Ken McLeod Quotes
born 1948 Canada
Ken McLeod (born 1948) is a Buddhist teacher, writer, translator, and management consultant now retired and living in Northern California.
- Canada
- Non-fiction authors
- Translators
Also known as: Ken Mcleod
Random Ken McLeod quote
20 quotes
The importance of conventional life is greatly exaggerated and a good death can do wonders.
An Arrow to the Heart. pg. 140 (2007)
Each time you sit down to practice, take a few minutes to feel in your heart why this is important to you.
Appeals to justice or fairness are almost always stories that hide or protect unacknowledged hurts or pains.
The most reliable way to cut through the thinking process is to bring attention to what you are experiencing in the body.
Any form of idealism involves avoiding some specific pain or suffering.
The fundamental effort in Buddhist practice is to develop a sufficient capacity in attention so that you can experience your own non-existence.
At every stage of practice a price has to be paid for clarity. The price is the loss of an illusion.
When you experience things completely, then you know what they are.
Study void. Void is what makes everything possible. If there is no emptiness or open space in your life then very very few things are possible.
We're going to have to retire the word mindfulness. It's been hopelessly corrupted in English.
When you read sutras don't seek to understand them. Stay in touch with precisely what they are eliciting in terms of experience in you.
To see what you've done, look at what you are. To see what you'll be, look at your actions.
Buddha did not ignore suffering or try to explain it away as an unfortunate side effect of a divine plan or cosmic order. Suffering was, for him, the central issue.
When people thank and tell you how much you've helped them, what they say has nothing to do with you. This is just their way of expressing joy in their own experience. Remember this, too, when people complain or criticize.
Increasingly, and often to our surprise, we respond to difficult situations with calmness, clarity and directness. A quiet fearlessness or ...
What's the dominant emotion associated with purity? Anger. The most aggressive people are the ones who insist on being utterly pure. It's responsible for countless wars at all levels of society. Far better to have no aspiration, no hope and relate to things just as they are.
It says in the sutras that buddha nature pervades all beings. But this does not mean that there is some thing which is buddha nature. Rather, when all the confusion of samsara is cleared away, what remains is buddha nature.
By just taking a breath you're moving into attention a little bit and so you get much less caught up in reactivity. A practical application of this in your life is, never say anything before you've taken one breath. It's a very simple practice--changes the dynamics of conversation with other people completely.
If you don't clearly understand what you are looking for in a teacher or in internal work, you will inevitably accept someone else's agenda as your own. While you may start internal transformative work on the suggestion or advice of another person, at some point your practice has to become a response to your own questions about life and being.
Some find they can practice effectively by bringing attention to the arising of like, dislike and indifference in their meditation practice and daily life. Others are able to use the power of loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, or devotion to change the way they experience things. And still others develop or naturally have enough capacity in awareness that they experience attraction as delight, aversion as clarity, and indifference as non-thought.