On Samadhi

Ken’s description of samadhi cuts through a lot of idealized notions about meditative absorption. Instead of treating it as a rarefied trance or exalted state, he frames it as active attention—the union of stability and clarity working together. This view shifts practice from trying to “get somewhere” to cultivating a dynamic balance between resting and looking. 

What I find most helpful is the way he explains balance. Ken doesn’t say to maintain balance but to be sensitive to imbalance—to learn from the subtle ways our attention tips toward dullness or agitation. It’s such an incisive reframing: practice becomes a continuous dance, grounded in awareness rather than control. 

From Eightfold Path 2

The Sanskrit word, samadhi, is a very difficult word to translate. And it has actually a wide range of meanings, but in this context the meaning is actually fairly precise. With some reservations I use the word absorption. I haven’t found anything better yet. There are lots of problems with that word but samadhi is active attention and it is composed or comprised of the union of stability and clarity. In just the resting mind there are those two aspects of the mindfulness and awareness and they come together to form active attention. But then that evolves into the stability or the resting quality and then the insight quality which is basic clarity quality. So when those two come together then you’re experiencing absorption or samadhi.

And the way that I’ve found very helpful in regarding this from the mahamudra perspective, it’s from a book called "Clarifying the Natural State." As you develop the ability to rest you naturally find that you begin to look at experience. So the way that you deepen the resting is to start looking in the resting. Now as soon as you start looking it brings an active quality into the attention which tends to destabilize the resting.

So by working at this and being sensitive to the balance, you’re not only able to look in the resting but rest in the looking. And that’s the two-liner that I find very helpful. Rest in the looking and look in the resting. Those two lines will take you a very, very long way in your meditation practice. The key thing here is to be sensitive to imbalance. When you are just resting the mind tends to grow a bit dull. When there is too much emphasis on the looking, the resting quality destabilizes.

People talk about balance. I find it’s much more useful to talk about imbalance. Because when things are in balance, we don’t experience anything, we are just there. Chuang-Tzu says, "When the shoe fits you forget the feet. When the belt fits you forget the waist."

In terms of developing our skill and abilities in meditation practice, rather than trying to maintain balance become adept at detecting imbalance. And so this involves being in touch with your body, in touch with emotions, in touch with quality of attention, and as imbalances arise you can quietly correct them. And there’s constant period of adjustment but the net result is that the quality of attention becomes progressively deeper and more stable. That’s the way I found most useful and most effective for working with this last one. So you are bringing attention to the quality of your attention, if you wish.

Related posts:
Profound Radiance: A Guided Meditation
Three Doors in Practice

Three Doors in Practice

I recently listened again to the retreat Death: Friend or Foe. In the first session, Ken speaks of three doors in practice: impermanence, compassion, and devotion. For me, they trace a journey that unfolded almost by accident. 

The truth of impermanence began to sink in after my first encounters with Buddhist teachings and reflections like the four thoughts that turn the mind. The early death of a close friend gave that recognition a more visceral meaning.

Years later, while volunteering as a life story writer for hospice patients, I discovered—unexpectedly—that I could simply be present. Compassion, as Ken describes it, is not sentiment but a clear seeing that connects us directly to the human condition. That capacity to stay open in the face of another’s suffering began to take root.

Devotion, though, remained a mystery. I found the Tibetan emphasis on devotion hard to relate to, as if it were a foreign language I could never learn. Yet over time, without effort or intention, something has shifted. What once felt inaccessible has emerged as a quiet, unbidden longing—a deep opening of the heart. Now I see how these three doors—impermanence, compassion, and devotion—are not separate entrances but connected rooms in the same house. Each opens into the next, revealing the same space of knowing.

From Death: Friend or Foe 1

When I was in the three-year retreat, we learned probably 150 different meditation practices. I’ve never gone through and actually counted them. But I remember very distinctly reading a small section at the end of one book that was full of quite advanced practices. And there’s a series of quotations from different teachers in this particular tradition—the Shangpa tradition—and one of them has just stayed with me, really made an impression. It’s by a person called Kyergongpa Chökyi Senge, who lived in the 12th century in Tibet. And this is not an exact quote, but it's to the effect that there are three doors in practice. One is death and impermanence, the second door is compassion, and the third door is devotion/insight. They end up being the same door. And then he said a little bit about each one of those. And I found that, over the years, to be very true. If you look in the Theravadan texts, they explain that death and impermanence is the door for certain kinds of people and compassion is the door for other kinds of people, and devotion is the door for other kinds of people.

Related posts:
On Samadhi
Profound Radiance: A Guided Meditation

The Violin Case

Awakening from Belief was the first retreat recording I listened to after discovering the Unfettered Mind website more than 20 years ago. Hearing Ken say that karma isn’t about justice but about how patterns unfold was oddly freeing.The violin-in-the-case image hit me hard. Karma shapes the space I move in, yet knowing that it’s enough allowed something in me to relax.

From Awakening From Belief 2

For instance, a lot of people think of karma as a balancing mechanism in the universe. It's what makes the universe just. Well, that's just a projection of the human value of justice on the world. It's nonsense. It's totally unjust. When you really appreciate how karma operates, how this process operates, you realize you have about as much room to move as a violin in a violin case. Fortunately, it's enough. So the choice points, to go to the point that you're raising, are few and fleeting. That’s why mindfulness is so very very important. Because through the practice of attention, through the cultivation of attention in the practice of mindfulness, you actually create more and more choice points.

Related posts:
Bird Teacher
Three Doors in Practice