Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield

Jack and trauma expert, Peter A Levine, PhD, map the path to healing through imagination, curiosity, somatic experiencing, and loving awareness.

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“Healing has to be coming together through the minute particulars in the body and in the story that’s actually our experience and not some idea about it.” – Jack Kornfield

In this fresh conversation, Jack and Dr. Levine dive into:

• Mapping trauma and the path to healing suffering
• A relaxing Jack “Just Here: Guided Meditation” on loving awareness
• How An Autobiography of Trauma led to Peter’s powerful healing journey
• Working with the astrological and Jungian archetype of Chiron, the Wounded Healer
• Somatic Experiencing and the roots of healing trauma in the body
• The transformative aspects of meeting trauma with loving kindness and persistence
• Curiosity as a necessary factor of enlightenment
• How the gift of Jack’s childhood trauma led him to discover Buddhism
• Imagination and Peter’s mystical meet-ups with Albert Einstein
• Miracles, intuition, and psychic premonition/knowing
• What Jack shared with his scientific-materialist atheist father on his deathbed
• Our inseparable connection and recognition that it’s always “us” in this web of life

“The whole notion that we are separate is a fabrication. We are in a field of consciousness.” – Jack Kornfield

About Peter A Levine, PhD:

Dr. Peter A. Levine has worked in the field of stress and trauma for over 40 years, is the developer of the Somatic Experiencing method, and founder of the Ergos Institute of Somatic Education. To connect more with Peter’s teachings, pick up a copy of his illuminating book, An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey, and sign up for his upcoming classes and programs at SomaticExperiencing.com

This conversation was originally filmed on 5/24/24 by the Ergos Institute of Somatic Experiencing as a community health somatic support benefit for MathMoms in Cape Town, South Africa. Learn more about this compassionate initiative here at mathmoms.co.za

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Harmonizing to the 'music of the spheres' & sharing gardening tips from Buddha, a blissful Jack unveils the possibility of sudden awakening.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

"You don't want to wait until you float out of your body when you die and look back and say, 'Wow, that was an amazing incarnation, wasn't it?' You actually want to have it now." – Jack Kornfield

In this fresh video episode, Jack blissfully illuminates:

• The wisdom of the Music of the Spheres
• Energies of the 2024 Solar Eclipse
• Alan Watts on why 'life is like music'
• The enlightening present moment
• Harmonizing life's opposites like the Tao
• Dancing with life's changing rhythms
• To be married to amazement and mystery
• The beautiful revelation of sudden awakening
• Being at the still point of the turning world
• Sudden realization, gradual practice, and Zen
• Releasing from the body of fear
• Buddha's gardening wisdom
• The fruits of inner well-being

"That's what meditation does, it makes space. We step out of the thrall of our plans, thoughts, reactions, how it should be, what's happened, and what should happen; and out of the fears and the confusion, sadness, excitement, and all those things; and we become the space of loving awareness that says, 'Yes.' It's an act of love." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk originally took place 3/25/24 for Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Monday Night Dharma Talk and Meditation. Sign up for Jack's next one at JackKornfield.com/events

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Revealing how to disentangle your illusions and let go of old identities, Jack paves the way to the mystical present moment.

Join Jack online Sat June 22 for The Awakened Heart: Mindfulness and Compassion Practices for Living a Wise and Free Life – a special live daylong retreat exploring lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and peace. Register here.

“Part of the joy of selflessness is that as we become selfless much greater forces of what life is move through us.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Disentangling your illusions
• Opening to the paradox of self and no-self
• The yogic practice of asking, “Who am I?”
• This mystical present moment
• How the entire universe is inside your mind
• Experiencing selflessness
• Why you can’t just ‘no-self’ it away
• Moving past your inner-critic, shame, and unworthiness
• Listening to, accepting, and loving the shadow
• The strength of being grounded on Earth
• Working with meaninglessness
• Letting go of old identities
• Love as the work of a lifetime

“You can’t just ‘no-self’ it away.” – Jack Kornfield

“All that you need to do is to keep coming back to the present and what needs to open in you will. You can really trust that.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk estimated to be recorded on 4/23/1990 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Exploring life as a flowing, dynamic process, Jack shares the jewel of Buddha's awakening by unraveling the paradox of self and no-self.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

"Each of those sets of words, 'self,' and 'no-self,' are concepts or ideas or words that we use in a very crude approximation of pointing to some mystery of this process of life that's neither self nor no-self." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• Unraveling the paradox of self and no-self
• The Jewel of the Buddha's Awakening
• Anattā (selflessness) and how it connects with respect
• Tales of a Magic Monastery
• Living in the reality of expansion and contraction
• Why Ajahn Chah shared 'self' and 'no self' both aren't true
• The word "happy/sad" in Japanese
• Opening to our life as a flowing, moving process
• Becoming aware of selflessness
• Interdependence, interconnection, codependent arising
• Learning to respect ourself and nourish beneficial qualities
• Developing yourself while also "losing yourself"
• Discovering your True Self
• The importance of integrating our spiritual practice into our lives
• Learning to live in your body and love well

"To be really present is to connect with the mystery." – Jack Kornfield

"You develop yourself as you lose yourself." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk estimated to be recorded on 4/23/1990 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Learn the Dynamic Art of Interactive Guided Meditation with Jack Kornfield in an online masterclass! To take part in the two live online Q&A sessions, register by June 9 at bit.ly/InteractiveCohort

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Sharing the blueprint for how to unlock true abundance, Jack reveals the secrets of letting go of greed, embracing generosity, and appreciating simplicity in life.

Learn the Dynamic Art of Interactive Guided Meditation with Jack Kornfield in an online masterclass cohort this June! Join the journey.

"Abundance isn't about how much you have, but how much you appreciate. – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• How to let go of our greed and live in true abundance
• The Buddhist notion of "dana" – generosity, service, open-hearted caring
• Greed as a strategy of impoverishment, rejection, and incompleteness
• Transforming our 'endless wanting' into a beneficial awakened dance with the world
• Expressing the Tao, the harmony of the universe, through our being
• The Dharmic alchemy of the Bodhisattva
• Meditation, listening, and finding out what we truly want in this life
• Where Suzuki Roshi meets Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
• How abundance of the spirit connects with simplicity rather than things
• A personal story of Jack taking his unique Bodhisattva Vows in the Rocky Mountains while teaching at Chögyam Trungpa's Naropa University
• Taking your strong, grounded, noble seat that can handle it all
• How being there for others is abundance in their life
• The generosity and delight of authentically giving – things, space, silence, listening, attention, commitment, honesty, smiles, blessings
• Ram Dass and Maharajji's lesson of "feed people, love people."
• Is "selfless service" actually selfless?

"Abundance of the spirit doesn't mean things; it means discovering a kind of simplicity of our life where we're abundant in any circumstance." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk estimated to be recorded on 3/1/1990 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Unveiling how to grow your heart as big as the sky, Jack shares the spiritual antidote for aversion, negativity, and fear.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

"Let your heart be as big as your whole experience, like the sky." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Overcoming aversion by "bringing it into your heart" rather than your rational mind
• Touching into emotions, fears, and judgements with compassion instead of aversion
• Using techniques like "noting/naming" for moving past intense feelings
• Loving your negatives states as you would love your own child
• Seeing clearly the karma, value, and consequence of your personal patterns
• Who would you be if you dropped your opinions, views, identity?
• Growing your heart to the size of the sky
• Practicing the 'art of letting go'
• Learning to live in the reality 'the Now'
• Why Buddha had a better time than most
• Painting as a doorway to spiritual experience
• Transmuting difficulties by dropping our resistance to them
• How to hold healthy views without being attached to them

"In this space of Now, it's not necessary to have fear. In this place of Now, we can rest." – Jack Kornfield

"If we want to create peace, or if we want to live free from greed, hatred and delusion, the place to start is in ourselves." – Jack Kornfield

Learn the Dynamic Art of Interactive Guided Meditation with Jack Kornfield in an online masterclass cohort starting this June.

This Dharma Talk originally recorded on 1/1/1989 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Illustrating how to free yourself from fear and opinion, Jack reveals how to overcome suffering by cultivating a pure heart.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

"The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there." – Robert M. Pirsig

In this episode, Jack skillfully illuminates:

• Skillful ways to free yourself from stuck views and opinions
• Ram Dass's teaching advice to Jack
• Balancing life's sufferings with life's joys
• Zen wisdom on how to drop your views
• Accepting what you see and rejecting what you think
• Overcoming suffering by living with a pure heart
• Buddha's 'Fire Sermon' teachings
• The way attachment connects to fear, and how to get to the root
• How views and opinions keep you separate, ego-focused, and defensive
• Working with racism and fear by imbibing wakefulness and mindfulness
• Overcoming opinions and and views by the method of noting/naming

This Dharma Talk originally recorded on 1/1/1989 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Learn the Dynamic Art of Interactive Guided Meditation with Jack Kornfield in an online masterclass cohort starting this June!

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Uncovering how to find joy and freedom in any situation, Jack shares the roadmap for discovering peace within yourself.

Learn the Dynamic Art of Interactive Guided Meditation with Jack Kornfield in this online masterclass cohort starting this June! Learn more and register at bit.ly/InteractiveCohort

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

“Peace is the cessation of your struggle, it’s putting down the burden and letting things be as they actually are.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Learning to be at peace with yourself and the world
• How to meditate when it feels like you can’t meditate
• The way emptiness connects with compassion
• Reconciling where peace meets struggle
• Peace as an internal state you can bring with you
• Being Here Now, opening to life fully, and becoming intimate with all things
• How we can find joy, liberation, and freedom in any situation
• Dharma stories of the Buddha as well as the Bodhisattva Vimalakīrti
• Coming to terms with the First Noble Truth of suffering, disappointment, and change
• The transformative power of meeting life exactly as it is
• What we can learn from both a “Duck Meditation,” “Goose Poem,” and a Tibetan Prayer
• Love and it’s connection with courage

“We can’t come to rest because we’re at war with what’s actually here.” – Jack Kornfield

“To enter into the unknown is really to enter into the moment.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk originally recorded on 12/01/1989 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Jack and the ‘Grandfather of Gratitude,’ Brother David Steindl-Rast, delve into sacred reflections on death, where Buddha meets Jesus, the power of compassion, the positive side of grief, and beyond.

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“The process of grieving that breaks this little heart, which closes itself in itself, opens us to the heart that we all share, the one heart that we all have in common.” – Brother David Steindl-Rast

In this sacred dialogue, Jack, Brother David, and Frank Ostaseski reflect on:

• How Christianity and Buddhism fit together spiritually
• The compassionate smile of Buddha meeting the sacred heart of Jesus Christ
• The positive side of grief: opening to the collective heart
• Death and grace in both traditions
• Deconditioning from a difficult mother
• Harnessing the power of your common sense
• A funny story about the Pope, and how to awaken to who we already are
• Jack’s journey to the Temple of the Coconut Monk
• How to handle pain like a Burmese Master
• How to forgive yourself and overcome remorse
• Diffusing suicidal tendencies by cultivating self-compassion
• Guided meditations and sacred chants from Jack and Brother David

“In a meditative way, one of the big pieces of being able to love, or touch, or open, or live, is really the work of forgiveness, grace, and receiving yourself in all of your complexity and loving.” – Jack Kornfield

“Compassion, loving kindness, and understanding are our true nature, our true state.” – Jack Kornfield

This conversation recorded on 6/30/1988 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Fantastic Fungi's visionary director, Louie Schwartzberg, joins Jack to explore the profound connection between psychedelics and mindfulness. 

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

“You can’t separate psychedelics from life.” – Jack Kornfield

In this fresh conversation, Jack and Louie spelunk the depths of:

• The connection between psychedelics and spirituality
• Psychedelics as a gateway to wonder, curiosity, and the sacred
• How tripping on psychedelics informed Louie’s filmmaking
• Albert Einstein and psychedelics as the intersection between art and science
• The universe and life as a constant transformation of light energy
• Buddha’s “Flower Sermon” and Zen Master Suzuki Roshi’s “Beginner’s Mind”
• Jack “exchanging maps” with famous LSD researcher, Stanislav Grof
• Studies showing the combination of psilocybin mushrooms and Louie’s time-lapse nature imagery as a powerful therapeutic tool for helping addiction and PTSD
• The importance of “set and setting,” community, and integration
• How psychedelics actually fit into the Buddhist precepts
• Honoring biology and the feminine aspects of nature
• The gifts of sacred attention and loving awareness
• Finding beauty wherever you are, and how Louie’s films heal by sharing patterns of nature for the soul to connect with

This conversation was originally recorded on 3/29/24 by Banyan Together – an online mindfulness community started by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. To join the community and learn more, visit BanyanTogether.com

“A lot of the work I do is to make the invisible visible. And that’s the perfect description of what a psychedelic journey is like, making the invisible visible.” – Louie Schwartzberg

“We live in a culture that’s almost defined by the absence of the sacred. And so we feel this yearning, this intuitive wish to connect—whether it’s going high in the mountains, or making love, or taking psychedelics, or meditating.” – Jack Kornfield

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Inviting in calm, strength, and steadiness, Jack leads a guided meditation into the heart of mindful loving awareness.

This guided meditation was originally recorded on 2/19/2024 for the Spirit Rock Monday Night Dharma Talk and Meditation. Register to join Jack's next livestream at JackKornfield.com/events

"Feel the weight of your body, gravity, and how the earth completely supports you when you let go into your seat. You're met by the strength and steadiness of the earth itself. You can rest on her. – Jack Kornfield

In this fresh episode, Jack leads a guided meditation for:

• Inviting in a sense of ease and calm
• Relaxing into mindful loving awareness
• Finding a steady, grounded, rooted posture
• Keeping a natural, soft, and flowing breath
• Quieting the mind and watching experience unfold
• Noticing the arising and passing away of all phenomena
• Allowing yourself into rest, trust, and relaxation

Learn to live beautifully with Jack Kornfield and Dr. Dan Siegel in their new online journey, Living Beautifully: Transformative Science and Mindfulness Practices to Cultivate a Wise Heart

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Exploring the great mystery of life and existence, Jack shares enlightening insights on the playful nature of wisdom.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to recieve 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"The beautiful thing is, wisdom is gracious." – Jack Kornfield

Fresh from an adventure in Costa Rica, Jack offers wisdom on:

• Spelunking the great mystery of life
• Wisdom as inherently gracious and playful
• Balancing compassion with emptiness
• How to speak with suffering people
• Joanna Macy and the "Great Turning" of human civilization
• Ram Dass, Ajahn Chah, and Stephen Levine
• "Central Casting" and the human experience
• How Jack and his colleagues handle their own aging

"It's all empty and it all matters." – Jack Kornfield

"Meditation is not about gaining or attaining something, it's about seeing the world with the heart of wisdom." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk was originally recorded on 2/19/2024 for the Spirit Rock Monday Night Dharma Talk and Meditation. Register to join Jack's next livestream at JackKornfield.com/events

Learn to live beautifully with Jack Kornfield and Dr. Dan Siegel in their new online journey starting April 15, Living Beautifully: Transformative Science and Mindfulness Practices to Cultivate a Wise Heart

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Offering compassion for our human flaws, Jack relays how to stop being so loyal to our suffering, and helps uncover the heart of the Buddha living within each of us.

Learn to live beautifully with Jack Kornfield and Dr. Dan Siegel in their new online journey, Living Beautifully: Transformative Science and Mindfulness Practice to Cultivate a Wise Heart

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Living the Divine Abodes to uncover the heart of the Buddha within yourself
• How to live in loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity/peace
• Ram Dass, the Chicken and Rice Man, and selfless service
• How the circle of compassion is not complete until it includes self-compassion
• Viktor Frankl and the boundless freedom of the human spirit
• David Roche and The Church of 80% Sincerity
• Moving beyond looks and into the reality of unconditional love
• Turning off the news and doing something enjoyable
• How to stop being so loyal to your suffering

This Dharma Talk from 12/10/2007 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

“You can search the tenfold universe as the Buddha and not find a single person more worthy of love and care than the one seated right here in your own body.” – Jack Kornfield

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Shining light on the Divine Abodes, Jack shares how we can navigate the world from the goodness of our hearts.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to recieve 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"Luminous, says the Buddha, is this heart and mind." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• The Divine Abodes (Brahmaviharas) as qualities of the Awakened Heart
• Navigating the world from the goodness of our hearts
• Loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity/peace
• What is possible for us as human beings
• Discovering who we really are and what really matters
• Stories of Jack's Buddhist teacher, Maha Ghosananda
• The spirituality of neuroscience's "Mirror Neurons."
• Sharon Salzberg, Metta practice, and the power of attention
• Ram dass, and the heart as the doorway to love

Learn to live beautifully with Jack Kornfield and Dr. Dan Siegel in their new online journey, Living Beautifully: Transformative Science and Mindfulness Practices to cultivate a Wise Heart

"What we give our attention, that place will flower and blossom. So if we give our attention to love, it grows." – Jack Kornfield

"Loving Kindness is like the rain that falls on all things, the just and the unjust, equally without discrimination. That love, when it grows within our heart, has a quality of nurturance, moisture, opening ,sweetness and constancy to it. It's an expression of the heart that's unencumbered by fear." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 12/10/2007 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Jack shares miracle stories and personal lessons from Dipa Ma – the luminous, compassionate and unshakeable spiritual master.

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield. The live version begins March 18! Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3T7Aafp

"You had a sense from this very sweet, mild-mannered old lady of a kind of unshakable inner strength, an incredible sense of stillness and strength in her being." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack lovingly reflects on:

• His times with the great yogi and spiritual master, Dipa Ma Barua
• Miracle stories and spiritual lessons of Dipa Ma
• How the suffering in Dipa Ma's life drew her to Buddhism and meditation
• Dipa Ma's siddhis (spiritual/psychic powers) and compassionate shining heart
• A life-changing story of Jack being blessed by Dipa Ma
• Her grandmotherly loving kindness
• Dipa Ma's favorite spiritual questions

"Dipa Ma's teaching was to always keep people in your heart, to give of your love to the people, and the earth and the world around." – Jack Kornfield

"Of all of the possibilities that one can do with the heart and mind, Dipa Ma was a great master of them." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 11/01/1989 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Talking Kabir, breakups, LSD, and Ram Dass, Jack shares how we can unfurl from the suffering of our expectations in order to live the mystery.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"Awareness has this quality of allowing change or openness to take place, because you're not trying to make it a certain way... you're observing it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

- Kabir and waking up in this very life

- Grief, breakups, disappointment, and letting go

- How expectation creates suffering

- Meditation and "manufacturing the light"

- Expectations, battling reality, and opening to the mystery

- How the mind measures, but the heart loves

- What Ram Dass told Jack about dealing with the death of his father

- Moving past the content of mind, and truly experiencing life

- The essence of Buddha's practice of mindfulness

- Labeling/noting feelings as a way to release them

- Albert Hoffman and LSD

- Relationships and how to make commitment without expectation

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield. The live version begins March 18! Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3T7Aafp

"Now, what's interesting to discover in meditation, is as you pay attention inside, it's the mind which measures, the mind with thought. The heart doesn't measure, the heart doesn't have that capacity, actually." – Jack Kornfield

"This is an amazing thing—bodies, and life, and cars, and planets hanging in space, and big balls of fire that we name stars and no one knows where they come from...beetles, insects, and strange things. What is this? So we sit and make ourselves a little bit quiet in order to turn the heart and the mind together to face directly this reality, this changing reality of birth and death, of change of life." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 10/10/1988 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Going back to the basics, Jack explores how we can skillfully navigate our dynamic mood states by experiencing them as clouds of the mind.

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield beginning March 18!

"Moods are actually kind of mysterious and quite impersonal. They're like the weather. It's been kind of cool this year, then we get our rainstorms, and the sun comes in between, and the wind comes and dies down, and we don't have any control over it whatsoever. It just comes. It's due to certain conditions." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack compassionately illuminates:

• Experiencing moods as clouds or weather—arising and passing naturally from impersonal sets of conditions
• The six flavors of experience in Buddhism
• Finding the middle ground between acting on feelings and suppressing them
• The "vipassana romance" and understanding the "siren call" of desire
• Diffusing desire with humor, mindfulness, and noting
• Moving past attachment and aversion by leaning into them
• Techniques for overcoming doubt
• Letting go and becoming more happy and more live

"The optimist wakes up and says, 'Good morning, God!' And the pessimist wakes up and says, 'Good God! Morning...' It's the same experience, but the mood somehow changes it." – Jack Kornfield

"One sits and practices, and let's these experiences come and fill us. We bow to them, name them, soften in the heart and say, 'Okay, show me your stuff, give me the whole thing.' And you know what happens after a while? If you make this spaciousness in the heart and that still point, at some point it ends. Because everything does. You say, 'Wow that was a big storm of desire, wasn't it?' And there you are, and there's this sense of freedom that comes that that's not who we are most fundamentally." – Jack Kornfield

The Dharma Talk from 4/1/1988 at was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Illuminating the subtle but crucial difference between codependence and compassion, Jack outlines how to set boundaries and live from our unique truth.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"Codependence means being an accomplice, a kind of complicity with someone who's acting in a self-destructive way, being dependent on their behavior, or supporting it somehow for your own security." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack sheds mindful light on:

• The subtle but crucial difference between compassion and codependence
• Trying to fix it or save someone instead of allowing them to taste the fruits of their karmas
• Feeling locked into supporting someone's destructive behavior
• The lack of feeling secure leading to needing to over-control
• Needing to fix someone else's problems because we can't live with it in ourself
• How we are all accomplices to a codependent society
• Mother Teresa and seeking to love the world instead of trying to fix it
• The necessity of balancing compassion practice with equanimity practice
• The spiritual importance of disharmony and the value of suffering
• Boundaries and the ability to say "no"
• Ownership, possessiveness, and the trouble with believing our roles
• The Bhagavad Gita and acting from our hearts without attachment to the fruit of the action
• Living our our unique truth amidst the mystery

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield beginning March 18!

"We are all heirs to our own karma, we have created our own lives. We can love and assist others, but in the end, no one can create a life for someone else, no one can change another person's fate. We are the ones that create what will happen for us." – Jack Kornfield

"Can we seek to love the world instead of trying to fix it? It is possible to be in a codependent relationship with the ills of the society, so we have to start looking within ourselves. What does it mean to do good? Mother Teresa taught in her work in Calcutta in the death and dying centers, 'We're not social workers. Our work is not to take people off the streets and clothes them and feed them. The government could do that. Our work is to bring to the people that we touch the spirit and the love of God that has touched us. The rest of it is just the vehicle to communicate that spirit.' It's a very different way of approaching solving a problem.'" – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 9/1/1989 at was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Sharing spiritual wisdom on meditation, abundance, intimacy, and the astral body, Jack helps us cultivate the courage to recognize truth.

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield beginning March 18!

"In one important sense, meditation is an exercise in truth, an exercise in opening to what is true, to what is here in front of in the most direct and obvious ways." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack compassionately illuminates:

• Meditation as an exercise in truth
• Jesus and the Buddha following their deepest inner truths
• Dharma and direct seeing from the heart
• Buddhism's three characteristics of life: impermanence, suffering, selflessness
• Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's view on the rebirth of our bad habits
• The difference between our physical 'fear body' we inhabit during the day, versus our expansive 'astral body' we expand into at night
• Mindfulness, spaciousness, and Buddha Nature
• Abundance and intimacy in spirituality
• The 16th Karmapa as the Dharma King
• A beautiful (and funny) story of an end-of-life guided meditation

"Somebody asked Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Tibetan Lama, 'If there's no self, what is it that is reborn in Buddhism?' He smiled and said, 'I hate to tell you this, but what's reborn is your bad habits.'" – Jack Kornfield

"To note what's present is the first task. The second task is to see or sense what happens to it. These are both important. So, sadness comes and you note, 'Ah, here's the feeling of sadness.' And then you name it for a while, you stay with it and see what it does, 'Sad...sad...sad.' Maybe you name it five to ten times and it disappears. Then itching comes and you name, 'Itching...itching...' You don't just name it and hurry back to your breath. You name it and see what it does, 'Itching...itching.' Then, it spreads and your whole face is tingling, 'Tinging...tingling... I'm gonna die if I don't scratch this... Dying...dying...' Then if you stay with it, dying passes, tingling passes, itching passes. If you let yourself stay with things, naming them as long as they are there and seeing them happen, they show their true nature—which is to arise, change, and pass." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 7/11/1990 at was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Illuminating the deepening levels of spiritual practice, Jack explores how to let life breathe while setting your heart on gold.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

“What we’re doing in practice is feeling the actuality of how life is pulsing, moving, flowing and swirling, fast and slow, rhythmically, within our own body, within our own direct experience.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• How to let life breathe while setting your heart on gold
• The importance of balancing our concentration, effort, and equanimity
• How the quality of presence can help the gold of the heart and mind shine
• Riding the body’s rhythm of breath as our main focus of attention and rest
• To feel of how life is pulsing, moving, and flowing through our experience
• Working with our loneliness, suffering, grief, fear, and longings
• Awakening into the present moment to see past the body of fear
• How recognizing spaciousness and impermanence helps us overcome our difficulties
• The power of trust, letting go, and letting life breathe

“People sometimes feel like it’s not worth it to practice. In the beginning it seems like you’re here 2% of the time, but if you continue and look honestly, you might be here 4% of the time. In one way, that’s discouraging statistically that you’re off 96%, but in another way it says you are now here alive and present twice as much as you were two days ago.” – Jack Kornfield

“The insight into the true path comes when we discover that we’re not trying to hold onto a single thing, not a perception, not a pleasant experience, not the calm of meditation—those are all parts of the waves of experience that rise and pass in space. The idea isn’t to hold your breath when you get something good to see how long it can stay, that doesn’t work very well. The idea is to let all of life breath. As we do, we let go moment by moment, more fully. We learn to trust, like the goldsmith, blowing on it, sprinkling water, softening, cooling, and a lot of time just giving presence so it’s beauty can start to show.” – Jack Kornfield

This episode from 10/09/1983 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha's path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack's new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield beginning March 18!

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Wrapping the world in the heart of loving kindness, Jack offers a meditation to help us into presence, relaxation, & loving awareness.

Jack originally shared this guided meditation for the Spirit Rock Monday Night Dharma Talk and Meditation. If you would like to join Jack online for his next livestream, register here.

"Living in loving kindness opens the doorway to happiness and joy." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack leads a guided meditation to help us:

• Enter into presence, relaxation, kindness, and loving awareness
• Wrap the world and our experiences in the heart of loving kindness
• Learn what it feels like to truly wish well for others and yourself
• Use the power of our imagination to visualize and experience transformative blessings
• Gradually and incrementally extend our metta to encapsulate all sentient beings
• Offer our hearts and direct our loving kindness to those suffering throughout the world
• Take the "advanced class" by extending our metta to those causing suffering
• Listen to our intuition and allow our heart to direct itself
• Live in happiness and joy, and bring loving kindness to all we touch

"Extend the feeling of loving kindness across the world, to those in difficulty, the families the children who are fleeing danger in so many places—Myanmar, Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza, Palestine, Israel—across the world. You picture them—the families the children—and send rays of love, metta, and strength, 'May you be safe and protected, may you find ease and graciousness, may you be held in loving kindness, and in whatever ways you can, may you be happy.'" – Jack Kornfield

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In this brand new Dharma Talk, Jack sings a redemption song inviting us to lay down our suffering and anger so we can open to the heart of compassion.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"These teachings of redemption point to the wondrous possibility that the conflicts that plague the world can be transformed by the nobility of heart." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully shares:

• Real tear-jerking stories of redemption of the human heart
• If there is a possibility of return from all the conflicts in the world today
• Contemplating who we push out of our hearts
• The value of offering compassion and loving kindness
• Not letting the suffering of the world poison our hearts and turn us against whole groups of people
• How without compassion and wisdom, we project it out on "them"
• How Buddhist teachings of impermanence lead to the possibility of redemption
• The transformative miracle of neuroplasticity
• Putting down thoughts of blame and turning towards a peaceful heart
• How good stories can help us break the trance and bring us into the present moment
• The way Ram Dass helped Jack, Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein work through a period of conflict
• How the world is full of second chances and redemption is possible

"What is the value of the gaze of compassion and loving kindness? It's the consciousness, it's the conscience that leads us to a wiser and more humane life. And with the most terrible dictators and terrorists, the warlords that we see causing so much suffering in this world—we have to do all we can to stop that suffering, but it's also important not to let it poison our hearts, not to let it in any way demonize our hearts to turn against whole groups of people, or give way to despair." – Jack Kornfield

"It's not just the grass that keeps growing, your body keeps renewing itself. Everything is in change. Consciousness is a waterfall, a river, an ocean of recreation again and again, inviting new patterns in illumination and the possibility of redemption. You can trust this power and align yourself to it." – Jack Kornfield

This lecture from Jack originally took place for the Spirit Rock Live: Monday Night Dharma Talk and Meditation. If you would like to join Jack online for his next livestream on Feb 19, register here!

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In this lively session, Jack illuminates how we can begin to open the heart through the transformational power of self-acceptance.

"Acceptance is the ground out of which true insight and understanding comes. It's an essential aspect of our practice. If we don't accept some aspect of ourself—some feeling, some physical sense of ourself aspect, some mental sense of ourself—then how are we to learn about it if we condemn it? How are we to discover it's nature? How are we to become free in relationship to it? Self-acceptance is not all of the practice, but it's a foundation and spirit which allows for attention and mindfulness to work." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• Transforming ourself and our practice through self-acceptance
• How true acceptance allows the practice of attention and mindfulness to work
• Don Juan, attention, non-self, and "dissolving the world"
• The power of accepting our non-acceptance
• Practice as a process of opening the heart and mind
• Dipa Ma as an embodiment of loving kindness, metta
• The gradual transformational created through the careful continuity of 'noting'
• Overcoming and integrating doubt, anger, guilt, and pain
• Resting in the present and the natural calming of the heart and the mind
• Impermanence and the Five Aggregates
• The spiritual question of 'free will versus determinism'
• Meditation and looking at our intentions
• Moving poems by Thich Nhat Hạnh and Hanshan

"Practice is a process of opening both the heart and the mind. To open the heart is to allow ourselves to begin to experience whatever there is in our being—in our walking, in our moving, in our eating—with a kindness, with a softness." – Jack Kornfield

"You can sit, and the intention to get up will arise, and if you really notice with continuity and care, you can notice maybe the attention to standup and walk because you're uncomfortable, or the intention to go take tea, or the intention to go to the bathroom. And if you notice sometimes you'll see the intention arise as that quality, 'About to do something...', and you note it, and it disappears, and there you are still sitting there. You watch the breath for a while and the intention comes again, and you begin to see how intention functions, and that it too is impersonal. It's not something you can say is, 'I, me, or mine.'" – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 10/16/1983 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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In this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack illuminates the law of karma and shares how we can overcome habits in order to live a life of awareness.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"To live a life of awareness asks a lot of us—it asks that we know ourselves, know our feelings, and know our hearts." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack compassionately outlines:

• How to move past our karmas to live a life of awareness
• Listening inside to find integrity with our words, actions, and hearts
• Buddha's emphasis on working with our feelings to find freedom
• How not to get caught in reaction to the 'Eight Worldly Winds'
• Understanding the law of karma and law of change
• Overcoming our habits and shaping our future with awareness
• Understanding our motivations in our actions
• Discerning between feelings in the body and our mind's stories
• Diffusing overpowering emotions with awareness

"The first part of karma is simply that things keep changing, and that how we respond to them creates our future. What's in our hearts that motivates us, creates how the future will be." – Jack Kornfield

"Wisdom—understanding, living wisely—comes from the cultivation of awareness." – Jack Kornfield

This talk from New Years Day 1/1/1988 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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In this New Years episode exploring how we can revolutionize our lives by becoming aware of our feelings, Jack talks clear seeing and gives instructions for an eating meditation.

"If you become aware of your feelings, they don't last very long. We feel like we're angry for a day, or sad for a week, or happy for a month, or grieving for a while—as if those feelings lasted that long. But if you look closely and you let yourself feel what's here and pay attention, feelings rarely last more than thirty seconds, maybe a minute, and then then turn into something else. Guaranteed. If you have some feeling that feels like it's lasted much longer than that, you haven't paid attention to it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• The practice of awareness, mindfulness, and paying attention
• Working with the inevitability of change, impermanence, and death
• Clear seeing, clear comprehension, and integrity
• Mindfulness of the process of eating, food, diet, and hunger
• Instructions for an 'eating meditation'
• Discerning the voices in our head and choosing the most skillful one to follow
• Using 'noting' and 'tracking' to become aware of our feelings and diffuse their grip on us

"When we remember that things change, when we can see it in front of us from moment to moment, it effects deeply the way that we live. If we know that things are really fleeting, it brings a quality or a care to our attention to know where we are. Because we realize that this may be the only time—in fact it is the only time—that we'll be in this day, in this moment, in this circumstance. So one tends to live less automatically if we remember the fact of change, of impermanence and death." – Jack Kornfield

This talk from New Years Day 1/1/1988 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Bestselling author, Yung Pueblo, and reporter, Dan Harris, join Jack to dive into how to love without grasping, Ram Dass's humor at his own predicament, and how to meditate when you are freaking out.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"The point of meditation practice isn't to withdraw from the world or become a monastic, but it's the possibility to live and take the activities of our life and bring them alive through loving kindness, compassion, and care for yourself and others. People sometimes think if I'm supposed to serve, I have to take care of everybody else, but the circle of compassion is only complete when it also includes yourself." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack, Yung Pueblo, and Dan Harris dive into:

• Jack and Yung Pueblo's connection to create Wisdom Ventures to bring compassion and right livelihood to business
• How the circle of compassion is only complete when you also include yourself
• Ram Dass' vulnerability, and how having a sense of humor about one's own predicament and being amused at our neurotic humanness is actually what truly liberates us
• Meditation as an act of care and listening which allows intuition and understanding
• The importance of community and why meditating in groups holds a different and usually higher resonance than meditating alone
• Skillful ways to handle conflict and difficult situations
• How to love family, partners, and friends openhandedly rather than with attachment and grasping
• 
  

"Meditation is not a grim duty, it's meant to be an act of care. And we live in a culture that's forgotten how we can take care of ourself. And one part of that care, even though at first it feels unfamiliar, is just to be quiet for a little bit and listen. Then there are things in us that we know—intuitions and understandings that come for how to navigate our life from what really matters." – Jack Kornfield

This conversation originally aired on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast with Dan Harris. If you enjoy this, Dan Harris has a new series – Non-Negotiables in the New Year – where he interviews celebrities and dharma experts to discuss their time tested, research-backed advice to get you through the new year and beyond. Listen here!

About Yung Pueblo:

Diego Perez is a meditator and #1 New York Times bestselling author who is widely known on Instagram and various social media networks through his pen name, Yung Pueblo. Online he has an audience of over 3 million people. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. Learn more at YungPueblo.com

About Dan Harris:

A skeptical journalist, Dan Harris had a panic attack on live TV that sent him on a journey that led him to try something he otherwise wouldn't have considered: meditation. He went on to write the best-selling book, 10% Happier. The show features interviews with top scientists, celebrities and experts in the field of mindfulness. And Dan's approach is seemingly modest, but secretly radical: happiness is a skill you can train, just like working your bicep in the gym. For more Dan check out podcast, Ten Percent Happier, and visit his website TenPercent.com

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In this new Dharma Talk, Jack explores how we can navigate the suffering of the world's conflicts with compassion, understanding, and peace.

This episode is from the Cloud Sangha Community Talk on Dec. 13, 2023. If you would like to join Cloud Sangha to steep in spiritual community, they are offering a 2-week free trial here.

"I think that we are afraid somehow that our own heart is not big enough to hold the tears and suffering of the world." – Jack Kornfield

In this fresh episode, Jack compassionately elucidates:

• How compassion is built into us and is absolutely natural
• Why the only side Jack is choosing is the side of peace
• Ajahn Chah's monastery as a zone of peace during wartime
• Opening our heart big enough to hold it all, connecting with the Mother of the world
• Pausing, living from our best intention, listening with an open heart, and mending what we can
• How when love meets suffering, it transforms into compassion
• Seeing the world through the eyes of compassion, and taking a stand for love
• How hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed
• A powerful guided meditation practice in opening to the heart of compassion
• How not to get swallowed up by the collective suffering
• Turning off the news, stepping out of the war, and becoming a place of peace, compassion, and loving awareness
• Dealing with pain, death, regrets, and "what if's"
• Being vulnerable and opening communication with estranged relations
• Acting beneficially without attachment to the results of our actions

"It's not your job to fix the world or to stop all the wars. It's your job to do your part, to stand for what matters, to speak and act in a way that represents compassion and love for everyone, to plant seeds to mend the places that you can." – Jack Kornfield

"Love, when it meets suffering, changes to a different quality, which is compassion. It's that quivering of the heart when we feel in ourself other's struggles and difficulties. It's the resonance with them, and the natural upwelling of, 'How can I help?' – Jack Kornfield

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In this unique exploration of Dharma, Jack shares how we can transform our daily lives by looking into how the Buddha answered questions.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"This talk on the way the Buddha answered questions is not to give you another talk on Buddhist history, but to connect us with the ancient timeless endeavor of practice, of awakening, and the ways human beings over many centuries have worked with the development of their understanding." – Jack Kornfield

In this illuminating episode, Jack highlights:

• How the way Buddha answered questions is relevant to living in our modern times
• Buddha's ancient sutras, talks, and Q&As, and how those teachings have touched the world
• Buddha's vision of mind and ability to understand the psyche, how it gets entangled, and how we can become free
• The "one taste" of Dharma and our capacity for inner-freedom
• Illuminating the reality of non-self
• How the teachings of the Dharma turn the mind back to one's own personal experience
• The radical way of seeing the world through a lens that is not, "I, me, mine."
• How to live fully whether we have one life or many lives to live
• Buddha's view of the "world on fire" and how to work with this in our daily lives
• How to work with contradictions along the spiritual path
• Continuity and carrying our practice and presence into the day in an enjoyable way

"The essence of Dharma is how we love moment to moment." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from October 1983 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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In Jack's heartfelt final talk at Insight Meditation Society, he explores heart and mind, wholeness and emptiness, and how the only way to be free is to let go of it all.

"When I was first studying Buddhism and meditating, even as it got a lot deeper, it was a clearing of the mind—mind becoming more silent, fewer thoughts, starting to see with a vision of clarity how things really arise, pass, and are truly ownerless. There's a kind of coolness to that vision, just like on a hot summer day when you go into a place and the cool breeze comes, and it cools off at night. That kind of vision of openness, of spaciousness of mind, and the clarity to see, has a sweetness, a sweet kind

In this heartfelt episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• The significance of this session as his last Dharma Talk at Insight Meditation Society before leaving to California to found Spirit Rock Meditation Center
• Jack's connection as a founding teacher of IMS alongside other Be Here Now Network teachers and podcasters, Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein
• How sangha—spiritual community—has a way of naturally calibrating itself and the students/teachers within it
• The sweet coolness and spacious clarity which comes from spiritual practice
• Suzuki Roshi and the wisdom of 0 and 1, emptiness and wholeness
• A moving story of service and renewal from a Ram Dass book
• How the only way to be free is to let go of all of it, absolutely everything
• The question Jack will ask himself when his body is dying: whether I've lived fully and loved well
• What the Buddha said about love

"The only way to be free is to let go of all of it." – Jack Kornfield

"What I imagine I'll ask myself when I die is: whether I've lived fully—but even more than that—whether I've loved very well." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 03/18/1984 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Illuminating the benefits of taking spiritual retreat, Jack highlights the importance of meeting our practice with great faith, great courage, and great questioning.

Join Jack with Trudy Goodman, Krishna Das, Anne Lamott and more, live online from Maui in the virtual Ram Dass Legacy Retreat: Love and Renewal 11/29 - 12/3!

"It's not a question of practicing and losing weight, or getting rid of our neurosis or figuring out our mother, father, husband, or wife trip; but it's really to get the bottom of the question of life itself: Who are we? What makes up our experience? And to ask that question, to come to the end of our questioning requires a kind of passion, a kind of urgency, to see, to know." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• The history and importance of taking spiritual retreat in Eastern traditions
• What it was like for Jack to take spiritual retreat with Burmese Buddhist teacher, Mahasi Sayadaw, and his Thai Buddhist teacher, Ajahn Chah
• Instructions for meditation and how to apply them properly to the retreat experience
• Moving beyond our psychological melodrama so we can gain deeper insight into the processes of mind
• Gurdjieff and using the fire of practice to transform our inner-world into a single whole
• Using our time wisely within the great mystery of this precious human birth
• Meeting our meditation practice with great faith, great courage, and great questioning
• The Diamond Sutra and how to live with a heart of light

"You say that practice is difficult. This is thinking. Practice is not difficult. If you say it's difficult this means you're examining yourself too much—examining your situation, your condition, your opinion—so you say practice is difficult. But if you keep the mind that is before thinking and planning, then practice is not difficult." – Jack Kornfield quoting a Zen Master

This Dharma Talk on 10/07/78 from Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Exploring the liberating step of Right Attitude, Jack illuminates how we can break free from our automatic habits by becoming fully conscious of them.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"There's a strength of heart that comes when we don't just follow our habit. It's a strengthening of heart that brings a sense of wellbeing or purity. Because we begin to train ourselves that we don't have to follow all our habits and all our desires." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Right Attitude / Right Thought as one of the steps on the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path
• The three aspects of Right Attitude: openness/exploration, renunciation/effort, love/non-harming
• Working with our unique personality in this incarnation
• The importance of adding fire to our spiritual practice
• Breaking free from our automatic habits by bringing conscious awareness to them
• Ram Dass and becoming a "connoisseur or your neurosis"
• Transforming our life from automatic pilot to being fully conscious
• The story of Larry Brilliant helping cure smallpox and what he learned about surrender and interconnectivity

"I think love really manifests when things get difficult. That's when you really know it. That's the fire that melts whatever barriers we ever have in our hearts. And our hearts want to be melted. The pain isn't so bad; it's much better than having it still solid and barricaded." – Jack Kornfield

Join Jack and friends live ONLINE from Maui Nov. 29 - Dec. 3 at the 3rd Annual Ram Dass Legacy Retreat in this 5-day virtual livestream event. Learn more and register here.

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Connecting the Buddha's wisdom with the teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda's infamous Yaqui shaman, Jack explores how to become a spiritual warrior.

Learn the Dynamic Art of Guided Meditation in this Masterclass with Jack Kornfield! Sign up for the on-demand version before Nov. 15 to take part in two live Q&A sessions with Jack!

"There's a mysterious beauty that surrounds those individuals who live their lives as warriors, as men or women of knowledge." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• How Buddha's factors of enlightenment (qualities of awakening) connect with Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda's infamous teacher and Yaqui shaman and sorcerer
• Don Juan's wisdom of the 'Way of the Warrior' in relation to Buddhism
• The qualities of living as a spiritual warrior: impeccability/wholeness, wise effort/energy, courage/investigation, controlled-folly (play/lightness), strength/concentration, and steadfastness/unshakeableness
• Shamanism and cutting through our sense of separation into the root of consciousness
• Finding inner-freedom by learning how to stop our internal dialogue

"The basic difference between an ordinary person and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary person takes everything as a blessing or a curse." – Carlos Castaneda (Author of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge)

This talk from 12/31/1983 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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In response to the conflicts in the world, Jack offers a harmonizing guided meditation inviting us into peace, sanctuary, and the heart of refuge.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"I breath in peace and breath out peace to all those who are amidst the troubles of this world—the conflicts, the refuges, the violence and the fear. I send you a peaceful breath. May we be peaceful together." – Jack Kornfield

In this timely episode, Jack leads a harmonizing guided meditation to help us:

• Find a mindful, balanced, and compassionate response to the conflicts and tragedy's happening throughout the world today
• Turn our awareness to the present moment, merging mind, body, and spirit
• Extend our consciousness, compassion, and mindful loving awareness around the planet, it's people, and environments
• Send out peaceful healing breaths to all those who are amidst the troubles of the world

This episode is from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday Night Dharma Talk and Meditation on 10/23/2023.

Learn the Dynamic Art of Guided Meditation in this Masterclass with Jack Kornfield! Sign up for the on-demand version before Nov. 15 to take part in two live Q&A sessions with Jack! 

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In this powerful new Dharma Talk touching on current events, an emotional Jack offers a heart of refuge amidst the world's conflicts.

"There's a liberation amidst birth and death, joy and sorrow, war and peace, that is beyond it all. This is the sacred openness of love and awareness itself.” – Jack Kornfield

In this emotional episode, Jack touches into:

• The terrors of the ongoing wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Darfur
• How constant news media effects our emotions and wellbeing
• Learning to live from the 'heart of refuge' which the Buddha offers
• What does it mean to be a refugee? How can we help create sanctuary?
• The importance of outsiders opening to the suffering of all humans rather than taking sides
• How the Buddha's mindful loving awareness overcomes Mara's aggression, greed, and doubt
• The ways we can open ourselves to forgiveness, compassion, community, safety, love, and trust

This episode is from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday Night Dharma Talk and Meditation on 10/23/2023.

Already downloaded by over 15k people, visit dharmamoon.com/ebook to get YOUR free copy of The Art of Teaching Mindfulness!

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Jack explores how meeting our lives with a directness and simplicity helps bring the mind, body, and heart into unity.

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"The spirit of the practice is a unification of the mind with the body and the heart, bringing them all together into one. In that unification, or collectedness, then it becomes possible, when the mind isn't wandering in fantasy of past or future, to see directly and clearly.” – Jack Kornfield

In this Dharma Talk, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• Buddha's simple wisdom: "In the seen, there is only the seen. In the heard, there is only the heard. In the sensed, there is only the sensed. In the thought, there is only the thought."
• Meeting our practice and the world with a directness and simplicity; bringing the mind, heart, and body into unity
• Cultivating an "excruciatingly" precise awareness and paying careful attention so we can see our life process in a new way
• The three-sided crystal of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness/insecurity, and selflessness
• Suzuki Roshi and the blissful wisdom of simplicity

This Dharma Talk 9/29/1983 at the Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Learn the Healing Art of Guided Meditation in this Masterclass with Jack Kornfield! Sign up for the on-demand version before Nov. 15 to take part in two live Q&A sessions with Jack! 

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In this riveting episode, Jack shares hilarious personal stories illuminating lessons from his life as a forest monk in Thailand.

"The spirt was you just did it, and you worked with whatever came up as your practice. Living the life of a monk meant taking what came to you and working with it, whether it was difficult or easy.” – Jack Kornfield 

In this riveting episode, Jack dives into:

• What it was like living as a forest monk in Thailand at Ajahn Chah's forest monastery
• The wisdom he learned through experiencing Ajahn Chah's four-part teachings on surrender, opening up to see clearly, working with the mind, and gaining balance/perspective
• The two levels of Dharma practice: using Dharma to feel comfortable, and using Dharma to get free
• Ajahn Chah's rascally yet direct interactions with students, including one with Ram Dass
• Working with attachments and aversions in order to overcome them and grow spiritually
• Learning how to let go and not get caught in the mind's lures, traps, and intricacies

Discover the transformative practice of teaching mindfulness in a new FREE 30-page ebook by Senior Buddhist teacher and Emmy award-winning musician, David Nichtern. 

With its blend of humor, wisdom, and accessible approach, The Art of Teaching Mindfulness ebook is a must-read for anyone interested in sharing the life-changing practices of mindfulness with others.

Already downloaded by over 15k people, visit dharmamoon.com/ebook to get YOUR free copy of The Art of Teaching Mindfulness!

This episode from Insight Meditation Society on 6/7/1981 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

"Meditation practice is where you are sitting. It's not to go to some other place, or have the ideal setting, or have your coffee, or have your quiet little room. Where you are is your practice." – Jack Kornfield

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Illuminating the Way of the Bodhisattva, Jack shares wisdom from St. Teresa of Calcutta, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Ajahn Chah, and Sueng Sahn on walking the spiritual path.

This vintage episode from April 10, 1977 at Camp Cedar Glen was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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In this vintage episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• The selfless service, love, and wisdom of Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta
• Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's unshakeable compassion and revolutionary work around death and dying
• How his teacher Ajahn Chah's Thai monastery was an island of peace and possibility amidst war and conflict
• What the story of Korean Zen Master, Seung Sahn, getting a job at a laundry mat teaches us about non-attachment to self
• Compassion, the spiritual path, and the Way of the Bodhisattva

Discover the transformative practice of teaching mindfulness in a new FREE 30-page ebook by Senior Buddhist teacher and Emmy award-winning musician, David Nichtern. 

With its blend of humor, wisdom, and accessible approach, The Art of Teaching Mindfulness ebook is a must-read for anyone interested in sharing the life-changing practices of mindfulness with others.

Already downloaded by over 15k people, visit dharmamoon.com/ebook to get YOUR free copy of The Art of Teaching Mindfulness!

"The power that a human being who’s really committed to truth and love has to transform people around them is quite remarkable." – Jack Kornfield

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In this flowing question and answer session, Jack helps his students mindfully navigate topics like loneliness, intention setting, meditating with ADD, meeting our shame with nobility, and dealing with jerks.

"The spiritual path is really step by step. If you think of it as long, you can get lost and overwhelmed. But if you realize that you're not going from here to there, you're going from there to hear, the path leads you back to this moment and to a more tender heart.” – Jack Kornfield 

In this question and answer session, Jack and his students mindfully explore:

• A do-it-yourself intention setting ceremony
• What it's like to practice meditation with ADD
• The benefits of going on spiritual retreat both in-person and online
• How to handle being triggered by "jerks," politics, greed, hate, and injustice
• Meeting our shame and regret with nobility and growth
• Finding patience and trust for the spiritual path
• Spirituality and how to deal with difficult family
• The importance of satsang (sangha, spiritual community)

Transform your life through Jack's Kornfield's most powerful stories in this brand new 10-hour journey! Live session begin this October!

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Executive Chairman of the Ford Motor Company, Bill Ford, joins Jack to discuss capitalism, Right Livelihood, and the next generation.

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“To be successful in business you have to have values, you have to stand by those values, and you can't compromise those values. But you also have to have the tools to do that. Whether it's meditation or other forms of self-exploration, you have to have a way to shed the stress and to really dive into what's important.” – Bill Ford

In this episode, Jack and Bill mindfully navigate:

• How we can make business and work a force for good
• The stakes and rewards of servant leadership
• Capitalism, Right Livelihood, and the Next Generation
• Navigating tough decisions and bringing out the best in others
• Compassionate leadership in a cold economy
• Living with empathy and from our highest intention

Transform your life through Jack's Kornfield's most powerful stories in this brand new 10-hour journey! Live session begin this October!

"What's the point of your life if there isn't some well-being woven into it? It's not meant to be a grim duty. Some people take meditation as a grim duty. That doesn't make it happy, and it doesn't actually serve you in some deep way." – Jack Kornfield

This conversation was originally recorded for the Inner-MBA program presented by Sounds True.

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In this hilarious episode, Jack Kornfield, Trudy Goodman, and Bonnie Duran, DrPH, share stories on becoming empowered to solve your own problems.

Transform your life through Jack's Kornfield's most powerful stories in this brand new 10-hour journey! Live session begin on Sept 28th!

“The Buddha's enlightenment solved the Buddha's problem, now you solve yours.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode Jack, Trudy, and Bonnie mindfully explore:

• The powerful lesson encased within Bonnie's first one-on-one session with Joseph Goldstein
• Empowerment, personal understanding, and spiritual awakening
• Hilarious stories from Jack on his teacher Ajahn Chah involving enlightenment, Jesus, and the wisdom of not-knowing
• Trudy's two-sided spiritual lesson on aging, impermanence, and presence
• Dealing with uncertainty and learning to trust yourself

About Bonnie Duran, DrPH:

Bonnie Duran, DrPH, (mixed race Opelousas/Coushatta) is a Professor Emeritus in the Schools of Social Work and Public Health at the University of Washington (UW), in Seattle. Before, during and after completing her doctoral degree at UC Berkeley, she has worked in public health and social care research, education and practice with a focus on Native Americans/Indigenous peoples and other communities of color for over 35 years. Dr Duran has conducted studies of mental disorder prevalence, risk and protective factors, victimization, and treatment seeking/ barriers to care among people attending Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities and probability samples from the Tribal Colleges and University’s within the largest rural Tribal Nations in the U.S. In partnership with communities, she has adapted and developed Indigenous interventions for system level, community and individual health and wellbeing.

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

Learn more about Trudy’s offerings at trudygoodman.com

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Reflecting on what it means to live in a wise society, Jack shares stories on how we can handle difficult topics – cancer, abortion, women's rights, prison, and war – with a mutual respect.

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“How much respect do you give to those you disagree with? And what would they feel from you? Not that you have to have the same ideas, but is there that spirit of respect? Can you see the secret beauty behind their eyes? Can you see them all with a heart open even if you disagree?” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• What the truth of interdependence means to tending a wise society
• How Buddha, Dharma, and meditation connect with politics and community
• A story of enlightenment about 'The Rabbi, the Abbot, and The Messiah'
• Quieting the mind, opening the heart, mutual respect, and listening deeply
• The compassion of Quan Yin, and the Dharma as medicine for the world
• Gracefully handling topics like cancer, abortion, women's rights, the prison system, and war

Transform your life through Jack's Kornfield's most powerful stories in this brand new 10-hour journey starting Sept 28th!

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Jack shares a guided meditation on relaxing into the ocean of air we find ourselves in when we open to the present moment.

Transform your life through Jack's Kornfield's most powerful stories in this brand new 10-hour journey starting Sept 28th!

“You become a connoisseur of breathing for this moment, attentive to this remarkable breathing in and out of the atmosphere, keeping you alive, exchanging with all.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack leads a guided meditation helping us:

• Tune into embodied presence
• Invite in relaxation, ease and calm
• Become mindful of the body breathing itself
• Use noting to move past waves of emotions and thoughts

"As you sense each breath, you can whisper softly in the background of your mind, 'Ease, calm,' and allow the embodied presence that is feeling this breath to invite you into a place of stillness, breath by breath." – Jack Kornfield

This meditation was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock Meditation Center for the Monday Night Dharma Talk on July 24, 2023.

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Illuminating the concept of mudita – sympathetic joy – Jack helps us cultivate authentic happiness for those around us, and leads a guided meditation on the topic.

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"Spiritual joy is the innate capacity for the heart to take pleasure and wonderment in this life and in the happiness of others, a kind of sympathetic joy." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully navigates:

• Mudita as a spiritual/sympathetic joy and generosity of spirit which take s pleasure in the happiness of others
• Rumi, the ocean of poetry, channeling, listening, and inspiration
• Seeing the beauty in the the light, eyes, and world around us
• Spirituality, happiness, and taking responsibility for your heart
• The Buddha's lens that joy and beauty are crucial factors of enlightenment
• A guided meditation partner practice to cultivate mudita (sympathetic joy) and metta (loving kindness)

This Dharma Talk from 12/03/2001 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published by DharmaSeed.

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Jack returns to explore the nature of Dharma as universal, immediate, timeless, beneficial, protective, and available to all.

"The Dharma is universal, it's immediate, it's open-handed, it's to be experienced by each person for themselves directly, it's timeless. The truth of life is here to be discovered for any individual with eyes open to see." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully navigates:

• Sufis introducing the Dance of Universal Peace to Jack's retreat of Buddhists
• Dharma as universal, immediate, timeless, beneficial, protective, and available to all
• The various meanings of 'Dharma': the teachings, the physical/emotional elements of the world, personal destiny/path, and Universal Laws/Truth
• How Joseph Goldstein accidentally found his teacher Munindraji while on the way to take LSD under the Bodhi Tree
• Karma, impermanence, duality, selflessness, attachment, metta (loving kindness), and the preciousness of life
• The Vipassana paradox of Tibetan Dream Yoga

"The Dharma protects those who follow it like a great umbrella in the rainy season." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 12/05/1987 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Getting vulnerable about the hungers which afflict our lives, Jack helps us into the nirvana beyond the illusion of incompleteness.

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“In Sanskrit or Pali the word is ‘Trishna,’ which means thirst, desire, wanting. It’s exaggeration, or the realm that it manifests in in the greatest way, is called ‘The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts.’ Hungry Ghosts are pictured as these beings who have huge stomaches and tiny little mouths, so that it’s never possible to get enough in there to ease that hunger.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack vulnerably navigates:

• Hunger, abundance, deprivation, indulgence, addiction, and the illusion of incompleteness
• Feeling idiotic, depressed, needy, judgmental, sad, lonely, hungry, etc
• Trishna—thirst, desire, wanting—and the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts
• Samsara and the propulsion of endless wanderings of seperation/seeking
• Ajahn Chah and being with what is, rather than struggling against it
• Relating wisely and tenderly to Buddha’s First Noble Truth of suffering
• Nirvana as the end of cyclical grasping and the illusion that we are incomplete

“Nirvana is the end of cyclic existence, which is to say, the end of grasping and going around in circles looking for something that you are, but haven’t yet touched—the end of the illusion that we are incomplete.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 02/01/1987 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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In this lively episode, Jack dives into how mindfulness, awareness and intimacy help us engage with life more fully.

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"Zen master Dōgen said that to be mindful, to be awake, to pay attention, is the same as intimacy—intimacy with your lover, with your friends, or the sky and the trees, the drought, the grasses, your neighbors, the rhythms of the seasons, your children or parents." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• Spiritual practice as a path with heart about connecting our spiritual life and worldly life
• Using breath to relate with nature and life as movement and a process of change
• Understanding the movements of mind and using mindfulness to live more fully
• A story involving Jack, a Zen master, and a glass of sake at Naropa
• How mindfulness, awareness and intimacy are synonymous
• The way Jack personally deals with and gets intimate with loneliness in his life
• Meditation as teaching the art of appreciation for what's in front of us
• The art of getting intimate with our fear to engage with life more fully

"To enter into one thing in a very personal and immediate way—not with your mind, but your whole being—is to touch everything." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from Spirit Rock in January 1989 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Navigating the body's river of sensations, Jack helps us into the still-point of freedom amidst life's cycles of change.

"If our goal in spiritual practice is some state, some open state, it would be in spiritual life like buying already open flowers instead of buds, or like adopting an adult instead of a child. To awaken the heart of a Buddha requires us to find the deepest respect and compassion for things as they are, for they way things are. There isn't anything you can hold onto in that because it's always changing. There is no enlightened retirement. The way things are includes the cycles of stillness and action, the times of raising a family or being a renunciate, making money or retiring—and finding somehow a way to be with what is, with the truth of change." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully elucidates:

• The Dalai Lama's view on the Big Bang Theory
• How when we open deeply to our feelings, we recognize the body as a flowing river of sensation
• The Buddha's 'Eight Worldly Winds' and using mindfulness and Right Effort to navigate life's cycles of expansion and contraction
• Ram Dass, Be Here Now, and the "rollercoaster of highs and lows" of spiritual practice
• Finding freedom in the still-point amidst the cycles of change
• Trusting ourselves and the universe enough to let go into the mystery

"Life is a process of expansion and contraction. We breathe, and as we sit in meditation you notice there are long and short breaths, cool, fast, deeper ones and shallow ones. If you let it breath itself it has all these rhythms of the body opening and closing all the time. Then you pay attention to sensations in the body. At first it feels like tension, pain, hot, or cold, but the more deeply you listen with your inner-awareness, that which we call pain, tension, hot, or cold, becomes pulsing, throbbing, needles, pinpricks, swirling movement. The more deeply we feel, the more our body shows itself to be a river of sensation." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from Spirit Rock on 4/23/1989 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Illuminating the art of paying attention, Jack shares hilarious stories and mindful insights around how we can let go into the present.

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"To learn the art of paying attention requires some practice, that we learn how to sit and steady ourselves, to steady our bodies, and listen with a steadiness of heart, to actually be with what is here in our experience—pleasant and unpleasant, beautiful and ugly. That's what sitting is about, really, is to sit and be with the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows, to see them, feel them, and let ourselves be as we are." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack artfully illuminates:

• How your spiritual path is truly in your own hands; other's can point the way, but you must walk it
• The Buddha's four aspects of Right Effort
• Learning the art of paying attention, and applying this to sit with life's 10,000 joys and sorrows
• The Samurai way of going through the path of fire
• Jack's hilarious personal experience solving koans on Zen retreats
• Letting go into the present moment (while still acting in the world)

"As one Zen master says, 'Just put it down, put everything down. Just be here and forget about the past and future. That's enough.'" – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma talk from March 13, 1989 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed

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In this Independence Day focused episode, Jack reflects on how we can foster true freedom and independence through using a spiritual rudder.

"The Buddha, in the last bit of his life, said, 'When I'm gone, don't follow or place all of your reliance on elders or teachers, but rather follow the Dharma, the universal law, and know these things for yourself. Know the forces of grasping, hatred, and ignorance. Really know what they are. Let yourself see them, and know that it is possible to find freedom from these. If it weren't possible I wouldn't tell you about it. Then as you live your life, be aware of what brings goodness, what brings freedom from grasping, hatred, and delusion. Nourish that which brings that freedom, sustain it and support it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack dives into:

• The ideals of the U.S., versus its reality and history
• What it means to be independent, what it means to be free
• Learning what your "spiritual rudder" is to steer you in the midst of this Kali Yuga
• Buddha's advice on following the Dharma, and your Way, rather than following others
• Our spiritual rudder as synonymous with truth, love, integrity, and our Buddha Nature
• True freedom as freedom from the pull and sway of outside circumstances
• Real loving kindness, real metta, as timeless, fearless, and free

This Dharma talk given by Jack on July 4th, 1994 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Hop in the Sauna with Jack Kornfield and Prince Ea, as they steep deeply into topics of spirituality, fear, meditation, compassion, and staying awake in the world.

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"People say the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, but that's only half the story. There is a lot of suffering that really needs our honest compassion and tending, but it also needs hope. If you go into a refugee camp and you're depressed and worried; they don't need that, they already have plenty of that. They need somebody that comes in and says, 'We human beings can make the world better." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack and Prince Ea steam in:

• Meeting all facets of the world with optimism and hope
• Why we should never underestimate the human heart
• Mindful presence, loving awareness, and waking up to who we are
• Overcoming fear and not buying into the scare tactics used in politics
• What it was like for Jack to meet and learn from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
• The story of Jack becoming a Buddhism monk and finding Vipassana meditation
• Unpacking compassion as a verb, rather than empathy which is inactive

About Prince Ea:

Prince Ea is a film maker, speaker, human optimization researcher, and creator who has touched the hearts, minds and souls of millions of people worldwide. By producing creative, inspirational and thought provoking content, Prince has accumulated over 1 billion views on Facebook alone and even more on a combination of other platforms. For more info, please princeea.com

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Jack joins CEO of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Sam Altman, onstage with Soren Gordhamer at Wisdom 2.0 to talk artificial intelligence, spirituality, ethics, and the future of humanity.

Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI and ChatGPT. Soren Gordhamer is the founder of Wisdom 2.0.

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In this episode, Jack, Sam, and Soren explore:

• How A.I. technology will impact our world and the future of humanity
• The ways Sam's meditation practice is influencing his tech career
• Potential benefits and pitfalls of opening artificial intelligence onto the world
• If we can instill values, ethics, and morals into A.I.
• How Sam created OpenAI to allow a collective democratic process for how A.I. evolves
• Does artificial intelligence technology have a sense of self?
• Learning how humanity can best utilize these evolving tools
• How A.I. can aid our spiritual practice

"What are people going to do in the post-A.I. world when we all have tremendous resources, we've solved a lot of inequities in the world, and we have a lot of time on our hands? Well, there are a lot of people who need a lot of spiritual practice, and we're gonna have that time." – Sam Altman

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Plunging further into last week's topic, Jack offers vulnerable perspectives on how sexuality and relationships play into our life and practice.

"If one wants to understand karma, or one wants to understand virtue, ethics, or morality—which are equally important and profound in developing a spiritual life—the way to do it is very simple: it's beginning to know, observe, feel, and understand what's going on in our hearts as we act." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack vulnerably explores:

• Understanding karma, virtue, intention and action
• How so much of our sadhana and practice comes through our relationships
• Learning about ourselves and the universe through sex and relationship
• Sex and relationship as a form of opening and surrender, as well as commitment, offering, acceptance, growth, and healing
• Desire, grasping, reality, love, and the present moment
• Relationships as a place to find the foundations of mindfulness
• The nature of love as expression, growth, and unity

This episode from 1987 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Exploring the relationship between spirituality and sexuality, Jack offers reflections and perspectives on ways to dance with the sexual energy in our lives.

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"In a way, sex is a mirror. How your sexuality goes in a particular day or week is pretty much a reflection of the rest of your heart, mind, spirit, and being. In that regard, it's just like meditation—you sit down, close your eyes, and you get to see what's there: frustration, anger, happiness, or love. Sexuality serves the same way, physically, but even more so emotionally." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• The relationship between spirituality, sexuality, and our lives
• Why sexuality is such a major part of our culture
• Our underlying fear of true intimacy
• Suzuki Roshi's koan of "How do you realize Buddha while making love?"
• The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in relation to our sexuality
• Wounds, trauma, healing, and the body
• Using relationships in a skillful way to grow
• Tantra, breath, and going beyond ourselves

"If you look at our culture, television and mass media, sex is such a big part of it. Why is it such a big thing in our culture and our lives? Because, in part, it's a vehicle to go beyond ourselves." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharna talk from 1987 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Directly following Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's death, Jack offers perspectives on the life and dharma of one of spirituality's most impactful and controversial figures.

"Lama Govinda said that of all the young tulkus, of all the young incarnate lamas to leave Tibet, there was none as bright as Trungpa Rinpoche—bright in the sense of his field of his being and his energy. Lama Govinda, even at a point when he wasn't very happy with the way Trungpa Rinpoche was behaving, said that he still had to admit there was no one who walked across the Himalayas and came out who had that light more than Trungpa." – Jack Kornfield 

In this episode, Jack dives into:

• A celebration of the life, teachings, and impact of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
• The Vimalakīrti Sutra, and how certain Bodhisattvas teach as householders so that their message can be best understood by the world
• How Jack being invited to teach alongside Ram Dass, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein on the faculty of Trungpa's Naropa University in Boulder, CO sparked their teaching careers in the West
• Lama Govinda's view on Trungpa's innate radiant brightness and his "lion's roar"
• The traditions, trainings, and spirit of Shambala through the metaphor of the rising sun
• Meeting our life and practice with an openness and fearlessness
• Buddhist personality types and their unique seeds of awakening
• Trungpa's discipline for practice, and his deep devotion for his teachers and dharma lineage
• Ping-ponging between Ram Dass's and Trungpa Rinpoche's dueling Bhakti and Buddhism sessions the opening summer at Naropa

"Trungpa Rinpoche gave himself as fully to the West as any Buddhist teacher that I know that has come. And in a more remarkable way, he absorbed our culture, our language, our customs, who we are, into himself and said, 'Alright, let's play! Let's take the seed of the Dharma and really make it sparkle and alive in the West.'" – Jack Kornfield

 This Dharma Talk on 4/01/1987 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Rewiring our brains around difficulties, emptiness, fear, and longing, Jack highlights how we can connect our practice with our deepest love.

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"When you get afraid or things are difficult, fear is simply the signal that you're about to learn something new. When you feel afraid it's like the little light comes on that says, 'About to grow.'" – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack contemplates and explores:

• The times in our lives where we feel truly connected to our hearts
• Ajahn Jumnian, motivation for practice, spiritual thirst, and working with addiction
• Bringing awareness to the truth of emptiness and nature of joy and sorrow
• Reincarnation and seeing everyone in the world as your mothers, fathers, and children
• Finding that what we really want is simple heart connection
• Emptiness, longing, and feeding the hungry heart
• Stillness and living from our fundamental nature of love and caring
• The difficulties in life as part of the spiritual path
• Seeing life as a continuous flow of mistakes to learn from, and fear as a signal that you are about to grow

"To study emptiness means to accept without resisting, to not push away or not distract ourselves from the emptiness that's within us that we half-feel and keep trying to fill up through all of our sense of longing and deficiency. Instead, it's to sit and say, 'Alright, let me feel that longing, that emptiness, that space, that deficiency. Let me feel how deep it is, how big it is, and not just try to fill it right away.' When we stop running and feel that, then something new comes alive in us." – Jack Kornfield

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Mindfully retelling ancient Buddhist Dharma stories, Jack reflects on what it means to live with a wise heart.

"For someone who wants to break free inside of the forces of ignorance, delusion, habit, and sleepwalking—you must really see that there's something greater than just getting through each day, and devote yourself in some fashion to it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack opens us to:

• Modern retellings of ancient Buddhist Dharma stories
• The courage and mystery of the heart
• The law of karma and the power of intention
• The compelling nature of spiritual practice
• Buddha's past life as a lion living on an island with an elephant friend
• Discovering what is love, and what is goodness in the heart
• Learning to listen to where our actions comes from

"Find a place in yourself—in your being, your heart—that really wants to understand what life and death is about, that wants to live in a different way. Let that be the source of your inspiration, the source of your guidance." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 3/23/86 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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In this vintage Dharma Talk, Jack illuminates Buddhism's Three Characteristics of Life: stress, non-self, and impermanence.

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 "Somehow we believe our concepts, that we'll be here forever, that our life is really going to go on and on. Or we believe our advertising, the idea from the culture that if you get 'this' you'll be able to hold onto it and it will make you happy. It's just not true. Happiness is a matter of the heart; not something we can grasp or hold." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Knowledge, love, patience, and a spirit of constancy
• Being here now and living in mindfulness in the present moment
• Buddhism's Three Characteristics of Life
• Anicca: impermanence
• Anatta: non-self
• Dukkha: stress/suffering
• True happiness as a matter of the heart
• How you can't stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf
• The original truth of self and freedom

This teaching is part of a 4-week long Yoga of Heartfulness online course featuring teachings from Ram Dass and friends. Learn more about this 10 hour course: Ram Dass' Yoga of Heartfulness

This flowing lecture from 4/18/1985 was originally published on DharmaSeed

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Jack returns with a cosmic Dharma Talk exploring expansion and contraction in relation to impermanence as the root of spiritual practice.

"The law of change is the brown rice and vegetables of spiritual practice, it's the root of our direct experience of life." – Jack Kornfield 

In this episode, Jack takes us on a cosmic journey through:

• The basic fundamentals of Dharma teachings on how to live wisely in our practice
• A trippy interstellar perspective flip through a simple intergalactic thought experiment
• Life—this capacity to be conscious and aware—as a process of expansion and contraction
• The law of change, impermanence, as the "brown rice and vegetables" of spiritual practice
• Spiritual practice as a way to find freedom and compassion within ourselves
• Learning to live in the present of how it is, rather than how we wish it would be

This Dharma Talk from Spirit Rock Meditation Center on 6/20/1994 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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This week, Jack joins Michael Krasny for a conversation diving into mindfulness, loneliness, compassion, gratitude, suffering, meditation, and the Dharma.

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"With mindfulness you learn to live in the present. If you walk down the street and you're spending all your time thinking about that conversation you had and the tasks you have to do, you miss the people walking by, you miss the clouds after that rainstorm, the colors of the sunset—the lavender, red, and orange that's reflected in the windows and puddles—you miss your life. Mindfulness becomes liberating in that way." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack and Michael discuss:

• Ram Dass and the idea of "being here now" in regards to suffering, depression, and suicidal thoughts
• Overcoming loneliness, isolation, and grief by reaching out and connecting with others
• Wrapping ourselves in the infinitely compassionate cloak of of Quan Yin or Mother Mary
• How compassion and mindfulness practices regulate our body away from the 'fight, flight, freeze' response
• Vipassana meditation, the mindful loving witness, and bringing it back into the world
• Planting seeds with your conscious effort and peaceful heart, but not being attached to the outcome
• How mindfulness liberates us to be fully present for the beautiful nuances of our lives
• The difference between pain (inevitable) and suffering (optional)
• The various meanings of the word "Dharma," and it's relation to truth
• Making friends with our inner-critic and judging mind
• Consciousness, gratitude, and the Great Mystery

"We have the capacity to hold our sorrows and our measure of suffering with compassion rather than judgment, rather than fear, almost as if you could wrap yourself with the cloak of Quan Yin—the Goddess of Infinite Compassion—or Mother Mary, so that you know that you're not alone, and that we've done this." – Jack Kornfield 

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Uncovering how to live with a peaceful heart, Jack maps the inner landscapes of meditation, and shares how we can use listening to find The Way.

“A peaceful heart is not a withdrawal from life, but rather coming back into ourselves to remember the place that neither grasps nor judges and hates.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• What it means to live with a peaceful heart
• Moving beyond the grasping of attachment and aversion
• Living in the world from a place of wisdom
• The inner landscapes of meditation
• Greed, hatred, delusion, and revenge
• Interdependence, connection, and Bodhicitta
• Impermanence and the wisdom of insecurity
• The Goddess of Peace and the Goddess of Justice
• Wise response and transmuting suffering
• Bodhisattvas and compassion
• Buddha and the boundless infinity of love
• Listening to embody The Way

This flowing Dharma Talk from Jack on 10/01/2001 was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Jack returns for an illuminating Dharma Talk exploring the deep human longing for the wedding of body and spirit.

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"The invitation of spiritual life, of awareness or mindfulness—we could call it a sacred attention—is not to hurry up, fix, or make this human realm perfect or better. Nor is it to ignore it, but rather to awaken to what is each day as we meet it in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds, in our family, in our community on this earth – to see it how it is, and to illuminate it with the heart, to illuminate it with our understanding and compassion, to find the basket of spirit that is here, and let that spirit shine in this human realm." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack dives into:

- An old African wisdom story of a shepherd, his cattle, a dark forest, a lover, and a magic basket

- Life, death, void, silence, and opening to the great mystery

- Perception, consciousness, and Buddha's wisdom that mind is the principle element of creation

- Listening, truth, timelessness, and The One Who Knows

- The balance and connection between spirit and form

- Rumi and the deep human longing to wed body and spirit

- Buddha and the teachings of compassion

- Breath, wholeness, and the eternal present

- Moving past the fear body by breaking through the myth of seperation

This Dharma Talk from Spirit Rock Meditation Center on 09/11/2000 was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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In this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield connects with lifestyle expert Sarah Grynberg to talk about a life of greatness. 

"Really, meditation is about deep listening. You sit and what needs to be understood will come if you sit quietly. It is like going into the forest and finding a little clearing and sitting down. If you're quiet for a while the animals, the birds, they all resume their life and you see all the things you would never see before. " – Jack Kornfield 

In this episode Jack Kornfield and Sarah Grynberg discuss:

• What it was like for Jack to grow up in Judaism 
• Ajahn Chah and being ready for suffering 
• Surrender in meditation
• The catharsis of emotional release 
• Deep Listening 
• Buddhism as a practice versus a religion
• The Psychology of Heart and Mind 

About Sarah Grynberg

Sarah Grynberg is a well-renowned interviewer, well-being expert, keynote speaker, and host and producer of the highly-rated lifestyle and internationally successful podcast, A Life of Greatness, where she’s engaged some of the world’s biggest names. Through her years of research studying the links between the facets of human behavior, personal growth, and happiness, Sarah formulated her own blueprint for cultivating greatness. This powerful blueprint has become the touchstone of Sarah’s courses, talks & writing. You can keep up with Sarah on Instagram or on SarahGrynberg.com

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Teaching us about breath work and presence, Jack Kornfield guides a mindfulness meditation and discusses the beauty of listening.

"You are not the body, you are the mindful loving awareness that notices this body with kindness and care." – Jack Kornfield 

In this episode Jack Kornfield offers us:

• A guided mindfulness meditation 
• Tools to relax and experience presence 
• Breathing techniques for full body awareness 
• Ways to develop the capacity to listen
• Advice on working with trauma 
• Ways to thank our fears 

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Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein explore the emergence of Western Buddhism and balancing faith with wisdom.

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"In the Buddhist tradition it's said that one of the prayers one might make is: May I be born in circumstances that I may experience the Dharma that will bring me to awaken the heart of boundless compassion and discover inner freedom." – Jack Kornfield

"That kind of questioning which isn't cynical and isn't arrogant but is really wondering, really wanting to know the truth for oneself, I think of as an essential component of faith." – Sharon Salzberg 

"Even in those first few minutes, what I discovered was there was a way to look into the mind as well as looking out through it. To me that was revelatory." – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein touch on:

• The formation of the Insight Meditation Society
• The emergence of Western Buddhism
• The balance of faith and wisdom 
• Starting small with meditation
• Being the product of our conditioning
• Having compassion for the human predicament 

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In this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield teaches us about fostering femininity in our dharma practice.

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In this episode Jack Kornfield discusses:

• The relationship of birth and death
• Loving deeply by opening our hearts, bodies, and mind
• Moving from the masculine to the feminine 
• The power of forgiveness

"Part of what's happening to practice is that it is becoming balanced with a greater emphasis of the feminine...instead of independence there's more teaching of interdependence, of relationship to one's body, relationship to the earth." – Jack Kornfield

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In this episode, Jack Kornfield helps us discover how the ocean of breath can lead to greater compassion for all.

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"With the opening of breath comes a spaciousness or a healing quality which is that we can allow ourselves to hold in compassion, with a kindness of heart, all that arises." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode Jack Kornfield discusses:

• Breath as the movement of spirit
• The cycle and rhythms of life
• Developing awareness of the breath
• Noticing our senses

This 1994 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed

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By telling stories of the Buddha, Jack Kornfield directs us on the purpose of practice and the laws of Dharma.

"What we repeatedly direct our mind to in this society is consumerism and materialism and addictions of different kinds. What we direct ourselves to, we get. For better or for worse." – Jack Kornfield

This talk from Jack Kornfield 1/4/1994 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

In this episode Jack Kornfield discusses:

• The will to do
• Skillful action
• The mind as a mirror
• Birth stories of the Buddha
• Renunciation
• Awakening to the law of Dharma

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In simple, heartfelt presence, Jack Kornfield teaches us about coming into the dharma body.

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"You can see it in your life. It's helpful to be aware when you drive, or if you paint or you do computer programming or you make love, or you write poetry, or you garden. Mindfulness, I declare, is all helpful. With that presence is the path to freedom, to awakening." — Jack Kornfield

In this episode Jack Kornfield discusses:

• Stories of Thich Nhat Hanh
• Becoming the Buddha
• Cosmic Breakthroughs
• Navigating Death
• Mindfull Awareness

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Jack Kornfield describes the Buddha's vow to awakening and how we too can set a daily intention to awaken. 

NEW Meditation Series: Pause, Breathe, Be Here Now with Ram Dass, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, John Lockley, Ram Dev, Trudy Goodman, Lama Tsultrim Allione—FREE January 16 to 25. Sit in true peace, love, and tranquility. Join thousands of people around the world for this collective meditation experience: onecommune.com/ramdass

"An intention creates our life. Thought manifests or leads to deeds, deeds develop into habit, habit hardens into character and character shapes our world." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode Jack Kornfield discusses:

• The small, intimate choice to awaken
• Collective awakening
• Intention in practice
• The interplay of mind and body

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Moving beyond our small sense of self, Jack Kornfield introduces us to the ways intention, love, and acceptance can transform us.

Amidst our ever-changing lives, we can find the patterns which form from our hearts and realize the source of who we are.

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NEW Meditation Series: Pause, Breathe, Be Here Now with Ram Dass, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, John Lockley, Ram Dev, Trudy Goodman, Lama Tsultrim Allione—FREE January 16 to 25. Sit in true peace, love, and tranquility. Join thousands of people around the world for this collective meditation experience: onecommune.com/ramdass

"Our heart is the garden into which we plant seeds and nourish them. Depending on our intention, gradually, we shape the patterns of our lives. What's important then is not so much what we say or do, but what is the intention with that? " – Jack Kornfield

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Reflecting on impermanence, Jack Kornfield explains that despite our physical frailty our spirit can never truly die.

Where can we go when we die? Jack Kornfield explores the recycling of energy, our limitlessness beyond death, and how death enables us to live more presently.

NEW Meditation Series: Pause, Breathe, Be Here Now with Ram Dass, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, John Lockley, Ram Dev, Trudy Goodman, Lama Tsultrim Allione—FREE January 16 to 25. Sit in true peace, love, and tranquility. Join thousands of people around the world for this collective meditation experience: onecommune.com/ramdass 

"There's this amazing thing with death that there is both less of someone and yet more of them. There's some way in which you can walk in the woods and they are there to speak too. Being with death slows us down, it softens us, it makes us more gracious." — Jack Kornfield

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Mindfully navigating death, we learn from Jack Kornfield how to appreciate the vulnerability of one's final moments on earth.

Jack Kornfield describes the truth death pushes us to face and how keeping an awareness of the inevitable aids us in living fully while we can.

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NEW Meditation Series: Pause, Breathe, Be Here Now with Ram Dass, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, John Lockley, Ram Dev, Trudy Goodman, Lama Tsultrim Allione—FREE January 16 to 25. Sit in true peace, love, and tranquility. Join thousands of people around the world for this collective meditation experience: onecommune.com/ramdass 

"Mindfulness of death is powerful because it begins to bring abut a deep questioning, a profound shift of identity. In the face of death, who are we?" — Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield describes finding a light in the dark via Buddhist wisdom on forgiveness, transience, and a profound sense of freedom.

Through ancient storytelling and dharmic conversation, Jack Kornfield helps us grasp forgiving ourselves and others, keeping a connection to our senses and instincts, and resting in our Buddha nature. 

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 “To forgive means simply that we will not put anyone out of our heart because to do so closes us. It reduces us from being human.” – Jack Kornfield 

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Traversing the receptive energy of water, Jack Kornfield details the power of fluidity, serenity, and gentleness.

This lecture was originally uploaded on DharmaSeed.org

A spiritual journey is often quite gradual. It is not typical to one day wake up and have a deep relationship with God or become enlightened. That gradual deepening we feel as we tune into our practice is much like a body of water. We are open, receptive, and vast. The mystery of being is that we do not know our destiny or how our spiritual journey will form, but like water, we can yield to the mystery.

"Do you have the constancy to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving and present until the right action arises by itself?"

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Through catalysts of compassion and acceptance, Jack Kornfield guides us into a life of lasting transformation.

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“We are a pattern, a process, that is never the same. In this process of our life, the patterns that continue for us flow out of our intentions.” – Jack Kornfield

This dharma talk was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Sharing the wisdom of beloved Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah, Jack Kornfield describes experimenting with life and accepting things as they are.

This Dharma Talk from Jack Kornfield was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

"What he was pointing to was that we can see with great honesty our circumstance, with great compassion, and in the middle of it laugh. This too is a part of our humanity...there is a wisdom that is so much greater than the things we get caught up in." – Jack Kornfield 

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Leaning into the qualities of an awakened heart, Jack Kornfield teaches us the perfection of truthfulness and how it will set us free.

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In a society that does not promote the truth among its citizens, government, or economy, we have to work hard on our individual honesty. Sometimes that may mean something quite surface-level. Jack says that there are levels of truth. We may see the truth of someone's personality, their job, and their costume. Or, we may see a deeper, soul level of truth. Meeting someone in their true spirit, from our true spirit, allows everyone to be fully seen.

"The truth really becomes married with compassion and our words then become a part of something that awakens not just ourselves but everybody else." – Jack Kornfield

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Gather around for story time as Jack Kornfield offers a dharma talk centered around the Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta, which contains the teachings from the last year of the Buddha’s life.

This dharma talk was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 8/22/22

Find more teaching from Jack Kornfield at jackkornfield.com.

“Because it’s the shaking of the foundation of all the ground that we stand on. Enlightenment, the teachings of birth and death, the earthquake says this is what wakes us from the dream of separateness and solidity. There’s something greater here in this human incarnation. Who are you really? Remember. You are consciousness itself born into this body. You are the witness to it all. And the earthquake reminds you of this.” – Jack Kornfield

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Proceeding with the practice in daily life series, Jack Kornfield plunges into right concentration and mindful breathing.

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"Concentration isn't a forcing of your mind on the breath or on the pain, the pleasant sensation or on the thought. It's much more a sense of the opening, the softening, the receiving—that's what allows the mind to settle." – Jack Kornfield 

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Continuing his survey of the Eightfold path, Jack Kornfield teaches listeners about Right Effort and how we can apply ourselves in spiritual practice.

“In the end, you have to let go. No matter how much effort you make and where it takes you, it doesn't take you all the way. Because it is not your effort that makes you free, but your discovery of what's true about yourself and life.” – Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield delves into Right Livelihood, one of the key practices on the Eightfold Path that can help us find joy in our occupation.

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"Find something, and really give yourself to it. That is a happiness." – Jack Kornfield

This talk from Jack Kornfield was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Exploring Right Action and the Five Precepts, Jack offers modern Buddhist insight on ahimsa, virtue, happiness, drugs, sex, and samadhi.

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Continuing a series of talks illuminating the Noble Eightfold Path, Jack sheds light on a prominent aspect of Buddhism: Right Action. Taking you on a journey through the Five Precepts by sharing deep and entertaining stories and insights, Jack offers wisdom around ahimsa (non-harming), reflects on witnessing a transformation prayer from Mad Bear of the Iroquois Nation, and relays down-to-earth Middle Way guidance around drugs, sex, and samadhi.

"Look in your life at what it is that makes you more conscious rather than less conscious. Rather than running away or deluding yourself, what brings you face to face with life and wakes you up? Cultivate that." – Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield continues his series of talks on practice in daily life by focusing on uprightness of heart, Right Speech, and how we can learn to let our words come more directly from our heart.

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“What Right Speech does, it asks us a question: Can we start to become conscious of all these hours where we talk on automatic pilot? Can we make it become more useful to ourselves and to our planet, to that question I asked: What do you care about? What do you want for the world and for yourself?” – Jack Kornfield

This talk from Jack Kornfield was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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In this second part of his 'Practice in Daily Life' series, Jack Kornfield leads a lecture on intention and the ways it can determine our karma.

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This talk from Jack Kornfield was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

“The gift of intention, the dedication, is to fulfill your own true nature – to fulfill that which is beautiful in you.” – Jack Kornfield

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In this dharma talk from 1985, Jack Kornfield speaks to the heart of meditation by posing a series of frequently asked questions about bringing our spiritual practice into daily life.

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Support podcasts like this through the Be Here Now Network 6th-Anniversary Fundraiser Drive - win tickets to the Ram Dass Legacy retreat in Maui, shop limited edition BHNNxBrunofsky merch and more: beherenownetwork.com/fundraiser

This Jack Kornfield talk was originally published on Dharma Seed

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There is never a bad time to open ourselves to the spirit of the holidays! Reflecting on the 'season of generosity', Jack shares holiday Dharma stories on quieting the mind and opening the heart.

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In this Dharma talk stemming from Spirit Rock's Monday Night Dharma Class on 12/14/2015, Jack Kornfield focuses on the holiday season, relating various stories and perspectives to how we can move about human incarnation and our daily lives in a compassionate and generous way.

This talk from Jack Kornfield was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on abortion, Jack Kornfield explores the theme of mindful respect and how we can all listen to each other with loving awareness.

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This dharma talk was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on June 27, 2022.

“When we embody respect, graciousness, loving awareness for all, when we listen deeply, we are changing the world person by person, piece by piece. And this is the only way that it happens. We add our voice, we add our love, we add our courage, and we do so with the power of loving awareness and the freedom that it offers.” – Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield guides a “Here and Now” meditation focusing on connecting to the present moment, and receiving the breath and waves of experience with loving awareness.

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This meditation was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 5/16/22.

"There will be sensations of the body, sounds, emotions, and feelings arising, and a parade of images and thoughts and words will come and go. And you take your seat just where you are in the midst of all of these rising and passing experiences."

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Jack Kornfield offers spiritual advice on the path of parenting, shedding light on engaging the mystery with qualities of consciousness, mindfulness, and love.

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In this Dharma Talk stemming from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center on January 1st, 1991, Jack Kornfield shares spiritual practices and perspectives on the multi-faceted realm of raising children in the modern world. Outlining the qualities of conscious parenting, he shares stories from the Buddha, poems from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and leads meditations aimed at bringing awareness to the path of parenting.

"In some way, to parent is to plant something that's beautiful onto this earth for generations ahead." – Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield offers wisdom on awakening in the midst of life, sharing insight on navigating life's joys and sorrows with a fearless heart.

In this Dharma Talk stemming from January 4th, 1991, Jack Kornfield speaks to the process of awakening in the midst of life. Exploring the cycle of return, life's 10,000 joys and sorrows, and what role time and the present moment play in relation to Bodhisattvas and enlightenment, Jack elucidates the intricacies of life, death, fearlessness and the heart.

"To make one's activity sacred is to do it for that which is your deepest love, for that which you most deeply value." – Jack Kornfield

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This week on Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield lectures on false gurus, cults, and finding true teachers along our spiritual path.

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This dharma talk from Joseph was originally published on Dharma Seed 

“We have this amazing capacity to take situations and imagine them to be different than they are.” – Jack Kornfield

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In this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield blesses us with a dharma talk on the most basic truths in Buddhism: Annica, Dukkha, and Anatta.

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"As we become wise, we step back and see the mystery of it instead of how it is supposed to be." – Jack Kornfield 

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This time on Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield reveals how Buddhist principles have the capacity to bring us happiness and joy.

Explore the intersection of Buddhism & Bhakti with Be Here Now Network teachers and guests at the inaugural Love Serve Remember Summer Mountain Retreat August 25th – 29th in Boone, NC: https://www.ramdass.org/event/lsrf-summer-immersion-mountain-retreat/

“We can reawaken that capacity to actually appreciate life through a training of awareness and through being somewhat disciplined in a sitting practice.” – Jack Kornfield

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Reminding us of our luminous true nature, Jack invites us into the war-free zone of the heart, and leads a chant of the mantra 'Namoh.'

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In this Dharma Talk from Spirit Rock Meditation Center on 12/10/2007, Jack Kornfield shares reflective wisdom pointing to our innate capacity for love, compassion, metta, and joy. Exploring how our heart can be a war-free zone no matter the outside circumstances, he offers insight around the modern human predicament, before closing with a powerful and harmonic group chanting of the mantra 'Namoh.'

This talk from Jack Kornfield was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Jack Kornfield reflects on dynamic Buddhist stories highlighting how we can tend the garden of the world by tending to the garden of our heart.

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"Stay connected to the best of these seeds. Take a moment to reflect: What is your highest intention—in your love relationship, in raising children, in doing your work? Your intention is part of the seed. Come back to it again and again to water it. What is your intention for this world?" – Jack Kornfield

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In this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield offers a potent guided meditation designed for letting go into open, spacious awareness.

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"You are the Buddha resting in vastness, seeing the arising and passing of all things with the great heart of compassion, peaceful in the midst of it all." – Jack Kornfield

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Amidst Russia's war on Ukraine, Jack Kornfield applies spiritual wisdom to remind us that peace is possible.

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This talk was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock Meditation Center on 3/28/22

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Jack Kornfield inspires us with a dialogue on stillness, suffering, and how we can set intentions to help others.

“We stop and try to sit quietly and it's like there is a layer of ice that needs to thaw before the water can even move inside.” 

Each year we watch birds come and go; we see stillness and then movement. Sometimes, we forget that humans too are a part of nature. Jack reads us a poem by Pablo Neruda about being still and making each moment exotic. The poem is an invitation to quiet the mind, be present, and live from our hearts. Jack empathizes with how difficult it can be to relish in the stillness of life.

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This meditation was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock 

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In this guided meditation, Jack Kornfield helps us to open our hearts and to extend compassion to all in a time of war.

This episode of the Heart Wisdom Podcast was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 2/28/22.

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Jack Kornfield addresses the grief of the war in Ukraine, talking about how to have a peaceful heart in a time of war, and then explores the legacy and teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.

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This meditation was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 2/28/22

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In this guided meditation, Jack Kornfield helps us settle into an embodied awareness where we can simply let the breath breath itself and become the loving witness, consciousness itself.

This meditation was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 8/23/21

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Opening to the Great Mystery, Jack Kornfield illuminates how we can traverse the tumultuous polarities of life from the mindful and freeing perspective of the loving witness.

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This talk was originally livestreamed by Spirit Rock Meditation Center on 8/23/21

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Jack Kornfield engages the topic of how and why we become enlightened, talking about how we can experience the qualities of enlightenment at different times and in different ways.

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This Jack Kornfield dharma talk was originally published on Dharma Seed

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In this dharma talk from 2014, Jack Kornfield explores how we can navigate the never-ending waves of change in our lives with loving awareness, equanimity, and compassion.

This Jack Kornfield talk was originally published on Dharma Seed

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Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman join together to speak on the art and heart of forgiveness, and how forgiveness is an expression of what it means to live with loving awareness.

This dharma talk from Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman on the art and heart of forgiveness was originally published on Dharma Seed

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Jack Kornfield offers Buddhist wisdom for guiding your own practice as a householder, exploring continuity and impermanence with careful attention.

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This talk was given at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in 1986 and was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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In this heartfelt dharma talk, Jack Kornfield offers us wisdom on how we can practice gratitude and generosity during these challenging and difficult times. 

This dharma talk was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 11/22/21

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Planting seeds of faith, Jack weaves together Buddhist Sutta, teaching advice from Ram Dass, & an unknowing koan from his daughter—inviting us into the sacred pause of mystery & eternity.

Jack Kornfield shares a dharma talk on 'The Sacred Pause' – originally airing 3/22/21 from his ongoing Spirit Rock Monday night livestreams.

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Jack Kornfield explores the forgiving heart, offering us the basic ingredients for wise forgiveness, and leads a powerful guided meditation practice called the three directions of forgiveness.

This dharma talk was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 9/20/21

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A flowing and mystical Jack Kornfield opens our hearts to the vast spiritual mystery of death and impermanence.

Just in time for Halloween and the transition into the winter season, Jack Kornfield shares a timely lecture on death from his ongoing Spirit Rock Monday night livestreams.

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Jack Kornfield shares how we can apply parenting wisdom to our personal spiritual practice to heal and train our inner child.

This dharma talk was recorded on Jan 1st, 1988 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and originally published on Dharma Seed.

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Reflecting on our intrinsic Basic Goodness, Jack outlines how acceptance, trust, meditation, and faith in the heart can help us navigate life’s 10,000 joys and sorrows.

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"There's a kind of goodness that can be tapped in people when it serves an end that's greater than our small self that is really wonderful... It's something really basic in human beings and in our heart." – Jack Kornfield

This Jack Kornfield dharma talk from March 3rd, 1986 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on Dharma Seed.

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With a little help from Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan, Jack Kornfield explores the Seven Factors of Enlightenment and how we can all become impeccable warriors. 

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“One of the wonderful things about practice is each moment, in each thing we do in our life, is a new opportunity to be mindful, to be complete, to be whole. It’s never too late, and it’s never lost. It’s just now, again.” – Jack Kornfield

This Jack Kornfield talk from June 16, 1982 at the Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center was originally published on Dharma Seed. 

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In this timeless dharma talk from 1977, Jack Kornfield explores working with wisdom, power, and knowledge on your spiritual path, and why it’s so important to walk the Middle Way. 

This Jack Kornfield talk from December 1977 at the Insight Meditation Society Retreat Center was originally published on Dharma Seed. 

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In this dharma talk from 1986, Jack Kornfield explores a few truths about life that are really all we need to know, and how our direct experiences of these truths lead to freedom.

This Jack Kornfield talk given at Spirit Rock in 1986 was originally published on Dharma Seed. 

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Sharing a guided meditation and dharma talk, Jack explores the transformative power of Mudita – our innate sympathetic joy – through the childlike wonder of the Buddha.

This meditation & dharma talk were originally streamed live by Spirit Rock on 4/12/21. For more livestreams, meditations, & offerings, visit Jack's Youtube & JackKornfield.com

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In this dharma talk, Jack Kornfield explores seeing the world with the heart of wisdom and what it means when we rest in the One Who Knows.

This dharma talk was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock on 2/8/21. 

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Offering timeless wisdom, Jack Kornfield elucidates pertinent lessons on the topics of freedom, gratitude, trust, and the buoyancy of hope.

In the adjoining talk to last episode's 'Just Like Me' Guided Meditation—from a November 23, 2020 Jack Kornfield & Friends session from Spirit Rock‘s ongoing Monday Night Dharma Talk & Meditation—Jack shares pertinent wisdom on to aid the trying times we find ourselves in. Offering lessons learned of freedom, he shares the example of Nelson Mandela. In teaching on gratitude, he recounts a ceremony with Iroquois Medicine Man, Mad Bear. And sharing on trust, Jack offer's Martin Luther King's 'buoyancy of hope,' to keep us afloat on turbid waters.

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In this episode, Jack Kornfield leads his 'Just Like Me' guided meditation, a practice designed to work past our individual differences by seeing through the eyes of wisdom and heart of compassion.

Heralding from a November 23, 2020 Jack Kornfield & Friends session from Spirit Rock's ongoing Monday Night Dharma Talk & Meditation, Jack offers a potent guided meditation inviting us to work past our individual differences by celebrating our similarities and seeing the world through the eyes of wisdom. Encouraging us to bring a "difficult" person to mind, Jack walks us through a deep meditation aimed at peeling back our personal veils, so we can rest in the compassionate understanding, metta, and loving awareness of our unity. When we are truly seeing with the heart, we recognize that all others are...just like me.

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In this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield explores how conflict is natural for human beings and covers the Buddha’s seven-step process of reconciliation.

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On this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield leads a guided meditation that focuses on the practice of deep listening as we breathe love in, and breath love out. 

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In this dharma talk, Jack Kornfield offers wisdom and inspiration amidst the chaos of today’s world and explores how suffering is not the end of the story, but the beginning.

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In this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack shares poems and stories to help us bask in the wonder and mystery of life, meet cosmic pain with compassion and reflect on gratitude.

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In the face of these divisive times, Jack Kornfield offers some timely wisdom on equanimity, karma, maintaining a vast perspective and planting the seeds of goodness.

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In this dharma talk, Jack Kornfield explores why it’s so important to listen with the heart, both to yourself and to others, during these very chaotic and divisive times.

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Jack Kornfield explores how the Buddhist concept of Right Effort is about the effort to be present and bring more loving awareness to ourselves and the world around us.

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In this much-needed dharma talk, Trudy Goodman Kornfield and Jack Kornfield share their wisdom on working with polarization, and how we can all quiet our minds and steady our hearts.

Trudy Goodman Kornfield, Ph.D., is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. She also teaches residential retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA, Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center, and Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, among others. Learn more at trudygoodman.com.

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Jack Kornfield leads an equanimity meditation to help us be steady and balanced in the midst of constant change, then follows with a meditation that goes straight into the heart of compassion.

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Jack Kornfield shares a talk about the medicine that the Dharma might offer us during these turbulent times, explores the power of speaking truth, and reflects on the world's need for love in action.

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In this online dharma talk aimed at creating sangha during the novel coronavirus pandemic, Jack explores the causes and conditions for cultivating and maintaining a peaceful heart during trying times. Illuminating the topics of compassion, equanimity, and impermanence, Jack shares how we can use mindfulness and loving awareness to help birth a better world. For help during these trying times, Jack has compiled an ongoing catalogue of anti-racism resources, as well as a list of pandemic resources on his website JackKornfield.com

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In this post-election dharma talk from 2016, Jack offers spiritual sanctuary and human possibility to a zeitgeist of fear, anger, and uncertainty.

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In this talk, Jack illuminates how the history of racism and prejudice in this nation directly contradicts our instilled ideals of freedom and independence.

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Jack Kornfield explores the need we have right now for acts of truth, and shares some timeless teachings to help us in this time of pandemic. 

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If you enjoy the Heart Wisdom Podcast, we think that you will enjoy this special look at the relationship between food, ourselves and our practice with Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Ram Dass.

You can subscribe to Ram Dass' Here and Now Podcast in your podcast player to receive regular talks and guided practices from the Ram Dass archives.

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Jack Kornfield elucidates the mysteries of death, birth, identity, and awareness on this episode of the Heart Wisdom Podcast.

Keep up with Jack’s at home Monday Night Dharma Talks and find resources for dealing with the Novel Coronavirus pandemic at JackKornfield.com

Would you like to be part of the next generation of mindfulness meditation instructors? If so, we invite you to take a unique opportunity to study with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach and become a certified instructor to guide others in their practice – The Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program: A Two-Year Training Program for Teaching Awareness and Compassion-Based Practices

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Jack Kornfield offers a guided practice and Dharma talk that reminds us of the inner refuge that is available to us in the most hopeless of times.

Would you like to be part of the next generation of mindfulness meditation instructors? If so, we invite you to take a unique opportunity to study with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach and become a certified instructor to guide others in their practice – The Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program: A Two-Year Training Program for Teaching Awareness and Compassion-Based Practices

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Jack Kornfield shares his thoughts on the value of spiritual practice, and leads a guided meditation designed to use the breath to cultivate a steadiness of presence.

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Author and environmentalist Paul Hawken joins Jack Kornfield for a riveting dharma talk on climate change and how we can come together to spur the regeneration of our world.

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We go back into the archives to just a few weeks after the events of 9/11 for a lesson on how we can better respond to fear, tragedy, and injustice by cultivating a peaceful heart.

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Jack Kornfield shares stories of his dear friend and teacher, Ram Dass, and then explores how we can overcome the obstacles of climate change by honoring our interconnectedness.

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Jack Kornfield illuminates the fertile darkness of winter solstice as he talks about why it’s the perfect time to start anew and let what truly matters in your heart come into the light. 

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In this dharma talk, Jack Kornfield reminds us to bring loving-awareness to all our actions in life as he ties together the concepts of Right Livelihood and redemption.

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Jack Kornfield offers a reflection on our Buddha-nature and the wisdom of 'The One Who Knows'.

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On this episode of Heart Wisdom, Jack shares a story of transformation as he talks about how to be in this human incarnation and navigate the river of impermanence. 

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Fellow teacher Mark Coleman joins Jack Kornfield for an exploration of ways that we can harmonize with impermanence by meeting change with an open heart.  

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Jack Kornfield shares a dharma talk that looks at the seeds of lovingkindness and awareness that we plant through mindfulness and meditation practice.

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Who are we? In this dharma talk, Jack explores the mystery of identity and how meditation can open you up to the freedom of resting in timeless awareness. 

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Jack explores the concept of dukkha, which is the Buddha’s First Noble Truth, and how we can open our hearts to all the joy and suffering of our incarnation.

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In this special episode of the Heart Wisdom Podcast, Jack Kornfield honors the life and wisdom of his early Vipassana teacher, S.N. Goenka.

S.N. Goenka was a pioneer in making Vipassana meditation widely available to a secular audience. Over 170 meditation centers have been established around the globe in his honor. Goenka was an inspiration and teacher to thousands of students from around the world, including Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Ram Dass, Daniel Goleman, and many other western spiritual leaders. Discover the legacy of S.N. Goenka: vridhamma.org

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Poet Alison Luterman joins Jack for a beautiful duet as the two take turns reading poetry and talking about the power of words and creativity.

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With an open heart and clear vision, Jack talks about the difficult subject of climate change, our deep connection to the natural world, and how we can make a difference with love and compassion.

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In this dharma talk, Jack uses the topic of identity as a lens to understand the practice of mindfulness and explore the beautiful mystery of this incarnation.

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In this episode of the Heart Wisdom Podcast Jack Kornfield shares stories that open the mind, mend the heart and lead us to joy. 

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Jack Kornfield gives a beautiful dharma talk about the quality of equanimity and how this ever-changing world needs people whose hearts are at peace.

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In this talk, Jack Kornfield shares wisdom on the quality of mindful loving awareness that brings both healing and liberation.

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Jack is joined on stage by Chade-Meng Tan for an exploration of how spiritual practice and the search inside ourselves can guide us through our human predicament.

Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) is an award-winning engineer, international bestselling author, thought leader, movie producer, and philanthropist. Meng led the creation of a groundbreaking mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course at Google called Search Inside Yourself and is work has received eight nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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This time on the Heart Wisdom Podcast, Jack Kornfield shares teachings from The Buddha about the process of realizing, overcoming and liberating that comes from mindfulness practice.

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Jack Kornfield reflects on the beauty of life and the true nature of the Self that is revealed through poetry and art.

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In this episode of the Heart Wisdom Podcast, Jack shares what the story of the bodhisattva Vimalakirti can teach us about meeting the difficulties of life with an awakened heart.

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This week on the Heart Wisdom Podcast, Jack looks at the many enlightenments that each of us is capable of and explores why the possibility of liberation is such a taboo in many circles.

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Jack Kornfield shares a conversation with Sylvia Boorstein around taking the Bodhisattva vow and staying in touch with our Buddha nature as we navigate our journey of awakening.

Listen here:  https://beherenownetwork.com/jack-kornfield-ep-84-tag-team-dharma-with-sylvia-boorstein

Sylvia Boorstein, MSW, Ph.D. is the author of numerous books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation practice, including That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist and Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life. She is a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Sylvia has been teaching nationally and internationally since 1985. Her personal emphasis in teaching is the integration of mindfulness into everyday life.

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Jack shares the story of the Buddha’s final days and teachings, a story of inspiration and wisdom that offers a bigger picture of our place in things.

Find show notes and resources here: https://beherenownetwork.com/jack-kornfield-ep-83-a-story-of-inspiration/

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This time on the Heart Wisdom Podcast, Jack examines the inner beauty and liberation that comes from cultivating respect for all beings.

Find show notes and resources here: https://beherenownetwork.com/jack-kornfield-ep-82-respect-for-all/

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Jack Kornfield explores the liberation available when we cultivate our creativity through the practices of an open heart.

Find show notes and links here: https://beherenownetwork.com/jack-kornfield-ep-81-creativity/

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This week on the Heart Wisdom Podcast, Jack introduces us to a particularly beautiful practice, known as the Big Sky Meditation, that guides us into a quality of presence that is entered through the doorway of sound.

Find show notes and links here: https://beherenownetwork.com/jack-kornfield-ep-80-big-sky-meditation/

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On this special episode of the Heart Wisdom Podcast, Jack reflects on the life and teachings of his teacher Ajahn Chah.

Find show notes and links for this episode here: https://beherenownetwork.com/jack-kornfield-ep-79-Ajahn Chah

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