Be Here Now Network

Gil Fronsdal offers Buddhist wisdom on relating skillfully to our emotions and seeing them as messengers of our inner worlds.

In this talk, Gil Fronsdal lectures about:

Identifying emotions without getting lost in the story

The necessity and benefits of feeling pain

Knowing what's happening as it's happening

How most of us are driven by our desires and aversions

Simply knowing and how free our knowing can be

Making room for our experiences

How our emotions let us know what we should pay attention to

Learning how our emotions live in the intelligent system of our body

How reactivity blocks us from processing emotions

Being in our body and allowing processes to unfold

“One of the primary functions of emotions is to let us know something is important. They’re knocking on the door of our capacity to know. They are not accidents, they’re not incidental, they’re not annoyances, they’re not unfortunate. They’re actually a very important form of which your inner life is presenting itself to you.” – Gil Fronsdal

This talk was originally published on Dharmaseed

In this fresh guided meditation, Jack invites you to rest your mind and heart to uncover the authentic happiness encased within true peace.

This Dharma Talk originally took place for the Spirit Rock Monday Night Dharma Talk and Guided Meditation on 11/23/2024. To join his next livestream, please check out Jack’s events calendar at JackKornfield.com/events

“There is no greater happiness than peace.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack leads a guided meditation on:

- Peace as the highest happiness

- Finding ease, stability, stillness, and presence

- Receiving whatever arises with kindness and compassion

- Inviting thoughts and emotions to quiet

- Resting in mindful loving awareness

- Uncovering a peaceful mind and full heart

“Feel how the earth you are sitting on supports you completely in its steadiness.” – Jack Kornfield

Turning to Celtic wisdom, author and teacher John Philip Newell chats with Raghu about reconnecting to our home, Mother Earth.

This week, John and Raghu get into:

- John’s upbringing and being drawn to the natural world

- The Celtic lineage and having awareness for the sacredness of nature

- Knowing that wisdom resides deep within us, not outside of us

- Seeing the universe as an expression of the divine

- What we can learn from native traditions

- A radical new beginning through humility and relation to earth and one another

- Addressing the divine in one another and in every life form

- Breaking cycles of war and repetition

- The contributions of Carl Jung on the collective and individual unconscious

- Merging Eastern and Western traditions

“For me, it was the introduction to Celtic wisdom that awakened me to knowing that wisdom is deep within us and the divine is at the very heart of our beings. We don’t have to somehow invoke or implore a distance presence.” – John Philip Newell

About John Philip Newell:

John Philip Newell is a Celtic teacher and author of spirituality who calls the modern world to reawaken to the sacredness of Earth and every human being. In 2016 he began the Earth & Soul initiative and teaches regularly in the United States and Canada as well as leading international pilgrimage weeks on Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland. His PhD is from the University of Edinburgh and he has authored over fifteen books, including his award-winning publication, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, which was the 2022 Gold Winner of the Nautilus Book Award for Spirituality and Religious Thought of the West. His new book, also with HarperOne (and published in the UK by Wild Goose), is The Great Search (August 2024), in which he looks at the great spiritual yearnings of humanity today in the context of the decline of religion as we have known it.

Dissolving our erroneous beliefs of separateness, Krishna Das shares the importance of continuous service and devotional practice.

In this episode of Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das speaks about:

Service anytime and anywhere

Planting seeds for the fruits of our practice

Clearing out blockages in the body with asana practice

Krishna Das' deep friendship with Maharaj-ji

Samadhi and emerging into deeper states of consciousness

How mantra can uncover the presence of spiritual beings

Realizing that we are not our egos

The principal of Sub Ek, or, All One

KC Tewari and the film Brilliant Disguise

“Service can be done anytime and anywhere. It doesn’t have to be your job, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, it doesn’t have to make you money. Real service is learning how to treat other people with the same love and respect that we would like to be treated. You can do that now.” – Krishna Das

Listening to the song of the present moment, Jack uncovers how to dance with life’s dynamic rhythms along the harmonizing path to inner-freedom.

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 rhythm of your breath is no different than the rhythm of the stars.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

- The art of listening to the song of life, birth and death

- Why it can be so tough to actually “Be Here Now” like Ram Dass

- How love connects to the present moment

- Alan Watts, music, dance, and harmonizing to the universe

- Feeling the rhythms of your breath and body

- Learning to dance to life’s dynamic music

- Staying open and avoiding spiritual bypass

- Looking at our body and life clearly and directly

- The power of attention, noting, and spaciousness for diffusing our judgements and emotions

- Buddha’s discovery of the Middle Way, and why he stopped fighting himself

- Dealing with the unfinished business of grief, loss, loneliness, wounds

- How to handle worries or fantasies that keep looping over and over

- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the tenderness and fearlessness of an Awakened Heart

- Why Buddha focused on humans as ‘five processes,’ rather than personalities

- Letting go of our rigid sense of self and diving into the fluidity of life

- Non-grasping and how even enlightenment is a problem

- Discovering the true path to liberation

- Death, dying, and a reading from the Tibetan Book of the Dead

“To listen is to be awake in the present without moving away from or running away from what’s actually here.” – Jack Kornfield

“The only place to actually love another person, or a tree, or a living creature, or the earth itself, is when we’re here in the present.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma talk originally recorded in 1991 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Discover your great joy and love in Jack’s life-changing new online journey – The Awakened Heart: Discovering Great Joy and Love – dive in at bit.ly/TheAwakenedHeart

Join senior meditation teachers David Nichtern and Rebecca D’Onofrio for a free online discussion on the path of developing one's own meditation practice and supporting others who wish to explore this transformative path. Register for free today for The Journey of Becoming a Meditation Teacher | Sep. 19th @ 6:00pm ET: www.dharmamoon.com/beherenow

Connecting the inner world and the outer world, physicist Federico Faggin reveals his work studying the physics of spirituality.

This episode of Mindrolling with Federico and Raghu includes these topics:

Federico's life growing up in Italy

Neuroscience and studying consciousness

How physical feelings come from electrical processes in the brain

Connecting spirituality and physics

Considering if a computer could be programmed for consciousness

Faggin's experience recognizing the inner love that comes out of us

How quantum physics proves the interconnection within the universe

Federico's perspective on freewill and determinism in our lives

Going beyond what science has done

The limited freedom we have while incarnated

Predicting our behavior and how our consciousness is watching all

Grace and the unpredictability of free will

The divine mystery and why it will never be resolved

About Federico Faggin:

Federico Faggin is an Italian-American physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 project and the design group during the first five years of Intel's microprocessor effort. Federico Faggin is one of the greatest luminaries of high technology alive today; his work underlies the modern world's entire information technology. His new book, Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature, was just published in May of 2024.

“I eventually ended up deciding that I was going to spend the rest of my life studying consciousness and trying to connect spirituality and physics. In other worlds, connect the other inner world of experience and meaning with the outer world of symbols and matter in space and time.” – Federico Faggin

Refining our knowledge of the four elements, Joseph Goldstein explains how our bodily dispositions relate to earth, water, fire, and air.

The Satipatthana Sutta is one of the most celebrated and widely studied discourses in the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism. This episode is the tenth part of an in-depth 48-part weekly lecture series from Joseph Goldstein that delves into every aspect of the Satipatthana Sutta.

In this episode, Joseph Goldstein examines:

The four basic qualities of matter

Solidity and the earth element

Fluidity, cohesion, and the water element

Heat and light as the function of the fire element

Air and the experience of expanding and extending

Bringing the elements into our practice

Contemplating our bodily disposition in terms of the four elements

Noticing all sensations as the play of a given element

Moving away from the conceptual and into direct experiences

Psychic abilities and transforming an element into another one

How labeling and objectifying can lead to desire and aversion

Not grieving for what is non-existent

The unification of relative and ultimate reality

Don’t forget to grab a copy of the book Joseph references throughout this series, Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization.

This talk was originally published on Dharmaseed

“On the experimental level, we can see that the various sensations that we feel, however the body is disposed, is really just the play of the elements.” – Joseph Goldstein

Revealing how to calm the mind through meditation, Jack shares wisdom on self-acceptance, trust, and healing the unfinished business of the heart.

Discover your great joy and love in Jack’s life-changing new online journey – The Awakened Heart: Discovering Great Joy and Love – Sign up by Sept 9 to take part in two live Q&A’s with Jack. bit.ly/TheAwakenedHeart

“Don’t live in the mind, rest in the heart and let the mind come and go as it will. This is discovering your Buddha Nature.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

- Working with the ‘unfinished business of the heart’ – grief, sorrows, longing, wounds, loss

- Honoring life’s ‘ocean of tears’ with love and kind attention

- Cultivating the courage to allow your heart to be broken

- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the tender heart of a warrior

- Self-acceptance, allowing yourself to feel, and reawakening a trust in yourself

Healing the mind by seeing clearly and not taking it so seriously

- Resting the in heart and letting the mind come and go

- Discovering Your Buddha Nature, your fundamental ground of being

- The technique of seeing the world as enlightened, and the path as yours

- The healing encased within understanding emptiness, selflessness, and letting go

- Meditation as a truly courageous act

“The problem with the mind mostly is that we take it seriously.” – Jack Kornfield

“Healing of the mind is when we can hold in our hearts all that arises, and sense a rest and a goodness, a wholeness in us.” – Jack Kornfield

Focusing on curiosity, patience, and self-compassion, Cortland Dahl joins Raghu to go over his new book, A Meditator's Guide to Buddhism.

This week, Cortland and Raghu discuss:

The mystical practice of making aspirations

Tuning into ourselves and trusting ourselves

Learning through our relationships

Recognizing that the next Buddha is the sangha

Nurturing sparks of inspiration through practice

How meeting teachers helps us realize our own inner depth

Why curiosity can move us along the spiritual path

Patience, creating space, and being vs. doing

Self-compassion in a world of chaos and uncertainty

Discomfort as a zone of growth

Expanding our motivations for doing our practice

Seeing the awakened nature in everyone and everything

About Cortland Dahl:

Cortland Dahl is a Buddhist scholar and translator, author, meditation teacher, and a collaborator on various scientific studies. After receiving a Master’s Degree in Buddhist Studies, he lived for eight years in India and Nepal, where he spent long periods in solitary retreat in the Himalayan foothills and taught courses on Buddhism, meditation, and Tibetan language at Kathmandu University’s Center for Buddhist Studies and at the Tergar Institute, which he co-founded in 2007. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was mentored by the renowned neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson and received a Ph.D. in Mind, Brain, and Contemplative Science, the first ever degree of its kind awarded by the university. Cortland's current work focuses on studying the psychological and neural mechanisms of different families of meditation practice. He is also the creator of the Healthy Minds program, a well-being training program that integrates insights from scientific research with a comprehensive path of contemplative training. Keep up with Cortland HERE or check out his books HERE.

“We have no clue of this depth and richness that is inside of us. How we stumble through life completely oblivious to these amazing qualities of mind and somehow we just haven’t learned to see it. Then, you meet a teacher and it gets cracked open a little bit and you start getting a glimpse just by being in their orbit.” – Cortland Dahl

In this episode, Spring and Lama Rod have a conversation about:

Choosing liberation versus comfort and stability

Getting to the root of suffering and the root of who we are

Moving deeper into our current predicaments instead of bypassing

The intense labor of liberation and choosing freedom in an unfree world

Transforming suffering into wisdom and clarity

Pain as our guide and teacher

Building communities that can hold the nuances of justice and freedom

Finding a teacher with experience in all paths

The tension between enlightenment and humanity

Bridging conventional reality with the ultimate

“I’m not interested in your comfort, I’m interested in your freedom. Because if you’re always trying to prioritize comfort in this work then you’re going to be really disappointed. You won’t grow.” – Lama Rod Owens

About Lama Rod Owens:

Lama Rod Owens is a Black Buddhist Southern Queen. An international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School with a focus on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. Author of Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation, his teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care. Highly sought after for talks, retreats, and workshops, his mission is showing you how to heal and free yourself. A leading voice in a new generation of Buddhist teachers with over 11 years of experience, Lama Rod is highly respected among his peers and the communities that he serves. From these intersections, he creates a platform that’s very natural, engaging, and inclusive.

About Spring Washam:

Spring Washam is a well-known teacher, author, and visionary leader based in Oakland, California. She is the author of A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Any Moment and her newest book, The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from the Underground. Spring is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based meditation practices to diverse communities. She is one of the founding teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center, located in downtown Oakland, CA. She has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism since 1999. She is a member of the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in northern California where she was trained for over a decade.

In addition to being a teacher, she is also a shamanic practitioner and has studied indigenous healing practices since 2008. She is the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, a one-of-a-kind organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom in South America. Her writings and dharma teachings have appeared in many online journals and publications. She currently teaches meditation retreats and leads workshops, and classes worldwide.