Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention (Paperback)

~ Ken Mcleod (Author) "In a faraway country, now lost in the mists of time, there lived an old king and queen..." (more)
Key Phrases: degrade attention, reactive emotional patterns, rest with the breath, Buddha Shakyamuni, Kalu Rinpoche, Khenpo Gangshar (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This book's promotional material asserts that author McLeod "is no guru and has no meditation center; rather, he is a life trainer." Perhaps only in contemporary America can this be touted as an advantage for a Buddhist teacher. McLeod, no doubt, is not the least bit bothered by the implications, as he is writing expressly for "Americans in a thoroughly American way." Still, potential readers should not fear that McLeod has shortchanged them on the details of the Buddhist path. He offers very charming stories, unclouded prose, step-by-step meditations, charts and quotes from such varied sources as Bob Dylan, Milarepa, Rumi, Yogi Berra and anonymous Buddhist sayings ("Think of all sentient beings as Buddha, but keep your hand on your wallet"). McLeod delivers a hefty how-to manual that could prove useful to a single soul in the hinterlands or a sophisticated searcher in Los Angeles, where McLeod directs Unfettered Mind, a Buddhist teaching and counseling service. This text's apparent self-help style is somewhat ironic, since McLeod pointedly asks, "Can you do this work on your own?" and immediately responds, "Basically, the answer is no.... We need a teacher," going against the American apotheosis of the individual. Whether he cops to it or not, McLeod has illuminated the path for solitary individuals who want a long-lasting handbook to begin the journey toward wakefulness. (Apr.)Forecast: A five-city West Coast author tour and a February 15 excerpt in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review should boost sales of this book, which will have a 25,000-copy print run. Advertising is planned in PW and in Tricycle.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Ken McLeod's eminently practical manual goes straight to the heart of what the Buddha taught." -- -- Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism Without Beliefs

"McLeod has illuminated the path for solitary individuals who want a long-lasting handbook to begin the journey toward wakefulness." -- --Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (March 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062516817
• ISBN-13: 978-0062516817
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,604 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of Ken McLeod's "Wake Up To Your Life", March 21, 2001

By	George L. Draffan - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention (Hardcover)

Originally published in the Northwest Dharma News www.nwdharma.org

Hundreds of books on Buddhism have been published in recent years, but Wake Up To Your Life, a new book by Ken McLeod, is one of the first systematic curricula written by a Westerner thoroughly trained in traditional Tibetan ways. With deep insight, clear instructions, and entertaining stories, McLeod has given us a comprehensive manual for a lifetime of spiritual work.

Wake Up To Your Life begins as many books do, introducing the context and motivations for practicing meditation, and covering basic topics such as the four noble truths, the three disciplines of morality, meditation, and understanding, and the cultivation of mindfulness. It continues with contemplations on death and impermanence, karma, reactive emotions, and the four immeasurables, and ends with difficult practices for mind training, insight, and direct awareness.

McLeod breaks new ground from beginning to end. For example, the differences and synergies between mindfulness, awareness, and attention are clearly delineated, and active attention ("volitional, stable, and inclusive") is the central principle. That has practical implications, one of which is that ethical behavior becomes primarily a natural expression of attention, rather than a set of rules dictated by an authority or tradition.

Wake Up To Your Life is especially valuable in making explicit what has been hidden from or confusing to many practitioners. Those who have struggled to practice with insufficient instruction will benefit from McLeod's pragmatic approach. For example, he makes clear the important differences between the purpose, methods, effects, and results of meditation practice. Thus the meditator who has been instructed to "open your mind" or "be centered" will learn that being open and feeling centered (as well as distraction, clarity, sleepiness, and euphoria) are effects of meditation, and not methods. The book is packed with tools for choosing and working with a teacher, for cutting through confusion and self-deception, and for discriminating between genuine insight and passing mental states and energy surges.

Those who have been bewildered by Tibetan visualization and contemplative practices will see how they are rooted in basic Buddhist principles, and those who have been confused or put off by cosmology and deity practices will find clear explanations and a sensible approach. We see how the six realms are the worlds projected by our reactive emotions, and how an understanding of the five elements and five dakinis can help us transform the energies of our reactive emotions into pristine awareness.

The chapter on karma is a significant contribution to our understanding of meditation and of psychology. Detailed analysis of how our beliefs, reactive emotions, and habituated behaviors create and perpetuate the suffering in our lives is integrated with practical exercises for dismantling the components of those beliefs and behavioral patterns. McLeod has formulated the practices in terms directly relevant to modern audiences, and encourages the reader to rely on experience rather than belief. Waking up to your life does not depend on exchanging Western assumptions for Eastern ones; it depends on direct experience.

In the debate over whether teachers should transmit the Dharma just as it was received, or whether each culture and each generation must make the Dharma their own, McLeod is squarely in the second camp. He integrates age-old Buddhist methods with modern psychological sensibilities, and uses science and Sufi teaching stories to make his points, but the result is no sweet New Age concoction. Confusion is cut at every juncture, and no slack is given for wishful thinking. "You would probably prefer not to look at some parts of your life, but to ignore the areas of life that are uncomfortable to look at is not a good idea. If we protect any aspect of our life from the practice of attention, the habituated patterns connected with that part of our life absorb the energy of practice and gradually take over our lives. We become what we don't dismantle."

While Wake Up To Your Life is intellectually challenging and satisfying, it is ultimately a manual for spiritual practice, and not an exercise in cultural reeducation, religious history, or philosophical doctrine. Its only purpose is to provide a set of tools to deal with the challenges we encounter while engaging the work of "waking up from the sleep in which we dream that we are separate from what we experience."

Both beginning and experienced students and teachers of Buddhist meditation will benefit from using the methods in Wake Up To Your Life, but McLeod's pragmatic and integrated approach applies the power of attention to social, work, and personal relationships as well as to formal meditation practice. The book will be valuable to psychologists, mediators, managers, parents, and anyone else who deals with people and their reactive emotions. It's for anyone who has felt the suffering and confinement caused by their habitual patterns, and is serious about cultivating presence and freedom.

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Cracking the egg of ignorance.", March 31, 2001

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention (Hardcover)

This is not only a how-to-meditate guide, but a "wake-up" call about why we should meditate. "The path described here does not promise quick results," Buddhist teacher, Ken McLeod writes. "It consists of taking apart, brick by brick, the wall that prevents us from knowing who we are. To dismantle that wall is the work of a lifetime" (p. 16). Just as the Buddhist path "is the path of attention" (p. 29), reading this meditation guide is an exercise in attention. Read his book "carefully and slowly when you are clear and awake" (p. 18), McLeod recommends.

We arrive at Buddhist practice, McLeod observes, "because of a feeling of separation, emtiness, or lack of presence in life" (p. 43). McLeod's practice guide demonstrates that Buddhism may be viewed as "a collection of methods for waking up" from our confusion (p. xi). "To live authentically," McLeod writes, "we have to stop trying to avoid suffering and death by looking for meaning. We have to enter the mystery of life itself" (p. x). Following an excellent introduction to Buddhist dharma, McLeod then offers a series of east-to-follow guided meditations on cultivating attention (Chapter 3), confronting "the cold breath of death" (p. 108; Chapter 4), equanimity (pp. 259-268), loving-kindness (pp. 268-275), compassion (pp. 276-285), and tonglen taking-and-sending (pp. 314-352), among others.

Whether you are Buddhist or not, if you are interested in entering the mysteries of life, McLeod's book will become a well-travelled path on your bookshelf.

G. Merritt

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE JOURNEY A LIFETIME !, July 26, 2002

By	David Hains (North Syracuse, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention (Hardcover)

Mcleod's book on meditation is the most inspiring book on working Buddhism I have read. Meditation is the single most important aspect of self-actualization available. Knowing ourself is truely the key to wisdom and ethical behavior. Trying to "white knuckle" ethics, and teach oneself wisdom / understanding never works. We cannot understand what we haven't experienced. Meditation takes intellectual understanding and turns it into emotional understanding. This leads to wisdom and changes in our behavior (ethics). Ken Mcleod makes working meditation methods understandable, and presents the path to emotional understanding in a clear and concise manner. This book would take many lifetimes to complete. I have purchased many Buddhist books in the past and have never written a review on one before. However, this book is worthy of even my praise. A true lifesaver. OUTSTANDING !