Be Here Now Network

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

Joseph Goldstein covers the basics of metta, which he calls the generosity of the heart, and shares ways we can cultivate deeper feelings of loving-kindness in our practice.

“Metta, as most of you are familiar, is a word from the Pali language, the language of the Buddha’s time, and it means loving-kindness or friendliness. And it refers to that basic quality or that basic feeling of generosity of the heart. It’s an expression of the generous heart that is simply wishing well, simply wishing or expressing goodwill to ourselves and others.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode, Joseph shares his insight on:

The basics of metta, or loving-kindness, and how it refers to the feeling of the generosity of the heart

How metta can become the ground for wisdom to grow

The difference between metta and desire, and why those two feelings are often confused for one another

Different ways we can nurture our practice and cultivate deeper feelings of metta, including reflecting on forgiveness and gratitude

This dharma talk from February 6, 1999, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

Learn how to access wisdom through intentional action and radical honesty with Buddhist teacher Trudy Goodman.

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

"When we're honest we can look at ourselves directly. We can look at our own behavior. We can admit when we made a mistake and we can learn how to change at least some of our ways so that we do not cause that particular kind of harm again." – Trudy Goodman

In this episode, Trudy Goodman lectures on:

Discontinuing harmful activities

Honesty and being direct

The Dharma as our safety

The consequences of our actions

Integrity and looking at our motivations

The coexistence of Love and Hate

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.

In a discussion on transcendence, Raghu Markus and Zen Priest Hozan Alan Senauke describe embodying zen practices and having a stable mind.

"What really impressed me about the Chinese/Japanese poetry was that there was a sense of the ordinary. There was something marvelous and transcendent in ordinary perceptions." – Hozan Alan Senauke

In this episode Raghu Markus and Hozan Alan Senauke explore:

The practice of Zen

Magic within the ordinary

Meeting spiritual teachers and guides

Seeing both sides of everything and finding balance

Embodiment and putting our practice into the world

Being Happy and being in the moment

Hozan Alan Senauke:

Hozan Alan Senauke is a Soto Zen priest, folk musician, poet and the Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center in California. As a socially engaged Buddhist activist, Hozan has worked closely with the International Network of Engaged Buddhists and Buddhist Peace Fellowship since 1991. In 2007, he founded Clear View Project, developing Buddhist-based resources for relief and social change in Asia and the U.S. He is author of The Bodhisattva’s Embrace: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism’s Front Lines. In another realm, Hozan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for more than fifty years.

For Alan Senauke dharma talks, click here

In this deep exploration of the union between compassion and emptiness, Joseph Goldstein breaks down the relative and absolute levels of Bodhicitta, the heart-mind of awakening.

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“The ultimate nature of Bodhicitta – the relative level is compassion – the ultimate level of Bodhicitta, is the empty, aware nature of the mind itself. And as one Tibetan teacher said, ‘When compassion and emptiness are both present, enlightenment is unavoidable.’ So this is what we practice. This what we come to realize, to cultivate: the relative Bodhicitta of compassion, the ultimate Bodhicitta of emptiness.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode, Joseph explores:

Relative Bodhicitta, absolute Bodhicitta, and how these two levels are expressions of each other, not polarities

The different ways in which we can understand emptiness, including dropping into the effortless flow of experience, being reminded by our teachers, seeing the insubstantial nature of the self, and seeing that things are not amenable to our will

The nature of the mind, which is empty like space, has an innate wakefulness, and it is inherently pure

How the activity of emptiness is compassion

This dharma talk from July 9, 2003, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

Dr. Robert Thurman and Krishna Das lecture on chanting, Maharaj-ji, embodiment, and purpose in this devotion-filled episode.

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

"Human beings are such a precious embodiment...it's a great opportunity to become enlightened That's what you do when you attain freedom. You don't stop living; you become infinite life, you become one with everybody's infinite life." – Dr. Robert Thurman

"I would try to find the thing that you really want to do, and really do it. When I heard chanting in India, the first time I heard it I knew 'this, I could do.' And I'm still working at it." – Krishna Das

In this episode, Krishna Das chants and responds to questions with Dr. Robert Thurman on:

Experiences with Maharaj-ji

Enlightenment and Embodiment

Having a less rigid spiritual practice

Finding purpose

How mantras are holographic

Giving up your will to the divine

About Dr. Robert Thurman:

Known in academic circles as Professor Robert A.F. Thurman, Bob is a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings and the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is the author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics, and culture and was named by The New York Times as the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism. Bob is a Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and the Co-Founder and President of Tibet House US/Menla in service of HH Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet. A close friend of the Dalai Lama’s for over 50 years, he is a leading worldwide lecturer on Tibetan Buddhism and a passionate activist for the plight of the Tibetan people. In August of 2021, he released his most recent book, “Wisdom is Bliss” from Penguin Random House.

Scholar Michael Meade sits down with Raghu Markus for a mythical episode on storytelling, symbolism, and human nature.

"Myth is about vertical imagination. Myth opens up the connections we have to the heavens and the connections we have to the underworld... On the surface a myth is false, but it carries deeper truths than you can find anywhere else." – Michael Meade

In this episode Raghu Markus and Michael Meade converse about:

Michael's induction into the realm of myth

Storytelling with musical instruments

Oral and literary traditions in mythology

Finding truth within imagination

Life, death, and renewal

The mythic nature of humans and dreams

A connection between endings and beginnings

The African myth of the eagle and the child

About Michael Meade:

Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology. He combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths with a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals.

He is the author of Awakening the Soul, The Genius Myth, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, Why the World Doesn't End, The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul; editor, with James Hillman and Robert Bly, of Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart; and the creator of the Living Myth Podcast.

Michael Meade is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit network of artists, activists, and community builders that encourages greater understanding between diverse peoples.

Joseph Goldstein talks about how wisdom arises from an understanding of the true nature of impermanence, and how experiencing the truth of change can be our doorway to freedom.

In this episode, Joseph explores:

The nature of impermanence and why going from an intellectual understanding of it to a direct experience of it can be our doorway to freedom

The different ways we can gain liberating insights into the truth of impermanence, including reflecting on death and relationships

How, when we begin to see the true nature of change, we start to cultivate Bodhicitta

The two levels of Bodhicitta – the relative level and the ultimate level – and how Bodhicitta manifests as responsive compassion

“So this is really important because in talking about the impermanent nature of all this and how ultimately unsatisfying it all is, the implication is not that we pull back from experience, as some people might assume. Rather, it’s learning to not hold on. That is the implication, and that is the doorway to freedom.” – Joseph Goldstein

This dharma talk from March 25, 2004, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

Describing three levels of surrender, RamDev shows us how to receive the blessings of an open heart.

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

"The first level of surrender that allows us to receive is giving up a wish that things be different." – RamDev

In this episode we hear RamDev Dale Borglum discuss:

Transforming pain into cosmic joy

Openheartedness and grace

Global catastrophe and suffering

Absolute Goodness and our intrinsic nature

Enlightenment and Vulnerability

Surrender in the various stages of practice

Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn joins Sharon Salzberg for a discussion on present moment awareness, radical love, and freedom from pain.

For episode 203 of the Metta Hour Podcast, we have the first in a special series celebrating Sharon’s new book, “Real Life.” This interview features a conversation between Sharon and Jon Kabat-Zinn, pulled from the Living An Authentic Life Summit. Jon is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, and its world-renown Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic. He is the author of 15 books, including the bestseller Full Catastrophe Living. His latest book published in 2023 is Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief: Practices to Reclaim Your Body and Your Life.

The conversation begins with Jon leading a guided meditation practice, followed by a dynamic interview in which Jon and Sharon discuss:

• Jon’s first exposure to meditation

• mindfulness as a love affair

• what is authentic living

• translating ancient teaching of the Buddha

• Jon’s early teaching at UMass

• freeing ourselves from delusion

• waking up in every moment

• the compassion in mindfulness

• finding freedom from pain

To learn more about Jon’s work, teaching schedule, and latest book, Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief, you can visit his website. To hear this interview in its entirety, you can sign up right here for the Living an Authentic Life Summit which runs online from March 29th – April 2nd and it is free to join.

“When you tune into yourself, you’re actually tuning into the entire universe, of which you are an intimate and insanely beautiful and mysterious part.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn