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Ken McLeod

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In 1970, I met my principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, at his monastery outside Darjeeling and began my study and practice of Buddhism. Kalu Rinpoche was a senior meditation teacher in the Karma Kagyu tradition and the lineage holder of the Shangpa tradition. After completing the preliminary practices and learning Tibetan, I translated for Kalu Rinpoche on his first two North American tours (1972 and 1974-75). From 1972-76, I helped to develop Rinpoche’s first center in North America in Vancouver, British Columbia. At the same time, I had the good fortune to study with Dezhung Rinpoche, a Sakya master who lived in Seattle. During this period, I made my first forays into written translation with three texts, all of which were published by Rinpoche’s center in Vancouver: Writing of Kalu Rinpoche (a short text on the basics of Tibetan Buddhism written by Rinpoche expressly for Western students), A Continuous Rain to Benefit Beings (a commentary by Karmapa XV on Chenrezi meditation), and The Direct Path of Enlightenment (a revised translation was published in 1987 by Shambhala under the titleThe Great Path of Awakening). When I gave a copy of Direct Path to Trungpa Rinpoche, he promptly asked for a copy of the Tibetan and later used the text in his 1975 and subsequent seminary teachings. To earn money for the three-year retreat, I also completed an M.Sc. in mathematics at the University of British Columbia and ran a foster home. In 1976, Ingrid McLeod, Sarah Harding, Tony Chapman, Hugh Thompson, Richard Barron, and I left Vancouver to meet Kalu Rinpoche in France. There, along with Denis Eysseric and a lot of volunteers, we built the three-year retreat facilities from the ground up and in December that year, entered the first three-year retreat for Western students. In the retreat, we studied and practiced meditation methods in both the Karma Kagyu and Shangpa Kagyu traditions, including ngöndro, Vajrakilaya (Dorje Purba), Chö (gcod), Mind Training in Seven