This week, Jack joins Michael Krasny for a conversation diving into mindfulness, loneliness, compassion, gratitude, suffering, meditation, and the Dharma.

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

"With mindfulness you learn to live in the present. If you walk down the street and you're spending all your time thinking about that conversation you had and the tasks you have to do, you miss the people walking by, you miss the clouds after that rainstorm, the colors of the sunset—the lavender, red, and orange that's reflected in the windows and puddles—you miss your life. Mindfulness becomes liberating in that way." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack and Michael discuss:

• Ram Dass and the idea of "being here now" in regards to suffering, depression, and suicidal thoughts
• Overcoming loneliness, isolation, and grief by reaching out and connecting with others
• Wrapping ourselves in the infinitely compassionate cloak of of Quan Yin or Mother Mary
• How compassion and mindfulness practices regulate our body away from the 'fight, flight, freeze' response
• Vipassana meditation, the mindful loving witness, and bringing it back into the world
• Planting seeds with your conscious effort and peaceful heart, but not being attached to the outcome
• How mindfulness liberates us to be fully present for the beautiful nuances of our lives
• The difference between pain (inevitable) and suffering (optional)
• The various meanings of the word "Dharma," and it's relation to truth
• Making friends with our inner-critic and judging mind
• Consciousness, gratitude, and the Great Mystery

"We have the capacity to hold our sorrows and our measure of suffering with compassion rather than judgment, rather than fear, almost as if you could wrap yourself with the cloak of Quan Yin—the Goddess of Infinite Compassion—or Mother Mary, so that you know that you're not alone, and that we've done this." – Jack Kornfield 

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