A Trackless Path I
Ken McLeod guides students into a profoundly personal approach to spiritual practice, emphasizing clarity, honesty, and direct experience over fixed methods or beliefs. Drawing from classical texts and contemporary insight, he presents tools and inquiries—like the Five Whys and “How can I experience this and be at peace at the same time?”—to help students stay present with whatever arisesA Trackless Path 16 – A…. “Don’t try to figure anything out. Don’t try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest,” Ken says, echoing Tilopa’s six words and the heart of this pathless way.
-
1. An Experimental Retreat: An Open Format
In this opening session, Ken outlines the experimental nature of the retreat, designed to support self-directed practice within a lightly structured container. “Go where there is no path and leave no trail” sets the tone for exploring practice on one’s own terms. Topics covered include the four instructions of Gampopa, live interaction as the heart of teaching, and the metaphor of refuge.
-
2. Opening to Experience: The Primary Practice
Ken introduces a structured approach to what he calls the "primary practice," emphasizing the cultivation of inclusive attention rather than focused effort. “You rest deeply in your experience and see what’s there,” he says, guiding students toward a more intimate and stable awareness. Topics covered include the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, calm abiding, the shift in awareness, and how attention frees us from emotional reaction and identity.
-
3. Coming to Terms with Shame
In this session, Ken delves into the emotional terrain of shame, discussing how spiritual practice can be used to process regret and restore inner alignment. “We’re seeking a way to come to terms with this experience we call life,” he says, as he guides participants through the four powers—regret, reliance, remedy, and resolve. Topics covered include emotional material in meditation, identity and consistency, obsessive patterns, and the spiritual principle behind merit and resolve.
-
4. Living with Balance and Intention
Ken deepens the discussion around spiritual practice and daily life, encouraging participants to drop the notion of working toward a goal and instead develop the capacity to live skillfully. “Open to everything,” he suggests, as a way to stay in touch with what matters most. Topics covered include the types of practice, integration with daily activity, the significance of vows, working with imbalance, and the transformative role of awareness in relational life.
-
5. Body Like a Mountain, Mind Like the Sky
Ken leads an in-depth exploration of pith instructions, including “Body like a mountain, breath like the wind, mind like the sky,” showing how these poetic pointers support the unfolding of presence and emotional openness. “You can’t make mind empty,” he says, “because it already is.” Topics covered include working with emotional resistance, the difference between method and result, the integration of heart and mind, and the distinction between primary practice and mahamudra.
-
6. Gaze, Presence, and the Nature of Relationship
Ken explores how gaze can be used as a doorway to presence, extending meditation into movement and daily life. In the second session, he introduces a dynamic model of relationship—power, ecstasy, insight, and compassion—showing how these forces play out across family, friendships, and practice. “Any time there is a coercive element in a relationship, that is a power relationship,” he says. Topics covered include the role of gaze in meditation, mixing awareness with activity, boundaries, the limitations of traditional Buddhist relationship models, and emotional balance in evolving relationships.
-
7. Being No One: The Courage to Live Without Identity
Ken opens this session with a provocative reflection: “We’re practicing being no one.” In letting go of fixed identity, one gains the freedom to meet life openly, without the constraints of self-image or reactive patterning. He unpacks the emotional challenges of taking and sending practice, explores betrayal and unresolved pain in relationships, and considers the cost and reward of living a spiritual life within the world. Topics covered include working with contraction and expansion, making offerings (real and imagined), the true function of rituals and lineage, and the internal solitude of forging one’s own way.
-
8. The Rhythm of Practice and the Cost of Awakening
Ken outlines the deepening rhythm of spiritual practice—how openness gives rise to clarity, which in turn unveils deeper layers of conditioning and pain. Through personal stories and teaching tales, he explores the cost of authentic awakening, especially for those whose path lies outside traditional structures. “If your path lies outside of institutions, you really do have to reinvent the wheel,” he says. Topics covered include the five-step cycle of emotional processing, the evolution metaphor, the commodification of mindfulness, spiritual talent, the dangers of spiritual elitism, and the unforeseen consequences of action.
-
9. Idealism, Leadership, and Mind-Killing
In this wide-ranging session, Ken challenges the roles of idealism and institutional thinking in spiritual life, cautioning against ideologies that prevent genuine insight. He unpacks the subtle psychological machinery that governs behavior—what he calls “mind-killing”—and lays out ten methods by which both individuals and systems suppress awareness. “We don’t get off the tracks by turning around,” he says, “but by stepping out of the pattern entirely.” Topics covered include frames and metaphors in practice, leadership without identity, body-based awareness, emotional processing, and the necessity of unlearning in personal transformation.
-
10. Motivation, Faith, and the Primary Practice
As the retreat nears its end, Ken speaks about the four reminders as tools not for indoctrination, but for clarifying one’s relationship to life and practice. “What we experience now is all we will ever know,” he says, urging participants to reflect on impermanence and the question of how to live a life of no regret. Topics covered include traditional and contemporary views on motivation, the progression from attention to awareness to presence, the power of rest, and the devotional energy behind practices such as guru yoga and recognizing mind as the guru.
-
11. Power, Presence, and the Path of Natural Being
As the retreat draws to a close, Ken introduces an exercise in power, inviting participants to speak from their own experience as a form of realization. “You speak, and now it’s real in the world,” he says. Topics covered include shamatha as an expression of power, the conditioning behind reaction, and the transformative role of natural awareness.
-
12. A Path of One’s Own: Devotion, Direction, and Doing
Ken encourages participants to move beyond fixed ideas of “The Path” by exploring the deeper motivations behind practice. “Understanding is cheap,” he says. “What changes things is doing.” Topics covered include the Five Whys, the three seals of practice, and the role of devotion and direct experience.
-
13. Sit in the Mess: Doing the Work of Transformation
Ken offers a candid look at the unpredictable terrain of spiritual life, urging students to “sit in the mess.” “You awaken completely when you rest and do nothing at all,” he says. Topics covered include the paradox of progress, spiritual individuality, and the difference between maps and lived experience.
-
14. Going Beyond: From Concept to Experience
Ken explores the metaphor of going beyond, suggesting that freedom arises by entering experience completely. “What changes is that the emotions cease to be a drive and become an experience,” he says. Topics covered include emotional processing, ritual pitfalls, and tantric dynamics.
-
15. Momentum, Burnout, and the Limits of Progress
Ken explores awakening mind through questions about life and action. He unpacks compassion and emptiness as lived responses to existence. “How can I help?” he asks. Topics include burnout, resistance, building momentum, and the problem of mixing spiritual and social ideals.
-
16. Tasting the Tea: Practice Beyond Extremes
Ken closes the retreat with Tilopa’s advice and the parable of tea. “Open the teahouse of experience,” he says. Topics include the Middle Way, dealing with resistance, practical integration, and making life the field of practice.