Some call it joy, but it is not a giddy or excited joy. Most of us have probably already felt the “exquisite quality” McLeod describes, but he warns us about mistaking that quality for happiness, for bliss, for joy, for truth: Instead, think of freedom as a way of experiencing life itself-a continuous flow in which you meet what arises in your experience, open to it, do what needs to be done to the best of your ability and then receive the result. If you think of freedom as a state, you are in effect looking for a kind of heaven. Is it a kind of transcendence, if not in God, then in a god-surrogate such as timeless awareness, pure bliss, or infinite light?Īre you looking for an awareness so deep and powerful that your frustration and difficulties with life vanish in the presence of your understanding and wisdom? Are you not looking for a ticket out of the messiness of life? Take a moment and think about what you are seeking in your practice. These four spiritual longings are all escapist reactions to the challenges everyone encounters in life.
Valhalla, paradise, heaven, nirvana all hold out a promise of eternity, bliss, purity, or union with an ultimate reality. The quest for happiness is a continuation of the traditional view of spiritual practice-a way to transcend the vicissitudes of the human condition. In the commentary that follows, McLeod distinguishes the “exquisite quality” of a practice that experiences life with awareness, peace, and freedom from the fleeting happiness that many of us seek in practice, and even from the bliss states that emerge in meditation: The highest level of freedom is one that never changes.Īim for this-this is the practice of a bodhisattva. The happiness of the three worlds disappears in a moment, McLeod translates Tokme Zongpo’s ninth verse like this: So much so, that I read the book with a greater hunger for McLeod’s insights than for Tokme Zongpo’s, though it’s possible they are one and the same. Start with gratitude.”Īt its best, “Reflections” unfolds the subtle, sometimes difficult, meanings packed into Tokme Zongpo’s terse lines and articulates them with brilliant clarity and simplicity. I don’t think a sentence could better say, “Start now. “Right now you have a good boat, fully equipped and available-hard to find.” If you google Tokme Zongpo, you’ll find the results dominated by McLeod’s relatively unknown book, which-Ken tells me-is because uses a more accurate phonetic translation for the important monk usually known in English as Togme Zangpo or Thogme Zangpo, whose verse resonates with timeless insight and beauty from the first line: “Reflections” is a translation and commentary on a poem, “Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhissatva,” by the 14th Century Tibetan Buddhist monk Tokme Zongpo. McLeod’s latest book, “Reflections on Silver River,” reflects this variety in approaches, sometimes achieving great clarity and insight, and sometimes, in my reading, to mixed or delayed effect. “My clients included Volvo Design, ReadyPac, HBO, Warner Bros., TimeWarner, NetSeer, and QSC Audio.” In the late 1990s he developed an executive coaching and consulting practice and took his teaching into the corporate world. If McLeod’s sources and approaches have been varied, so have been his students. Unfettered Mind is the “Buddhist service organization” McLeod runs in Los Angeles: “a place for people whose paths lie outside established centers and institutions.” “This model later became the basis for Unfettered Mind.” “In 1988, I moved away from both the teacher-center model and the minister-church model and developed a consultant-client model,” McLeod writes in his online bio.
His primary training is in Tibetan Buddhism-he met his teacher Kalu Rinpoche in 1970- but instead of adhering to that or any particular lineage, McLeod incorporates perspectives from Zen, Theraveda, martial arts, Taoism and other spiritual disciplines in a style of teaching that departs from tradition. Even by his own description, Ken McLeod is an unusual teacher.
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