Complete—all teachings on behaviour end up in no dos or don’ts.
From: Revelations of Ever-Present Good, Jigme Lingpa.
This line from Ken’s translation of Jigme Lingpa’s poem is particularly enigmatic in today's world.
We are living through a convergence of upheavals—ecological collapse, political fragmentation, social polarisation, economic instability, and a lost sense of living in a meaningful, sacred world. Everywhere we look, there are urgent calls for action and for taking a stand. In these difficult circumstances, “no dos or don’ts” can sound not only impractical, but irresponsible.
Yet the point here is not the abandoning of ethics. It’s the end of relying on fixed notions of right and wrong as a way to navigate experience. We already know what happens when we rely on formulas.
Ken's book, A Trackless Path, is a commentary on Revelations of Ever-Present Good. As he points out in the commentary, moral systems organise belonging. They define who is right and who is wrong, who is inside and who is outside. In doing so, they generate cohesion—but also division. In the current climate, this dynamic is amplified everywhere. Positions harden. Identities form. The defence of what is “right” easily becomes the justification for dismissing or attacking others.
In the commentary Ken quotes Manhae (Han Yong-un, 1879–1944), a Korean Buddhist monk, poet, and independence activist. A key figure in modern Korean literature, Manhae's poetry explores love, loss, and awakening while also expressing Korea’s experience under Japanese occupation. He helped reform Korean Buddhism to re-engage with society and was imprisoned for his role in the 1919 independence movement.
Yes, I understand ethics, morality, law are nothing but the smoke worshipping the sword and gold.
Everything Yearned For, Manhae, Francisca Cho (translator)
Manhae’s line is not a rejection of ethics. It’s a recognition of how easily ethics becomes entangled with power, fear, and self-interest. And we see this not only in politics or institutions, but in the spiritual sphere as well.
So where does that leave us?
If we abandon external rules and cannot rely on shared moral ground, what guides action?
Ken’s answer is uncompromising: live from knowing. Not from conceptual knowing about what is right, not by applying a framework, not by aligning with a position—but meeting what arises directly, and responding from that immediacy.
This sounds simple. In practice, it is anything but, because we inevitably meet fear, anger, and grief. We fear the future; we fear loss and instability. We experience anger at injustice, indifference, and systems that seem beyond reach. We meet grief—often unacknowledged—for what is lost. And woven through these emotions are deeply conditioned patterns that shape what we see, what we feel, and what we do, often before we are even aware of it.
As Ken puts it:
Ordinarily, what I say or do in any moment is largely shaped by emotional and biological conditioning. Like the tectonic plates that make up the surface of this planet, reactive patterns shift and move inside me in ways that I can neither control nor predict. These movements may open fissures in my personality into which I tumble out of control. They may cause massive earthquakes that shake me to my core as different patterns collide and fracture. The notion that “I” exist as a seamlessly integrated personality is a Platonic pipe dream. All I can do is meet what does arise, open, and stand there until a way is clear. There is no guarantee that things will not turn out badly in a conventional sense. When they do, I meet that situation and then the next, learning in the process how to make similar occurrences less likely. Anything else seems arbitrary, contrived and self-serving.
A Trackless Path, Ken McLeod, p. 70
To live with “no dos or don’ts” means stepping into all of this without the protection of a script, without ethical systems that tell us what to do, without ideologies that tell us where to stand, and without dogmas that tell us what to believe. Without these, we are left exposed to the full complexity of each moment. And yet, this exposure makes a different kind of response possible.
Ken describes it as moving in the direction of balance and making ongoing adjustments. In this sense, the question is not, “What is the right thing to do?” It is, “What does this situation call for, when I am not defending an identity, a position, or a belief?”
Sometimes the response will look like action, sometimes like restraint, and it may be clumsy, incomplete, or even wrong in conventional terms. Closely connected with this is learning from mistakes. As Ken says, in session 4 of a retreat called A Trackless Path:
If you do something and you learn from it, no big problem. I mean it may be a problem, but if you do the same thing three times and you still don’t learn from it, now you have a really big problem.
So, there are no guarantees, and this is perhaps the hardest part to accept. In a world that feels unstable and deteriorating, we want certainty that our actions will lead to good outcomes. We want assurance that we are on the right side of history, or morality, or truth. Living without dos or don'ts offers no such assurance.
Instead, it asks that we do not turn away from what is in front of us, and that we respond from the clearest knowing available, again and again. Not as a principle. Not as an identity. But as a practice.
This does not resolve the crises we face. But it may change how we meet them. And that, in turn, has ripple effects.
p.s. Writing this reflection reminded me of Ekla Chalo Re, one of the most famous poems by Rabindranath Tagore, the renowned Bengali poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate. "Ekla Chalo Re" translates to "walk alone" or "go alone." He wrote the poem during the Indian independence movement. It reflects the spirit of fearlessness that dawns with clear knowing. Here is a version performed by Shreya Ghoshal with Bengali lyrics, English translation, and some quotes from Rabindranath Tagore.