Be Here Now Network

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. Join here: https://bit.ly/JackandDan

Subscribe to the Pilgrim Heart Podcast with Krishna Das on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app! Proudly presented by the Be Here Now Network, home of official podcasts from thought leaders like Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield and more!

Explaining love as our true nature, Krishna Das describes the benefit of relationships and accessing our own internal well of love.

Today’s episode originally aired on Krisha Das’ “Hanging Out In the Heart Space” online satsang on April 7th, 2022. Be sure to subscribe to Krishna Das on Youtube to get new episodes of “Hanging Out In the Heart Space”, fresh music from KD and more: Krishna Das Music

This time on Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das divulges:

The different versions of The Bhagavad Gita

Giving our full concentration to the mantra

How to be in the “I am” instead of the “me”

Regular practice over time as the path to truth

Understanding through practice rather than intellectual concepts

Relationships and seeing where our work needs to be done

Love as a true and constant nature

Calming our minds down with chanting and meditation

The way we are in relationship with everything all the time

“There is nothing wrong with love. The spiritual path is nothing but love. Relationships can really show you where your work has to be done and what work you have to do. Because you will see that they’ll be times when that beautiful romantic relationship looks like and feels like shit and torture. I guarantee it. Sooner or later. It may not last, but you’re going to go through everything in the relationship if you are really in relationship and you’re being honest with yourself and the other person. Relationships are wonderful opportunities to do a lot of work on ourselves.” –

RamDev shares his thoughts on approaching subtle grief and feelings of separateness through a Tantric lens.

In this episode of Healing at the Edge, RamDev holds a talk on:

Dealing with the subtle grief of being in the body

The illusion of self

Directly experiencing emptiness

Relaxing into perfection and the boundless nature of the heart

Tantra and seeing the beloved in everything

Finding opportunities in neutral moments

The Tantric 3-step and nakedly contacting anger and difficult emotions

Repression and creating space for what must be released

A guided meditation

“We’re going from this grief because we’re feeling separate to compassion for this grief. This compassion reveals the empty nature of the heart, and then this Tantric understanding begins to awaken. Maybe that sounds like a lot of words, but it’s a very somatic, immediate, intimate process that can be experienced right now.” – RamDev

Offering instruction for metta practice, Joseph Goldstein explains the many flavors of loving-kindness that we can try.

This 2018 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed.

This time on Insight Hour, Joseph Goldstein explicates:

The unconditional quality of metta

Helping each other see our individual loveliness

Using mantra to evoke the feeling of loving-kindness

Metta as a tool for deep concentration

Experimenting with the different ways metta can be applied in meditation

The three aspects of practicing of loving-kindness

A 12-minute guided metta practice to settle into the feeling of well-wishing

“There are two main purposes for doing metta meditation. One is metta, or loving-kindness, which can be used as a vehicle for developing concentration. So, not only for the metta quality itself, but it is a technique or a method for developing strong concentration, even to the point of absolution.” – Joseph Goldstein

For episode 237, we are launching the Fireside Chat Series on the Metta Hour.

This series features intimate conversations with longtime dharma teachers about the early days of their practice and the most impactful moments with their own teachers. Hosted by IMS Online, the launch of this monthly series is a conversation between Sharon and Jack Kornfield. Jack trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. The conversation begins with a 10-minute guided meditation from Jack.

In this episode, Sharon and Jack discuss:

Jack’s experience with Thai Buddhist monk Ajahn Chah

The Buddha statue debate from the early days on IMS

Jack’s first book “Living Dharma”

Ajahn Chah’s teaching about the original mind

Realizing innate qualities versus developing them

The sign above the door at IMS

What languages Sharon and Jack learned in Asia

Sharon’s relationship with teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche

The role of study in one’s spiritual life

Dualistic versus non-dualistic teachings

The necessity of lovingkindness in their early teachings

Learning to accept help and support

Sharon’s experiences with Dipa Ma

Different teachers that Jack has pissed off

The conversation closes with a short sitting.

You can learn more about Jack’s work right here: https://jackkornfield.com/

Check out his new online course on the eight-fold path available right here: https://jackkornfield.com/product/walking-the-eightfold-path-with-jack-kornfield/

Ramin Nazer and David Nichtern explore the individual’s place in an ever-changing and technologically-advancing world.

This time on CSM, we hear about:

Technological advancement and the collective mind

Sci-Fi and fear vs. hope for the future

The unsustainability of bliss

Eternalism and the hellscape of pointlessness

The dystopia of A.I and ChatGPT

Safe zones versus growth zones

Creativity and trying to guess what the world wants to see

Creating a balance in a chaotic world

The fundamental experiences that ground us

Psychedelics as a liberating disruption

Simulations, robots, and ‘I am-ness’

The dynamics of polarity

“According to Buddhism, the solution is you maintain your status as a human being who has ups and downs, who has lungs, and disappointments, yet there’s a seed of real depth of wisdom and understanding and compassion in it. You bypass the God realms.” – David Nichtern

About Ramin Nazer:

Ramin Nazer is a multi-talented artist, podcaster, comedian, game creator and musician based out of LA. He is best known for his consistent stream of unique, psychedelic-spiritual, bite-sized art for the social media age, as well as his podcast, with comedian Shane Mauss, Mind Under Matter, where they take a hilarious and scientific approach to human behavior. You can tap into Ramin’s steady flow of art on his Instagram, tap into his solo podcast Rainbow Brainskull, and peer into his myriad offerings at RaminNazer.com.

Speaking to issues of ecology, politics, and social action, Ram Dass shares stories of compassionate action and explores patterns of interdependency we can recognize in the world.

Want to participate in the discussion about this episode of Here and Now? Join us for the SoulPod Meet-Up on April 9th at 8 p.m. EDT. Subscribe to the General Fellowship Group for more information.

This episode of Here and Now is from a 1992 talk in Edgartown, MA.

Ram Dass discusses our looming ecological crisis, politics, and living in the age of the Kali Yuga. There is change happening all around us. For Ram Dass, what’s interesting is where one stands in relation to change.

How do we respond in an appropriate way to all the suffering in the world around us? Ram Dass shares classic stories of compassionate action and talks about the constant dialogue between the mind and the heart.

Ram Dass explores how moving through different planes of reality can help us recognize the incredible patterns of interdependency in this world. By acknowledging that these other planes exist, we can find a way to be fully in the world and simultaneously not be trapped by it. In this way, we’re able to keep our hearts open in hell.

“When you experience the plane of reality where everything is interdependent, it includes you, you’re part of it all. If you flip the dial and go to another plane of reality, you see that behind all of the forms, which are like cloud patterns, there’s only one of it. There’s one stuff. There’s one stuff that keeps going into these incredible patterns.” – Ram Dass

For episode 236, Sharon is in conversation with Sameet Kumar, Ph.D. Sameet is the clinical psychologist for the Memorial Cancer Institute.

Sameet specializes in working with cancer patients and their caregivers. He is the author of Grieving Mindfully, The Mindful Path Through Worry and Rumination. He is part of a new anthology, coming out in May of 2024 from New Harbinger Publications, How to Grieve What We’ve Lost.

In this episode, Sharon and Sameet discuss:

How Sameet came to grief counseling

American culture’s denial of the first noble truth

The human experience of pain/pleasure

Grief is whatever it is to you

The non-existent timeline for grief

Widening the scope of what losses affect us

The tools of ACT, CBT and Mindfulness for grief

Sameet’s new anthology book

Dampening the grief stress response

Sameet’s support of COVID front-line workers

Working with add-ons

The role of Ram Dass in Sameet’s life

Sameet closes the conversation with a guided meditation on the refuge tree.

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 receive 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 Practice to Cultivate a Wise Heart. Register here: https://bit.ly/JackandDan

"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.

Expanding our notions of love to a universal state, ecologist and peace-pilgrim, Satish Kumar, joins Raghu to talk about his new book, Radical Love.

Get your copy of Radical Love HERE

This time on Mindrolling, Satish and Raghu journey through these topics:

How Gandhi was a great influence on Satish’s life

Loving people with whom we do not agree

The ultimate love, knowledge, and heroism we receive from our mothers

The feminine motherly quality we can find in gurus

Satish’s experience in the Jain tradition

Negative consequences from materialism, consumerism, and the industrial way of life

Pollution, global warming, and harm to bio-diversity as our collective karma

Why everyone should take a Hippocratic oath

Remembering we are all human beings and can all practice love as our primary religion

Science, gravity, and the capacity to understand the non-physical reality

How love holds together the spiritual world

Unilateral love and not waiting to love another until they love us

Gandhi’s concept of Sarvodaya, or the uplifting of every living being without exception

About Satish Kumar:

Satish Kumar is a peace-pilgrim, ecologist, life-long activist and former monk who has been inspiring global change for over 50 years. A world-renown author and international speaker, Satish founded The Resurgence Trust, an educational charity that seeks to inform and inspire a just future for all. Satish has been the guiding spirit behind several other internationally respected ecological and educational ventures. He co-founded Schumacher College which he continues to serve as a Visiting Fellow. He appears regularly on podcasts and on radio and television shows and continues to teach, run workshops, and write about reverential ecology, holistic education and voluntary simplicity. Check out Satish’s book offerings HERE.

“Do no harm to yourself, do no harm to other people, do no harm to nature. That is the Hippocratic oath a doctor takes. I would like to suggest that everybody should take that. Politicians should take that. Scientists should take that. Economists should take that. Business and industrial leaders should take that. Do no harm. If you do no harm to yourself, and you do no harm to other people, and you do no harm to nature, then you can have a more positive karma. The consequence will be a more harmonious relationship, and a more peaceful world, and a better relationship among all humans.” – Satish Kumar