long association between the two. Other significant teachers included Dezhung Rinpoche, Thrangu Rinpoche, Gangteng Tulku Rinpoche, the sixteenth Karmapa, and Kilung Rinpoche. 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. 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. After several years at KDC, McLeod saw that the traditional, religious-center approach wasn't meeting his students’ needs. So he began evolving a new, non-traditional model based upon regular, one-on-one practice consultations; small, highly interactive teaching groups and meditation retreats; the notion of the individual practice path; an informal student–teacher relationship; and a "pragmatic" way to present material. These key elements would become the core of his teaching. 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