Chapter 1 of “Meditating on the Four Immeasurables”
Introduction to the meditation practice Ken: … is going to hand out the meditation practices, which she very kindly put together at my request, which I only passed on to her today. My plan for this class—we have six sessions, this is the first one—over the next two weeks we’re going to work through equanimity […]
Chapter 1 of “Learning from the Lives of Lineage Holders”
The story of Sukhasiddhi Ken: Okay, the subject matter or the topic this evening is the life story of a woman who came to be known as Sukhasiddhi. She’s one of the lineage figures in the Shangpa Kagyu. Khyungpo Naljor was a Tibetan master who lived in about the twelfth century and he started off […]
Chapter 2 of “Chö: Cutting Through the Thickets of Thinking”
How to approach chö Ken: Okay. Before we begin, remember, yesterday I read something that Kongtrul had written about how to approach chö. Here’s something that the tenth Trungpa Rinpoche wrote. That was the one preceding the one who came to North America. This commentary is by the tenth Trungpa Rinpoche. [Pause] He says: Practice […]
Chapter 1 of “Monsters under the Bed”
Moving into the experience of breathing Claudia: Good morning. How’s everybody? We’re going to begin this morning covering some kind of basic ground on meditation. I say basic because it’s a foundation—not because it isn’t rich, and because it is ground that we all return to on a regular basis, every time we sit. I’m […]
Chapter 1 of “Eightfold Path”
The eightfold path describes results of practice Ken: … and one of the other characteristics of this period is that there’s a love of reason, because reason seemed to offer a way of transcending the messy world of emotions. And we find that same idea that was present in the early Greeks is also present […]
Chapter 1 of “There Is No Enemy”
The starting point Ken: So welcome to the fall retreat here at Mt. Baldy Zen Center. As you all know, the topic for the retreat is, There is No Enemy. Now, I’ll be quite up front with you about exactly what we’ll be doing. I have some ideas, but we will see as it unfolds, […]
Chapter 1 of “Living Awake: Who Am I?”
Introductions Ken: Welcome to, I think this is our third or fourth in the Living Awake series, though many of you are new. This one is “Who am I?” I find this very interesting, because each one of the Living Awake series has attracted a very different audience. And there are many different people here […]
Chapter 1 of “Releasing Emotional Reactions”
A Nasrudin story Ken: The subject matter of the retreat is releasing emotional reactions. Nasrudin wanted to steal some fruit from a stall. Everybody here knows that Nasrudin is my favorite Buddhist teacher, I take it. Nasrudin wanted to steal some fruit from a stall, but the stall holder had a fox which kept watch. […]
Chapter 1 of “Practicing the Diamond Sutra”
Introduction The Alembic, Berkeley, California. 4 Jul, 2024. Why are you here? Ken: I’d like to begin a little informally. Most of you probably don’t know me very well. I certainly don’t know most of you. So the first thing I would like to do is to hear from a few of you why you […]
Chapter 1 of “A Trackless Path II”
Introduction Ken: Okay. Now we can officially start. It’s almost 9:00, I’m not going to keep you up much longer. You all set there, Jeff? Jeff: Yeah. Ken: Great. Okay. Thanks. So, welcome to the second year of A Trackless Path. As I said in an email, that quotation comes from altering a Ralph Waldo […]
Chapter 1 of “Being Mahamudra”
Experiencing whatever arises Ken: The subject matter for our time together here is mahamudra. That of course is the Sanskrit term. A translation of the word maha is very simple, it means great. Mudra is a little more difficult to translate because it has a wide range of meanings. It can mean a ‘gesture’ such […]
Chapter 1 of “Karma: Awakening From Belief”
Everything is interdependent Ken: A pleasure to be here finally. The misadventures in Chicago were a wonderful example of the cost of efficiency. Everybody was on the plane, we were taxiing towards the runway. They put us into a holding zone, did a quick calculation and found out there wasn’t enough gas in the plane. […]
Chapter 1 of “Stalking Death”
A sufi story Ken: A stream from its source in far off-mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, […]
Chapter 1 of “Power and Presence”
Power is rarely discussed Ken: We’ll keep this fairly short because we’re late already. There are a few things that we wanted to cover this evening. This is the introduction to the Power and Presence retreat here at Mount Baldy, October 8th, 2008. Several of you—in discussion we had in the introductions and so forth—mentioned […]
Chapter 1 of “Finding the Way”
Why are you here? Ken: Now to the retreat. We called this retreat Finding The Way. One of my business clients said, “What are you going to teach?” And I emailed her back, “My objective is to teach this retreat without teaching anything.” She emailed back, “That sounds very Zen.” Our intention in this retreat […]
