In this class, Ken McLeod invites students into a direct and sometimes disorienting encounter with the Diamond Sutra, using daily aloud recitation and in-person dialogue to shift attention from conceptual understanding to lived experience. Rather than explaining the sutra, Ken helps participants feel how its repetitive contradictions interrupt habitual mind and open a different kind of knowing. Over time, students discover the sutra isn’t something to figure out—it’s something that works on you. (July 2024)

In this retreat, Ken McLeod explores what it means to live with an unfettered mind—one that is open, responsive, and able to meet experience directly. Through clear, practical instruction and vivid examples, he shows how attention, understanding, and technique come together in everyday life. The teachings invite a deep kind of courage: to rest fully and to let no part of your life remain untouched by practice. (October 2006)

In this retreat Ken McLeod guides participants into a direct and often unsettling encounter with the reality of death. Drawing on stories, meditation practices, and subtle shifts in perception, he shows how opening to the inevitability and unpredictability of death becomes a path to clarity, compassion, and freedom. (May 2004)

In this retreat, Ken McLeod and Jeff Bickford offer a deep, embodied exploration of how power functions in our lives and practices, especially in relation to presence, intention, and internal conditioning. Through guided exercises, evocative storytelling, and group dialogue, participants learn to recognize power not as dominance, but as the ability to stay present and act clearly in the midst of complexity and challenge. (October 2008)

Ken McLeod presents a practical and experiential approach to the four immeasurables—equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion, and joy—drawing from multiple Buddhist traditions. Through guided meditations, deep inquiry, and lively exchanges with students, each session explores how these qualities emerge when we turn toward experience instead of away from it. These teachings invite a shift in how we meet ourselves and others, revealing the transformative power of an open and present heart.

This is an excerpted version of the series, Four Immeasurables.  It focuses on the core contemplative practices—equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion, and joy—offering a direct, practice-centred entry into the teachings. The opening class provides broader context about the role of the four immeasurables in Buddhist practice, while the concluding class offers a wide-ranging synthesis on emotional transformation and integration. (February 2007)

In this mahamudra retreat Ken weaves together traditional texts such as Aspirations for Mahamudra and Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom with practical guidance. He explores struggle as resistance to experience, encourages reflection on essential questions about life, and introduces deep listening as a way of engaging fully with experience. He demystifies Milarepa’s advice on practicing without limits, distortion, or hesitation, emphasizes the importance of openness, clarity, and stability in cultivating awareness, and explores ground, path, and result as a framework for the unfolding of mahamudra practice as it transforms how we experience life. (September 2007)

Ken McLeod presents a comprehensive and experiential journey into the heart of mahamudra, one of the most direct and profound approaches to meditation in the Tibetan tradition. Ken draws from texts such as Clarifying the Natural State and Lamp of Mahamudra,  reframing this classic material in plain, contemporary language, free of jargon and cultural overlay. Each session builds on the last, exploring themes such as the nature of mind, the dynamics of attention, the role of boredom and resistance, and the unfolding stages of practice—from stability and simplicity to one taste and non-meditation. With humor, clarity, and deep personal insight, Ken guides listeners toward an embodied, moment-to-moment experience of what we are and how life actually unfolds. (November 2006)

In this retreat, Ken McLeod guides participants through the full arc of Chenrezi practice, from foundational principles to the subtle refinements of visualization and mantra. Combining ritual, story, and direct instruction, he brings Vajrayana to life as a path for uncovering the lived experience of awakened compassion in every aspect of being. (October 2003)

Ken McLeod examines the subtle ways ideology creeps into spiritual practice and obscures direct experience. Through stories, meditations, and lively exchanges with students, he explores how wisdom arises—not from fixed views—but from resting in experience and responding with awareness and compassion. The result is a penetrating look at what it means to live and practice with integrity in a complex world. (May 2009)

In this retreat, Ken McLeod and Gail Gustafson guide participants through a series of direct, embodied inquiries into presence, perception, and personal truth. Rather than offering answers, each session invites you to explore the questions that animate your practice—and to discover the treasure of experience itself. With equal parts clarity, humor, and depth, Ken and Gail illuminate how real change begins in the space before action. (May 2006)

Ken McLeod offers a rare, in-depth exploration of chö, the Tibetan practice of “cutting through” fear, fixation, and identity. This retreat focuses on working directly with the emotional and energetic patterns that drive reactivity—what the tradition calls “demonic obsessions.” “Whatever you protect from the practice, you will become. It will take you over.” In chö, nothing is left out. (July 2004)

Ken McLeod explores how resting in awareness changes the way we experience life. “You awaken completely when you rest and do nothing at all,” he says, inviting participants to let go of effort and meet experience as it is. Topics covered include bringing daily life into practice, trusting natural awareness, and finding freedom by resting in experience. (August 2008)

In this dialogue, Ken McLeod and Bill Porter explore the Heart Sutra not as a text to be understood intellectually, but as a guide for engaging the immediacy of experience. Through spontaneous exchange and audience questions, they illuminate the radical insights of emptiness, perception, and personal responsibility that form the foundation of practice. What emerges is not a set of answers, but a lived way of inquiry—rooted in attention, compassion, and the mystery of being. (January 2009)