Recently Ken published How to Lose Your Mind in the practice materials on the Unfettered Mind website, and he has been commenting on Gampopa's text in a series of newsletters. I then had the good fortune of stumbling across Eric Pema Kunzang's translation of the same text in Perfect Clarity: A Tibetan Buddhist Anthology of Mahamudra and Dzogchen.
Ken provides a link to the Tibetan root text, so I was able to give ChatGPT the Tibetan as well as both Ken and Eric's translations. ChatGPT commented that Eric's translation is "clear, respectful of tradition, slightly formal, and requires some background, while Ken's tone is direct and experiential—almost like he’s talking to you in retreat." Eric gives the architecture: cause, condition, method, path, fruition; disturbing and harmonious experiences; stillness, emptiness, attainment, and release. There is clarity in that. It lets me see the bones of the instruction and recognise its place in the Mahamudra tradition. But Ken’s translation brings the text into my heart.
Where Eric writes “nonfabrication,” Ken writes “this unaffected mind.” Where Eric writes “freeing concepts into dharmata,” Ken writes “this freeing of mind in empty experience.” Where Eric gives “disturbing experiences,” Ken gives “unconducive energy shifts”—including unstable attention, illness, panic attacks, and doubts. Suddenly the text is not speaking in codified and often self-referential language from a distant world. It is speaking to the actual texture of practice: what happens in the body, in attention, in fear, in discouragement, in the subtle ways we interfere with experience.
As someone who cannot read Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan or Chinese, I am utterly dependent on translators. Even with the help of ChatGPT, I have no possibility of understanding root texts. I don't know the range of a Tibetan word, or when a phrase is technical, poetic, ordinary, or deliberately paradoxical. So translators are not just carrying words across from one language to another; they are mediating our practice worlds. This makes translation style profoundly important.
A literal or tradition-preserving translation can be valuable, especially for those who are at ease with traditional vocabulary, or feel drawn to precise maps of practice. But I need language that shows me what to do when I practise, and helps me recognise what is happening. I need translation to reflect lived experience rather than adhere to standardised, technical terms.
Ken’s experiential style does that. His language points less to concepts and more to movements: mind resting, presence emptying, knowing arriving, clinging unwinding. These are not abstract ideas. They feel like things I might notice, return to, deepen, and not mistake for the end of the path.
The experiential style of translation is like ambrosia to me. Rather than aiming to preserve a sacred vocabulary, it functions to awaken recognition. For anyone who relies on translation as a bridge into practice, this matters enormously. A traditional translation may tell us what the teaching is. The experiential language helps us enter it.
Here are a few examples to illustrate how translation styles differ depending on the orientation of the translator.
Eric Pema Kunzang
The Single Sufficient Path of Mahamudra
Ken McLeod
The Pure Essence of Mind, The One and Only Path of Mahamudra
Mahamudra has no method, yet nonfabrication is the method.
Although mahamudra has no method, this unaffected mind is a method.
Mahamudra has no fruition, yet freeing concepts into dharmata is the fruition.
Although mahamudra has no result, this freeing of mind in empty experience is the result.
As the main practice, settle the mind in the state of nonfabrication and embrace it with nondistraction.
For the main matter, consistently place mind without distraction and rest without affectation.
The first harmonious experience is the occurrence of stillness; from this, the experience of the empty essence follows.
For conducive energy shifts, first the shift into mind resting arises, then the shift into presence emptying, then the shift into knowing arriving, and then the shift into clinging unwinding.