Then and Now: A Commentary on The Jewel Ornament of Liberation
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.
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1. Bridging Ancient Teachings to Modern Practice
Ken introduces the series by discussing how to translate Tibetan Buddhist teachings from a pre-modern society and make them relevant in the context of our multicultural and post-industrial world. "This is not about trying to go back to another age or create another situation, but how to bring these things forward into this set of circumstances," he says. Topics covered include study, reflection, and practice, and the process of making teachings accessible for today’s practitioners
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2. The Question Behind Buddha Nature
Ken discusses buddha nature, describing it as the potential to meet whatever arises in life. "One of the things buddha nature is saying is that we always have the potential to meet whatever arises in experience," he comments. Topics covered include overcoming confusion, exploring buddha nature, and how every situation can be seen as workable.
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3. Quieting the Mind and Knowing the Quiet
Ken examines what allows the mind to grow quiet, encouraging participants to explore their own direct experience. "One can say what makes it possible for the mind to grow quiet is that its nature is peace. That’s a very powerful statement," he says. Topics covered include resting in awareness, the relationship between heart and mind, and the experiential discovery of inner peace.
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4. The Precious Opportunity of Human Existence
How do we make use of the rare opportunity of human existence? Ken draws on the cosmological framework of the six realms to examine conditions that support or hinder spiritual practice. This talk highlights the role of curiosity and consistent effort in spiritual practice. Ken explains that when Gampopa talks about the precious human body, he means the unique opportunities that arise when the right conditions come together for spiritual practice.
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5. Faith, Confidence, and Urgency in Practice
What drives spiritual practice? Ken McLeod emphasizes the urgency of seizing opportunities for pratice, while exploring the role of faith as "the willingness to open to whatever arises in experience." He delves into the differences between faith and belief, outlines three types of faith, and discusses how faith fosters courage, and plays a central role in buidling trust and confidence on the path.
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6. The Role of the Teacher in Spiritual Practice
Ken explores the role of the teacher in spiritual practice, emphasizing that the teacher is not an authority but an experience—a guide who helps you meet your own experience and wake up. "What actually happens in the teacher-student interaction is that we’re shown how to find this [our capacity for awakening] in ourselves," he explains as he demystifies the teacher-student relationship and the different roles of the teacher.
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7. Questions and the Teacher-Student Relationship
How does learning happen? Ken explains the vital role of questions in spiritual practice, outlining different types of inquiries and their purposes. By framing the teacher-student relationship as a shared exploration, he highlights how mutual engagement can plant seeds of understanding. As Ken says, "When you and I interact, an experience arises, and it’s in that experience that learning or understanding takes place."
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8. Respect, Service, and Devotion in Practice
What does it mean to relate to a teacher? Ken redefines respect and devotion as ways to honor the role of waking up in our lives. With a modern perspective, he addresses cultural differences and the importance of creating the right conditions for learning and growth. As Ken says, "Respect for one’s teacher allows one to form a relationship with the aspect of experience that is showing you how to wake up.
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9. Foundations of Spiritual Growth
Ken delves into the medieval origins of The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, explaining how impermanence underpins spiritual practice. With thoughtful commentary, he connects ancient frameworks to modern contexts, showing how they guide us toward clarity and purpose. "Cultivating that quality of buddha nature in people is much more a growth process than a manufacturing process," Ken reflects, highlighting thegradual and organic nature of waking up.
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10. Facing Impermanence: A Path to Clarity
How does understanding impermanence shift our perspective? Ken outlines meditation frameworks to embrace life’s transitory nature. Drawing on personal stories and Buddhist cosmology, he reveals how facing impermanence opens a path to clarity and connection. "We know our life is going to end, so the appropriate thing is to live it fully. Savor every moment of it," Ken emphasizes, inviting us to reflect on how impermanence enriches our experience.
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11. Preparing for Life’s Final Reality
What would you do if you had one year—or one month—to live? Ken shares reflections on death and impermanence, offering practical and personal insights into living a life of no regrets. "Now, knowing that and taking that in with some degree of acceptance leads us to make the most of our lives, however we understand that phrase," Ken reminds us, emphasizing the importance of aligning our lives with what truly matters.
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12. Struggle and the Nature of Ordinary Life
Why do we struggle? Ken examines the nature of ordinary experience, introducing frameworks that reveal how patterns of attraction, aversion, and indifference shape our lives. "When you stop ignoring your experience, it strangely becomes much richer," Ken notes, encouraging us to meet our struggles with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to examine habitual patterns
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13. Mapping Emotions: The Six Realms
Ken introduces the six realms as a mythic framework to understand emotional reactions. "The map of the six realms is very useful to us, because it describes how we experience the world when we are in the grip of these reactive emotions," Ken explains. By mapping our experiences to the six realms, we learn how anger, desire, contentment, and others color our perception.
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14. Understanding Karma: Mystery, Agency, and Evolution
Ken examines karma, framing it not as cosmic justice but as a way to understand how actions evolve into experience. "Karma is a way of giving us agency in this world, which seems beyond explanation," he explains. Using the analogy of gravity, Ken demonstrates karma’s inevitability and impartiality, while the analogy of evolution paints it as an adaptive, unfolding process. He emphasizes how cultivating attention allows us to interrupt cycles of conditioning, creating opportunities for greater openness and freedom.
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15. Intention, Action, and a Path Forward
Ken delves into the dynamics of karma, focusing on the interplay between free will and conditioning. "Choice is only meaningful when there is the possibility of perceiving an alternative," Ken explains. By exploring the factors that shape our actions and experiences, he reveals how attention broadens our awareness, enabling more skillful engagement with life.
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16. Patterns, Karma, and Responsibility
Ken explores how habitual patterns create imbalances that ripple through our lives. "Whenever we move away from what is arising in experience, we introduce imbalance," he explains. Ken shows how attention allows us to meet experience directly, reducing the imbalances that perpetuate struggle and opening the way to live with greater presence.
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17. The Power of Kindness
What makes kindness so transformative? "When we let the experience of receiving kindness in, it cuts through all of our conditioning and gives rise to the natural expression of love," he explains. Noting that many feel discomfort when receiving kindness, Ken reflects that opening to that discomfort and to the full experience of kindness deepens connection and dissolves separation.
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18. In What Do You Trust?
What does it mean to trust? Ken explores the nuances of trust and its relationship to refuge in Buddhist practice. "At the moment of trust, you are just opening to whatever is there," Ken explains, "letting go and experiencing no separation, however brief." By examining what we rely on and how we open to experience, Ken guides us into a deeper understanding of refuge as trusting the natural openness and clarity in our own experience.
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19. Refuge: Embracing the Three Jewels
How do the three jewels—buddha, dharma, and sangha—guide our practice? Ken delves into the outer, inner, and secret dimensions of these core elements of refuge. "The outer has to do with what we experience through the senses," he explains, "the inner refers to principles or ideals, and the secret points to what we experience but cannot put into words." Ken invites us to consider how refuge shapes our orientation to life and supports our journey toward awakening.
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20. Exploring Wholesome and Unwholesome Actions
What does it feel like to act out of alignment with your values—or to act with integrity? Ken invites us to explore the physical, emotional, and cognitive effects of wholesome and unwholesome actions. "When we do something unwholesome, something in us is just saying, ‘I don’t care about the consequences, I am just gonna do it,’" Ken explains. This reflection sets the stage for understanding bodhicitta, highlighting the importance of aligning our actions with our deeper intentions
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21. Awakening Mind: Insights from Mythic Language and Metaphor
How do we engage with awakening mind through mythic language and metaphor? Ken explores twenty-two poetic descriptions, revealing their layered meanings and relevance to practice. "These descriptions are not prescriptive but descriptive," Ken explains, "inviting us to see where these qualities already manifest in our experience." By reflecting on metaphors such as earth, gold, and the ocean, Ken highlights how mythic language opens pathways to deeper understanding and inspiration
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22. Directing Attention: Awakening Intentionality
How do we clarify what we truly want? Ken explores the interplay of attention, intention, and will, emphasizing the importance of aligning our actions with our values and aspirations. "Living in attention, intention, and will requires increasingly higher levels of internal clarity," Ken notes. He encourages us to engage deeply with what matters most to us and reveals how living in alignment with our values reduces suffering and fosters a deeper sense of purpose and coherence in life.
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23. Laying Disturbances to Rest: The Four Rs
What does it take to make peace with past wrongs? Ken guides a reflection on the Four Rs—remorse, remedy, resolve, and reliance—as a practical approach to addressing the imbalances created by harmful actions. Topics covered include the role of compassion, the connection between insight and behavior, releasing personal stories and cultural narratives, and using ritual as a structure for practice.
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24. Taking Joy in Goodness
What happens when we reflect on the good in ourselves and others? Ken explores how rejoicing in virtue helps us recognize and let go of learned perceptions that limit us, building a foundation for confidence and clarity. He examines how our bodies respond to goodness, the importance of expansive aspirations, and how taking joy in others’ good works inspires a deeper connection with practice.
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25. Working With Despair and Rejection: Reflections on the Bodhisattva Vow
What happens when we feel despair or reject others? Ken examines these emotions in the context of the bodhisattva vow, exploring their impact on our ability to engage with life and practice. Topics covered include the significance of connection, how habitual patterns shape despair, and the deep intention to embrace all aspects of experience without turning away.
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26. Training in Awakening Mind
How does daily practice shape our understanding of the bodhisattva vow? Ken reflects on the experience of reciting the vow, offering insights into how ritual and repetition help cultivate awakening mind. Topics covered include the power of intention, the importance of training, and how practice brings clarity and focus to daily life.
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27. Introduction to the Six Perfections
Ken introduces the six perfections: generosity, morality, patience, effort, meditative stability, and wisdom, describing them as essential practices that naturally support and reinforce one another. Reflecting on the "four black dharmas," he explores actions that undermine one's intention to wake up, such as lying to a teacher and causing others to regret virtuous actions. He emphasizes that "these lists are distilled experience" and highlights how engaging deeply with the six perfections enables actions to arise as "non-conceptual, immediate responses," grounded in the union of emptiness and compassion.
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28. Generosity: The First Perfection
Ken explores the perfection of generosity, asking, “When do the six perfections become perfections?” emphasizing that, "In the act of generosity, you cannot give anything without letting it go." This practice deepens over time, dissolving the patterns that reinforce a sense of self. Through interactions with students, Ken highlights how generosity transforms when it arises naturally and without attachment, becoming a direct, immediate response to what arises.
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29. The Ethics of Moral Discipline
Ken examines morality, ethics, and discipline, highlighting their roles in Buddhist practice and daily life. Drawing on The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, he reframes morality as discipline, explaining that it forms “the basis of all excellent qualities.” Rather than adhering to fixed rules, Ken emphasizes that morality arises as a dynamic and immediate response when one brings attention to each moment. “Each moment tells me what the right thing to do is,” he explains, linking discipline to thoughtful, skillful action and freedom from conditioned behaviors
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30. Patience: Meeting Life’s Challenges
Ken explores the perfection of patience, focusing on how impatience arises from an unwillingness to experience discomfort or a lack of control. He emphasizes that patience involves meeting such experiences with attention rather than resistance. “The essence of patience is not reacting,” Ken explains, linking it to deep inner stability. Through conversations with students, he examines how practicing patience brings greater awareness to habitual patterns and allows one to rest in challenging feelings
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31. Effort and Engagement in Practice
Ken explores the perfection of effort, also referred to as perseverance, drawing from the Tibetan term brtsön grus (pronounced tsöndru). He highlights how this term emphasizes enthusiasm and the natural pouring of energy into tasks, rather than mere hard work or grinding determination. Ken identifies three obstacles to perseverance—mental inertia, discouragement, and distracted effort—and discusses remedies like cultivating confidence and consistent practice. Through interactions with students, he illustrates how perseverance fosters resilience, determination, and a joyful, engaged approach to practice.
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32. Meditative Stability: Resting in Attention
Ken explores the perfection of meditative stability, emphasizing its foundation in relaxation and rest rather than force or concentration. Drawing from the Tibetan term bsam gtan (pronounced samten), he reframes the practice as cultivating “stable mind” or “meditative stability.” Ken highlights how a quiet mind fosters clarity and deepens perceptiveness, enabling individuals to act skillfully and help others more effectively.
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33. The Power of Intention and Clarity
Ken continues the exploration of meditative stability, focusing on how setting a clear intention transforms both experience and outcomes. He describes intention as “a path into non-self,” where the sense of a separate self diminishes through a joining with the world and the activity at hand. Through discussions with students, Ken examines how fear, arising from this openness, functions to maintain the sense of self, and suggests that meeting such experiences with curiosity leads to greater clarity and ease.
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34. A Path Into Non-Self
Ken explores the perfection of wisdom, emphasizing the natural clarity that arises when one rests in the experience of any activity. He describes intention as “a path into non-self,” where the sense of a separate self diminishes through a joining with the world and the activity at hand. This clarity transforms actions, such as walking or washing dishes, into moments of presence and ease. Ken highlights how wisdom and skillful means work together to foster freedom and connection.
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35. Navigating the Five Paths of Practice
Ken examines the five paths of practice, commenting: “No individual follows the map, or progresses in a nice methodical way through them, because growth cannot really be systematized." Ken encourages viewing the five paths as “a way of organizing a lot of accumulated experience and wisdom” rather than a strict linear process. He reflects on how these stages offer guidance while honoring the individuality of each person’s journey.
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36. The Ten Stages of Bodhisattvas
Ken explores the ten stages of the bodhisattva path, presenting them as a gradual growth of ability rather than a rigid sequence of steps. “The ten stages of a bodhisattva describe the extent to which you’re able to be active and doing things, and still have that quality of completely present, awake attention,” he explains. Topics covered include the refinement of ethical conduct, the cessation of emotional reactivity, and the progression toward “one taste,” where all experience is met with open awareness, free from preference or bias.
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37. Expressions of Awakening: The Three Kayas
Ken concludes the Then and Now series by exploring the three kayas of buddhahood—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya—and their relevance to practice today. He describes awakening as a shift in how we experience life, emphasizing that “when we become fully awake, we actually have very little choice,” as clarity reveals the appropriate response in each situation. Topics covered include the natural expression of compassion, the mythological dimensions of the kayas, and how awakened activity inspires and nurtures others.