Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield

Jack shares a guided meditation on relaxing into the ocean of air we find ourselves in when we open to the present moment.

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“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.

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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.

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"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.

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Jack returns to explore the nature of Dharma as universal, immediate, timeless, beneficial, protective, and available to all.

"The Dharma is universal, it's immediate, it's open-handed, it's to be experienced by each person for themselves directly, it's timeless. The truth of life is here to be discovered for any individual with eyes open to see." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully navigates:

• Sufis introducing the Dance of Universal Peace to Jack's retreat of Buddhists
• Dharma as universal, immediate, timeless, beneficial, protective, and available to all
• The various meanings of 'Dharma': the teachings, the physical/emotional elements of the world, personal destiny/path, and Universal Laws/Truth
• How Joseph Goldstein accidentally found his teacher Munindraji while on the way to take LSD under the Bodhi Tree
• Karma, impermanence, duality, selflessness, attachment, metta (loving kindness), and the preciousness of life
• The Vipassana paradox of Tibetan Dream Yoga

"The Dharma protects those who follow it like a great umbrella in the rainy season." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 12/05/1987 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Getting vulnerable about the hungers which afflict our lives, Jack helps us into the nirvana beyond the illusion of incompleteness.

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“In Sanskrit or Pali the word is ‘Trishna,’ which means thirst, desire, wanting. It’s exaggeration, or the realm that it manifests in in the greatest way, is called ‘The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts.’ Hungry Ghosts are pictured as these beings who have huge stomaches and tiny little mouths, so that it’s never possible to get enough in there to ease that hunger.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack vulnerably navigates:

• Hunger, abundance, deprivation, indulgence, addiction, and the illusion of incompleteness
• Feeling idiotic, depressed, needy, judgmental, sad, lonely, hungry, etc
• Trishna—thirst, desire, wanting—and the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts
• Samsara and the propulsion of endless wanderings of seperation/seeking
• Ajahn Chah and being with what is, rather than struggling against it
• Relating wisely and tenderly to Buddha’s First Noble Truth of suffering
• Nirvana as the end of cyclical grasping and the illusion that we are incomplete

“Nirvana is the end of cyclic existence, which is to say, the end of grasping and going around in circles looking for something that you are, but haven’t yet touched—the end of the illusion that we are incomplete.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 02/01/1987 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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

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"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.

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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.

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

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"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

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In this Independence Day focused episode, Jack reflects on how we can foster true freedom and independence through using a spiritual rudder.

"The Buddha, in the last bit of his life, said, 'When I'm gone, don't follow or place all of your reliance on elders or teachers, but rather follow the Dharma, the universal law, and know these things for yourself. Know the forces of grasping, hatred, and ignorance. Really know what they are. Let yourself see them, and know that it is possible to find freedom from these. If it weren't possible I wouldn't tell you about it. Then as you live your life, be aware of what brings goodness, what brings freedom from grasping, hatred, and delusion. Nourish that which brings that freedom, sustain it and support it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack dives into:

• The ideals of the U.S., versus its reality and history
• What it means to be independent, what it means to be free
• Learning what your "spiritual rudder" is to steer you in the midst of this Kali Yuga
• Buddha's advice on following the Dharma, and your Way, rather than following others
• Our spiritual rudder as synonymous with truth, love, integrity, and our Buddha Nature
• True freedom as freedom from the pull and sway of outside circumstances
• Real loving kindness, real metta, as timeless, fearless, and free

This Dharma talk given by Jack on July 4th, 1994 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Hop in the Sauna with Jack Kornfield and Prince Ea, as they steep deeply into topics of spirituality, fear, meditation, compassion, and staying awake in the world.

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"People say the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, but that's only half the story. There is a lot of suffering that really needs our honest compassion and tending, but it also needs hope. If you go into a refugee camp and you're depressed and worried; they don't need that, they already have plenty of that. They need somebody that comes in and says, 'We human beings can make the world better." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack and Prince Ea steam in:

• Meeting all facets of the world with optimism and hope
• Why we should never underestimate the human heart
• Mindful presence, loving awareness, and waking up to who we are
• Overcoming fear and not buying into the scare tactics used in politics
• What it was like for Jack to meet and learn from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
• The story of Jack becoming a Buddhism monk and finding Vipassana meditation
• Unpacking compassion as a verb, rather than empathy which is inactive

About Prince Ea:

Prince Ea is a film maker, speaker, human optimization researcher, and creator who has touched the hearts, minds and souls of millions of people worldwide. By producing creative, inspirational and thought provoking content, Prince has accumulated over 1 billion views on Facebook alone and even more on a combination of other platforms. For more info, please princeea.com

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Jack joins CEO of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Sam Altman, onstage with Soren Gordhamer at Wisdom 2.0 to talk artificial intelligence, spirituality, ethics, and the future of humanity.

Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI and ChatGPT. Soren Gordhamer is the founder of Wisdom 2.0.

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In this episode, Jack, Sam, and Soren explore:

• How A.I. technology will impact our world and the future of humanity
• The ways Sam's meditation practice is influencing his tech career
• Potential benefits and pitfalls of opening artificial intelligence onto the world
• If we can instill values, ethics, and morals into A.I.
• How Sam created OpenAI to allow a collective democratic process for how A.I. evolves
• Does artificial intelligence technology have a sense of self?
• Learning how humanity can best utilize these evolving tools
• How A.I. can aid our spiritual practice

"What are people going to do in the post-A.I. world when we all have tremendous resources, we've solved a lot of inequities in the world, and we have a lot of time on our hands? Well, there are a lot of people who need a lot of spiritual practice, and we're gonna have that time." – Sam Altman

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