Ken McLeod

After fifteen years, he realized that this model could not accommodate the ways in which Unfettered Mind was growing and evolving. His practice as a business consultant gave him an understanding of how the flaws that characterize organizations and institutions could also be found in Unfettered Mind and most other Buddhist organizations. So in 2005, he began a sabbatical leave; in 2006, he re-invented Unfettered Mind. In an effort to avoid the structure and hierarchy of most Buddhist institutions, Unfettered Mind is now modeled as a network: in addition to the usual, teacher-driven activities (classes, workshops, retreats), UM is developing a wide range of web-based resources from which a practitioner—local or non-local—can find information, guidance, and teachings that meet their own individual needs and enable them to shape their own, specific path, outside of an established, institutional framework.

In 1990, he left KDC to set up a non-profit organization, Unfettered Mind, as a vehicle for this approach. At the time, the notion of a Buddhist teacher establishing a private practice went against accepted convention; it caused much controversy in 1996, when he presented the idea to the Buddhist Teachers Conference, but has since been adopted by many teachers. During the 1990s, McLeod established a corporate consulting business, organized three conferences on Buddhism and Psychotherapy, and developed the curriculum that eventually became his book Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention (2001).

In 1985, he settled in Los Angeles to run Kalu Rinpoche's dharma center. He did so until 1990, when he founded his own organization, Unfettered Mind. He taught strictly traditional material, but is recognized (1) for having pioneered a new teacher–student model based upon ongoing, one-on-one consultations and upon small teaching groups that have a high degree of teacher–student interaction, and (2) for his "pragmatic" approach to teaching, translation, and practice.

Under Kalu Rinpoche's guidance, McLeod learned the Tibetan language and completed two traditional three-year retreats (1976–1983). In the years that followed, he traveled and worked with Kalu Rinpoche on various projects, and became a prominent translator of Buddhist texts, including a landmark translation of The Great Path of Awakening by the first Jamgon Kongtrul, a key text in the teaching of lojong ("mind training").

In 1976, McLeod joined Kalu Rinpoche in Central France to help establish, and then participate in, the first three-year retreat for Westerners, at Kagyu Ling.; this was the first of McLeod's three-year retreats (1976–1983). His fellow retreatants included others who also went on to become senior Western teachers and translators: Sarah Harding, Ingrid McLeod, Richard Barron, Anthony Chapman, Denis Eysseric, and Hugh Thompson. In 1985, at Kalu Rinpoche's request, McLeod translated and published The Chariot for Traveling the Path to Freedom: the Life Story of Kalu Rinpoche. Also in that year, Kalu Rinpoche authorized McLeod to teach, and asked him to be the resident teacher at his Dharma center, Kagyu Dongak Chuling (KDC), in Los Angeles. McLeod was an interpreter for several other Kagyu teachers, most notably for the third Jamgon Kongtrul (of Palpung) at the 1990 Kalachakra empowerment in Toronto.

In the 1970s and 1980s, McLeod received training, plus travelled, translated, and worked on Kalu Rinpoche's many projects. He was the English interpreter for Kalu Rinpoche's first two tours of the West (1972 and 1974–75). He also translated texts: Writings of Kalu Rinpoche, A Continuous Rain to Benefit Beings, and The Great Path of Awakening by Jamgon Kongtrul, which he published as "The Direct Path to Enlightenment." In 1974, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche offered his own translation of the basic slogans therein, and criticized McLeod's translation of the title—although Trungpa liked the translation generally. McLeod publicly accepted the criticism, and Shambhala Publications published the book in 1987 as The Great Path of Awakening. Trungpa Rinpoche's own book on the slogans included McLeod's translations for comparison.

Ken McLeod (born 1948) is a senior Western translator, author, and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. He received traditional training mainly in the Shangpa Kagyu lineage through a long association with his principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, whom he met in 1970. McLeod resides in Los Angeles, where he founded Unfettered Mind. He has currently withdrawn from teaching, and no longer conducts classes, workshops, meditation retreats, individual practice consultations, or teacher training.

Ken McLeod was born in 1948 in Yorkshire, England, and raised in Canada. He holds an M.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of British Columbia. In 1970, he met Ven. Kalu Rinpoche at his monastery outside Darjeeling, India, and began studying Tibetan Buddhism. Kalu Rinpoche became his principal teacher, and thus began a long association between the two. Other significant teachers included Dezhung Rinpoche, Thrangu Rinpoche, Gangteng Tulku Rinpoche, the sixteenth Karmapa, and Kilung Rinpoche.