Ken McLeod Quotes

The importance of conventional life is greatly exaggerated and a good death can do wonders.

Appeals to justice or fairness are almost always stories that hide or protect unacknowledged hurts or pains.

It says in the sutras that buddha nature pervades all beings. But this does not mean that there is some thing which is buddha nature. Rather, when all the confusion of samsara is cleared away, what remains is buddha nature.

The fundamental effort in Buddhist practice is to develop a sufficient capacity in attention so that you can experience your own non-existence.

When people thank and tell you how much you've helped them, what they say has nothing to do with you. This is just their way of expressing joy in their own experience. Remember this, too, when people complain or criticize.

Buddha did not ignore suffering or try to explain it away as an unfortunate side effect of a divine plan or cosmic order. Suffering was, for him, the central issue.

We're going to have to retire the word mindfulness. It's been hopelessly corrupted in English.

Each time you sit down to practice, take a few minutes to feel in your heart why this is important to you.

If you don't clearly understand what you are looking for in a teacher or in internal work, you will inevitably accept someone else's agenda as your own. While you may start internal transformative work on the suggestion or advice of another person, at some point your practice has to become a response to your own questions about life and being.

The most reliable way to cut through the thinking process is to bring attention to what you are experiencing in the body.

As you become more awake you actually find yourself with less and less choice about what you do in any given situation. And you have less choice because you see more clearly. This is a very important point. Clarity doesn’t create more options. It eliminates options because you see that they aren’t appropriate or they don’t work.

Study void. Void is what makes everything possible. If there is no emptiness or open space in your life then very very few things are possible.

The vast array of methods and techniques which comprise Buddhism, particularly the Tibetan tradition, are all to help us come to know simply what we are, buddha, awake and aware. Time and time again, we are told that we are buddha, that the buddha qualities are present now, but that we just don’t know it. The problem, for many of us, is that this knowing is not a form of knowing that we are used to. We need tools and methods to dismantle the emotional blocks, the habitual patterns, the worries, concerns, expectations, and hopes that keep us from trusting and knowing what we are.

Attention, attention, the key to practice, so many teachers have said. It’s true. When we come to know, even a little, this truly miraculous and open nature of our being, we begin to appreciate the jewels and riches in these very simple instructions that come down to us through our teachers.

When you experience things completely, then you know what they are.