Ken McLeod unpacks the teachings of the Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa, bringing the wisdom of this classical text into a form that speaks directly to modern practitioners. While drawing primarily from Gampopa’s text, Ken also integrates insights from other great Tibetan masters as well as modern perspectives and his own experience, offering a well-rounded approach to the path of awakening. He explores key teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, including refuge, the six perfections, the bodhisattva vow,  and buddha nature,  showing how these teachings can transform daily experience and deepen spiritual practice. As Jamgön Kongtrül said, “Buddha nature is what is left when all the confusion of ordinary experience is cleared away,” pointing to the clarity and openness that emerge when we free ourselves from reactive patterns.

In this retreat, Ken McLeod invites participants to explore the deep insights that arise when we shift our perspective on conflict and opposition. Drawing from personal experience, teaching stories, and practical frameworks, Ken guides participants in redefining what it means to engage with resistance and challenges in life. Through these talks, he offers tools and perspectives to navigate relationships, dissolve opposition, and cultivate compassionate action.

In The Warrior’s Solution, Ken McLeod offers a powerful map for transforming reactive patterns into presence, drawing on meditative ritual, internal inquiry, and direct experience. Each session explores a crucial step—intention, sacrifice, death, and rest—guiding practitioners to face the inner opponent, dissolve conditioned identity, and meet life with unshakeable clarity. These talks form a cohesive and practical path for living with integrity, awareness, and authentic freedom.

In “Who Am I?” Ken guides participants through a deep exploration of identity, challenging the assumptions that shape how we see ourselves. Through reflection, meditation, and practical tools, these sessions uncover the layers of self—conventional, functional, and ultimate. With humor and clarity, Ken helps participants navigate the question “Who am I?” to discover a more fluid and liberating way of being.

This retreat offers a sustained, in-depth exploration of Tokmé Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, drawing on Ken McLeod’s distinct blend of experiential insight, directness, and responsiveness to real-time student questions. The teachings weave traditional verse commentary with personal anecdotes, poetic language, and dynamic dialogue with participants. Ken repeatedly emphasizes the importance of grounding spiritual practice  in direct experience, not conceptual understanding—a point he reinforces through spontaneous interactions, challenges to the habitual tendency to analyze and try to figure things out, and illustrations drawn from everyday life.

In this retreat, Ken McLeod guides participants through Tokmé Zongpo’s Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva. This retreat is structured in four parts—foundations of practice, adversity and reactivity, the six perfections, and integration into daily life—each building on the last. Through personal stories, poetic language, and direct experiential instruction, he invites us to dismantle conventional thinking and meet life as it is. The result is a practical, profound exploration of compassion, attention, and the inner freedom that arises when we stop resisting experience.

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.

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.