Talking Kabir, breakups, LSD, and Ram Dass, Jack shares how we can unfurl from the suffering of our expectations in order to live the mystery.
Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield. The live version begins March 18!
“Awareness has this quality of allowing change or openness to take place, because you’re not trying to make it a certain way… you’re observing it.” – Jack Kornfield
In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:
- Kabir and waking up in this very life
- Grief, breakups, disappointment, and letting go
- How expectation creates suffering
- Meditation and “manufacturing the light”
- Expectations, battling reality, and opening to the mystery
- How the mind measures, but the heart loves
- What Ram Dass told Jack about dealing with the death of his father
- Moving past the content of mind, and truly experiencing life
- The essence of Buddha’s practice of mindfulness
- Labeling/noting feelings as a way to release them
- Albert Hoffman and LSD
- Relationships and how to make commitment without expectation
This Dharma Talk from 10/10/1988 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.
“Now, what’s interesting to discover in meditation, is as you pay attention inside, it’s the mind which measures, the mind with thought. The heart doesn’t measure, the heart doesn’t have that capacity, actually.” – Jack Kornfield
“This is an amazing thing—bodies, and life, and cars, and planets hanging in space, and big balls of fire that we name stars and no one knows where they come from…beetles, insects, and strange things. What is this? So we sit and make ourselves a little bit quiet in order to turn the heart and the mind together to face directly this reality, this changing reality of birth and death, of change of life.” – Jack Kornfield
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 focal point