Table Of ContentDISCOVERING THE BUDDHIST
PATH OF ATTENTION
K E N M c L E O D
W U
a k e p t o
Y L
o u r ife
Discovering the Buddhist
Path of Attention
K M L
en c eod
HarperSanFrancisco
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
WAKE UP TO YOUR LIFE: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention. Copyright © 2001
by Ken McLeod. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of
this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written per
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first Harper Collins paperback edition published in 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McLeod, Ken.
Wake up to your life : discovering the Buddhist path of attention / Ken McLeod
isbn 0-06-251680-9 (cloth)
ISBN 0-06-251681-7 (paperback)
1. Spiritual life—Buddhism. 2. Buddhism—Doctrines. I. Title.
BQ4302.M44 2001
294.3'444—dc21 00-046133
06 ❖/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Chapter 1: The Mystery of Being 1
Chapter 2: Buddhism in a Nutshell 19
Chapter 3: Cultivating Attention 49
Chapter 4: Dismantling Attachment to Conventional Success
Chapter 5: Karma and Dismantling Belief 127
Chapter 6: Dismantling Reactive Emotions 207
Chapter 7: The Four Immeasurables 243
Chapter 8: Mind Training 313
Chapter 9: Insight and Dismantling Illusion 353
Chapter 10: No Separation 411
Sources 449
Permissions 453
Guide to Meditations and Commentaries 455
Index 459
Acknowledgments
I thank all my teachers. Without them, this book would never have
come into being. I am grateful to Jon Parmenter, Yvonne Rand, and
Ruth Gilbert for their substantial contributions. My thanks also to
Michelle Bekey, who started the ball rolling; to Tom Lane, Janaki
Symon, George Draffan, and Shawn Woodyard for their help in editing
and revision; and to Bill Block and Lynn Chu for their assistance and
support.
To my teachers, especially Kalu Rinpoche,
who poured their teachings into me
And to my students, whose passion for insight inspired me
to distill and return what was given so freely
Introduction
I first met my principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, at his monastery near
Darjeeling, India, in 1970. I had heard that he held a class for
Westerners most afternoons. I had also read how teachers tested the
motivation of students by putting them through ordeals, so I came to
the class with a bit of trepidation. After the translator introduced me,
Kalu Rinpoche asked if I had come to Darjeeling as a tourist or
because I wanted to study Buddhism.
“To study,” I answered.
“Good,” he said. “This is no place for tourists.”
Abrupt and anticlimactic, his reply left me both relieved and let
down—-relieved that I wouldn’t have to endure an ordeal such as sit
ting outside the monastery gates for a week, and let down because
being accepted seemed too easy. Later I came to appreciate that the
path presents its own challenges and a teacher rarely has to add much
to the mix.
My own path has been and is a long struggle with very few shafts
of light on the way. I’m not even sure that the path has an end. Yet I
have had the good fortune to meet and study with a few people who
have taken significant steps down that path. Because of their kindness,
I’ve learned something about how to dismantle the wall that separates
us from knowing what we are. Even though I teach others, I am still
very much a student of the way.
In these pages, you will find no descriptions of alternative states of
mind, different realities, or marvelous mystical states. I will not recom
mend that you retire to a monastery, give up your job, or make other
radical changes in the form of your life. Instead, you will find practical
tools with which to change the way you experience life.
The methods and perspectives presented here originated more than
2,500 years ago in India with Buddha Shakyamuni. They were preserved
x Wake U p to Your Life
and developed in many Asian countries, including the remote moun
tains of Tibet. They have been transmitted faithfully from generation
to generation by individuals who have dismantled the wall that sepa
rates us from what we experience and have entered into the mystery of
being. They have been taught for generations and have withstood the
tests of time.
This book began as series of meditation guides for people who
study and practice with me. I use these methods in my own practice
and teach them to people who, unable to ignore the separation any
longer, are looking for a way to take the wall apart.
The irony is that the separation is a fiction. Existentialist philoso
phers largely missed this point. Their effort—to live authentically by
finding individual meaning in a chaotic universe—presupposes that
we are separate from the world we experience. To live authentically, we
have to stop trying to avoid suffering and death by looking for mean
ing. We have to enter into the mystery of life itself.
Suffering points to the mystery of life. Many philosophical and reli
gious traditions seek to explain away the mystery by advancing a set of
beliefs that attempt to give meaning to suffering. Belief in meaning is
still a belief. It will be betrayed by changes in circumstances. A mother
suffers when her child dies in an accident, so she asks, “Why? Why did
this happen? It doesn’t make any sense.” When beliefs we are depen
dent on are rendered meaningless in the face of tragedy, the only place
to go is despair.
Death also points to the mystery. Religions try to mitigate the fear
of death by explaining death away with beliefs in heaven or eternal
life. When I attended the funeral services for a distinguished teacher in
the Tibetan tradition, I was dismayed to hear the lama presiding over
the ceremony say, “Do not think of this teacher as having died;
instead, think that he has gone into retreat for a while.” His statement
seemed to contradict the basic teaching of Buddhism that all com
pounded things are impermanent.
An often-unspoken but deeply held belief is that if a person is
morally good, then he or she will live a long life. When a “good” per^
son dies from cancer, however, those who adhere to that belief are dev
astated. They ask, “How could such a tragedy happen to this person?
It doesn’t make sense.” Their view of life is so shattered that they, too,
lapse into a despair from which they may never recover.
Though difficult to do so, we can instead face squarely the fact that
suffering and death are part of life and can come at any time to any
person, regardless of how good, moral, famous, rich, or respected he
