Ken McLeod Quotes

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

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.

As compassion deepens, we find ourselves developing a nobility of the heart. Increasingly, and often to our surprise, we respond to difficult situations with calmness, clarity and directness. A quiet fearlessness or confidence is present as we no longer fear that we will compromise our own integrity. We find, too, a joy, a joy which arises from the knowledge that our every act is meaningful and helpful to the world.

Greed for results, for something dramatic, undermines practice completely. The effects of meditation are subtle and take time to mature. When we are constantly looking for some kind of sign or attainment from our practice, we are essentially looking outside ourselves.

When you read sutras don't seek to understand them. Stay in touch with precisely what they are eliciting in terms of experience in you.

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.

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.

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.

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

Any form of idealism involves avoiding some specific pain or suffering.

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

At every stage of practice a price has to be paid for clarity. The price is the loss of an illusion.

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

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.

To see what you've done, look at what you are. To see what you'll be, look at your actions.