Reflecting on our intrinsic Basic Goodness, Jack outlines how acceptance, trust, meditation, and faith in the heart can help us navigate life’s 10,000 joys and sorrows.
This dharma talk was recorded on March 3rd, 1986 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and originally published on Dharma Seed.
Peace Pagoda: Faith in the Heart & Taking Refuge
Telling a story of visiting the United States’ first large Peace Pagoda – a Buddhist stupa built atop a hill in Massachusetts by peace-loving Japanese monks – Jack shares how they won over the rather tentative local community with gentle nature and good-heartedness. The reason things kept succinctly falling into place for the monks, Jack highlights as Basic Goodness and faith in the human heart, amidst taking Taking Refuge in one’s intrinsic Buddha Nature.
“There’s a kind of goodness that can be tapped in people when it serves an end that’s greater than our small self that is really wonderful… It’s something really basic in human beings and in our heart.” – Jack Kornfield
Jack shines light on how to recognize the inner basic goodness intrinsic to all beings, on Ep. 82 of Heart Wisdom
Value of Your Heart: Reflecting on Basic Goodness (12:08)
Outlining the importance of ‘walking in another’s shoes,’ Jack describes how beneath even our negative impulses lays a desire to be loved and feel whole – to salve the suffering of separation/mind.
“When people go back in their lives in their minds and look at the worst situations that they’ve created or other people around them have created, and can really get themselves back to that place, and maybe even get in the mind and heart of the people that hurt them a great deal, and switch consciousness to walk in that person’s shoes, they inevitably discover that underneath all of that, was that other person’s own pain and suffering, and underneath all of that, still, was a longing, a desire to be touched, to be loved, to be whole in some way.” – Jack Kornfield
Tend to yourself and tend to the world, with Jack Kornfield, on Ep. 48 of Heart Wisdom
Going Through the Center: Meditation, Acceptance, & Trust (22:08)
After telling a dharma story showcasing the deep value in learning to ride life’s ups and downs from a calm, accepting center, Jack explores the importance of meditation practice for learning how to trustfully navigate and ‘go through the center’ of life’s 10,000 joys and sorrows by threading the eye of the needle.
“Part of the process of meditation and spiritual practice is to come to a rest in our being, to a center that is unshakable. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t move in the wind, but that there’s a place in the heart of trust where we’ve touched an ability to feel all the things of life, of death, of birth—what the Taoist call the 10,000 joys and sorrows—and to accept every one of those, to come to rest, and then we can see things with a fresh mind, fresh ear, and fresh eye.” – Jack Kornfield
Learn how to uncover your natural goodness, with Jack’s friends Sharon Salzberg and Tara Brach, on Ep. 156 of the Metta Hour
