When the Picture Falls Apart

This will be my 30th post since starting this blog, and the final one for 2025. It feels quite serious but only from a certain point of view!

Listening to this clip from an interview on the Mystical Positivist with Ken McLeod and Norman Fischer recorded during the early days of the COVID pandemic, I felt an immediate sense of recognition. Like many people, I began practice just as Ken describes, with the notion that at some point the ordinary difficulties of life would stop catching me—that insight, or awakening, would somehow insulate me from unsettling shocks and reversals. Over the years, that picture has steadily fallen apart.

Since I began practising, life has moved in ways I never could have anticipated. I've come to understand that I chose significant directions in my life for reasons that had everything to do with long-standing reactive patterns set in place very early, and very little to do with how I approach life now. Some of the difficulties that followed came from turns of life I had no say in; others arose directly from those early choices. There have been quiet reckonings too: recognising that the life I am living is, in large part, shaped by those early reactions and the choices that followed. And over time, I’ve had experiences that made the cost of those patterns impossible to ignore.

Practice doesn’t free us from wanting things to be different, but it does change how we meet the reality that things are what they are. You can’t go back and choose again with better information or deeper insight, or realign the past with what you understand now. At some point, the only option is to respond to the direction of the present, even when that direction feels constrained by choices you would no longer make.

Ken’s honesty about disorientation—the loss of familiar touchpoints—also resonates deeply for me. I hear him pointing to something both sobering and reassuring: spiritual practice doesn’t deliver a life free of difficulties. What it can offer, over time, is a growing capacity to stay in relationship with what’s actually happening, rather than collapsing into regret, blame, or fantasy. Practice doesn’t necessarily make things easier, and it can even make things a lot harder. But it does make it possible to meet difficult situations more honestly.

From The Mystical Positivist Radio Show 360

Stuart: In the email exchanges that we did about what we were going to talk about for this program, Ken had asked friends what they would be interested in hearing us discuss. There's a lot of things to discuss, but one of the questions that came up is how helpful it would be and encouraging for people to hear that even senior teachers and practitioners have difficult days during our common pandemic crisis. So that's kind of a kind of a starting point. I have some other topics I want to bring up later, but I think it gets to some of the core issues of what makes spiritual practice spiritual practice, what makes practitioners different than people who aren't trying to engage in a spiritual practice. And so I invite any responses that come up to this question posed by one of Ken's friends.

Ken: Norman, do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first?

Norman: You go ahead.

Ken: Thank you. The first thought that comes to mind in that question is that I think a lot of people, when they start spiritual practice, think they're going to get some place where the ordinary vicissitudes of life are not going to bother them anymore. I certainly did when I started off and was gradually disabused of that notion in the course of my practice, and being with people who had a long history of practice, they all found some situations difficult, they had certain things that went on inside them. So my whole understanding of what spiritual practice is about gradually changed over the years.

I was asked a question about enlightenment very recently and the answer that I came up with is we have this idea of enlightenment but as time goes on the picture kind of disintegrates in front of us. And so at this point yeah, I have my ups and downs, and with this crisis—the pandemic—my initial reaction to it was that I found it very disorienting. So many of the usual touchpoints in life weren't there and I think all of us have had to learn to negotiate life a little differently.

I think the most significant effect of years of practice is that I'm probably more ready to relate to how things are rather than how I want them to be. I still want them to be different but I tend to relate to them how they are and go on from there.

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The Reliable Witness

When I listen to this passage, I feel both relieved and unsettled. Relieved because Ken names something I’ve intuited for a long time: that external feedback about the effects of practice—how I seem to others, how “nice” or “settled” I appear—doesn’t actually tell me very much about what’s going on inside. And unsettled because it takes away a reference point. If praise about improved behaviour isn’t a reliable guide, then there’s nowhere to hide.

The idea of the “reliable witness” also cuts through my tendency to feel pleased or even smug when someone remarks that I’m calmer, less reactive, or easier to live with. It’s not that feedback from others has no value, but it can quietly pull attention away from what’s actually happening inside. Behaviour can change for all sorts of reasons. It can even improve while something inside is quietly tightening, avoiding, or accumulating unspoken regret.

I appreciate the simplicity of Kontrül’s mind training instruction: “When you are clear inside, without regret or shame about your actions, that is the reliable witness.” It doesn’t depend on comparison or approval. It points to a kind of inner alignment—a sense that nothing needs to be hidden or justified. I recognise how rare that clarity can be, and how honest it asks me to be.

Hearing Ken describe this, I’m reminded that practice isn’t about becoming a better person in the eyes of others. It’s about developing the capacity to know directly whether I’m at ease with what I do and how I live. The reliable witness speaks softly, but unmistakably.

From A Trackless Path 13

Ken: Let's start with a simple question. How many of you have expectations about your practice? What it should be like, and how you should be in the world as a result of this practice? Well, one of the more relieving and one of the more troubling instructions in The Great Path of Awakening is:

Rely on the principal witness.

It could be "judge" too. And the commentary says, as you practice mind training, people may come to you and say, "Oh, you're a much nicer person than you used to be. You're much easier to get along with. You must be making great progress in your practice." And so you think, "Oh, I'm getting somewhere." But that's regarded in mind training as an unreliable witness because people don't know what's actually going on inside you. All they're doing is basing it on behavior.

And this certainly has happened to me. In the first three-year retreat I got a note from my wife, who was in the women's retreat saying, "From what the other guys are saying you're making great progress in your practice because you're much easier to live with now." And this was further confirmed many years later when I was in Vancouver in the early 70s helping to establish a center there. I was visiting with some old friends, and we were chatting in the kitchen. She came up, put her arm around me and said, "I think I can say this now, Ken. You really were an asshole." [Laughter]

So, what do you do with that? That's the unreliable witness.

And Kontrul goes on in his commentary to say... I'm going to experiment with getting rid of the word mind for a while and see what that's like.

When you are clear inside and not experiencing regrets or shame about your actions, that's the reliable witness.

Student: Could you repeat that?

Ken: When you are clear inside and have no regrets or shame about your actions, that's the reliable witness.

What he's saying is the reliable witness is mind itself.

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People Work in Different Ways

When I first heard Ken tell this story about Lama Tenpa—making the point that different things work for different people—I felt a sense of permission.

As someone who doesn’t visualise, I’d already learnt that many practices don’t translate well into my experience. So hearing Ken say, so plainly, that what matters is finding a way of practice that speaks to you and actually changes you when you do it, was deeply encouraging. It shifted the frame from “try harder” to something more fruitful: pay attention to what works. Ken calls this approach pragmatic Buddhism.

When I first heard Ken talk anout Lama Tenpa I was practising in a dharma centre context, in a very traditional setting. I had little opportunity to ask practice questions of my teacher and spent a long time stuck, spinning in confusion, doing practices that didn't bring about change. It took several years to recognise and acknowledge that I was stuck.

Now I hear this passage as an invitation to trust my own knowing. When you do, your path of practice becomes your own. It may not fit any system, but when you find what works, it changes you utterly.

From A Trackless Path 12

Ken: Well, people work in different ways. Our retreat director when I was in the three-year retreat was Lama Tenpa. Mahamudra was his practice—he didn’t do anything else. And he’d come over to the retreat sometimes, he’d say, “You know I really should offer a few tormas to Mahakala. Oh, I’m too lazy.” And by lazy he meant that he sat about twenty hours a day and he slept for about four hours sitting up. So very lazy person. And in the second retreat he didn’t teach the four immeasurables at all. And I worked with him. When he got to taking and sending he didn’t even teach taking and sending—just a very little bit—he had them doing something else.

I had a really knock down, drag ’em out argument with him about that because it had been a really important part of my training in the first retreat. And finally after listening to me, basically yell at him for half an hour he just looked at me and said, “Ken, that worked for you. It doesn’t work for me.” You know, mahamudra really, really worked for him.

And four immeasurables was very important part of my own practice, which is one of the reasons I teach it—because I think it’s very, very important. For other people it’s Avalokiteshvara. Other people it is resting with the breath. There are many, many practices, and the important thing is to find a way of practice that speaks to you. I really hope you can move in that direction. And then it doesn’t matter what anybody else is doing because you have something which speaks to you and brings about change in you when you do it. And that’s what’s really, really important.

Once you get into a center-institutional thing and people are doing this practice, and this practice, you get into this comparison game: who’s getting ahead of whom?

One of my students at an retreat many years ago—it was an insight retreat—I gave them a couple of options. One was to do the traditional insight practices and the other one was to work with Nasrudin stories. She was pretty good practitioner, so she was working on her third Nasrudin story in this particular retreat. At the end of the retreat [laughs] she says, “How many other people got to three?” And I said, “You’re never going to know,” [laughs] because it was the comparison game again.

And this stuff comes up all the time, and it’s worse than useless—it’s counterproductive. It works in the wrong direction. And so to the extent that it’s possible I’m trying to create a way of practice... None of you, at least at this point, I don’t feel any of you are in competition with anybody else.

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How Dakinis Transform Experience

Over the years I’ve listened to each of Ken’s classes and retreats as they were published, even when I didn’t feel especially drawn to the topic or practice. Vajrayana material was often hard for me to take in; I had a long-standing habit of wanting to understand something before I could open to it. That instinct, shaped by my upbringing and scientific training, made Vajrayana’s imaginal world hard for me to enter.

But life has shown me, repeatedly, that we don’t know what we don’t know. Teachings I once set aside as “not for me” have often opened the most unexpected doors. This talk on dakinis was one of those.

Listening to Ken’s explanation, something in me softened up. The word dakini, wrapped in layers of mystique and esoteric imagery, resonated with a love of fairy tales and myths that I’ve had since childhood. And Ken described these supernatural or mythic figures as the unruly, reactive forces within our own minds—the currents of wanting, grasping, aversion, and confusion that take over before we even register them. Hearing this, resistance fell away, loosening the conditioning that had throttled my connection to the imaginal.

The lines from Khyungpo Naljor struck deeply: “Wanting nothing from outside, taking things as they come.” As Ken unpacked this, I noticed how often I move through life trying to get something—from people, situations, even from practice itself: ease, reassurance, clarity, a sense of direction.

The teaching on the water dakini stopped me. “Crystal is the non-thought of mind itself.” When attention rests without collapsing into analysis or drifting into narrative, there is a clarity. I felt a moment of that while listening—just a uncomplicated openness. And I saw how rarely I allow such simplicity. My conditioning pulls me toward interpretation, understanding, and demanding coherence. But the crystal dakini points to a knowing that precedes all of that.

What struck me most, though, is how this teaching hinges on recognising that what arises in experience is not “other.” When Ken says that knowing the dakini to be your own mind changes everything, I felt something inside reorient. The familiar stance of “me navigating experience” gave way for a moment, to a sense of no separation, just immediacy. And in that moment the transformation he describes felt utterly natural.

From Five Elements, Five Dakinis

Ken: Now let’s talk a little bit about dakinis. Dakinis, the origin of dakinis, these were the aspects of experience ascribed to supernatural entities, that were called dakinis.

Mingyur Dorje, one of the karmapas, wrote a very nice composition about dakinis, in which he describes the origins of a group of four dakinis, which corresponded to the first four of the elements; earth, water, fire, and air. The water element, for instance, corresponds to the dakini whose name is Changeling. And Changeling was this spirit or demon that would appear to you in different forms and seduce you into doing things that were really bad for you. And another one was called the Murderess. These were regarded as female entities. There were in Indian lore also male entities. They were called dakas, and dakini was the female form. And they were originally supernatural spirits. What happens in Vajrayana is that these elements of folklore—the way that experience is interpreted—then became symbols for the way mind works. Does anyone here have a copy of my book, who can loan it to me? Thanks very much. Oh actually, it’s in here.

And I included this song by Khyungpo Naljor, who’s probably known here as Tsultrim. He describes what the crucial element is. The ordinary dakini represents these unruly aspects of our mind, the wild, untamed, reactive mind which just takes over. So he says:

When wanting and grasping hold sway, the dakini has you in her power.
Wanting nothing from outside, taking things as they come.
Know the dakini to be your own mind.

What’s being expressed here is, whatever arises in experience, when we regard it as something other, then attraction, aversion, all of the reactive emotions operate. And we are in the thrall of dualistic fixation and dualistic interpretation. And alienated from our own nature, our own knowing, and just react to things. That’s what it means when he says that the dakini has us in her power.

Then he says:

Wanting nothing from outside, taking things as they come.

Those meditation instructions—wanting nothing from outside—now how much of our lives do we go around trying to get something from the world to make us feel better? Relationships, money, possessions. The list just goes on and on. Trying to get these things from outside to make us feel good in some way. It doesn’t work. Well, no it doesn’t work. It never works. It’s temporary at best. Does that stop us from doing it? No, you keep doing it.

Taking things as they come.

This again is a meditation instruction. All too often, most of the time, we don’t take things as they come. Something arises and we want it to be a little bit different. [Chuckles] It’s not quite right. Many years ago I had a girlfriend who was just exactly right. I was never quite right. [Laughter] Never quite fit. Life was tortuous. It was very difficult.

Know the dakini to be your own mind.

That is, know that what arises in experience is not something other. Now, when we know that, and this is not an intellectual knowing, this is an experiential knowing, then everything changes. The way that we experience the world changes. And so rather than being fixed in this dualistic I/other framework; when we know what arises in experience to be your own mind. Now there is no difference—there is just experience. And you’re awake in that experience. So he goes on to say:
Know that the crystal is the non-thought of mind itself. And,

Crystal dakini guards against interruptions.

This is a very deep instruction. The crystal—this is the water dakini.

Crystal is the non-thought of mind itself.

So when you have a level of attention in which you can rest, and there is no conceptual process taking place in the mind— there’s no thought—then things can arise. And it doesn’t matter what arises. It doesn’t disturb. You follow? And thus nothing can interrupt the quality of your attention and the quality of your presence.

Know that the source of wealth is contentment and the jewel dakini fills all wants and needs.

There’s a story from the life of Buddha in which a poor person, a very poor person comes across this wish-fulfilling jewel and he recognizes what he’s found. And he says, “Wow, this is so important and valuable. I don’t know what to do with this. The Buddha will know what to do with it.” So he went to Buddha and said, “I found this wish-fulfilling jewel. I don’t know what to do with it but you’ll know the person who needs this the most so I’m going to give it to you. The Buddha said, ”Thank you.“

Later that day there was a big festival and sponsored by the local ruler, the king. And in middle of this festival, Buddha called the king and said, ”Here’s this wish-fulfilling jewel. I was told to give it to the person who needs it most and I’m giving it to you.“ The king said, ”Why?“ ”Because you have more want than anybody else in this community.“ [Chuckles]

So, no contentment. When there’s no contentment it does not matter how wealthy we are—and we can think of wealth in terms of financial wealth or possessions. But it doesn’t really matter. It applies to other kinds of wealth, some people are greedy for knowledge, some people are greedy for connections, some people are greedy for power. It doesn’t make any difference.

When there’s no contentment, then the jewel dakini has us in her power. When we know contentment, then we are the richest person in the world because we don’t need anything. So, this is how the dakinis transform experience.

Working with the Unfettered Mind Website

I’ve spent more than twenty years practicing with the Unfettered Mind website as a key resource. It was my doorway to Ken’s teaching, and eventually led me to contact him and to begin studying with him. Since 2009, I've helped with site design and development and supported the volunteers who prepared the transcripts. In the process, I've come to know the material quite intimately.

Some people say that they find the site overwhelming because it invites you in, but doesn’t tell you much about where to go. There's no curriculum, no progression of levels—just a vast collection of resources in different formats and a first steps page.

I've written these notes for those who feel unsure about where to begin. They aren't a map or a set of instructions. Instead, they offer ways of approaching Unfettered Mind so you can find what speaks to you and let your own practice lead the way. It draws on my experience of working with the material, and on what I’ve learned from using the site to support my own practice.

These notes have five parts. You can begin anywhere:

• Part I – Understanding Unfettered Mind
• Part II – Orienting Yourself
• Part III – Working with the Resources
• Part IV – The Living Ecology of Unfettered Mind
• Part V – Letting Unfettered Mind Become a Companion

My hope is that something here helps you find your own way into the "labyrinth" of Unfettered Mind, and into the deeper terrain it opens up.

→ Read the notes here

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

For many people, the holiday season carries a bittersweet quality—moments of warmth mixed with pressure, expectation, and emotional strain. The weight of family expectations, financial stress, loneliness, old patterns, and the year-end reckoning with what has or hasn’t happened can make December one of the most difficult stretches of the year. Disrupted routines and the cultural insistence on togetherness often amplify feelings of stress, sadness, or disconnection. Instead of ease, the season can feel like a convergence of emotional weather systems.

In “What to Do About Christmas?” Ken uses the three marks of existence—impermanence, suffering, and non-self—to illuminate the emotional turbulence of the season. He begins with impermanence, noting how seasonal cycles prompt reflection, self-evaluation, regret, and disappointment. Ken offers guided meditations on both regret and accomplishment, emphasising that fully experiencing sensations, emotions, and stories in the body allows these experiences to complete themselves instead of lingering.

Turning to suffering, he reframes it as the universal struggle to get emotional needs met—and the futility of trying to control what we feel. Emotional freedom arises not through control but through experiencing emotions directly. Ken introduces taking and sending (tonglen) as a practice well-suited to family tensions: breathing in others’ painful feelings as black smoke and breathing out one’s own ease as moonlight. This practice undermines self-cherishing and opens us to the full complexity of shared emotional life.

NOTE: Since visualisation is not a part of my experience, on the in-breath, I feel the weight, tightness, or contraction of difficult emotions. On the out-breath, I sense whatever ease, warmth, or clarity is present and feel it radiating outwards. A simple phrase can help: in-breath: “feeling this”; out-breath: “offering ease.” This is tonglen without imagery—direct, embodied, and complete.

Finally, addressing non-self, Ken suggests entering challenging holiday situations with a clear intention, because without intention, reactivity easily sweeps us away. Ken encourages us to dig beneath surface motivations until we find a deeply felt, honest intention. This clarity shifts experience from “something happening to me” to “I am in this,” enabling genuine presence and connection to arise.

Listen to the whole talk if you can. It's a great way to spend 40 mins.

From What to Do About Christmas?

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Beyond Visualisation

In this interview with Matthew O’Connell on the Imperfect Buddha Podcast, Ken reframes Vajrayana deity practice for those who struggle with visualisation. Rather than using imagery, he emphasises touching compassion and emptiness directly and letting the feeling of being the deity arise from that experience. It’s a shift from image-making to feeling-being, and it changes the whole flavour of practice.

He shares striking examples: practitioners forming deep relationships with figures like Green Tara through sustained devotion; the way deities function as living presences rather than symbolic artefacts; and how, for Western practitioners, meaningful connection may come more readily through familiar figures such as Mary or Christ. The heart of his point is that an authentic relationship with a deity evolves from experience, not from forcing the traditional forms.

I first reached out to Ken for advice on the difficulties I was experiencing with Vajrayana visualisation, and the communication challenges I faced in taking practice questions to my teacher, a young Tibetan tulku who spoke little English. Ken invited me to set imagery aside and let the practice speak to me. That shift helped me stay with the long arc of ngöndro. In time, I came to see that the 100,000 repetitions of these practices, day after day—stretching to five years in my case—built capacity in attention, which later supported deeper forms of practice.

Many years afterwards, something unexpected happened: a sense of devotion began to flow naturally, and now I find myself spontaneously reciting the 100-syllable Vajrasattva mantra and singing the Heart Sutra, and forming an awe-struck relationship with Niguma through recitation of The Magic of Faith. This conversation with Matthew O'Connell is a reminder of how relationships with deities are lived, felt, and discovered over time rather than achieved through effort or visualisation.

From The Magic of Vajrayana

Matthew: So I wonder, I'm one of those people that finds visualization and energy stuff pretty easy. That comes to me quite naturally. And so I don't necessarily have a huge problem visualizing these quite elaborate entourages of different beings with eight arms and all of this stuff going on. But within that I quite enjoy exploring the simplification of it too. And then shifting my attention to appreciate different aspects of it.

So sometimes the detail is quite interesting to explore. Sometimes just a kind of quite bland, almost universal colour or something like this might be interesting. And sometimes I use traditional symbols and then I change them to other things too.

And I feel I can get away with that because I've been practicing for quite a long time. I wonder to what degree we may lose something if we change deities too much or not? So I guess that's a side question. But the real thing I'd like to do is again go back to the suggestion I made before, which is how can deities, in your view, open up possibilities? And as the second part of thour would be, do you think we can thoroughly westernize the kinds of deities and the symbology attached to them that we might be looking at?

Ken: Oh, this is a complex question. I think the first point is, what is a deity? I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about that.

Every deity in the Tibetan tradition is the union of compassion and emptiness. That's our nature. And not everybody has your facility with visualisation. In fact, as you probably know, visualisation is almost an insuperable obstacle for many people when they try to practice Vajrayana. So I wrote the section on deity practice [in The Magic of Vajrayana] with that very much in mind, but also drawing on my own experience. The starting point has to be the unity of compassion and emptiness. And what I suggest in the book is something that I took from the Nyingma tradition: by hook or by crook—to use an English phrase which I'm sure you're familiar with—touch emptiness and compassion. And these are not concepts, of course, but an experiential shift. And let the experience of being the deity grow from there, rather than trying to visualise it, per se. That is an approach which is going to involve feeling being the deity, rather than visualising being the deity. Suzuki Roshi once said, our practice is based on absolute confidence in our fundamental nature. And so when you do deity practice, you take as your fundamental nature the unity of compassion and emptiness, and you let yourself trust that to the umpteenth degree.

Now that's quite a jump right there. And as you let yourself absorb that and let that permeate your whole way of being, then the sense of being the deity can come alive. And that may come alive in the forms of the deity, particularly if you're familiar with the forms. Because one has to remember that all of these deities were at one time or other, religions, and they were the central figure of a religion in its own right. And it was over the process of centuries that these things came together. And the Tibetans went over and just brought everything they could back and put it all together into this thing we call Vajrayana. But it's not how it was practiced in India at all. Tibetans would say, "The Indians practiced one deity and saw hundreds. We practice hundreds of deities and don't see any."

So the sense of really being the deity, and take say, Green Tara, who's the protectress, right? What's it like to have an intimate relationship with this figure? And it's very, very much a relationship. It's your personal god. Taking on as one's personal god a figure from another culture is a difficult transition. A colleague of mine, Michael Taft, feels that many people will do better taking on the Virgin Mary, or Christ, or some other figure. Because we have to come to terms with those figures, too, I don't know what the answers are. But I do know the answers are to "How this is going to evolve?" and things like that.

I was able to develop a relationship with these deities, and I know how to point people in the direction of doing that for themselves. But you really are taking on. At first I thought I had a relationship with one particular deity, and then I found, rather to my surprise, that there's a different deity who feels like a companion to me now. I never feel particularly separate from him, but I know other people feel the same way about other deities. I mean, my own teacher, his teacher, after he had completed his training, was the tailor in the monastery, which was a big job, because you had all of these banners that had to be renewed all the time and things like that. It was a lot of work to do.

And he decided at a certain point, "This is a complete waste of time," and he shut himself in one of the latrines in the monastery. You can imagine what a latrine in a Tibetan monastery was like. Not porcelain, scrubbed every day.

He didn't leave it for seven years. And during that whole time, he prayed and meditated on green Tara. And so there he is, in this basically stone and concrete shithole. After a couple of weeks, they started putting food under the door for him, but he wouldn't unlock the door. That's how he formed a relationship with Green Tara. And it's very much about forming a personal relationship and letting the spirit, and this goes straight to your shamanic training, letting the spirit of the deity come into you and take over in you. That's what it's about.

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Mantra of the Heart

I bow /
to the Lady of Wisdom, /
clear and boundless. //

The Buddha sat upon Vulture Peak, /
surrounded by monks and bodhisattvas. //

He entered a deep absorption — /
where everything arises, shines, and is known. //

Avalokiteshvara, /
looked into the heart of wisdom /
and saw the five streams of being /
empty of their own nature. //

Then Shariputra asked: /
To live this deep wisdom/
How should one train?//

O Shariputra, /
see this clearly — /
Replied Avalokiteshvara /
this body is emptiness, /
and emptiness is this body. //

Body is not other than emptiness, /
emptiness not other than body. //

The same is true /
for feelings, /
for thoughts, /
stories, and awareness. //

All experience is open — /
not fixed, /
not born or destroyed, /
not pure or impure, /
not lacking, not complete. //

Therefore, Shariputra, /
in emptiness there is no thing to grasp: /
no form, no feeling, /
no thought, no story, no awareness. //

No eye, no ear, no nose, /
no tongue, no body, no mind. /
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, or thought. //

No ignorance, /
no end of ignorance. /
No old age and death, /
no end of old age and death. //

No suffering, /
no cause, /
no cessation, /
no path. //

Nothing to know, /
nothing to gain. //

And so the bodhisattva rests, /
trusting the heart of wisdom. /
With nothing clouding the mind, /
no fear arises. /
Delusion falls away, /
and awakening unfolds. //

All buddhas of past, present, and future /
awaken by this same wisdom. //

Therefore, know this mantra of the heart — /
the great mantra, /
the clear mantra, /
the unsurpassed mantra — /
that ends all suffering. //

It is true, not illusion. //

Say it — /
feel it — /
know it — //

Om gāte gāte / pāragāte / pārasaṃgāte / bodhi svāhā. //

These lyrics draw on the wonderful translations of the Heart Sutra by Ken McLeod and Thich Nhat Hanh. I created the music with suno.com.

Ken McLeod's translation of the Heart Sutra is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 and was used with permission. Thich Nhat Hanh's translation is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

"Other" as a Doorway to Practice

During a recent discussion about tonglen with other practitioners, someone spoke about “doing tonglen for myself.” Another person demurred, noting that it felt strange, and I shared that feeling. Something didn’t sit quite right, and this passage from Ken came to mind.

Ken makes a sharp distinction that cuts through a lot of Western psychological language: compassion is the wish that others be free of suffering; the wish to be free of suffering oneself is renunciation. And the ability to stay present with one’s own pain isn’t self-compassion—it’s mindfulness. Hearing this again clarified why “self-compassion” can feel subtly off. It easily becomes a way of protecting the very sense of self we’re trying to see through.

Tonglen has been a central practice for Ken, and he talks about it in many classes and retreats. This passage from Guru, Deity, Protector is especially incisive because he points out how tonglen works with anything that feels “other,” even if that “other” is a part of ourselves we’ve avoided or pushed away. Working with a younger version of myself, for example, isn’t directing compassion toward “me”; it’s opening to something locked inside that needs to be experienced fully.

When seen this way, the question mark around “doing tonglen for myself” makes sense. Tonglen is about dissolving the separation that creates “self” and “other” in the first place. The way I practice is to look at wherever that separation is felt most strongly.

From Guru, Deity, Protector 3

John: Do you have to have self-appreciation or love yourself before having the confidence to do that, the faith of longing?

Ken: I don't think so.

John: Thinking of that, how possible is self-love?

Ken: Well, in Tibetan, and maybe in Pali and Sanskrit—I don't know them well enough—the idea of self-love or self-compassion is a contradiction in terms. And we have these concepts flying around really because of the influence of Western psychology.

In Tibetan Buddhism for instance, the wish that others be free of suffering is called compassion. You want others to be free of suffering, that’s compassion. The wish that you be free of suffering is not called self-compassion. It’s called renunciation. Or if you want another translation it’s called determination. “I want to be free of suffering, I gotta do something about it—I gotta get out of this mess.” And so that is the wish that I want to be free of suffering is disenchantment with the current state of affairs which leads to that renunciation.

And, the capacity to be present with your own pain, that’s not self-compassion—that’s mindfulness. That’s what mindfulness is—just that. I tend to feel—and this may be a bit harsh on my side—that these concepts such as self-love, self-compassion, self-forgiveness are often covert or not so covert ways of protecting a very explicit sense of self that does not want to meet the actual state of affairs. It’s a protective mechanism usually centered around a very explicit sense of self.

Student: Doing mind training, it seems to me that part of that is compassion with yourself in doing that with mind-training.

Ken: It’s accepting the pain. What do you mean compassion with yourself?

Student: Sending yourself light or taking in the pain.

Ken: Yes, but when we’re doing that we’re doing it with a very explicit conception of self. And the purpose of it is to undo that particular conception. For instance, an instruction I give to people: they have a piece from their childhood where something very uncomfortable, very painful happened like some form of abuse or something like that. I will instruct people to do taking and sending with that child.

What they’re doing taking and sending with is something that is locked inside them. And by doing that, they’re actually opening that up and experiencing what’s in there. And when they experience it completely, it literally dissolves, and now they’re free, not necessarily from the pain but from having to avoid it.

Student: And it’s almost like an agenda; you’re looking at that part of you.

Ken: Exactly, because the way you’re relating to it inside, is like it’s another.

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Okay, and when you were doing the taking and sending retreat last year, anything you feel a sense of other with is appropriate to do taking and sending with. You follow? Which I feel is different than trying to feel compassion for yourself, whatever that is. The other problem I have is there isn’t any self to feel compassion for. People don’t like that.

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• Dangers in Spiritual Practice
• Working With Pain

Dangers in Spiritual Practice

In this passage Ken describes two dangers in spiritual practice: working at a level of attention you can’t sustain, and working with methods that don’t fit.

While I felt strongly drawn to Vajrayana, I struggled with its imagery-based practices. Without mental imagery, visualisation quickly became frustrating. Eventually I met deep resistance around completing the ngöndro, and began wondering whether I belonged on that path at all, but there was the thorny issue of samaya. Strain, doubt, and the sense that something was fundamentally lacking in me were running wild. Ken’s point is simple but rarely said aloud: when the fit is wrong, practice stops being a path and becomes a source of imbalance.

Ignoring these dangers has real consequences. Pushing beyond your actual attention capacity can tilt your whole system—creating tension, instability, and overriding the body’s signals that you’re past your limit. Persisting with methods that don’t suit can lead to confusion, guilt, imagining that working harder will solve the problem, or as in my case, total blockage—inability to practice. As Ken points out, imbalance in approach inevitably becomes imbalance in result.

I value Ken’s invitation to trust experience rather than ideology or inherited expectations. He asks the most practical of questions: “Does this work for you?”

For more on the dangers of the spiritual path, check out Ken's explanations of Gampopa's similes for the spiritual teacher as guide, escort, and ferryman in Then and Now 6

From Guru, Deity, Protector 1

Ken: There’s danger in all forms of spiritual practice. And the dangers come about in two ways. There may be more, but for the purposes of our discussion I’m looking at two.

One danger is working at a higher level of attention than you can sustain. This is why many of you recall one of my recommendations is that when you’re working with difficult or painful areas, you let it open to you, you don’t try to open it up. Many of you have heard me say that. The reason for that instruction is so that you aren’t working at a higher level of attention than you can sustain. You are working at the level of attention that you actually have, and things evolve. And they definitely do evolve and they deepen, but in a way in which you stay in balance—you and the whole world. It’s very important. If you work at a higher level of attention than you can sustain, you’re living on borrowed energy. There’s an imbalance. And when there’s a consistent imbalance in your efforts, there will inevitably be an imbalance in the results. That is totally contrary to the intention.

Second danger. You’re working at something that simply doesn’t fit with you. And quite a few people who’ve come to see me over the last few years have been practicing one or more Vajrayana techniques, and I listen to them, and in some cases they simply don’t have the level of attention to be able to do it. They’re just swirling around in confusion and it’s not making anything better.

In other cases, it’s quite clear that Vajrayana practice just doesn’t sit with them. And I’ll say, “Just stop it.” They all get bent out of shape and worried about it, because of all of this big heavy propaganda about samaya and commitment and so forth. But it’s absolutely the case. I mean, we get this same thing in other areas of practice. Some people take ordination as a monk or a nun and it really doesn’t fit them. It’s a long, long path of practice.

One woman I know, she was very sensible. She was quite serious about her practice in Buddhism. The bodhisattva vow just didn’t fit with her. Not at the time that I knew her anyway. She wouldn’t take it. She was very helpful and worked with people and helped people in many, many ways. But there was something about that that really didn’t suit her.

So, what I’m encouraging you to do here is to weigh everything with your own experience. We are going to be talking about faith. We’re going to be talking about devotion, because these are very significant elements in Vajrayana. You can’t ignore them. You can try to, but it really doesn’t work. Devotion is not something that is appropriate or suitable for everyone.

So through these few days I hope you will get a flavor of what this is actually like. I’m going to do my best to convey that to you, both through our talks together but also through the practice. The form of the practice may be a bit different. It’s experimental, so it may be a total failure. But all through this, I want you to be asking, “Does this work for me or not? Is this a path I want to take or not?” And really weigh that. Because the whole point of our work together—not just this thing, but spiritual practice—is becoming more present and aware in every aspect of your life. It’s not about getting a credential or being able to say, “I’m practicing the biggest, meanest, sexiest path there is.” That’s not the point.

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Bringing Attention Into Action

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Ken’s way of teaching is how he brings practice straight into ordinary life. He doesn’t separate meditation from the unsettling situations we encounter daily; he gives instructions for working with them directly. These four steps are a good example. They’re simple, practical, and grounded in how things actually unfold: get clear on what’s happening, connect with the people involved, see what needs to be done, receive the result and keep going.

In other talks he calls them the four steps of standing up.

These steps help me shift attention from spinning stories back to the demands of the moment. They’re not techniques so much as reminders of how to meet life without getting lost in reactivity.

From Eightfold Path 2

When you're in a situation and it doesn't really matter what, and things aren't going the way that you want or expect, four things:

First, get the facts. Find out what is actually going on.

Our tendency is to make up stories about it. And whenever there's something happening which we don't understand what's really going on, we make up a story. And it's astonishing how quickly we make up that story. And there's a very important characteristic of that story; we're always the hero of it, which makes it suspect right there. So rather than make up a story, get the facts—what's actually happening.

Second, rather than react emotionally, and particularly defensively or judgmentally, which is what we usually do, empathize with and understand the other people.

Find out what they're experiencing and try to understand that. And so that makes an emotional connection, which really changes things.

Third, focus on what needs to be done, not on what isn't going right.

Focus on what needs to be done. As one person says: "Stop messing about with the past and look to the future." I put this in terms of: "Focus on the direction of the present." What actually needs to happen here to make this work?

And be strategic. You may think it should happen a certain way but that way may not work in this situation. So you've got to figure out what will actually work.

Often when people are consulting with me about problems they're facing, I'll make a suggestion and they say, "Well, we can't do that because of this," and "We can't do that because of that," and "I can't do that because of this." And their tendency is to regard all of this as obstacles. What they're actually describing is the territory in which they are living at that point. And these are things that have to be negotiated and worked around but they aren't actually obstacles unless you regard them as an obstacle. And I've found that shift in perspective is very helpful to people.

Fourth, whatever happens, receive it and keep going.

One of my favorite quotations is from Churchill: “When you're going through hell, keep going.” Certainly applicable in Britain in the Second World War.

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How Meaning Reveals Itself

“Body like a mountain” invites you to feel what effortless sitting is actually like. When I let the words sink in without trying to analyse them, the body knows what to do. The meaning of the metaphor reveals itself in practice.

Ken uses metaphors because they help us bypass the urge to figure things out, and take us straight into direct experience. That emphasis on direct experience is a hallmark of his approach.

From Pointing Out Instructions 3

Ken: A lot of instruction in Buddhism is expressed in mythic language. I'll give you one example. It happens to be a mahamudra instruction—I thought I'd keep it on topic.

Body like a mountain,

Breath like the wind,

Mind like the sky.

Now, I think this is quite a good example. If I say body like a mountain, what do most of you think of immediately?

Student: Rigid.

Ken: Yeah. Okay, now what's it's like meditating like that?

Student: Tiring

Ken: Does it work? No. So, is this what it means?

Student: No.

Ken: No. So, what does it mean? Nick?

Nick: You become very stable.

Ken: How do you become very stable? Can you just say "I'm going to be stable."? Does that work?

Nick: You relax your body.

Ken: What does that have to do with a mountain?

Nick: Mountains don't make any effort to sit there like that.

Ken: Exactly. Say it again loudly.

Nick: Sorry. I said mountains don't make any effort to sit like that.

Ken: Yeah. So this phrase—body like a mountain—means to sit without any effort whatsoever. And you come at this by actually just taking it in and letting it speak to you, not trying to analyse it and figure out exactly what it means, etc., etc. Okay.

This is the language of poetry. And it's similar things with

Breath like the wind,

Mind like the sky.

So, in what we work with in these days that we're here together let the instructions sit in you. Let them reveal their meaning. You'll know when they've revealed their meaning by what happens in your practice.

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A Simplicity That Costs Everything

There’s a passage in A Trackless Path 1 that I keep returning to. Ken talks about “the price” of practice—not as something heroic, but as the ordinary, human cost of letting illusions fall apart. Certainties dissolve, familiar motivations lose their grip, and the usual strategies for holding a self together stop working. Practice doesn’t polish us; it undoes us.

I appreciate the way Ken describes awakening without framing it as an achievement. Words like peace, presence, or simplicity aren’t goals. They’re the textures or flavours of experience when the tension of duality relaxes and the machinery of “someone” starts to unwind.

This may be why Buddhism felt like home from the beginning. There was a kind of care in not letting anything—even open, clear, awareness—harden into an anchor. It felt unsettling yet strangely honest. Ken’s sensibility reflects that: a willingness to lose identity and certainty, to walk through unknowing, to let curiosity undo the familiar life. He quotes Eliot: “A moment of complete simplicity which costs not less than everything.”

From A Trackless Path 1-7

Julia: Could you talk a little bit about the price in worldly terms of doing this. Because you’ve talked about the aloneness of finding your own path. But you haven’t talked about the consequences of it for the life of work and relationships which can change very dramatically as a result.

Ken: Well. I think one has to talk about both the price and the rewards. You’ve heard me tell this one before.

A group of people came to a Sufi and said we’d like to study with you. And he said, “Are you willing to give up pride and be humble?” And they said, “Yes!” “Are you willing to experience difficulty and not seek comfort?” And they said, “Yes!” And he asked them. “Are you willing to serve and not lead?” They said, “Yes!” He said, “Very well. Next Tuesday I’m meeting with a group of students who studied with me for three years. Please come.” He told them where to come.

That Tuesday evening this group of people came in and there was a group of students sitting there. And the Sufi said, “Sit over here.”

And he turned to his students, the ones who had been studying with him for three years. And said, “How many of you would rather be proud than humble?” And they all stood up. “How many of you would rather have comfort than difficulty?” And they all stood up. “How many of you would rather lead than serve?” And they all stood up.

So he turned to this new group and said, “So you see that the results of studying with me will be that you are worse than you are now. Please think about this. And we can talk again.”

When we set out on such a path, we have no idea where it will lead. I remember a meeting I had with Julia and a couple of other women—Martha and Michelle—in my old office. And I think it was Michelle said, “And what do you do?” And Julia said, “I’m not working right now.” And Martha said, “Yeah, I’m working.” And Michelle just looked at her and said, “Oh, you haven’t been studying very long with Ken yet. Another couple of years and you’ll be unemployed.” You remember that? [Laughter]

Julia: I remember that.

Ken: And Martha went [makes gasping sound]. Couple of years later she was unemployed. So because as one begins to explore this curiosity that we have about this experience we call life, all kinds of things are called into question. Actually, everything is called into question! [Laughter]

Towards the end of Four Quartets T.S. Eliot writes,

"A moment of complete simplicity which costs not less than everything."

So things are called into question. And this starts actually quite early. Many of you have heard me talk about the eight worldly concerns: happiness and unhappiness, gain and loss, fame and obscurity, respect and disdain. These are what the conventional life is based on. We seek happiness, wealth, gain, a certain amount of fame or renown, certainly respect. Try to avoid the others. And if we turn our back on that, everybody thinks we’re crazy. But you may very well find that as these things come into question or as you come to certain understandings that what is meaningful to everybody else has little meaning maybe even no meaning to you.

And what I often find is how extraordinarily hard some people become around money. That when the topic of money comes in this perfectly reasonable, nice person becomes somebody else. That’s what’s really important in their lives. And they will sacrifice friendships and things for that. Which is completely bizarre as far as I’m concerned because money is always replaceable. Friendships aren’t.

So, we begin to move. And this changes our relationships with people. And we’ve already talked in other evenings about how when things change inside we begin to relate to people differently. And for some people, they can’t accept the change in relationship and those relationships fall away. And they’re replaced by other relationships. Maybe not as many of them but they are often replaced by other relationships. And they’re different in quality and tone and dynamic.

But through this process there can be a consistent sense of loss. I think this is what Julia was referring to in terms of price. Is that right?

Julia: Yes.

Ken: And it can do what I was talking about in relationship with betrayal. It’s the grief we experience when we lose an illusion. You know, we live that and it was so fine. But now we see it’s not like that and there’s grief in that. There’s a process of separation which is what grief is about.

But I think it’s only fair to say that those prices are half of it. The other half of it is that we move into a more complete relationship with this experience we call life. And whether you call it a sense of wholeness or purpose or direction or understanding or congruence—that’s also part of the picture. It’s not necessarily a nice neat process—if you let this go this comes. It’s often if you let this go you wander around for a long time wondering what the hell is going on. And then you begin, “Oh, this is actually what I was looking for. I just didn’t recognize it.”

But one has to be willing to accept and live in this kind of uncertainty and change and, in many cases, unknowing. Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet says,

“Only be a poet if you have to be a poet. If you have any other choice in your life, take it.”

Somebody I was meeting with quite recently said the same thing about photography to me. It applies to a lot of areas. And basically I say the same thing to people, “Only travel this path if you have to.”

There’s a teacher in Toronto who’s quite old now, Lama Karma Thinley, who’s always been a bit quirky. Which is one of the things I liked about him. When he first came to Toronto which was back in the ’70s, people would go to India and they would come back full of enthusiasm saying I took refuge with so and so, etc. And Lama Karma Thinley would go, “Oh. I’m so sorry!” [Laughter] At first it was just like, “What?” And Lama Karma Thinley would, “Maybe it’s not too late.” And of course the people were just like “What!” So, does this speak to what you were—

Julia: So, perhaps better not to start probably—

Ken: It’s a Tibetan expression, you know, “Perhaps better not to start. Once started, better to finish.” Well, things don’t necessarily work out on the path. And I know because I’ve seen any number of people really damaged, quite a few corpses, etc. Many colleagues for whom that’s been the case.

At the same time, if you have this curiosity and you pursue it, it’s unlikely whatever happens that you’ll regret it. The opposite is not true. And, as I’ve said, it’s very much about coming to terms with our experience. And we can put that in all kinds of language. For some people, they seek freedom. For some people, awakening. For some people, presence. For some people, knowing of some form. Some people, peace.

There are other words that are used to describe it. One I’m thinking of is union. But that’s a metaphor. It’s a metaphor to describe a certain experience. What we are looking for is a way of experiencing our lives which fundamentally leaves us at peace.

Now a lot of colleagues of mine really take issue with me for making that statement. But for some of you whom I know through our conversations have experienced presence without any sense of subject or object. There is in that experience a complete peace. You are free of the tension of duality. And that’s why I use that terminology. It’s actually not about looking for meaning or purpose because those are relatively subtle forms of identity.

I go back to something that I mentioned at the beginning of the retreat. I’ve mentioned many times because I find this wording very helpful. That curiosity that I’ve been speaking about this evening often is experienced as a small, stammering voice that is asking somewhat inconvenient questions. And if you choose this path then you learn to listen deeply so you can hear that voice. And that’s no simple matter.

Apprentice Buddhas

Ken talks about waking up as something we can actually do. In this passage, his description of the five-path map points directly to experience: developing an intention, experiencing some insights, waking up, seeing clearly, and learning how to live from that seeing in the midst of ordinary life.

I'm struck by how simply he speaks about bodhisattvas and buddhas. A bodhisattva understands the nature of experience directly but hasn’t yet learned to live every moment from that view. For a buddha, that view has permeated the whole of life.

Ken's description of buddhas and bodhisattvas cuts through idealisations about spiritual life. He shifts the focus from goal seeking to developing capacity to experience everything that arises. This passage stays with me because it reminds me that integration is an ongoing process and that living awake is possible.

From Then and Now 7

Raquel: What’s the difference between buddhas and bodhisattvas?

Ken: Ah okay, that's a good point. Very loosely speaking bodhisattvas are apprentice buddhas. To make it a little more refined, in all traditions of Buddhism there’s a map of spiritual progress known as the five paths. There’s the path of accumulation, path of accommodation, path of seeing, path of practice and path of no practice. And in the path of accumulation, you’re developing, generating the goodness and well being which lays the foundation for spiritual understanding. And there’s a long exposition way at the end of this book on the five paths, a sufficiently detailed one. The path of accommodation is where you begin to get some intimation of what experience is actually like—the emptiness and so forth and so there’s a process of accommodation to that. The path of seeing is where you actually wake up. And when you wake up you have a certain experience of being awake and present, but it’s not fully integrated in your life. So the path of practice is where you’re working at integrating all aspects of experience into this seeing that’s been uncovered, and the path of no practice is when that process is complete.

You become, officially, a bodhisattva when you enter the path of seeing. That is you understand the nature of experience directly, and then you go through all the stages of a bodhisattva until you get to the path of no practice, which is equivalent of buddhahood. So from this map, what the Buddha represents is the way of experiencing things in which you can experience all aspects of experience awake and present, which means you can experience everything that arises. Remember we talked about this, developing the ability to experience everything. The understanding and seeing of a bodhisattva and a buddha are the same; the degree in which it has permeated all experience is different. Okay so that’s why I say bodhisattvas are buddhas in training.

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Anger As Intel

For much of my life anger arose when I felt cornered. In the passage below Ken makes the point that anger can signal a boundary violation, bringing a clarity I didn’t have when I was young. Anger became the force that said, “This is too much,” when I had no other way to say it.

Growing up, I learned two ways of coping: disappearing by hiding or running away, or escalating bad behaviour even though I knew it would lead to dire consequences. They looked like opposites, but both came from the same place: no safety, no protection, and a profound sense of powerlessness. Hiding delayed the impact. Escalation was the refusal to capitulate. It was the limited agency I had.

Perhaps this is why I feel uncomfortable with so-called “righteous anger.” It often feels a step removed from what is actually happening inside. Ken’s conversation with a student about righteous anger helped me understand that anger is easily justified as clarity or moral certainty when it is really a way of avoiding helplessness or hurt. When someone insists their anger is principled, it feels like a cover for the vulnerability underneath. It’s another way of fighting experience rather than meeting it.

In this passage from Ken's series on the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva he explains that anger often arises when we can’t address what’s happening. This directly echoes my experience. When an adult crossed a line, my childhood anger showed up as “bad” behaviour—a way of asserting that I had no way to stop something intolerable. I can also see now that the reactions of my caregivers came from their own versions of righteous anger.

That old structure has been incredibly persistent in my adult life. Anger arises quickly when something resonates with the crossing of an old line. Now, when a strong sense of “no,” a sense of "enemy"comes up, I ask questions: "What experience am I fighting? What am I not wanting to feel? What feels too much?" When I can meet the anger this way it becomes intel rather than erupting as a reaction.

From 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva 8

Kate: I just want to clarify for myself that what it seems to me is that anger is always caused by opposing experience or fighting experience. So, therefore, anger is always a reactive pattern?

Ken: Yes. Anger is a reactive pattern, because in anger you see the object of anger as something other, and there may be a very, very good reason for it. Now at the Vajrayana level, there’s another way of looking at it, and that is that anger is the intelligence of the universe telling you that a boundary has been violated. And so now you can look: where is the boundary being violated? And then you can seek to address that in the appropriate way. The comparable one for desire is that desire is the intelligence of the universe telling you that a connection has been broken. Suddenly, I want that. When the connection’s there, there isn’t any sense of desire. There’s just a flow of energy and response. But when it’s broken, then there’s that wanting.

Student: Along the lines of what Kate just said, isn’t there such a thing as righteous anger? [Ken laughs] It seems that I’ve read about that in some of my readings, an anger that comes up in response to the mistreatment of other beings, for example.

Ken: Well, you see other beings being mistreated, other people, whatever. What’s the first thing you feel?

Student: Compassion.

Ken: Right. First thing you feel is compassion. Now, when does the anger arise? This is important.

Student: Doesn’t it come up when you find an opportunity to deal with what’s causing the suffering?

Ken: I would say it arises when you realize in your position you can’t do anything about the cause of the suffering, so you now fall out of the compassion into anger. And then you try to defend it by calling it righteous anger.

There was a person down in Orange County back in the early 90s. And he was expressing his anger at the homeless people. And he was training with me in taking and sending at the time. So, he was experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance, shall we say. I said, “Why are you angry with the homeless? They are the products of the system. If you want to help the homeless, why don’t you call the mayor? You’ve got influence here, and put pressure on him.” But moving from anger at the homeless—because they were disturbing his sense of what his community should look like—to actually taking action was way too big a step for him.

And so anger comes up because you feel impotent and you’re trying to control the situation. And then it’s defended as righteous anger, which is used as a justification for violence. It’s not ever. And once you go down that road, you’re going down the road of fundamentalism, terrorism, taking what is essentially compassion, turning it into an ideology where now the ends justify the means. And compassion goes out the window, and you’re just trying to make the world conform to how you think it should be. Does this make sense to you? Is that too strong?

Related posts:
Every Reactive Pattern Has Two Poles
Recognising Reactivity in Real Time – Part 1

Every reactive pattern has two poles

I used to think my reactive patterns had a single, recognisable shape, but Ken’s description of patterns having two poles, expressive and receptive, reveals this landscape to be much more fluid. Instead of one behaviour repeating, a pattern oscillates between opposites that look different on the surface, but are actually two expressions of a single dynamic.

A pattern that ran my life for years was staying invisible to avoid conflict. I can see with hindsight that I tended to take the receptive pole as “me” and was blindsided when the expressive pole suddenly erupted. Staying invisible would build pressure until the bottled-up resentments and anger exploded into rage. Ken’s point is that the flip is the pattern reversing direction, like a train running back and forth on the same track. Seeing this has been uncomfortable, but also clarifying.

His key instruction—to hold both poles in attention at the same time—feels like a gentle undoing. I abandoned trying to fix or reject my behaviour, and started hanging out with the whole mess: the urge to hide and the urge to lash out. With both held in awareness, the emotional charge powering this pattern became more visible, and the automatic flip gradually lost momentum.

This isn’t easy work, but it makes reactive patterns feel less solid and more like currents of energy shaped by old fears. When awareness is steady enough to hold both poles of a reaction, more choice becomes available and the pattern itself starts to dissolve.

From Mind Training in Seven Points 15

Every pattern has two poles, which I choose to call expressive and receptive. Active and passive aren’t quite precise enough. The very easy one you see is the bully/coward. The bully is the expressive and the coward is the receptive. Now, bully isn’t a pattern; coward isn’t a pattern. The pattern is bully/coward.

And when you push on a bully and make it impossible for him to be a bully, then he becomes a coward. And when a coward encounters a situation where cowardice doesn’t work, he flips into bully. Which is one of the reasons why some of the weakest people—weak inside—become the most vicious torturers.

So, most of us, in a reactive pattern, identify primarily with either the expressive or the receptive pole. So, we often think we’re just the one side. But as you begin to work on, say the expressive pole, and it becomes more and more difficult for you to function in it, then you will flip and start behaving in exactly the opposite way. And what’s important to understand here is the pattern hasn’t disappeared, you’ve just picked up the train and reversed it. It’s running on the same track.

So, when you start seeing this flip, now you’ve gotta work on the other side. And the best way to do this is to hold the expressive and the receptive in attention at the same time. By doing that you will bring attention to the emotional issue that is driving the pattern as a whole and the split into these two forms of expression.

Related posts:
Recognising Reactivity in Real Time – Part 1
Anger As Intel

Recognising Reactivity in Real Time - Part 2

In Awakening From Belief Ken explains that reactive patterns always start with an emotional core—something we are unwilling to feel. They exists to make sure attention cannot land on the emotional core for more than an instant. Instead, attention is diverted into thoughts, impulses, and behaviours that feel necessary and justified. Once activated, reactive patterns begin producing conditions that perpetuate themselves. You don’t see the emotional core; you see the world distorted through the pattern. He stresses that reactive patterns always feel like “me,” appearing as personal truths. A few examples:

Everyone is judging me. If the emotional core is shame, even neutral expressions can feel sharply evaluative. The sense of being criticised arises not from others but from the fear of being exposed.

No one ever supports me. If the emotional core is abandonment, you may not register support when it’s offered. The pattern filters out moments of connection, leaving only the sense of being alone.

This is going to fall apart. If the emotional core is fear, you may find yourself scanning for signs of danger or instability. Even small changes can feel like major threats.

I need to fix this immediately. If the emotional core is helplessness, the urgency of a situation may become exaggerated. Everything feels like an emergency.

Ken notes that the emotional core of a pattern is always simple—fear, shame, abandonment, loss, inadequacy—but the patterns around the core can be enormously complex and multi-layered. They can include emotions, behaviours, and also physical tensions, automatic impulses, habitual stories, identity structures, perceptual distortions, and worldviews. He points out that people often try to work with the complexity—analysing, fixing, and improving—instead of addressing the core.

I've noticed that a reactive pattern can produce many different distortions, and that it can take years, decades, to develop enough capacity in attention to fully experience a heavily sealed-off emotional core. Life events trigger reactions that reveal more and more layers. Over time I’ve come to see that each layer functions as a kind of protective shell, formed around something I once didn’t have the capacity to feel. As capacity grows, life exposes the next layer. There’s something strangely trustworthy about this process, but it's not smooth or predictable, and when a new layer shows up and asks to be met, it can feel explosive in its immediacy—abrupt and destabilising.

In the following passage, Ken offers four reliable ways to recognise reactive patterns, and later on in the session he talks about the particular relevance of these for core patterns that are heavily protected from awareness:

From Awakening from Belief 11

Ken: Now, the first thing is to recognize reactive pattern. And we’ve talked about various ways to do that. The main one is when what you experience as result is consistently different from your intention, that usually indicates that there’s a reactive pattern operating somewhere in the mix. But there are other ways. One of my favorites is: What you don’t notice; what you don’t question; what you can’t laugh about.

Student: Once more, Ken.

Ken: What you don’t notice; what you don’t question; what you don’t laugh about. Queen Victoria’s: “We are not amused.” [Laughter]

Student: I think she had a very strong identity.

Ken: Only just a little. So, those are very reliable. Now, of course, what we don’t notice, you’re going to depend on somebody else, your teacher or friend, your spouse, to point out to you. And that’s very helpful. But you can observe what you don’t question. This is where your beliefs are, and your assumptions about life …

Related posts:
Recognising Reactivity in Real Time – Part 1
Every Reactive Pattern Has Two Poles

Recognising Reactivity in Real Time - Part 1

In this passage Ken describes one of several ways to recognise a reactive pattern. A hallmark of reactivity is an insistence on black-and-white inflexibility: “I want it this way—can’t have it that way.” This can show up as a demand for comfort or a refusal to feel discomfort. Behind those hard edges sit beliefs that quietly organise experience without ever announcing themselves.

A sense of shock arose when I first encountered Ken’s "indicators" of reactivity. I realised how pervasive reactive patterns were. Refrains of “can’t have this, must have that” were running much of my life, shaping behaviour in a multitude of ways. At the time, I believed the psychological explanation that my reactive patterns stemmed from a disorganised attachment style shaped by adverse childhood experiences. But as I took in more of what Ken presents in Karma: Awakening From Belief, I began to notice complexity in how patterns were layered. Eventually, I began to view psychological explanations of recurrent, mindless, mechanical behaviours as useful concepts rather than truths.

A next step was taking in Ken’s reminder that the point isn’t to eliminate the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that arise with beliefs and reactivity, but to notice them and hold them gently in attention, especially the ones that had already hardened. In recognising those silent “musts” and “can’ts,” something loosens. Space opens, and in that space lies the possibility of freedom from the same old patterns.

From Karma: Awakening from Belief 7

Also see Wake Up To Your Life, chapter 5

Ken: Several people have asked how you recognize a reactive pattern. Well, one of the features of a reactive pattern is, as I mentioned, that they're mechanical in nature. What's one of the characteristics of a mechanical system?

Student: No variation.

Ken: No variation. It just runs one way. So, a way to identify a reactive pattern—and it's very useful to do this—is, "Must be this way, can't be that. Have to have this, can't have that. Must have this, can't have that." Any time you have that going in you, chances are you're running a reactive pattern. We run into this all the time. The retreat that I did recently in Santa Fe, there was a little confusion the first day, and there was no coffee at breakfast. [Laughter]

Student: Not a good move.

Student: Ah, love it.

Ken: See, there we are, right there. "Must be this way, can't have that."

A nobleman once asked a dervish, "I've been a student of the path for many years but I feel I have gained no understanding at all." And the dervish replied, "That is because you are too arrogant." And the nobleman said, "If you weren't a holy man I would take offense at that remark; however, I am willing to listen. I will do whatever you say." And the dervish replied, "The situation is beyond hope. You will not do what I say, and so you cannot learn anything on this path." And the nobleman said, "I don't accept that. Give me your instruction." And the dervish said, "I want you to take off your fine clothes, put on some rags, wear a horse's feedbag full of oats in front of you and a sign saying 'Kick me' on the back." "I can't do that." "Exactly," said the dervish, "so you cannot learn."

We run into this all the time. And when you hear yourself say—and we have many ways of saying it: "Has to be this way." Some of the examples that were given in earlier conversations: "Have to be peaceful, can't have conflict." Reactive pattern. "It's against the rules." Other people, their conversations: "Can't be peaceful, have to be conflict." Same thing. It's just the reactive pattern running in a different direction. So anytime you run into that kind of inflexibility—black and white, this way or that—you're dealing with a reactive pattern.

Related posts:
Recognising Reactivity in Real Time – Part 2
Every Reactive Pattern Has Two Poles

Practice Intensely With Little Fanfare

This exchange between Ralph and Ken touches a dilemma I’ve navigated for nearly forty years—how spiritual practice affects a intimate relationship when only one partner is drawn to it. My first teacher advised me to practice seriously but keep silent about it. Here, Ken echoes her words with a line from the mind training teachings: practice intensely with little fanfare.

Although I rarely spoke about it, it was obvious I was spending time with spiritual teachers and practicing meditation, and that was enough to create unease at home. I sensed that my partner found this unsettling, perhaps even threatening. He struggled to understand how something he could not relate to could matter so deeply to me. While I never expected him to share this calling, my behaviour made it evident that his criticism and scepticism didn't affect my commitment.

Fortunately, over time, the tension dissolved. The pejorative remarks have faded, and although the incomprehension and a seeming lack of curiosity remain, my partner has come to accept that Buddhist practice is central to my life. Perhpas he noticed that his own deep interests absorb him in the same way that study and practice do for me. We’ve found a way to attend to what matters deeply to each of us, without expecting or needing the other to participate or even to understand.

From A Trackless Path II – 5

Ralph: I’ve always found it helpful to look at my practice using the three stands of willingness, knowledge, capacity, and the one that I’ve had the hardest time with by far has always been willingness.

Ken: Oh!

Ralph: Because I find the practice is isolating. I thought that Sophie’s question about how do you introduce the concepts to people who haven’t had our experience, is a very germane one for me because I went back into a household that had no direct experience and was very threatened by it. It caused a lot of fear to arise. And so to me, I think as we go down into this practice, there are a lot of personal sacrifices. It’s a very difficult practice for other people who are close to you to adopt. And so I wanted to ask the question about your experience with that and how somebody deals with people that get hurt by it.

Ken: Well, several things come to mind with that question, Ralph. In no particular order the first thing that came to mind was, a woman at a workshop that I did in the late 80s in Portland. And there were 20 people, a relatively small number, so I was able to ask everybody at the beginning why they were here. And everybody went around—this was second or third to the last person—to respond to this. And she said, “My husband has practiced Zen for the last 25 years. He’s never talked to me about his practice. He’s never suggested that I should do any kind of practice myself. He just gets up in the morning and meditates. But when I left to come here, there was a little smile on his face.” And I just found it so touching because there was such maturity in this relationship.

And so the second thing that came to mind was one of the mind training teachings: practice intensely with little fanfare. We do this practice, and as Kongtrul points out again and again in The Seven Points of Mind Training, The Great Path of Awakening, we’re doing it for ourselves. We make use of bodhicitta and compassion, but we’re the ones who benefit from it. And he goes on to say, “Don’t expect thanks for doing this.” Don’t expect a pat on the back. You’re the one who benefits from this. But I’ve always enjoyed, I really like that line, Practice intensely with little fanfare. In other words, don’t make your practice public. Don’t impose it on other people. There is no need to.

And yes, you’re quite right. One of the things I’ve worked with many people on is that in a couple relationship, any couple relationship, when one person gets involved in a practice and the other person doesn’t, for the person who doesn’t it feels like the other person is having an affair.

Ralph: Right.

Ken: And there’s therefore a responsibility on the part of the person who is practicing to honor the relationship and not be the source of anxiety and fear. Now I had a wonderful time with a person who’s now a very good friend, and he’s been extraordinarily helpful to me in my own life, but he started off as a student. And he was a Fox News Republican when he started with me. Very, very aggressive, hard driving business guy. But there was one great thing about him. If I said, “Do this,” he just did it. And the twelve, fourteen years I worked with him I don’t think he missed more than two days of meditation. “You said to do that, okay, I meditate a half hour every day. That’s it.” Travel, doesn’t make any difference, he just did it. So there are certain good qualities there. But when he got involved with me, his wife just went straight through the roof. And like many people, and this is what we tend to do. When we get involved in something such as practice, it’s tremendously important to us and we want to share that with people who are close to us. One word of advice, don’t. Because they don’t understand for the same reasons that they don’t have the experience, it’s not there. Anyway, he wanted to talk to his wife about it and from her point of view, he had just gotten involved in a cult and it was six of one whether their marriage was going to last or not. That was her experience.

Ralph: Sometimes early in your practice we’re not that wise.

Ken: I agree.

Ralph: My experience was it was taking my time away from the family to meditate at night, in particular when that would be a traditional time when we would be together.

Ken: Ato Rinpoche, who’s a wonderful teacher in England, he married in England and had a daughter, and he was very clear. Family always came first. If he was meditating and his daughter came up and needed attention, that was it [snaps fingers]. And this is what it means: practice intensely with little fanfare. You find a way of practicing so it isn’t an imposition on your family.

And in this case that I’m describing, about two years later, I received an invitation to this person’s 60th birthday party. And I was very surprised because the invitation came from his wife. So I went and hung around, chatted with people, and then as I was leaving I said goodbye to him and then went to say goodbye to her. And she just pulled me aside and said, “Ken, you know I’m never going to meditate, but I have benefited from it.” [Laughter] And this is the result of practicing intensely with little fanfare. There’s another—I remember it was in the Shambhala Sun years and years ago—that kids were interviewed about their parents practicing. And one young girl said it all, “My daddy is a better daddy when he practices.”

Ralph: I remember a story you told, I think, about a young lady who goes toward Buddhism from a Roman Catholic family, and her family is perplexed by this, and she just decides to give up the practice and go home. And she writes back to her instructor and says, “They sure hate me when I’m a Buddhist and they sure like me when I act like the Buddha.” [Ken laughs]

Ken: Yeah, that’s not my story, so thank you. I’ll add that. So yes, I was young and stupid. Most of us were young and stupid, and so, people do get hurt by it, you’re quite right. But my advice is, yes, take your practice seriously, but practice it in a way in which it is not an imposition on other people, and that will require some dedication and some effort.

Now the other side of your question is also very relevant. I think this is somewhat true of the nature of a pluralistic society as opposed to other societies where everybody is a Buddhist or everybody is this or everybody is that. As one develops a relationship with attention and awareness and compassion, or any of a number of themes in Buddhism, it’s human nature that you want to talk about it with somebody. That would be really nice. And it can be difficult to find people with whom to have those conversations. And so yes, there is a loneliness that can arise. That’s part of the practice. If you live in a place like the Bay area, there’s much less of that because there are Buddhists coming out of the woodwork, Buddhist teachers coming out of the woodwork. But when I first came to Los Angeles there was relatively little Buddhist activity. There’s far, far more now, and it’s been that way in town after town in America that people have found themselves the only practicing Buddhist within 500 miles or something. And that has changed very significantly. It is good to find people with whom you can have those kinds of conversations. The Internet makes it much easier than it used to be to do that. But it is an aspect of practice that most of us have to deal with.

Related posts:
Getting Black and Blue: Learning to Rest in Awareness
Letting Go of More and More