Talks

421 talks in the Samadhi Practice Library, with guided instruction you can follow.

Teachings on the Buddhist path, almost all of them given live and recorded as they happened. Many are one session of a course, so the rest of the series is usually a click away.

D4S2 - Wisdom, and What We Take Home The session opens with a short practice in which we breathe in gratitude and compassion and breathe out anxieties and doubts. David turns to the last of the six perfections, wisdom
D4S1 - Concentration, and Balancing Effort With Relaxation The morning opens with mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils, with relaxation, stability and the counting. David turns to concentration, the fifth of the six perfections, and wh
D3S3 - Questions on Perfectionism, Judgement and Grief A few minutes of stillness and the breath open the evening, then David works through the questions. He covers how to reconcile a powerful psychedelic experience with practice, why
D3S2 - Joyful Effort, and the Three Kinds of Laziness Awareness itself is the object to begin with: sensations, then sounds, then thoughts, turning the attention back each time to the awareness that knows them, resting in the sky rath
D3S1 - Patience and Acceptance, and the Spark and the Fuel In the breathing practice we move up to the tips of the nostrils, the finest object so far, with clarity built on relaxation and stability rather than at their expense. David then
D2S3 - Questions, and Whether Our Habits Really Change The evening opens with a few minutes of settling in the body and the breath, then David works through questions from the room and from online. He talks about whether effort really
D2S2 - Ethical Conduct, and Loving Kindness In mindfulness of breathing we move to the sensations at the belly, with two extras to help focus, closer attention on the in breath and looseness on the out breath, plus counting
D2S1 - Generosity, Contentment and Gratitude The session opens with twenty minutes of mindfulness of breathing in which we release distractions with every out breath. David then begins the six perfections with the first, dana
D1S1 - Welcome, and Happiness as an Inside Job David opens with the practical shape of the retreat and his encouragement not to busy yourself between sessions. He talks about the theme, habits of happy people, and why the happi
Session Two - The Natural Warmth of Awareness In two guided practices we rest in awareness of awareness and then let warmth in on the in breath, without it feeling manufactured. Between them David reads Tsoknyi Rinpoche on ess
Session Two - From Need to Care, and the Open Palm David shifts the basis of a relationship from need to care, then reads Thich Nhat Hanh on loving in such a way that the person you love feels free. Contentment and gratitude come i
Session One - What Attachment Is, and Where It Hides David separates attachment from genuine love, quoting Venerable Robina Courtin that attachment is I-based and love other-based, and that the two are stirred together like milk and
Session One - Awareness Is Already Here In two guided meditations we rest attention in bare awareness, first noticing the knowing behind sounds and sensations, then meeting bodily discomfort the same way. David draws on
I Can't Meditate, My Mind Is Too Busy A short extract from Motivating the Lazy Practitioner Within. David talks about what happens when we do a ten minute practice where the mind wanders the whole time and we think it
Session Three - The Laziness of Discouragement The third laziness, discouragement, the "this is not for me" that stops practice before it starts. David quotes Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on feeling unworthy and Ven. Thubten Chodron's
Session Two - The Laziness of Busyness The second laziness, too busy for practice, the one David calls the most disguised because it sounds so reasonable. The energy of busyness fills every gap: participants in one stud
Session One - Procrastination The first of the three lazinesses, the pull of the sofa and "I'll do it later". David sets out the cycle of delay, brief relief then guilt, Shantideva's taste for idle pleasure, an
Stress Isn't What the World Does to You A short extract. David on a line he rejected outright when he first heard it, that stress is not what the world does to you but what you bring to the world, and on why he came to f
The Psychology of Stress & Burnout The talk opens with a grounding meditation in which we settle the body and set an intention. David brings together the Buddhist view that stress is the gap between how we want thin
Practising with Joy: Lightness and Humour on the Buddhist Path The evening opens with gratitude for a precious human life and closes with a longer empathetic joy practice in which we rejoice in good fortune, a loved one's happiness and even pe
Throw Guilt Out - You Are Not Your Worst Moments 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 thi
S1 - Looking Outward & Letting Go of Others’ Hurt 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
S2 - Turning Inward & Forgiving Ourselves 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
S3 - Introduction to Dzogchen David calls Dzogchen the most accessible of the three, and the pinnacle in the Nyingma school. Great Perfection points not at something to strive for but at a nature already self-p
S2 - Introduction to Mahamudra David sets out the path as a straight one, shamatha then vipashyana cutting through to pristine awareness, and Garchen Rinpoche's answer that Mahamudra alone is sufficient. Mahamud
S1 - The Path of Vajrayana David places Vajrayana in context, as a branch of the Mahayana that throws nothing out and makes no sense without renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness beneath it. Then deity yoga
We Cant Always Get What We Want (And That’s All Right) 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
Session Three - Restraint Without Suppression In the guided meditation we invite in a memory of anger, tracing what it cost and how a calmer response might have gone. David works through the Buddha's sutta on anger, its seven
Afternoon Session Charlie leads two guided rehearsals of Guru Rinpoche's nighttime dream yoga practice: falling asleep as a chosen deity, head resting in the guru's lap, attention on the throat cent
Morning Session Charlie opens with a short guided breathing exercise before turning to the theory of dream yoga, Milam Naljor: its four stages of recognition, transforming fear, multiplication and
Session Two - What Patience Actually Means 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 spaciousnes
Afternoon Session Charlie teaches reality checks and the "weird technique" for building daytime awareness that carries into sleep, then walks through the sleep cycle to show why lucid dreams grow ea
Morning Session Charlie Morley opens with a short grounding practice, then explains what lucid dreaming is: prefrontal cortex activation, neuroplasticity, and evidence from his trauma study, where
Session One - Not Debating the Insult The evening opens with a guided meditation on feeling tones in which we notice sensations as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, before David turns to the Insult Sutta, where the Budd
S4 - Non-Sectarian Approaches to Dharma David guides a mostly silent meditation, offering light prompts as each person settles into their own choice of calming practice. The talk weighs following one lineage closely agai
Session Two - Extending a Hand to Fear The morning opens with a brief settling meditation, then David leads a longer guided practice in which we extend kindness to anxiety using the shoes framework, five steps spelling
Session One - Three Kinds of Worry 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
Session Three - Refuge, and the Three Higher Trainings 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 train
Session Two - Enthusiasm, People Pleasing and Contemplation 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 concentr
Session One - What All of Us Want 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 th
S3 - Teachers, Etiquette, and Devotion with Discernment In the guided meditation we visualise the Buddha as indivisible from our own teacher, going for refuge and arousing bodhicitta before the talk begins. David covers etiquette in a d
S2 - Applying the Path Where You Are The session opens with a twenty minute guided meditation on the preciousness of human life, drawing on the Dalai Lama's reflection to arouse gratitude and resolve. David turns to s
S1 - Refuge in Good Company 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
D7S1 - The Whole Sequence in One Session, and Carrying It Home 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. Da
D6S3 - Equanimity, and the Four Immeasurables Complete The last of the four immeasurables, taught first in some traditions and last in others. Equanimity is not about flattening our emotions, David says: you ride the ups and downs with
D6S2 - Seeking What Is Aware, and the Nine-Round Breathing The same practice, with one question folded in: occasionally seek out what is that consciousness that is concentrating, then release the question back into non-doing. David sets ou
D6S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign: Awareness of Awareness The perfection of not doing, the one method with nothing to hold: we rest attention in its own nature, simply being aware of being aware, with no object at all. David reads Padmasa
D5S3 - Empathetic Joy, and Delighting in the Good Fortune of Others The third immeasurable, and the most uplifting: being happy with someone rather than only for them, on the understanding that joy is not locked inside one person. David says this o
D5S2 - Taking the Mind as the Path: Doing Even Less A second session with the same method, to get a bit more familiarity with it before moving on. David reads Lama Alan: in each of the two shamatha methods so far the practice involv
D5S1 - Taking the Mind as the Path: Watching Thought Without Following It We turn attention from the body to the mind itself: thoughts, images, memories and desires observed as they arise, play out and pass, without following any of them anywhere. David
D4S3 - Compassion, and Choosing Someone You Can Work With 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 sufferi
D4S2 - The Buddha's Instructions to Bahiya, and the Stages of Attention A few lines the Buddha gave to Bahiya, who urgently wanted teachings, used here as preparation: in the seen let there be only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed o
D4S1 - The Dzogchen Approach to Mindfulness of Breathing The last of the breathing methods: we move attention off the sensations of the body and rest in awareness itself, noting only whether the breath is long or short. David takes it ba
D3S3 - Loving Kindness Through the Classic Sequence, and Its Near Enemy Loving kindness outwards now, through the classic sequence of loved one, neutral person and difficult person, and on to all beings. Quoting Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, loving kindness s
D3S2 - The Classic Method at the Nostrils, and Vividness The best known method of all, classic in the Theravada and also found in secular mindfulness: the sensations of air at the nostrils, as Buddhaghosa set it down. This is where vivid
D3S1 - Stability, and Counting the Breath at the Abdomen The Burmese method, attention narrowed from the whole body to the rise and fall of the abdomen, and with it the second of the three qualities: stability. David offers counting as t
D2S3 - Loving Kindness, Beginning With Yourself The first of two evenings on loving kindness, given to what David calls such a tricky area for many of us: loving kindness for oneself. He is direct about how the classic practice
D2S2 - Mindfulness of Breathing at the Whole Body, and Why Relaxation Comes First The first of the shamatha methods proper, following Asanga: attention on the sensations of the breath throughout the whole body rather than at one point. David makes the case for t
D2S1 - Motivation, and the Fourfold Vision Quest 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 Shanti
D1S1 - Welcome, Noble Silence and the Shape of the Week David opens the retreat Samadhi inherited from the Contemplative Consciousness Network (CCN), and lays out the week: shamatha in the mornings, the four immeasurables in the evening
Session Three - Meeting the Emotion, and a Renewed Intention Continuing from the previous session, David guides a practice of simply being with an emotion rather than observing or fixing it, drawing on Tsoknyi Rinpoche's handshake practice,
Session Two - The Sacred Pause The session opens with a review of the emotional diary from the previous talk, before turning to working with a trigger once noticed. David draws on Shantideva's image of the piece
Session One - Why Rejection Hits So Hard David opens with a twenty minute guided shamatha practice, settling attention on the breath and noting its length. The talk sets out the five stages of an emotional episode: pre-ep
The Life and the World of the Dalai Lama Thubten Wangchen and Lama Alan Wallace open the CCN Dialogues on the culture the Dalai Lama came from: the Nalanda university tradition that Tibet preserved, and his four commitmen
Session 4 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind In tonglen we begin with a short visualisation of receiving love, then breathe in a loved one's suffering as a dark cloud, transform it at the heart, and send back well-being, wide
Session 3 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind 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'
Session 2 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind This second session opens with a twenty minute meditation in which we settle body and mind, then recite the eight verses together. David works through the third verse on watching t
D8S5 - The Retreat's Closing Visualisation and Dedication 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
D8S4 - The Substrate Trap, and the Moon Behind the Clouds Why resting in substrate consciousness, however blissful and still, is not yet realisation of pristine awareness, since dharmakaya is non-dual with space itself rather than one min
D8S3 - Distinguishing Mind from Primordial Awareness Lama Alan lays out three ways an ordinary mind gets mistaken for pristine awareness, from simply observing thoughts to resting in a substrate consciousness that feels blissful and
D8S2 - The Text's Closing Verses, and Acquiring Confidence The commentary reaches the end of Dudjom Lingpa's prose, tracing his own progress through the stages of realisation and the closing dedication verses of the text. Lama Alan explain
D8S1 - Resting in Awareness, and Why the Mind Must Change First Lama Alan opens with guru yoga and refuge before a long guided rest in open awareness, then turns to why merely suspending self-grasping is not enough: freedom takes seeing the emp
D7S4 - The Foundations of Practice, and the Limits of Intellect A wide-angle survey of how Buddhist practice moves from the four foundations of mindfulness and calm abiding through the reasoning of Madhyamaka, and why Dzogchen then asks the pra
D7S3 - The Bardo as a Cinema, and Deities as Your Own Mind The sense of moving from one life to the next in the bardo, compared to watching from inside a cinema: vivid, but never taking you anywhere. Lama Alan explains why Buddhas and thei
D7S2 - Hell Realms as Dreams, and the Grip of Self and Other The hell realms of traditional Buddhist cosmology, and why they are creations of mind rather than places built or imposed from outside. Lama Alan tells of the Buddha's earlier life
D7S1 - The Three Marks of Existence in Everyday Examples Lama Alan works through the three marks of existence: impermanence, illustrated by a ship that has had every plank replaced yet is still called the same boat; dukkha, the disappoin
D6S4 - Finding the Basis of Designation for the Self Before returning to practice, Lama Alan explains why greater stability of attention supports deeper inquiry, comparing it to the way trained working memory has been shown to raise
D5S5 - Questions on Observing the Mind and Losing the Self A long question and answer session on why observing the mind is not the same as observing yourself, and why introspection can feel impossible even to a trained philosopher. Lama Al
D5S4 - Galileo's Moons, and a Realisation Not Yet Stable Lama Alan uses Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter to show the difference between shamatha, simply noticing, and vipassana, noticing with inquiry into how something arises
D4S5 - Bodhicitta's Stages and Whether Shamatha Comes First 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 for
D4S4 - Full Shamatha, and Whether Consciousness Survives Death In the guided practice we narrow attention from the body to the space of the mind, before Lama Alan turns to what marks a full achievement of shamatha: a physical lightness and men
D3S5 - Working with Emotional Triggers, and a Wide-Ranging Q&A Catching a difficult emotion before it takes hold, using a psychologist's advice on spotting triggers early. Lama Alan takes questions ranging widely: clarity in falling asleep and
D3S4 - Right Listening and the Limits of Watching Thoughts A retreat as a deliberate withdrawal to regroup, not an escape, and three flaws that make listening to teachings useless: a distracted mind, a leaky one, or one full of assumptions
D6S3 - Why Dzogchen Practice Is Simply Waking Up Lama Alan traces how mental afflictions such as anger and pride do not simply vanish upon realisation but melt into the five wisdoms, and offers a third translation of Dzogchen, th
D6S2 - Resting in Awareness, and Why Nothing Exists Inherently A short experiment asks the group to rest in bare awareness for a few seconds before Lama Alan turns to Padmasambhava's song on dualistic grasping, tracing why day and night, joy a
D6S1 - How View Transforms a Single Meditation Technique The same meditation technique becomes shamatha, vipassana or Dzogchen depending on the view behind it. Lama Alan traces reification to an innate ignorance present from birth rather
D5S3 - The Space Between an Impulse and Acting On It Drawing on William James and psychologist Paul Ekman, Lama Alan describes the brief gap between a desire or emotion arising and its becoming visible in speech or action, and why no
D5S2 - The Training This Text Assumes 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
D5S1 - Six Domains of Practice, and Why Mind Is Not the Brain Morning devotions and mantra lead into a guided practice in which we move through the six domains of experience, from sight and sound to the space of the mind alone. Lama Alan work
D4S3 - Settling the Mind, and the Emotions That Surface A guided practice of settling the mind in its natural state, upright or lying down, with instructions to refresh, restore and retain attention whenever it wanders. Lama Alan warns
D4S2 - The Third Balance, and the Search for Where Mind Exists A last session of mindfulness of breathing adds vividness to relaxation and stability already practised, likened to a guitarist's final notes growing softer as the audience listens
D4S1 - Motivation, Guru Devotion and Entering the Path 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 gu
D3S3 - Seeing Through the Guru, and Boundless Compassion The substrate consciousness as a homing pigeon's coop, the place awareness returns to in sleep and in death. A breath practice leads into a guru yoga visualisation in which we trac
D3S2 - Guru Devotion Across the Three Vehicles Whether the universe rises to meet genuine effort toward wellbeing, or whether realisation simply depends on luck, training or momentum from past lives. In this breathing practice
D3S1 - Refuge, Devotion and the Two Causes of Suffering The refuge and bodhicitta prayers, examined line by line, with the image of trusting a dentist to explain what taking refuge means. Lama Alan introduces guru yoga and a self-empowe
D2S4 - Four Questions on Happiness, and Reality's Blessings Lama Alan admits teachings on suffering and hell realms can leave people tense rather than steadied, unlike those raised inside the tradition from childhood. A guided practice puts
D2S3 - The Buddha's Breathing Practice as a Source of Joy The Buddha's own instructions on mindfulness of breathing, moving from long and short breath to attending to the whole body, with Lama Alan's account of his own breath settling to
D2S2 - Stillness Without Stimulation, and Life After Death In the guided practice we remain still without stimulation or boredom, using the breath as an anchor rather than entertainment. Lama Alan surveys the basic supports of a contented
D2S5 - Shamatha, Materialism and the Question of Rigpa A clarification that wealth, power and prestige are not faults in themselves, only where happiness is mistakenly sought. Lama Alan questions whether a materialist worldview can tru
D2S1 - The Liturgy, and Whether Dzogchen Must Wait The morning liturgy is recited once in Tibetan, once in English and once in silence, neither abandoned nor performed by rote. A guided Dzogchen practice follows, in which we rest a
D1S1 - Meeting Dudjom Lingpa's Text and Its Lineage 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 sho
Session 1 - The Eight Verses of Training the Mind 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
D6S3 - Atisha on Perception, and Closing the Retreat Lama Alan opens with Atisha's teaching that extrasensory perception depends on shamatha, illustrated with siddhis he has seen and Russell Targ's remote-viewing research. He contras
D6S2 - Merging Mind with Space, and What Shamatha Requires A guided practice of releasing awareness into open space, drawn from Dudjom Lingpa's Dzogchen texts, continues the sequence from the day before. Lama Alan describes the lasting eff
D6S1 - The Final Stages of Shamatha and Its Signs of Arrival Mindfulness of breathing, settling the mind, and awareness of awareness are described as three nested practices, with mindfulness of breathing offered as the remedy for a stressful
D5S3 - The Oscillation, and Not Rushing Pristine Awareness Lama Alan guides an oscillation practice, concentrating awareness and releasing it, then turns to Padmasambhava's instructions for directing awareness to the sky, either side, belo
D5S2 - Stability by Effort, or by Letting Go of Grasping Lama Alan opens by distinguishing shamatha, only the on-ramp, from the path itself, and contrasts developing stability through effort with simply discovering it once grasping is re
D5S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign, and Stages Six and Seven The session opens with a guided practice of awareness of awareness in which we rest without any object at all, followed by why this is considered the ultimate retreat. Lama Alan th
D4S3 - Vase Breathing, and What You Bring to the Practice Lama Alan teaches the gentle vase breathing that accompanies settling the mind in its natural state, then reframes the practice around a different question: not how the session wen
D4S2 - The Middle Stages of Settling the Mind Continuing the practice of settling the mind in its natural state, Lama Alan works through the middle stages of attention, from patchy recovery after losing the object to the point
D4S1 - Two Paths to Practice, and How Appearances Deceive Lama Alan contrasts the monastic route of cutting all ties with staying in the world, married or with children, and explains how to weed attachment out of a relationship while keep
D3S3 - Combining Relaxation and Clarity in One Session Lama Alan shows how to combine mindfulness of breathing with shamatha focused on the mind, using the breath to relax and the mind practice to sharpen clarity, distinguishing two ki
D3S2 - Letting Thoughts Dissolve, or Cutting Them Off Two ways of working with thoughts in shamatha: the soft approach of watching them dissolve, shown through the raven that finds no land and returns to the ship it flew from, as a th
D3S1 - Radiant Purity, and What Obscures It 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, nev
D2S3 - Settling the Mind in Its Natural State We shift from the breath to the space of the mind, generating a thought or image and watching it dissolve, to grow familiar with observing whatever arises without being pulled in.
D2S2 - Sensations of the Breath and the Bodyguard of Shamatha Distinguishing the actual passage of air from the sensations it leaves at the nostrils, the final session on mindfulness of breathing covers how to stay with the target area throug
D2S1 - Hovering, Comparison, and the Five Obscurations Lama Alan introduces hovering, staying aware of being aware rather than dissolving into the breath, and traces suffering to grasping at what is not I or mine and failing to recogni
D1S3 - Three Breathing Methods and the Ground of Becoming Lama Alan teaches three ways of following the breath, each with its own guided practice: full body awareness from Asanga, abdomen breathing from the Burmese tradition, and the clas
D1S2 - The Coal Burning Plant, and Genuine Unhappiness 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
D1S1 - Motivation, Hedonic Pleasure and Settling the Mind 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
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part Two) 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 m
Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part One) The first of two sessions opens with a twenty minute guided meditation from Lama Rod Owens in which we attend to sensations of earth, air, water and fire in the body before extendi
Session Four - Impermanence Makes Rebirth Possible This final session on emptiness opens with a guided Awareness of Awareness practice, eyes open, with Padmasambhava's question of what is aware dropped in gently. The rest is a live
How to Bridge Divides in a Polarised World How tightly we hold the label of which side we are on. David tells the story of a man who turned up to every dispute wearing the colours and emblems of both sides, and told a boy t
Session Three - Perception, Emptiness and Clarity of Mind Teaching only this week, with no guided meditation until the close. David examines how appearances such as colour or a table are constructed by the senses and mind rather than know
Ecological Distress, Awe, and Emotional Wellbeing (Dr Eve Ekman) Dr Eve Ekman on the relationship between our emotions and the state of the natural world, from environmental anxiety to what nature gives back.
What Can Buddhism Offer During an Eco-Crisis (Lama Alan Wallace) Lama Alan Wallace on our ecological crises seen through the four noble truths, and the transformation of mind and culture the situation asks for.
Compassion vs Despair: A Buddhist Approach to Witnessing Suffering (David Oromith) Compassion and its near enemy, despair: how to attend to the suffering of others and of the world without being overwhelmed by it.
Session Two - The Thread That Continues The evening opens with a brief settling meditation, then David works through written questions on emptiness: the four point analysis for locating a self, the example of a liver, an
Session One - Looking for the Chairness The session opens with a settling meditation on the breath, with refuge and bodhichitta for those who want them. David introduces emptiness as the absence of a findable, independen
Session 5 - Diligence, Meditation & Wisdom 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 hear
Session 4 - Ethics & Patience 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. Dav
Session 3 - Cultivating Bodhicitta & Generosity In the guided meditation we work through the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for cultivating bodhicitta, recognising all beings as having once been a mother, then building gratit
Session 2 - Exploring Bodhicitta 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. Davi
Caring for Yourself While Caring for Others (David Oromith) 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 depers
Session 1 - Introduction The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle the body, then a contemplation on the rarity and preciousness of this human life. David defines the Mahayana path agai
Session 2 - Practices for Inner Joy The session opens with a short meditation on gratitude in which we notice where appreciation is felt in the body. David then describes three doorways to joy: living kindly, the cal
Session 1 - Practices for Relaxation David opens by naming why so many of us live from a baseline of stress, then leads a longer guided meditation of settling body, speech and mind in their natural state, followed by
Day 7 - Closing Discussion The final morning revisits the fourfold vision quest meditation, held with loving kindness: what would bring true happiness, what is needed from others, how to transform, and what
D5S3 - Non-Attachment, Generosity and the Roots of Ethics 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 throug
D5S2 - The Emptiness of Self and the Nature of Awareness David guides a practice of watching thoughts arise and dissolve without following them, a step toward resting in awareness itself. He turns to absolute bodhicitta, using a plant po
D5S1 - Meeting Deprivation, Prosperity, Anger and Craving 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
D4S4 - Bodhicitta's Final Steps, and Meeting Ordinary Scorn The final meditation in this sequence combines the great resolve, the wish to free all beings, with the four immeasurables to complete bodhicitta. David turns to verse seventeen, o
D4S3 - Responding to Disgrace, Disparagement and Betrayal 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
D4S2 - Everyone's Kindness, and Hard Questions About Rebirth The session opens with a guided contemplation, continuing the previous one, in which we dwell on the care shown to us since birth, through learning to walk and talk, to the ordinar
D4S1 - The Continuum of Mind and Turning Loss into Practice 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 the
D3S4 - Equanimity and Tonglen, Two Meditations in Practice Two guided meditations fill this hour. The first is equanimity, in which we work with a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, to separate love from the grip of attachment. T
D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen The session opens with a practice of mudita in which we delight in the good fortune of a friend, a stranger and someone we find difficult. David completes the seven point instructi
D3S1 - Loving Kindness, Refuge, and the Workings of Karma 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 direct
D2S3 - Inner Solitude and the Impermanence of All Things Building on relaxation, David introduces stability in shamatha, using counting at the belly to steady attention. The verse on solitary places turns out to be less about the physica
D5S4 - The Three Kinds of Patience, and a Farmer's 77 Problems 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
D2S4 - The Company We Keep and the Qualities of a Teacher 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 t
The Path of Wisdom and Compassion Ven. Thubten Chodron argues that the mind is not the brain, drawing on her exchanges with reductionist scientists at the Mind and Life meetings. She describes the periscope of I, m
D6S3 - Completing the Text and Living It Day to Day 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 antido
D6S2 - Self-Cherishing, Honest Speech and Healthy Boundaries In a meditation on exchanging self-cherishing for cherishing others we weigh putting our own happiness first against treating everyone's welfare as equal. David covers examining on
D6S1 - Diligence, Concentration and When to Step In 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
D3S2 - Compassion Practice and the Two Paths to Bodhicitta Compassion follows loving kindness as the second immeasurable, wishing others free of suffering rather than simply well. David explains why happiness chased through possessions nev
D6S4 - One Useful Word and a Vision for the Sangha 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 sha
Session 4 - Mindfulness of Phenomena In the guided meditation of open presence, eyes fully open to all six senses, we then watch one appearance cause another, a sound giving rise to an image, a feeling, a thought, whi
Session 3 - Mindfulness of the Mind In the guided meditation on mindfulness of mind, eyes open in space, we count the breath before watching thoughts, memories and emotions arise, abide and dissolve without following
Session 2 - Mindfulness of Feelings In the guided meditation on mindfulness of feelings, eyes partly open, we note the pleasant, unpleasant or neutral tone in sounds, bodily sensations and thoughts, without moving to
Befriending the Mind Natalia Bojanic on the attitudes that make mindfulness possible: curiosity, non-striving, letting be and letting go, and generosity, offered as antidotes to boredom, agitation, ave
Session 1 - Mindfulness of the Body 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 d
Mahamudra: How to Discover Our True Nature Ven. Robina Courtin teaches from Lama Yeshe's book of that name, which she edited, and from the Panchen Lama's root text behind it. She sets out the two modes of meditation, shamat
S3 - Taking the Mind as the Path The releasing approach to shamatha, practised with the eyes open. David guides what Lama Alan Wallace calls the Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing, resting in awareness
S2 - Counting for Stability, and the Nostrils for Clarity Mindfulness of breathing at the abdomen, with two tools added: focusing with the in-breath and relaxing with the out, then a brief count of one to seven. In a second practice we na
S1 - Relaxation Comes First The session opens with settling body, speech and mind in their natural states, which is a preparation, then closes with mindfulness of breathing across the whole body, in which we
Part Two - The Spiritual Warrior, and the Mind Training Commitments The spiritual warrior is on an inner crusade, not one aimed at anybody else. The tantric view that we are already enlightened and held back by a small idea of ourselves, a long vis
Session 5 - Equanimity 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 st
Session 4 - Empathetic Joy The session opens with a short settling practice, then the teaching on mudita, empathetic joy: rejoicing in another's happiness rather than only our own. David sets out what gets i
Part One - Destructive Emotions, and an Antidote for Each Spirituality with the religion stripped out, and emotions as the ground of ethics. The four opponent powers arrive by way of Atisha climbing down off his horse: take refuge, regret
Spiritual Rebellion: Mindfulness with Attitude 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. Sh
Session 3 - Compassion In compassion practice we move from ourselves through a suffering acquaintance, a loved one, a stranger and finally someone acting cruelly, wishing each free of suffering and its c
Session 2 - Loving-Kindness (part two) In the classic loving-kindness meditation we move through ourselves, an admired person, a close friend, a stranger and an enemy, using the phrases may you be well, happy and safe.
Session 1 - Loving-Kindness (part one) David guides a loving-kindness meditation directed entirely at oneself: recalling a kind action, naming a quality worth admiring, then arousing the wish to be at ease, well and hap
D2S2 - The Three Poisons Behind Our Reactions 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 ho
D2S1 - Verse One: The Precious Human Life Meditation posture comes first, then a Fourfold Vision Quest contemplation on what would bring lasting meaning and what to offer the world. David turns to the first verse, on makin
Day 1 - Introduction The retreat opens with a meditation on settling body, speech and mind through relaxation, stillness and alertness. David then introduces the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas, telling t
Session 5 - Purifying Negative Karma - The Four Opponent Powers After a settling meditation, David introduces collective karma and gives a concise summary of the course before turning to purification. He explains the four opponent powers, regre
Session 4 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Mind) & How Karma Ripens 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 compassio
Session 3 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Four of Speech) 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, rej
Session 2 - The Ten Nonvirtues (Three of Body) 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 karm
An Introduction to the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas David explains bodhichitta and what makes someone a bodhisattva, and places the 37 Practices among the four classic lojong texts. Most of the evening is the life of Gyalse Tokme Za
Session 1 - An Overview & Introduction to Karma In the guided meditation on refuge and bodhicitta we count fourteen rounds of breath and visualise the Buddha and the three jewels. David lays out the basic law of karma: intention
The Twelve Dependent Links of Origination In the twenty minute guided meditation on emptiness we search body and mind for a findable self and rest in its absence. David then sets out the twelve links of dependent originati
Session Four - Questions and Discussion Questions and discussion following the four immeasurables retreat, closing with a short dedication rather than a practice. David takes questions on book recommendations, on aiming
Session 3 - Empathetic Joy & Equanimity In the guided practice in empathetic joy we rejoice in our own good qualities, a loved one's happiness, and the kindness of strangers. David describes mudita as harder to sustain t
Session 2 - Compassion In the guided compassion meditation we move from ourselves through a loved one, a neutral person and someone in conflict, wishing each freedom from suffering. David distinguishes c
Session 1 - Loving-Kindness Two guided loving kindness practices: a short reflection on our own good qualities, then the full meditation, in which we extend well wishes from ourselves through a loved one, a s
Ignorance & Emptiness The session opens with a brief guided meditation to settle the breath, before David turns to ignorance as the root of attachment and aversion, and to emptiness, the lack of inheren
Three Types of Patience & Self-Cherishing 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 p
Aversion and Patient-Acceptance 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 destruc
Exploring Aversion The session opens with a guided meditation in which we settle body, speech and mind, then refuge and bodhicitta. David turns from attachment to aversion, tracing it from subtle irr
The Antidotes to Attachment and Navigating Loss The session opens with a short guided meditation in which we settle body, speech and mind, with refuge and bodhicitta. David completes his look at antidotes to attachment: non-atta
Exploring Attachment A short settling meditation on the breath with refuge and bodhicitta, before David defines attachment: how it exaggerates an object's appeal, filters out its downsides and grasps t
Introduction & the Bhavachakra The opening session of a module on the three poisons, with a settling meditation on the breath and refuge before David introduces the bhavachakra, the wheel of life, as a map for t
Prerequisites for Achieving Shamatha and Awareness of Awareness In the guided meditation we sustain bare awareness of awareness itself, the subtlest shamatha method, releasing focus on breath, body and thought until only knowing you are aware r
Reaching Shamatha and Taking the Mind as the Path David guides a meditation on taking the mind as the path: letting thoughts be rather than following them, picturing an object such as a mug, then staying with the space once it dis
The Nine Stages (5-9) and Taking Appearances as the Path David guides a cycling meditation from the Buddha's instructions to Bahiya: sight, sound and touch attended without labelling, eyes open, before turning to the mind and watching wh
The Nine Stages (1-4) and Dzogchen Approach to Mindfulness of Breathing The guided meditation follows Lama Alan's Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing: we rest awareness openly with eyes open and only peripherally note the breath's rhythm rath
Mindfulness & Introspection and Mindfulness of Breathing (Nostrils) In the guided practice on mindfulness of breathing at the nostrils we track the change in temperature between the in breath and the out breath. David explains vividness as the thir
Etymologies, Why Mindfulness of Breathing, and Mindfulness of Breathing (Abdomen) In the guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing at the abdomen we use the rise and fall of the belly and a count to seven to build stability after last week's relaxation. Davi
Compassionate Choices: Non-Harm, Vegetarianism and Veganism in Buddhism (David Oromith) This talk opens with a brief pause to set an intention rather than an extended practice. David sets out how vegetarianism and veganism are treated across Buddhist traditions: the T
The Benefits of Improving Our Attention and Mindfulness of Breathing (Whole Body) A guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing across the whole body, following a shortened settling of body, speech and mind, with David explaining why relaxation rather than for
Introduction, the Pursuit of Happiness, and Settling Body, Speech & Mind in Their Natural States The opening session of this shamatha module begins with a short intention setting and a full guided meditation on settling body, speech and mind in their natural states, in which w
Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels 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, test
The Noble Eightfold Path: Prajñā - Right View, Right Resolve This session starts with a brief settling meditation, with refuge and bodhicitta, before turning to the wisdom division of the path. David takes right view as knowledge of the four
Exploring Attachment: a Dharma Cafe Attachment, and why the mind soon tires of whatever it wanted. David tells Ajahn Brahm's story of the nun whose patched robe led to a cat, a cow, a field and a boy, and asks what h
The Noble Eightfold Path: Samadhi - Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration The session opens with ten to fifteen minutes of guided mindfulness of breathing to settle body and mind, before David turns to the second division of the path: right effort, right
The Noble Eightfold Path: Sīla - Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood 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 su
Turning Everyday Life into Dharma Practice 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 p
The Four Noble Truths: The Cessation and the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering 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
Transforming Adversity: Navigating Through Difficult Times 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, expe
The Four Noble Truths: The Causes (Origin) of Suffering The session begins with a short ten minute practice on the breath, with refuge and bodhicitta. David turns to the second noble truth, contrasting craving in the Theravada with igno
The Four Noble Truths: The Truth of Suffering The session opens with a short guided meditation in which we ground awareness in the body, followed by refuge and bodhicitta. David opens the first noble truth using a doctor's dia
The Spread Of Buddhism: Three Main Branches of Practice This session opens with a short settling meditation and a going for refuge, then David traces how Buddhism divided into Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, using the mustard seed st
Introduction & The Life Story of the Buddha David opens the Buddha's Path programme by outlining its twelve modules, then tells the life of the Buddha through a set of paintings, from the sheltered prince to the four sights,
Finding a Spiritual Teacher This talk on finding a spiritual teacher opens with a short guided meditation in which we rest attention on the sensations of breathing. David traces the teacher's role from early
Week 4: Equanimity (Upekkha): Finding balance and serenity with others and amidst life’s ups and downs The session closes the four immeasurables series with equanimity, upekkha, opening with a settling breath meditation and returning at the end to the classic practice in which we br
Week 3: Empathetic Joy (Mudita): Sharing in the joy and happiness of others 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 t
Week 2: Compassion (Karuna): Cultivating a genuine concern for the sufferings of others and compassionate action The session opens with a short breathing meditation to settle the group, before David turns to compassion, karuna, the wish for others to be free of suffering. He names its near en
Week 1: Loving-kindness (Metta): Cultivating an open heart and goodwill towards all beings The evening opens with a short settling meditation, followed later by a full loving-kindness practice in which we move from self to a loved one, a neutral person and someone diffic
Connecting to Communities for Genuine Wellbeing 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
Week 4: When We’re Blamed or Harmed - Transforming Self-Cherishing (23 March 2023) This closing session opens with a practice of resting in open, non-reactive awareness of body, sight and sound, before David turns to self-cherishing, the habitual sense that my co
Week 3: When Things Go Wrong - Transforming Anger (16 March 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
Week 2: When We Don’t Get What We Want - Transforming Disappointment (9 March 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
Week 1: Introduction to Mind Training - Rising to the Challenge (2 March 2023) This new course on lojong, Buddhist mind training, opens with a short relaxation meditation to settle the group. David explains that we cannot stop difficulties happening, only sto
S4 - Getting Off the Thought Bus, and the Sky-Like Mind After settling with the breath, David turns to the nature of thoughts: how we fuse with them, the story of the two arrows, and the image of thoughts as buses we climb aboard withou
S3 - The Four Immeasurables, and Empathetic Joy Against Loneliness The session opens with a brief meditation on the breath, before David turns to the four immeasurables: loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, practices for cou
S2 - Attachment and Aversion, and the Spark and the Fuel The evening opens with a short guided meditation in which we settle into the body and breath. David then explains attachment and aversion as habits of mind that exaggerate things,
S1 - The Mind Makes the Day, and Why We Fear Stillness After introductions round the room, David leads a ten to fifteen minute guided settling practice, relaxing body, speech and mind, breath by breath. The talk that follows is on why
Memoirs of a Buddhist Monk Matthieu Ricard presents his memoir, with photographs. He talks about leaving molecular biology at the Pasteur Institute after meeting Kangyur Rinpoche in Darjeeling at twenty one,
Embodying the Qualities of Tara Ven. Thubten Chodron works through the poem on Tara who liberates from the eight dangers, taken from her book How to Free Your Mind. Pride, ignorance, anger, jealousy, distorted vi
Uncovering Contemplative Creativity 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 behin
Four Aspects of Mental Balance 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 t
Exploring Our Vision of the Path Guided imagery as a way of surfacing what thinking cannot reach, and of finding a direction when you do not know which way to turn. Ondy Willson traces Freud on dreams and Jung on
Preventing Burnout and Cultivating Emotional Balance Burnout in three layers, emotional exhaustion, a lost sense that the work matters, and cynicism, and how to keep an open heart without being pulled under by it. Eve Ekman reports h
Dealing with Difficult People 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 c
D3S2 - Atisha on the Middle Way Lama Alan Wallace complements the root text with his own translation of Atisha's Pith Instructions on the Middle Way. Elementary particles, deconstructed by way of their directiona
D2S2 - Compassion, Not Despair, and the Small Adversities Lama Alan Wallace returns to a point he had passed over, on training in compassion, and gives Buddhaghosa's analysis of it and its false facsimile, despair, which looks like it and
D1S2 - Dispensing with Aversion to Adversity Adversity can only become the path if two things happen, and Lama Alan Wallace takes both: dropping the attitude of utter aversion to it, then finding a sense of well-being that ho
D6S2 - The Four Yogas of Mahamudra The four yogas, single-pointedness, freedom from elaboration, one taste and non-meditation, and how each maps onto the paths and grounds of a bodhisattva. Lama Alan Wallace reads A
D5S2 - Practise What Is Important 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, y
D4S2 - The Five Powers and Dying Accumulating merit and purifying obscurations by the four remedial powers, why Atisha counsels offerings to spirits, which Lama Alan Wallace defends by arguing that the physical wo
D3S2 - Near Enemies, and Tonglen Mounted on the Breath Teaching and questions, no guided practice. Lama Alan Wallace works through the near enemies of the four immeasurables, taken from Buddhaghosa's Path of Purification, self-centred
D2S2 - Examine the Character of Unborn Awareness Atisha turns the enquiry back on the observer: examine the character of unborn awareness. Lama Alan Wallace asks when exactly a human mind comes into existence and when it ceases,
D1S2 - Attentional Intelligence, and Let the Mystery Be Revealed 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
D3S1 - Emptiness, and Transforming Good Fortune Dodrupchen teaches adversity by way of ultimate truth in two sentences, which Lama Alan Wallace opens out with the refutation of the four extreme views concerning production. A car
D2S1 - Renunciation, Refuge, and a Remedy for Each Adversity A general notion is not enough, so Lama Alan Wallace works through the specific practices the text names for particular adversities: renunciation as a spirit of definite emergence,
D1S1 - Whatever Attitude You Cultivate Grows Stronger 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 plea
D6S1 - Atisha's Mahamudra, the View The retreat leaves the mind training for Atisha's own root text on mahamudra, his pith instructions on connate union, the lineage traced back through Naropa and Tilopa. Lama Alan W
D5S1 - Criteria, Pledges and Precepts 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 witnes
D4S1 - Blame Everything on One Culprit Lama Alan Wallace explains the two week gap, a perforated intestine and six days in hospital, then takes up the third point, transforming adversity into the path. In Buddhaghosa's
D3S1 - Self-Centredness and Tonglen Relative bodhicitta, and Shantideva's claim that self-centredness is a root of all suffering while caring for others more than oneself is a root of all happiness. Lama Alan Wallace
D2S1 - View All Phenomena as Dreamlike Ultimate bodhicitta, and Atisha's aphorism that all phenomena are dreamlike. Lama Alan Wallace takes apart naive realism and metaphysical realism, arguing that colours, sounds and
D1S1 - Four Revolutions in Outlook Lama Alan Wallace opens the retreat with Atisha, the Indian master behind the Seven-Point Mind Training, and the text's first point, train in the preliminaries. He recasts the four
The True Meaning of Non-Attachment and How It Sets You Free David starts by saying what non-attachment is not: coldness, indifference, giving up relationships or pleasure, pointing to the Dalai Lama's own tears and laughter as evidence. He
Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 3 Appearances are handled differently in shamatha, where attention is selective, and in open presence, where it is not, and that difference opens the last hour of questions. Lama Ala
Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 2 Can Westerners achieve shamatha? Lama Alan Wallace answers firmly yes, naming one of his own lamas, Lama Karma, who reached it in six months of very strict retreat after twenty yea
D6S2 - The Fruition and the Rainbow Body The commentary closes with the last two sections of the text, conduct and fruition, where meditative equipoise and daily life merge until no distinction is left between them. Lama
D5S2 - What Open Presence Actually Is Meditation in Dzogchen is nothing but sustaining the view, and the root text gives it in a line: the past has ceased, the future has not arisen, bring the consciousness of the pres
D4S2 - The Mind as a Black Box Dignaga and Dharmakirti argued that we only ever meet appearances, so nothing can be validly inferred about a world behind them, which is why the mind only school kept the mind and
D3S2 - Quantum Physics and the Dreamlike World Against Stephen Hawking's picture of human beings as chemical scum on a little planet, Lama Alan Wallace says there is no happy middle ground between materialism and Dzogchen. He a
D2S2 - The Four Kinds of Mindfulness Resting open to whatever arises is neither open presence nor shamatha, Lama Alan Wallace says, because the senses have no reason to implode into the mental. Gyatrul Rinpoche's line
D1S2 - Inner Solitude, and Three Ways Into Shamatha Solitude comes first: Lama Alan Wallace calls inner solitude, retreat from the eight mundane concerns, at least as important as the outer and far harder to achieve. He works throug
Illumination of Primordial Wisdom, Question and Answer Sessions, Session 1 An hour of written questions from 300 participants. Lama Alan Wallace separates the substrate consciousness, individuated and conditioned, from primordial consciousness, and calls
D6S1 - Do Nothing a Buddha Wouldn't Do The final morning begins with a twenty four minute practice rather than a talk, in which we rest in awareness of awareness. Lama Alan Wallace then reaches conduct, where equipoise
D5S1 - Apprehending the Apprehender The morning opens with Atisha's line on examining the character of unborn awareness, and Lama Alan Wallace draws out its consequence, that there was never a point at which we becam
D4S1 - Searching for the Apprehending Mind Chasing awareness back to its source, as a sunbeam is traced back to the sun, is the instruction here. Lama Alan Wallace distinguishes vipashyana, which entails inquiry, from the n
D3S1 - The Demons Are Your Own Appearances Whether shamatha must wait for full retreat is answered with an email from an elderly practitioner in a city flat, whose practice has continuity and bliss: right now we are in the
D2S1 - The Complete Instruction for Shamatha The second day opens with a short settling of body, speech and mind, then Lama Alan Wallace takes up the root text's shamatha instruction, directing the spear of entwined vital ene
D1S1 - The Homage and the Foundations 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 a
D6S3 - The Brain Cannot Generate Consciousness, and Eva Natanya's Path Closing questions, then a final guided practice. Lama Alan argues that emergent properties of physical phenomena are always physical, so there is no evidence that the brain generat
D6S2 - The Uncreated Light of Tabor Eva Natanya reads Gregory Palamas on the Transfiguration, where Christ became nothing he was not but showed the disciples what he had always been, and on the difference between God
D5S3 - Simeon's Light, and the Clear Light of Death Eva Natanya tells Simeon the New Theologian's own story of being flooded with light while praying, and reads Gregory Palamas on deification as a grace no natural capacity can reach
D5S2 - Created or Begotten Eva Natanya sets Julian of Norwich's parable of the lord and the servant beside the Dzogchen account of how samsara begins, and draws the Greek distinction between created and bego
D4S3 - The Mind That Observes, and Mount Meru Against Science Lama Alan Wallace turns the search back on the observer: if the mind that is observing has no colour or shape and no location, does it exist, and if not, what has drawn that conclu
D4S2 - The Circular Movement of the Intellect Eva Natanya draws out the circular movement of the intellect, which Gregory Palamas quotes from Dionysius: awareness returning to itself and beholding itself in the heart, set besi
D3S3 - The Jesus Prayer Eva Natanya takes the Jesus prayer apart word by word, from its root in the parable of the tax collector to the Greek Father Silouan spoke to her the week before, arguing that elei
D3S2 - The Prayer of the Heart Eva Natanya teaches the prayer of the heart from Simeon the New Theologian, whose instructions are physical to the point of controversy and which Father Silouan, relaying his own t
D2S3 - Mental Afflictions, and Whether You Need a Guru In the vipashyana practice on the mind itself we count the breath to ten, then watch what disturbs the mind's equilibrium, asking whether any mental event is stable, satisfying or
D2S2 - Christ's Infinite Intention, and the Doorkeepers of the Heart Eva Natanya answers the challenge left from the morning by arguing that Christ's intention was infinite in the way a bodhisattva's merit is, so anyone throughout space and time who
D1S3 - Mindfulness of Breathing, East and West 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
D1S2 - I Am Who I Am, and the Hesychast Life Eva Natanya opens the Christian side of the dialogue with the question of being in the west and of consciousness in the east, then Moses at the burning bush and a name that was not
S3 - Questions on Guru Yoga and Lineage Questions put to Eva Natanya, starting with where to begin reading in the hesychast tradition: the Philokalia, and the contemporary writing of Father Silouan. She answers at length
S2 - Christ as Yidam Eva Natanya takes the phrase from the Council of Chalcedon, without confusion and without division, and asks what it means to hold Christ as yidam as well as guru. She reads briefl
S1 - Levels of Devotion to the Teacher Devotion has a lot to do with listening, and Eva Natanya opens with a fifteen minute meditation on the elements and on the heart's own deepest plea. The teaching sets out how the t
D6S1 - Convergence, Not Conversion 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 throug
D5S1 - Guru Yoga, and When Samsara Begins Lama Alan Wallace sets the cataphatic question, what do I need to do, against the apophatic, what can I stop doing, and explains why guru yoga is core to Dzogchen: you cannot recog
D4S1 - Searching for the Mind, and Whether Shamatha Is Indispensable Lama Alan Wallace separates the Christian meanings of meditation and contemplation from the Buddhist ones, then leads a vipashyana practice from Padmasambhava: place the mind in th
D3S1 - Shamatha Without a Sign Lama Alan Wallace turns awareness in upon awareness itself, the method the Buddha called the most profound of the shamatha practices, and traces where it leads: the mind dissolving
D2S1 - The Dzogchen Answer to Suffering 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, bou
D1S1 - Buddhism as Contemplative Science Lama Alan Wallace argues that religion, philosophy and science are Eurocentric categories that do not fit Buddhism, and presents the four noble truths as testable claims rather tha
D7S4 - Open Presence and the Rainbow Body The final session opens with Lama Alan Wallace objecting to open presence being flattened into bare attention, a practice he says a marmot could manage. A silent 24 minute period b
D7S3 - Nighttime Dream Yoga Yangthang Rinpoche's pointing out instructions are completed and then practised, awareness resting in open presence, body relaxed, voice silent, mind unmodified. Lama Alan Wallace
D7S2 - Pointing Out Pristine Awareness Lama Alan Wallace gives one more reason for his research centre, a controlled experiment on past-life recall, and Michelle Alexander's New York Times column asking what if we are a
D6S4 - Searching for the Mind A second pass at vipashyana, this time following Padmasambhava's Searching for the Mind: is the mind that is placed the same as the one placing it, has it any location or size, and
D6S3 - Looking for the Mind That Thinks Vipashyana on the nature of the mind, guided from the pith instructions of a fourteenth century mahamudra master: what colour, shape or gender has the mind that observes, and where
D6S2 - The Grand Finale of Shamatha A review fires Descartes, materialism and the Buddhist schools in turn on the way to Madhyamaka, before Lama Alan Wallace turns to what he calls the grand finale of shamatha withou
D5S5 - Prospective Mindfulness, and Questions on Karma and Free Will The session opens with a silent period, with a choice of methods and two combinations Lama Alan Wallace likes, earth and wind and earth and sky, mindfulness of breathing leading in
D5S4 - Probing the Mind as Agent Consciousness is defined as luminous and cognizant, and Lama Alan Wallace turns Padmasambhava's next phase inwards: who or what is it that concentrates and releases the attention?
D5S3 - Awareness of Awareness Lama Alan Wallace takes up shamatha without a sign, awareness of awareness, which the Buddha counted among the ten kasinas and the subtlest of the methods Padmasambhava teaches. We
D5S2 - Shamatha Without a Sign A guided 24 minute practice from Yangthang Rinpoche's root text on the view, meditation and conduct of Dzogchen. Turn awareness in upon that which is aware, follow no thought of pa
D4S5 - Why Shamatha Cannot Be Skipped, and Questions on Dying Lama Alan Wallace sets the physics notes aside and gives the rest of the retreat to Buddhadharma. He recounts asking the present Dudjom Rinpoche why hardly any Tibetans really teac
D4S4 - Introspection and the Black Box Lama Alan Wallace makes the case for introspection as a science, taking William James's three-pronged psychology and the way mathematicians corroborate what only they can perceive.
D4S3 - The Space of the Mind Lama Alan Wallace fills in the piece most easily overlooked in shamatha on the mind: when nothing arises, attend to the space itself. Mickey Mouse balanced on his head and the Big
D4S2 - Causality Without a Mechanism Causality in Buddhism is phenomenological rather than mechanical: had this not happened, that would not have followed, and no bumping is required. Lama Alan Wallace points out that
D3S5 - False Awakenings and Dream Karma Thoreau on going to the woods to front only the essential facts of life, read out in full, then an unguided period, offered as half subduing thoughts breath by breath and half sett
D3S4 - Thoughts in Real Time, Emotions Only in Hindsight Settling the mind in its natural state, with a way in for anyone who keeps failing: deliberately generate a thought, Mary had a little lamb, syllable by syllable, watch where it di
D3S3 - Three Ways We Are Dreaming Total withdrawal, deep into the formless absorptions, or total immersion in the world: Lama Alan Wallace goes through the two strategies and why Gautama found neither was an escape
D3S2 - Generic Ideas and the Second Instant In the guided practice we take one domain at a time, the visual field, then sound, then the tactile, then the mind, each nakedly, asking whether any of it is owned. Lama Alan Walla
D2S5 - Evening Questions on Mind and Memory One silent period, each person following whichever method of mindfulness of breathing benefits them most. The rest of the evening goes to written questions. Lama Alan Wallace argue
D2S4 - The Third Balance: Vividness Vividness is the third quality to cultivate, after relaxation and stability. The practice is the classic Theravada one, attention narrowed to the sensations of the breath at the no
D2S3 - What Materialism Cannot Explain The Burmese method of mindfulness of breathing, attention on the rise and fall of the abdomen, chosen here to enhance stability without losing the underlying ease. Lama Alan Wallac
D2S2 - Falling Asleep and Becoming Lucid In Asanga's approach to mindfulness of breathing we attend to the sensations throughout the whole body correlated with the rhythm of the respiration, relaxing more deeply with ever
D2S4 - Four Questions on Flourishing, and What Free Will Means 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, wha
D2S3 - Awareness of Awareness, Dying Lucidly, and Loving Kindness Nothing could persuade you that you are not conscious, and Lama Alan takes that as his starting point. He describes the substrate consciousness, then guides awareness of awareness,
D2S2 - Observing Thoughts and Emotions, and the Substrate Consciousness Paul Ekman's spark and flame: recognising an emotion before the flame of its expression is worth training for, and a neuropsychiatrist rated metacognitive impairment worse than bei
D2S1 - Substantial Causes, and the Telescope of Introspection Substantial causes and cooperative conditions, a distinction from Dharmakirti that Lama Alan sets beside relativity theory: matter and space-time influence each other without trans
D1S4 - Materialism as a Learned Delusion, and Innate Self-Grasping Ignorance and delusion as the taproot from which the other afflictions grow. Lama Alan separates delusions we acquire from our surroundings from those we are born with, and argues
D1S3 - Relaxation Before Stability, and What Makes a Desire Afflictive What separates a strong desire from an afflictive one. Lama Alan defines craving and attachment as decontextualising their object and rooted in misapprehension, so even a little is
D1S2 - Tension, Agitation, Dullness, and Stillness Amid Turbulence The session opens with a twenty four minute guided practice in which we settle body, speech and mind in their natural states, taking the out-breath as the key and letting the breat
D1S1 - Hedonia, Eudaimonia and Where the Causes Lie 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 b
D7S1 - Padmasambhava's Pointing Out Instructions, and Innate Ignorance The Dzogchen day. Lama Alan Wallace settles body, speech and mind, then reads Padmasambhava's pointing out instructions from Natural Liberation while we rest awareness in the space
D6S1 - Looking for the Observer The third phase on the way to shamatha without a sign, guided: we rest awareness in the space ahead with no object, then turn in upon the mind that is observing, probing closely th
D5S1 - Watching Thoughts Like a Cowherd In settling the mind in its natural state, eyes softly open and the gaze vacant, we watch whatever rises in the space of the mind from the stillness of awareness, as Dudjom Lingpa'
D4S1 - The Sautrantika View, and the Instruction to Bahiya The guided practice is the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, in the seen only the seen, carried through sight, sound, touch and mental events, and we ask whether we are found by way
D3S1 - Free Will, and the Three Qualities of a Student In a detailed preamble Lama Alan Wallace argues that the dispute over free will is the wrong question, and offers Shantideva's counsel to remain like a piece of wood when the mind
D2S1 - State Checks and Dream Signs The first full day opens with a detailed preamble: Lama Alan Wallace asks how anyone can be harmed inside a dream, and answers that we identify with what is neither I nor mine, and
D1S1 - Are You Human? The Three Poisons and the Substrate The opening evening is teaching only, with no practice. Lama Alan Wallace starts from a Pali Canon exchange in which the brahmin Dona asks the Buddha whether he is a god, a spirit
P2 - Meditation, Conduct and Dying Well Yangthang Rinpoche's text is blunt: without the view there is no meditation, only a cheap imitation of it, and poor preparation for death. The session opens with a guided practice
P1 - The View of the Great Perfection Lama Alan gives the oral transmission and commentary to a Dzogchen text by Yangthang Rinpoche, who turned eighteen years in a Chinese concentration camp into an eighteen year retre
Part Five - Mindfulness, Alertness, and Difficulty as Incitement The last of the verses. Mindfulness and alertness are the companions, and a sinking mind is the more dangerous fault because it can be mistaken for something profound. Jetsunma Ten
Part Four - What a Thought Is, and Choosing a Teacher Two ways of working with the mind, the controlling one and the letting go one, and why a wild horse has to be tamed before it can be trained. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo explains that me
Part Three - Final Questions, then Refuge and the Five Precepts 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
Part Two - The Perfections Turned Around, and Questions on Anger 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 t
Part One - Atisha's Root Verses, and Taming the Monkey Mind 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
Space, Time and Consciousness An evening dialogue between Lama Alan Wallace and the cosmologist Bernard Carr, a doctoral student of Stephen Hawking. Carr speaks first: what is missing from the triumphant pictur
S3 - Non-Meditation and the Near Misses Is the method shamatha, vipashyana or Dzogchen? Lama Alan answers that the same practice can be any of the three depending on who does it, then maps understanding, experience, real
S2 - The Substrate Is Not Rigpa The whole instruction is one sentence: naturally observe that which knows the referent of the mind. Lama Alan returns to it, argues that Buddhism was never a religion so nothing ne
S1 - Cracking Open the Egg of Unawareness 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
Lojong, the Eight Verses of Mind Training 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 t
Establishing a Daily Practice, the Three Food Groups 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
Workshop Part 2 Charlie Morley tells the story of Namgyal Rinpoche, the Canadian who founded what became Samye Ling and was the first Western tulku, and his advice on purification, merit and dream
Workshop Part 1 For practitioners who have taken refuge, Charlie Morley's workshop opens with refuge and works through the four stages of dream yoga: recognition, transformation, multiplication an
A House of Pain: Coping and Support after Catastrophic Loss Joanne Cacciatore sets out what catastrophic loss does to the whole self, and Vanessa Juth's finding that social constraints predicted poorer psychological and physical health. She
Omniscience and the Buddha’s Mind Vesna A. Wallace reads the Buddha's omniscience through the Kalachakra tradition, working from Indian commentaries on the Litany of the Names of Manjushri, a text of 162 verses car
Part Four - The Fourth Time, and a Laboratory for Contemplatives In the guided practice we settle into awareness of awareness and then turn to inquiry: look for the observer, and find that it has no shape, colour, size or location, yet cannot be
Part Three - Emptiness, Bodhicitta and Buddha Nature How the second turning follows from the first. Lama Alan traces the argument from the nun Vajira, who reduces a chariot to a label and with it everything else, through Nagasena and
Part Two - The Bahiya Instruction, and How Much Jhana Is Needed In the guided practice of twenty four minutes, built on the Buddha's very short instruction to the wandering ascetic Bahiya, we move the attention through the visual, auditory and
Part One - Virtue, Dharma and the Path Lama Alan separates virtue, which anyone can practise and which can still end in burnout, from Dharma, which his mentor defined as engaging with reality in a way that leads to an e
D2S4 - Unhappiness From Within, and the Ambrosial Dwelling 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 ri
D2S3 - Between the Spark and the Flame Emotional balance, drawn from Lama Alan's work with the affective psychologist Paul Ekman: the seven emotions expressed the same way in every culture, and the refractory period in
D2S2 - In the Seen, Just the Seen The Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, in the seen let there be just the seen, becomes a twenty four minute guided practice. We take attention in turn to the visual, auditory, tactile
D2S1 - Unawareness and Delusion, the Real and the Imaginary Cognitive intelligence is telling what reality is presenting from what we project upon it. Lama Alan begins with unawareness and delusion, the twofold root of suffering, then a ref
D1S4 - Mindfulness as Remembering, and Introspection as Quality Control The session opens with a twenty four minute guided practice in which we take the three qualities in order: whole body awareness for relaxation, the abdomen for stability, the nostr
D1S3 - William James on Attention, and the Shamatha Project William James held that each of us chooses, by our ways of attending, what sort of universe we appear to inhabit. Lama Alan turns that on narcissism and on low self-esteem, and on
D1S2 - The Fourfold Vision Quest, and What Free Will Means We cultivate wise desire through imagination, rather than by quieting the mind. Lama Alan guides a twenty four minute fourfold vision quest, after the Native American tradition: wh
D1S1 - Conative Intelligence, and Two Kinds of Happiness 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 medi
Cognitive & Emotional Balance The last two balances: cognitive balance, which is vipashyana seeing experience without projecting onto it, illustrated by the coiled rope mistaken for a snake, and emotional balan
Attentional Balance Attentional balance, the shamatha side of the model, where deficit shows up as laxity and hyperactivity as excitation, both met with mindfulness and introspection. Glen Svensson co
Motivational Balance 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,
Tong-len (Taking & Giving) Tonglen, giving and taking, practised twice: first for ourselves and a friend, then we choose one mental affliction to dissolve and one quality to cultivate, before opening out to
Exchanging Self with Others 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
Great Compassion Bodhicitta, the aspiration for enlightenment for the benefit of others, and the first of the two main methods for cultivating it: the seven cause and effect, running from seeing ev
Equanimity Equanimity as an unbiased mind, undoing the habit of sorting people into friends, strangers and so-called enemies by how they seem to affect us. In the guided practice we step into
Empathetic Joy 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 differ
Dealing with Anger 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
Compassion Compassion, karuna, as the wish for ourselves and others to be free of suffering and its causes, which means understanding dukkha at three levels: unpleasant experience, the change
Dealing with Attachment Attachment is the near enemy of loving kindness, and Glen Svensson defines it as a mental factor that exaggerates an object's attractiveness and wants to hold on to it. In the guid
Loving Kindness 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 practic
Summary of Practice The last session draws the four modules together and turns to how to integrate the practice into daily life: shamatha first thing and vipashyana after it, the body scan for imperma
Short-Term Strategies 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 sufferin
Nature of Mind The mind itself becomes the object. Glen Svensson takes the shamatha practice of resting in awareness and adds questioning to it, which is what carries it over into vipashyana: who
Stages of Progress Where this practice leads. Glen Svensson maps the four results, stream enterer through to arhat, against the ten fetters, then the five paths, the ten grounds, and the difference b
The Four Steps In two guided practices we begin by imagining a situation with a strong sense of me: the me being praised, then the me being wrongly blamed. Each is searched for in the body and in
Emptiness of Person We turn attention to the person. In two guided practices we look for me, the meditator, first within the constant flow of physical and mental change, then by searching the body, th
Boundaries How a line drawn to make sense of experience is turned into a boundary, and the six step process by which that grasping becomes attachment, aversion and suffering. Glen Svensson wo
Emptiness A guided search for the me who is relaxing the body and focusing the mind, ending in the merely labelled me. Glen Svensson lays out the three ways things exist dependently, through
Searching for Self The body scan returns unguided, at your own speed and in your own sequence. In a second practice we look for a self in the body, in the mind, and in the two together. Glen Svensson
Not-Self A guided practice covers all three levels of dukkha, ending with the question of whether any experience is completely free of the potential for suffering. Glen Svensson then calls
Suffering We move mindfulness from the body to the mind, with a guided practice in which we watch thoughts, emotions and memories against the question of whether anything in the mind is stab
Impermanence The teaching opens and closes with a guided body scan in which we move from the crown of the head to the tips of the toes on one question: is anything in the body stable, or is eve
Stillness in Motion Resting in stillness while watching the movements of the mind, a practice Glen Svensson draws from Dudjom Lingpa, combines the two objects used earlier in the course. He reviews al
Merging Mind with Space Awareness is directed up, right, left and down into space, then to the centre of the chest and out in all directions, loosening the sense that it is something small inside the head
Resting in Awareness In the three-part guided practice we move from observing thoughts, to the space in which they arise, to releasing appearances altogether. Glen Svensson then introduces resting in a
Open Awareness The last session of the day opens with a further guided observing of thoughts, then Glen Svensson sets out three levels of mind, the coarse mind, the substrate consciousness reache
Observing Emotions Two guided practices: in the first we observe thoughts with the gaze raised against dullness and lowered against agitation, and in the second we turn to emotions, moods and reactio
Observing the Mind Bare attention comes first, a guided meditation in which we cycle through the visual, auditory, tactile and mental fields, in the seen only the seen. Glen Svensson then moves the o
Mindfulness of Breathing (Nostrils) In this practice we narrow our attention to the entrance of the nostrils, which is said to be very good for clarity of attention, as the breath grows subtle and forces closer atten
Mindfulness of Breathing (Abdomen) The abdomen becomes the object, the sensations of its rising and lowering, and counting to ten at the end of each in-breath is offered midway as a short term aid to stability. Glen
Mindfulness of Breathing (Full Body) 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 poin
Tools & Faults In an opening practice we take the rhythm of the breath as our object, noticing whether it is long or short, deep or shallow. Glen Svensson names two tools, mindfulness holding the
Qualities & Objects The teaching opens and closes with a guided practice on sensations of the breath throughout the body, with the out-breath used to release tension. Glen Svensson sets out the three
Preparing Body & Mind 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
Part IV: Realising Spontaneous Fruition Fruition as base, path and fruit, opened with the death of Dudjom Yangsi at 33 and Dzongsar Khyentse's letter on the vast chasm the great Dzogchen masters warn of between Dzogchen
Part III: Unifying Insight and Action The view carried into conduct, around Chatral Rinpoche's instruction that action should not be lost in the view, nor the view lost when acting. Ian Baker reads the mahasiddha Siddh
Part II: Perfecting the Path Turning from view to practice, Ian Baker reads Dudjom Rinpoche's instructions for mountain retreat on how thoughts liberate themselves: first like meeting someone you already know,
Part I: Refining the View Ian Baker traces how Dzogchen developed, from early formulations close to Chan through their absorption into mainstream Tibetan tantric Buddhism. He reads the view from images of S
Part IV: Nourishing the Subtle Body Chulen, the Tibetan word for rasayana, substances that support practice and realisation, is the subject here. Ian Baker reads out a treasure text describing five magical herbs said
Part III: Approaching the Great Perfection Ian Baker turns from landscape to the six yogas of Naropa, read through a seminar Chogyam Trungpa gave in the 1970s: illusory body, inner fire, karma mudra, clear light, dream, tra
Part II: Outer and Inner Pilgrimage in Dzogchen Tantra The route continues past the waterfall into lower Pemako, now in Arunachal Pradesh, up the Yangsang Chu, which the Tibetan texts describe as the uterine channel of Vajrayogini. Ian
Part I: Outer and Inner Pilgrimage in Dzogchen Tantra Ian Baker tells how he came to the hidden land tradition through his principal teacher Chatral Rinpoche, who answered his questions by sending him to live alone in a beyul for a mo
Mind & Mandalas - Part Three Questions from those listening. Eva Natanya gives Tsongkhapa's answer to why realising emptiness alone is not enough: living beings need form, and a Buddha must be able to manifest
Mind & Mandalas - Part Two Lama Alan Wallace replies to both presentations with a single image, Samantabhadra as the personification of one's own pristine awareness, and argues that guru yoga, not deity gene
Mind & Mandalas - Part One Ian Baker opens with an illustrated tour of the mandala, from scroll paintings and sand mandalas to Borobudur, Samye and Mount Kailash, then inward to the chakras and the mandala o
Session 3 - Q&A Questions to Vesna A. Wallace after the two talks. She explains why the mirror here is a prognostic mirror rather than a dusty one to be cleaned, and why the elements are ultimatel
Session 2 - 'Perception' Perception in the Kalachakra system, where the chakras, the channels and the vital energies shape what can be seen at all. Vesna A. Wallace traces how the waking, dreaming, deep sl
Session 1 - 'Imagination' Vesna A. Wallace argues that in tantric Buddhism the imagined is not ultimately less real than what the senses report, and that what practice makes imaginable surpasses David Hume'

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