In this class on mahamudra Ken speaks plainly about limitation. He describes his experience on the three-year retreat of wanting to go straight to the heart of practice but not being able to. Instead of labelling that as a failure, he names it for what it was: a lack of capacity at the time. That acknowledgement sheds light on an important aspect of practice: it isn’t about doing what’s most advanced or most elegant, it’s about doing what is actually possible, even if that comes with a sense of guilt, awkwardness, or falling short.
He then jokes about people “practising the meditation of a groundhog.” It’s a joke about hibernation, trading on an image of withdrawn stillness—unresponsive, unaware. Ken is poking fun at a common pattern: people sit, grow quiet, drift into a blank or foggy state, and take that to be deep practice. Resting without awareness easily settles into dullness, and that quality doesn’t stay on the cushion. Over time it shapes how a person meets the world. His humour softens the warning.
Seen in that light, the practical instructions that follow—posture, hands, eyes—take on a different significance. They aren’t techniques for producing an experience, but ways of supporting clarity. Nothing is forced. The body finds its own straightness. The eyes are left alone. Attention rests rather than strains. This is an invitation to rest while staying present. The refrain at the end is an invitation to drop chasing and rehearsing. Don’t pursue the past. Don’t entertain the future. Don’t dwell on the present. Just rest.
From Learning Mahamudra 1
Ken: On a personal note, I’ve always found meditation practice extremely difficult. And Kalu Rinpoche, my teacher, always encouraged us to go right to the heart of the matter. He was not interested in getting lost in some of the complexities of meditation practice, or different kinds of meditation practice. He always just went straight for the heart, straight for the essence.
But I wasn’t able to do that. And part of me really wanted to meditate resting on the breath. Whenever I asked Rinpoche if I could just meditate resting on the breath, he would always say to me, “There’s no breath in the bardo. There’s no breath after you die, so why are you wasting your time?” [Laughter] And he was quite right.
But in all honesty, it wasn’t the most helpful thing to me, because I did not have the capacity. So, I meditated on the breath anyway. I felt terribly guilty doing so—because it was all I could do. I had my own difficulties. That was all I could do. So, do what you actually can do.
There are an awful lot of people who think they’re practicing mahamudra and dzogchen but—as more than one teacher said, actually they're practicing the meditation of a groundhog. And that’s what they end up becoming.
So, I’m going to start with the subtler form and work down. But I really want you to take this to heart.
When you practice meditation, posture is quite important. I said earlier—when we were beginning meditation period, before we had our class—you sit in attention. What that’s going to mean, if you’re sitting in a chair, like I am, you’re just going to sit straight.
Now, I suggest you don’t try to hold yourself straight like this, because you just get tired. Just let your body be, find its own straightness. Straight back is actually quite important because the straight back allows the energies of the body to move and circulate, and come into balance, which creates the conditions for awareness, and presence, and balance in the body. And that’s very helpful.
If you’re sitting on the floor—sitting on a cushion—which is the traditional meditation posture, then let your legs rest flat on the floor, making kind of a triangle. You want to use a cushion, which raises your butt off the floor, so that you can actually sit with a straight back without straining.
I find it’s best to position the hands in one of two ways. One is to position the hands on your thighs, so that your elbows are directly below your shoulders, so there’s no strain in the back. The other is the traditional meditation posture of placing one hand on top of the other.
And there are some people who say it should be the right on top of the left, and there are those who say it should be the left on top of the right. It’s obviously very important. [Laughter] You hold your hands like that.
And this is what Nyishul Khenpo, another one of my teachers, would say: “And there are those who say your thumbs should rest just touching. And there are others who say your thumbs should be spaced just far apart enough that you could slide a piece of paper through.” That’s obviously another extremely important distinction.
He said that when he heard that, he realized that people will argue about anything. But what is important, if you’re sitting in this posture, is that you hold your elbows out a little bit. Not like this—this closes in the chest so it constricts the breath. You hold your elbows out a little bit.
You’ll find when you sit like this that, in the beginning you may have a tendency to put your chin out or up, or something like that. What I find very helpful is to imagine that you’re hanging from the top of your head. Like there’s a hook right there.
When that happens, your chin will come in slightly and your head will move back on your spine. Your head and spine are lined up. That’s the whole point of the posture: your spine is supporting you. You’ve got your shoulder yoke here that’s being supported.
You’re actually sitting the way you’re meant to. You’re being supported by your spine, and everything’s hanging from your shoulders. Instead of what a lot of us do—and which I did for many years—is this. You see how that is? I’m holding myself up.
How am I holding myself up? With my shoulders. Do you know how tiring that is? And I bet at least half of you walk around your lives doing that all the time.
So, you get the feeling for this. There is a natural straightness, and there’s a firmness in the posture, but there’s also a relaxation in the posture. And that’s very important.
There are a couple of other little things to take note of. One is to curl the tongue slightly so that the underside of the tongue rests about half an inch back from the upper teeth. A couple of reasons for that: it reduces the formation of saliva, but it also completes a circuit of circulation of energy in the body, so that mind and body come into balance.
It may feel a little odd, but you get quite used to that quite quickly.
Last point is eyes. There are all kinds of things about certain gazes when you’re meditating, but what I’d like you to do with the eyes when you meditate is exactly what you do with your ears.
Everybody’s going, what does he mean? What do you do with your ears when you meditate? Anybody?
So, try doing the same thing with your eyes. Just do nothing with your eyes. You’ll find that they come to rest in a certain way on their own.
It’s a lot harder to do nothing with your eyes, because we’re so used to paying attention to things and looking at things—computer screens, traffic, reading, and so on.
So, you just rest. And what’s very important in the physical posture is that it has that quality of resting. [Pause]
And then …
Don’t pursue the past.
Don’t entertain the future.
Don’t think about the present.
Just rest.[Pause]
Again. Set your posture so you’re sitting straight, yet relaxed. Let the breath settle so it’s also natural. And …
Don’t pursue the past.
Don’t entertain the future.
Don’t dwell on the present.
Just rest.