Top 15 Ken McLeod Quotes

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

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

Some find they can practice effectively by bringing attention to the arising of like, dislike and indifference in their meditation practice and daily life. Others are able to use the power of loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, or devotion to change the way they experience things. And still others develop or naturally have enough capacity in awareness that they experience attraction as delight, aversion as clarity, and indifference as non-thought.

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

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

What's the dominant emotion associated with purity? Anger. The most aggressive people are the ones who insist on being utterly pure. It's responsible for countless wars at all levels of society. Far better to have no aspiration, no hope and relate to things just as they are.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

By just taking a breath you're moving into attention a little bit and so you get much less caught up in reactivity. A practical application of this in your life is, never say anything before you've taken one breath. It's a very simple practice--changes the dynamics of conversation with other people completely.

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