Rewiring our brains around difficulties, emptiness, fear, and longing, Jack highlights how we can connect our practice with our deepest love.
“When you get afraid or things are difficult, fear is simply the signal that you’re about to learn something new. When you feel afraid it’s like the little light comes on that says, ‘About to grow.'” – Jack Kornfield
In this episode, Jack contemplates and explores:
- The times in our lives where we feel truly connected to our hearts
- Ajahn Jumnian, motivation for practice, spiritual thirst, and working with addiction
- Bringing awareness to the truth of emptiness and nature of joy and sorrow
- Reincarnation and seeing everyone in the world as your mothers, fathers, and children
- Finding that what we really want is simple heart connection
- Emptiness, longing, and feeding the hungry heart
- Stillness and living from our fundamental nature of love and caring
- The difficulties in life as part of the spiritual path
- Seeing life as a continuous flow of mistakes to learn from, and fear as a signal that you are about to grow
“To study emptiness means to accept without resisting, to not push away or not distract ourselves from the emptiness that’s within us that we half-feel and keep trying to fill up through all of our sense of longing and deficiency. Instead, it’s to sit and say, ‘Alright, let me feel that longing, that emptiness, that space, that deficiency. Let me feel how deep it is, how big it is, and not just try to fill it right away.’ When we stop running and feel that, then something new comes alive in us.” – Jack Kornfield
RamDev Dale Borglum offers practices and perspectives on moving from fear to fearlessness, on Healing at the Edge Ep. 76
About Jack Kornfield:
Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, studying as. a monk under the Buddhist master Ven. Ajahn Chah, as well as the Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies.
Dive into Jack’s ongoing dharma offerings and transformational online courses on the new JackKornfield.com
Listen to more from Jack:
Tune into Ep. 109 of Heart Wisdom: This Too Shall Pass
Learn about Living with a Peaceful Heart in Ep. 91 of Heart Wisdom
Check out Ep. 90 of Heart Wisdom to learn about Healing Through Loving Awareness
Listen to more Stories That Open the Mind, Mend the Heart and Lead to Joy with Jack Kornfield in Ep.92 of Heart Wisdom
Tune into Ep. 102 of Heart Wisdom: The Wisdom of the One Who Knows
Check out Ep. 1 of Heart Wisdom to gain wisdom on Impermanence
Photo via PATCHAREE SISUWONG