Reflecting on the election, Jack explores how we can most mindfully and lovingly dance with impermanence, suffering, and ‘the great turning’ of the world.

This episode was originally recorded for the Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday Night Dharma Talk and Guided Meditation Livestream on 11/11/24. Learn more about Spirit Rock’s offerings here. Join Jack’s next livestream event here.

“It’s not about an election one way or the other, they come and go. There’s such huge other forces happening right now—climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion energy—huge possibilities and huge problems. As T.S. Elliot says, ‘In my end is my beginning.’ Everything that turns offers a new openness and beginning for something else.” – Jack Kornfield

In this fresh episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Navigating the election and politics in a changing world
• Returning to the basics of Buddhism and living a wise spiritual life
• Quieting the mind, tending the heart, listening to the cries, and seeing with the eyes of wisdom
• What Ajahn Chah’s wisdom for the election results would be
• Opening to change, honoring impermanence, facing suffering
• Annica – the wisdom of uncertainty
• Navigating the “Great Turning” of the world
• Shifting from exploitive and consumer consciousness to one of interdependence and mutual care
• Facing our suffering, warfare, racism, aging, death, loss, and change
• The Zen view of the “dew drop” world
• How annica, dukka, anatta connect with nirvana and unshakeable freedom
• To end the illusion of separation
• Politics as a form of ritualized warfare
• Standing up like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita
• Human history as also containing compassion, courage, and sweetness
• Finding refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
• Living from unconditional love and a freedom from fear
• The transformative power of community
• Our inexorable connection to all the great Saints, Gods, and to the Great Mystery

“You get to choose your spirit. No matter what.” – Jack Kornfield

"We know that we're not separate. You know it especially when you're on the mountaintop looking down after some amazing hike, or listening to a piece of music that transports you beyond the small sense of self. You know it when you make love, or take psychedelics, or have some profound meditation, or dance until you disappear. We all know it." – Jack Kornfield

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Helping us reflect on our daily habits and feelings, Jack shares how Right Attitude, Wise Aspiration, and Mindful Thought allow us to uncover the sweet joy of living in The Way.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

“With Wise Attitude we begin to discover the power of kindness, the joy in not grasping, the delight in generosity, the ease in letting go, and the immediacy of freedom and liberation that is here in every moment.” – Jack Kornfield

Exploring the second step of the Eightfold Path, Jack mindfully shares on:

• Right Attitude, Wise Thought, the second step on the Eightfold Path
• Seeing directly the true power of mind and heart
• Overcoming habitual patterns of thought, action, and attitude
• The Buddha on nobility, integrity, and the heart
• Overcoming greed, hatred, and delusion
• Knowing the sweet joy of living in The Way
• Wise Aspiration and the path of the Bodhisattva
• Reflecting on our attitude around death
• Rumi, Stephen Levine, Martin Luther King Jr, Suzuki Roshi, and Alan Watts
• Taking what life gives us as “grist for the mill” of awakening
• Examining spiritual teachings in our own life (what works, what doesn’t?)
• Trading ‘protection and defensiveness’ for ‘openness and curiosity’
• Accepting each moment as an unrepeatable miracle
• Beginner’s Mind and Don’t Know Mind
• Openness, respect, and compassion

“It is knowing what is true that brings ourselves freedom. We don’t get free by making ourselves free.” – Jack Kornfield

“It is only through mercy, through the kindness of compassion, that reconciliation happens, that what’s locked in suffering begins to grow and breathe new life.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded in 1992 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Intersecting the Buddha’s ‘Wise Understanding’ with Alan Watt’s ‘Wisdom of Insecurity,’ Jack illuminates the path of discovering lasting happiness.

For an even deeper dive down the Eightfold Path, sign up for Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield, an online course designed to guide you through the wisdom, compassion, and freedom of Buddha’s teachings. Learn more and sign up here.

“Spiritual life is not about possessing or finding security, but rather it’s discovering what Alan Watts called, ‘the wisdom of insecurity,’ the capacity for freedom and compassion of heart, no matter what the circumstances. Right Understanding is a willingness to dedicate ourself to awakening, no matter how conditions change.” – Jack Kornfield

Exploring the first step of the Eightfold Path, Jack mindfully shares on:

• The Buddha, Enlightenment, the Eightfold Path, and Four Noble Truths
• How to live a wise, mindful, happy, and loving life
• The Middle Path as the pathway to freedom
• Wise Understanding, the first step on the Eightfold Path
• Suffering, it’s causes, and how to alleviate it
• Where happiness actually comes from
• Working with clinging, grasping, aging, aversion, fear
• Impermanence, change, and the wisdom of insecurity
• Spiritual Direction and the journey of the soul
• The seed of awakening your Buddha Nature
• Understanding the Law of Karma
• Finding nirvana through our current circumstances
• Having compassion for what puts us to sleep
• Tending your heart to tend the whole world

“Buddha saw that the cause of happiness and the cause of suffering is not so much in life itself, but in the way that we relate to life.” – Jack Kornfield

“Right understanding tells us that we can dedicate our life to something beautiful.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded in 1992 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Discover how to shift from trauma to loving awareness through mindfulness, conscious healing, and compassionate activism with Jack Kornfield and Thomas Hübl, PhD.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

“Who you are is so much more than your trauma, you are consciousness itself.” – Jack Kornfield

In Part 2 of this episode originally airing for The Collective Trauma Summit in 2021, Jack and Thomas mindfully explore:

• Developing the skills to heal our trauma
• Jack’s time with meditation master, Maha Ghosananda
• The powerful connection between activism and spirituality
• Avoiding burnout, finding balance
• Transforming from skeptical to mystical
• Navigating the traumas in the Middle East
• Digesting our traumas
• Waking up from auto-pilot
• Expanding your window of tolerance
• How to face racism, war, economic disparity, the environment, etc
• Mindfulness, consciousness, and loving awareness

“The whole notion that spiritual practice doesn’t have anything to do with activism is a fiction.” – Jack Kornfield

“Every breath you take is the breath of the starlings and the breath of the earthworms and the soil. We’re all inter-breathing it together. That’s how it works, that’s what life is.” – Jack Kornfield

About Thomas Hübl, PhD:

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma.

He is the author of Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World and Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, as a coach for CEOs and organizational leaders, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. For more info, books, podcast, and upcoming offerings, please visit thomashuebl.com

Open the Heart of Forgiveness with Jack Kornfield: A Journey of Redemption, Reconciliation and Renewal. Learn more and sign up!

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Jack Kornfield and Thomas Hübl, PhD explore the dimensions of trauma, individual and collective healing, and the transformative power of community.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

“Almost every great spiritual tradition knows that we can’t do it alone. Because part of the revelation is that the whole notion of separateness is a constructed fiction—that we are one another’s bond, we are one another’s glory, that we are life itself—and that sense of separation dissolves in mystical ways, in the deepest most profound therapeutic ways.” – Jack Kornfield

In Part 1 of this episode originally airing for The Collective Trauma Summit in 2021, Jack and Thomas mindfully explore:

• The essence of trauma, how it gets locked in our body, and how to finally release it
• The merging point of Eastern Spirituality and Western Psychology
• The way intimate relationships help bring up exactly what we need to work on
• How our trauma work can lead to spiritual healing
• The various dimensions of healing trauma
• Deep and moving stories of alchemizing trauma
• Creating a safe container for our healing and collective healing
• How interdependence in a group naturally leads to healing
• The importance of community (satsang, sangha)
• How Stan Grof’s holotropic breathwork is a psychedelic experience
• Grounding and integrating our our practice into mindful loving awareness
• An ancient Buddhist parable on merging the physical world with the spiritual

Open the Heart of Forgiveness with Jack Kornfield: A Journey of Redemption, Reconciliation and Renewal beginning Oct 21. Learn more and sign up!

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Jack guides us in creating a sacred container for spiritual practice—a space where, like a garden, our inner life can be nurtured, allowing us to transform life’s challenges into paths of awakening and growth.

Open the Heart of Forgiveness with Jack Kornfield: A Journey of Redemption, Reconciliation and Renewal beginning Oct 21. Learn more and sign up!

“Much of our spiritual life, to mature, needs a sacred container for transformation. It needs this container that is greater than our small self—the body of fear and the mind of desire—something that honors a larger spirit, a larger truth.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

Creating a free and protected space, a sacred container for your practice

How the very difficulties in our lives are what actually awakens us

Using our hardships as a crucible for uncovering our own goodness

Rumi’s flavorful and delicious “vegetable fable”

Learning how to stay centered on your cushion

The mirror-like quality of meditation practice

Meeting our practice with commitment, constancy, patience

Honoring the cycles of nature and the universe

Feeling our feelings to heal our grief

Learning the value of staying with things, even through difficulty

Choosing the Dharma over the body of fear and mind of desire

Nurturing the sacred garden within yourself

The power of prayer and feeling blessed

“In a way, sitting is nothing more than looking in the mirror. You sit and face whatever arises.” – Jack Kornfield

“It almost doesn’t matter what we pick, who our partner is, or what we choose to do, as long as it’s reasonably wholesome. What matters is how much we can give to it, of our sincerity, of our earnestness, of our heart.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded on 8/1/1991 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Guiding us through the ever-changing cycles of life, Jack uncovers the profound truth of our interconnectedness as boundless and unique expressions of the Dharma.

This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.

“We see that there isn’t one way to practice or to live, but many cycles, seasons, and expressions of Dharma and truth.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Natural wisdom of the rainforest ecosystem
• Discovering the truth of our inexorable interconnection
• Seeing clearly the reality of change and impermanence
• Interconnectedness within the flowing stream of interbeing
• Spiritual maturity and recognizing the patterns and cycles of life
• The many unique expressions of Dharma, spirituality, and truth in this world
• Wisdom from Buddha, Dipa Ma, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, HH the Dalai Lama, S.N. Goenka, and Tibetan cave-dwelling yogis
• Bringing your compassion to the environment, politics, social action, homelessness, education, etc
• Meditation as a radical act: facing head-on the forces of greed, prejudice, hatred, and delusion
• Finding your unique dharma and way to help the world
• Life and spirituality as a process of death and rebirth over and over again
• Uncovering a deep ‘joy for no reason’
• How the “light and love” in meditation is actually literal
• Untangling the knots of our attachments to live in inner freedom
• A poem dedicated to the struggles in the Middle East
• Discovering your capacity to awaken, and your unique gift

“It’s not about perfection of oneself or the world, but it’s learning to live in a simple way and touch one moment after another with wisdom, understanding, compassion, and presence.” – Jack Kornfield

“Wisdom is a state of our being in our heart. And to live in that way takes humility, a surrender or commitment, a trusting heart, a going into the unknown.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 1/3/1991 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Open the Heart of Forgiveness with Jack Kornfield: A Journey of Redemption, Reconciliation and Renewal beginning Oct 21. Learn more and sign up!

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Speaking to progressing on the spiritual path, Jack explores enlightenment as true intimacy, and shares how: where we’re going is actually here.

“Where we’re going is here, and what we’re after doesn’t exist in time.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Our idealistic/romantic notions of the spiritual path
• Consciousness, impermanence, and working with human emotions
• Wisdom stories of Ajahn Chah, Jack’s accomplished Thai meditation teacher
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the legend of building a Spiritual Amusement Park
• Progress and patience along the spiritual path
• Enlightenment as intimacy with all things
• A guided meditation practice reflecting on life, death, and good deeds
• Transforming the the world with one small act of kindness at a time
• Honoring our own beauty and goodness
• How compassion is characterized by true intimacy
• Recognizing and coming to our spiritual maturity
• Living like a Bodhisattva, and what it really means to ‘save all beings’
• Alchemizing extreme suffering, trauma, and grief into compassion, forgiveness, and service

“Enlightenment is to be intimate with what’s here.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 1/3/1991 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

For more teachings, full courses, articles, and guided meditations, head to JackKornfield.com or sign up for Jack's email teachings at JackKornfield.com/newsletter

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