37 Practices in Four Parts
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.
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1. An Impure Motivation
Ken begins this retreat with a candid account of his evolving relationship with Tokmé Zongpo’s text. A turning point came when he realized that compassion—not emptiness—is the definitive spiritual quality. “The reason that we study or want to know emptiness is so that we can be compassionate.” Topics covered include Ken’s translation of the text, the life and ethics of Tokmé Zongpo, and the foundational role of motivation in spiritual practice.
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2. You Are the Silence
Ken introduces a new way of reading Tokmé Zongpo’s verses—one that engages not with concepts but with the emotional and experiential layers of language. “You are the silence, which means that anything can arise and you do not need to be disturbed.” Topics covered include the inner meaning of “leaving your homeland,” how we define ourselves by what we oppose, and meditation as the art of not doing.
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3. What Do You Do with This Life?
Ken leads a wide-ranging conversation on the discomfort of comfort, the impulse to practice in good times and bad, and the value of listening to our deepest inner questions. “We don’t actually get to choose what the experience is. But it is no more than an experience.” Topics covered include the illusion of control, karma as instruction, finding genuine teachers, and cultivating a non-antagonistic relationship with pain, self, and the full catastrophe of life.
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4. Compassion Without Control
Ken expands on Tokmé Zongpo’s eleventh verse with a profound exploration of compassion—not as an ideal, but as a practice rooted in presence and attention. “Until you can just be there, you cannot know what to do.” Through vivid metaphors and personal stories, he introduces the meditation of taking and sending, guiding participants to meet their own pain and others’ with equanimity and openness. Topics covered include the distinction between compassion and control, how attention transforms experience, and working gently with inner resistance.
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5. The Intelligence of Anger
Ken examines the cluster of verses that address injustice, betrayal, and abuse, offering grounded and sometimes surprising guidance for working with reactivity. “Whenever you feel angry, a line has been crossed. That’s something to take note of. It’s where your sense of self becomes active operationally.” Topics covered include the myth of closure, the function of resentment, the ethics of spiritual ideals, and the practice of taking and sending as a response to suffering—our own and others’.
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6. Staying Sane in a Crazy World
Ken addresses the raw realities of suffering, aspiration, and spiritual idealism with warmth and clarity. He challenges perfectionism and spiritual bypassing while encouraging students to meet life exactly as it is. “When you fight with the pain, you’re actually fighting with yourself. And I’ve always found that when you have a fight with yourself, one of you loses. Always.” Topics covered include buddha nature as experience not belief, American puritanism in spiritual practice, and meditation as a dynamic process of balance rather than escape.
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7. What You Practice Is What You Become
Ken helps participants distinguish between aspiration and actual practice, drawing on vivid metaphors—from elite athletes to sword masters—to show how deep change arises not from force, but from repetition, openness, and attention. “If you try to make it absolutely pure, it’s like trying to hold your bike absolutely rigidly steady… you’ll crash very quickly.” Topics covered include meditating in a noisy world, the difference between method and result, and how opening to the experience of desire leads to genuine freedom from attachment.
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8. My World, Not The World
Ken challenges our deeply held notions about perception, objectivity, and emotion by drawing a sharp distinction between “the world” and “my world.” Through exercises in attention and poignant examples of suffering, he guides participants into direct, embodied experience. “You see nothing whatsoever. And yet that is exactly the space in which all experience arises.” Topics covered include subject-object fixation, the mind as mirror, levels of ability in working with anger, and the interplay between compassion, responsibility, and trust in modern spiritual life.
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9. The Practice is the Perfection
Ken explores the six perfections as lived, embodied practices rather than abstract ideals. He strips away the language of striving and emphasizes attention as the gateway to transformation. “Real giving is, you give it, and that’s it.” Topics covered include anger as resistance to pain, the true meaning of generosity, how personal ethics evolve, the function of attention in transformation, and the mysterious power of stable awareness.
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10. Look in the Resting, Rest in the Looking
Ken concludes the retreat with a dynamic blend of teachings and Q&A, touching on prayer, practice, and personal confusion. He underscores how attention—not suppression—dissolves emotional reactivity and opens the door to presence. “Knowing arises out of being in the experience itself.” Topics covered include finding a teacher, personal gods and inner guidance, emotional honesty, the ethics of speech, and how to let go of spiritual striving without losing sincerity.