Be Here Now Network

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

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

"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.

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 Q&A session from 1992, Ram Dass explores:

- Conscious dying, free will, and the grieving process

- Communication after death, relaxing about enlightenment, and working with fear

- Developing faith, feeling vulnerable while falling in love, and why we can’t afford to armor our hearts

- The practice of Metta meditation and how it can help us tap into the universe of compassion

This podcast is also sponsored by Pengwee's Breath, a tender-hearted story of a young penguin who learns that his own breath gives him the power to calm his fears. Enjoy the book on its own or with a companion Teaching Guide for parents and teachers that can be downloaded for free from the author's website.

Get your copy today: http://mybook.to/pengweesbreath

“And as this practice deepens and you recognize that you are one of the beings in that circle, as well as the heart that is sending light forth, you enter more and more deeply into the universe of compassion. And in that universe, the heart is freed to love as it must love.” – Ram Dass

Activist, writer and yoga teacher Seane Corn joins Jackie Dobrinska, host of the Ram Dass Fellowship, for a conversation about nurturing the soul with love and attention in a way that allows for a ‘revolution of the soul’.

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

In this interview for the Ram Dass Fellowship, Jackie speaks with Seane Corn about:

Tapping into our inner strength and pursuing a ‘revolution of the soul’

How the practices of yoga, mindfulness and meditation can offer relief for those who have experienced severe trauma

Learning to befriend ourselves

Today’s episode was recorded as part of the Ram Dass Fellowship’s regular online gatherings. To learn more about the Ram Dass Fellowship and sign up to join a fellowship gathering near you, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship.

“Getting real is recognizing not only the grief and the anger, but the sense of powerlessness that a lot of people feel in this day and age.” – Seane Corn

Author Andy Karr invites us to look into the mirror, speaking with Raghu about why it is so essential for each of us to develop the habits of self-reflection and mindfulness practice.

In this week’s episode, Raghu speaks with Andy about:

The themes of self-reflection, applied mindfulness and cultivating a personal practice that are explored in Andy’s newest book, Into The Mirror

Andy’s connection to Ram Dass, Buddhism and his study under Chögyam Trungpa

‘Crazy wisdom’ and the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa

The importance of holding a personal practice of some sort, and what that offers to our lives

“There is no substitute, in my mind, for just developing the habit of practicing. I think alongside of that is perspective, because you see yourself and then it goes back to mindfulness. You see your resistance, your fear, your boredom, whatever it might be.” – Andy Karr

Links & Recommendations From this Episode:

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel

Crazy Wisdom by Chögyam Trungpa

Why We Meditate by Daniel Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche

In this episode of the Pilgrim Heart Podcast, Krishna Das explores working through our traumas to heal our karma and unveil the jewel of love within us all.

“We’ve been told their is a jewel within us, our true nature, the soul, real love; through repetition of the name we are shoveling away the shit that is covering that. ” – Krishna Das

In this episode of Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das holds a discussion on :

- The strength we can gain from the repeating God’s name

- Serving others and treating them as best we can

- Maharaj-ji and serving our parents as the highest form of Worship

- Praying from a far, trauma, and releasing negative energy

- Karmic freeing, broken hearts, and abuse

- Overcoming difficult parental relationships

- Deep connections and the crumbling ego in India with Maharaj-ji

- Loving the soul instead of the role

Joseph Goldstein discusses the challenges of practicing liberation, awakening, and enlightenment in the context of a lay person’s life.

This dharma talk from May 12, 2023, was recorded at the Insight Meditation Society and originally published on Dharma Seed.

“The Buddha said, ‘I have shown you the path to liberation. Now, liberation depends on you.’ This is really true. If you don’t take your life into your own hands, not even the Buddhas can make a difference. It’s up to you.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this talk, Joseph Goldstein offers insights into:

Finding a balance between monastic renunciation and worldly pleasures

Impermanence and the inherent instability of existence

The Four Noble Truths as they relate to the concept of Duḥkha

The understanding of selflessness

Taking your path into your own hands

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.

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

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 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

In this episode of Healing at the Edge, RamDev reflects on surrendering into suffering and how right effort unfolds in our lives.

In this episode of Healing at the Edge, RamDev reflects on:

- The motivations for our spiritual practice

- Looking at how suffering is caused by how we are relating to our environment

- Sitting with discomfort

- The different kinds of laziness

- Alleviating suffering for other beings

- The path of working with Kali

- Remembering our connectedness to God

“Right effort is the effort to surrender. It’s not the effort to change, or fix, or do anything. It’s the effort to keep remembering that our true nature is already whole.” – RamDev (Dale Borglum)

Taking a journey into the vastness of the mind, Joseph Goldstein explores the creative power of consciousness.

In this episode, Joseph Goldstein elucidates:

Consciousness as the creator of our inner and outer worlds.

The suffering that can come from an uncultivated mind

Mental illness, obsessions, addictions and thought-loops

Being a prisoner of our own untrained mind

Impermanence, empowerment, and the potential of the inner Buddha

The Mahamudra and taming the mind

Staying mindful during defilement

“The Buddha talked of how this mind, this force or power of consciousness, can be our worst enemy or the most benevolent friend.” – Joseph Goldstein

About Joseph Goldstein:

Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and loving-kindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he is one of the organization’s guiding teachers. In 1989, together with several other teachers and students of insight meditation, he helped establish the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

“What’s most helpful to remember, in this part of the process where we become so aware of these defilements of the mind, is that they are visitors. They are not the nature of the mind itself. And because they are visitors we don’t have to judge ourselves, and we don’t have to judge them.” – Joseph Goldstein