healthy sense of self first, she argues, since it is the ego that walks the path towards its own dissolution. Taming the monkey mind, observing the mind at all times, and living in disharmony with the world.

• 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.

More by subject

• Anger and aversion 140
• Attachment and craving 116
• The nature of mind 92
• Emptiness 84
• The bodhisattva path 80
• Anxiety and fear 78
• Death and dying 76
• Distraction and attention 70
• Sleep and rest 66
• Buddhist psychology 59
• Illness and pain 57
• Karma 56
• Teacher and student 56
• Habits and change 50
• Genuine happiness and wellbeing 48
• Patience, forbearance and acceptance 46
• Relaxation 41
• Impermanence 40
• Gratitude and appreciation 38
• Tantra and Vajrayana 37
• Relationships and family 35
• Depression and low mood 32
• Dream yoga 32
• Motivation and intention 32
• Dreams and sleep 31
• Comparison and self-cherishing 27
• Guilt and regret 27
• Work and daily life 26
• Rebirth and continuity 25
• Self-criticism and shame 24
• Lineage and tradition 23
• The four noble truths 22
• Stress and burnout 21
• Buddha nature 20
• Ethics and precepts 20
• Emotional balance 19
• Forgiveness 17
• Generosity and dana 16
• Consciousness and science 15
• Enthusiastic effort (virya) 13
• Dependent origination 12
• Grief and loss 11
• Perception and projection 11
• Refuge 11
• The four thoughts that turn the mind 11
• The eight worldly concerns 10
• Attentional balance 8
• Not-self (anatta) 8
• The six perfections (paramitas) 8
• Ecology and the climate 7
• Nature and the outdoors 6
• Cognitive balance 5
• The eightfold path 5
• Peace and conflict 4
• The sixfold matrix of mental balance 4
• Secular mindfulness 3
• Symbolism and iconography 3
• Introspection and self-monitoring 1
• Spiritual materialism and bypassing 1
• The three marks of existence 1