Be Here Now Network

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.

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 Dharma is something that becomes a personal thing for each one of us. And it's expressed through our abilities, our vision, and our own particular skills.” – Jack Kornfield

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

"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

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

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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)

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

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 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! Sign up here:

"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.

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

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.

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

“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! Sign up here: https://bit.ly/44MUnK9

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.

This time on The Spirit Underground, Spring Washam and Lama Rod Owens begin a gentle exploration of the intersection of gender identiy, sexuality and spirituality.

In this exploratory discussion, Spring Washam and Lama Rod Owens gently surface their thoughts on:

- The binary between sacred and secular sexuality

- Why we repress sexuality as a culture

- Tending to the needs and suffering of the body

- Moving through the ways we’ve been conditioned to think about bodies, attraction, desire, sexuality, gender, etc.

- Discussing sexuality in spiritual leadership

- Holding space for sexual energy on a community level

“If we’re talking about an enlightened society, that is also enlightened sexuality.” – 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.

“I want us to reach a place of liberation where we love our bodies, where we are fluid, and relating to space and energy.” – Spring Washam

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.

Spring currently teaches meditation retreats and leads workshops, and classes worldwide: springwasham.com

Pushing beyond the bare minimum of religiosity, Omid Safi inspires listeners to deepen their faith into an ecstatic adoration of God.

In this episode of Sufi Heart, Omid Safi elucidates :

- Islam and the unity of Allah

- Iman as faith and Ihsan as virtue

- Spirituality and Aesthetics

- Doing what is required of us through religion

- How Habib (the chosen one) inspired a deeper level of faith

- How we can aspire to be in a state of love and adoration

- The eyes of the heart versus the eyes of the head

- Worshiping God for more than just salvation

- Islamic Saints and their stories of experiencing Allah through beauty

-Recognizing the unwavering divine presence of God

- The eternal now and present moment awareness

- Undivided attention as an act of love

- Courtesy and recognizing our individual journeys

- Being a beautiful witness

“God is to be found here and now…the divine simply is not to be experienced in the afterlife, in the heavenly realms, in the celestial realm. Here and now where you are, where we are, we can come to experience Allah.” - Omid Safi

You can join Omid on one of his heart-centered and spiritually-focused educational tours of:

Mecca and Medina Umrah program: December 14-21st, 2023. [For Muslim participants]

Morocco: April 13-22nd, 2024.

Turkey: somewhere in late May to early June, 2024.

Further information is available at Illuminated Courses & Tours where you can also find information on virtual courses, spiritual talks, and more: https://www.illuminatedcourses.com/

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.

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

"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.

Grab an All-Access Plan for Jack's growing library of online courses at jackkornfield.com/all-access-pass

In this radio interview from 1985, Ram Dass touches on identity, the purpose of meditation on the path to enlightenment, working with death as a path to spiritual growth, and much more.

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

In this 1985 interview from “The Questline” radio show, Ram Dass explores:

Not clinging to identity and how to deal with shifts in consciousness

The role and purpose of meditation on the path to enlightenment

Astral planes, psychedelic drugs, and the spiritual heart

Working with death and dying, and why he found the 1980s to be a much more optimum time for spiritual growth than the 1960s

Different levels of awakening, and walking the path of service

Are you interested in contributing to the wildfire recovery efforts in Maui and in the most impacted areas of Canada? Check out these resources below to find out how you can help:

Hawaii Community Foundation - https://www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/maui-strong

Canadian Red Cross - https://www.redcross.ca/

“In a way, I’m finding it much more interesting to remain spiritually conscious in the 80s… Like we’re much closer to facing in the daily news the issue of our potential death. And that is a major cultural vehicle for awakening. The confrontation with death is one of the – as Castaneda says, keeping death on your left shoulder – it is the vehicle that helps you awaken the most. And that’s what we’re confronted with much more now. So it seems like the optimum time for spiritual growth to me.” – Ram Dass