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by Ken McLeodUnfettered Mind is a network of teachers and students that provides training in direct awareness (e.g., mahamudra and dzogchen in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition) for those whose path lies outside established centers and institutions. The principal teacher is Ken McLeod, translator, author, and executive director of Unfettered Mind. Ken began his training in 1970 with the Tibetan master, the Ven. Kalu Rinpoche. Trained in the Kagyu, Shangpa, and Nyingma traditions of Buddhism in Tibet, he was authorized in 1985 by Kalu Rinpoche to teach and guide others. His book, Wake Up to Your Life (published in 2001), provides a comprehensive and accessible approach to practice, from the initial stages of meditation up to the full integration of open awareness into one’s life. The recordings here are a selection of his teaching and retreats over the last several years and cover a wide range of topics: meditation, compassion, emptiness, power, conflict, and presence. Ken’s approach, and the approach at Unfettered Mind, is to create environments of awareness, conditions in which people experience directly what it means to be awake and present in life. His teachings include pragmatic applications of Buddhist methods to the practicalities of life.
Recent podcasts
MMT01: Mahayana Mind Training (retreat)
21/05/2007
Overview of different meditation practices: presence, energy transformation, purification; mind-training as a way to clear away self-cherishing; meditation instruction for resting with the breath; feeling the breath with the heart; variations in translation of the mind training text (available at unfetteredmind.org)
MMT02: Mahayana Mind Training (retreat)
21/05/2007
Education, training, and learning in Tibetan and Western cultures; brief biographies of Atisha and Chekawa Yeshe Drorje; secret teachings and transmissions; mind-training as a way to refine experience; refining v. training; empty compassion (emotion-free); illusion of choice as an indication of the lack of freedom; meditation instruction on groundwork
MMT03: Mahayana Mind Training (retreat)
21/05/2007
Clarity in intention; the world of shared experience, the world of personal experience and the myth of integration; What am I? What is life?; subject and object; Where does experience reside?; the dream analogy; What is awareness?; thoughts as experience; meditation instruction on awakening to what is ultimately true
MMT04: Mahayana Mind Training (retreat)
21/05/2007
Knowing whatever arises for what it is; the natural response of compassion; the three poisons and dualistic thinking; why taking and sending works; taking and sending & the four immeasurables; the three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue; meditation instruction for awakening to what is apparently true, taking and sending; questions from participants
MMT05: Mahayana Mind Training (retreat)
21/05/2007
Questions from participants on taking and sending, including: Is it okay to focus just on the meditation’s imagery of smoke and light rather than specific emotions? How specific should one be with taking and sending? How much do you sent out? How do you deal with running out of energy? Is taking and sending to be taken literally or figuratively? A variation of the taking and sending meditation from the previous session; applications of mind training, including: making adversity the path; driving blame into one; being grateful to everyone; emptiness as the ultimate protection; the four practices; working with whatever one encounters
