Love is in the air, as Jack explores the nature of desire, relationships, and spiritual passion—offering wisdom on stabilizing the heart, navigating distractions, and awakening to the timeless and sacred.

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“If you know what it’s like to really fall in love with someone, then you can begin to sense what it means to bring the full presence of attention to your life.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• The Buddha on mindfulness and awareness
• Stabilizing the heart, mind, and body in the present
• Overcoming distractions and difficult moods
• Being aware of desires arising and passing
• Chanda – spiritual passion, the desire for awakening
• The connection between power, insecurity, and fear
• How to stop feeding the hungry heart in unskillful ways
• The difference between desire and love
• Relationship, marriage, and staying in love
• A moving love story from Thich Nhat Hanh
• Reclaiming our humanity and animal nature
• Reawakening mystery, gratitude, awe
• Touching that which is timeless and sacred
• Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of infinite compassion
• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and living your fullness
• Noticing what tempts you away during meditation

“What direction do our personal desires take us? It’s good to study them. As my teacher Ajahn Chah said, ‘It may be a very fast car, but you ought to look at what road you’re going down and which way it’s headed.'” – Jack Kornfield

“Perhaps what we most deeply desire is immensely simple—to reclaim our humanity, our animal nature that Jung talked about, the wondrous senses, the sense of the spirit of awe, the remembering, the reawakening of that sense of gratitude and mystery for life.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded on 9/28/1992 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Rekindling the ancient art of listening, Jack shares how we can transform our lives through nourishing inner stillness and simplifying the mind.

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“The Divine waits for us to taste the food and not just read the menu.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Reclaiming the ancient Art of Listening
• Meditating like the Buddha in nature
• How your breath reflects your life
• Meditation, attention, and overcoming restlessness
• The ways we keep ourselves busy
• How to trust your human instincts
• Reclaiming an intimacy with your senses
• Noticing when we’re listening and when we’re not
• Honoring others through your attention
• Cultivating the humility of ‘Don’t Know Mind’
• The mystery of life, death, love, consciousness
• Nourishing inner stillness and simplifying your mind
• Letting go into the unfolding present moment
• The rather bizarre situation of having a human body
• Our connection to nature, earth, the elements, and all of being
• Finding the meditative space of no going forward, backward, or standing still

“To meditate is to remember, reclaim, reawaken the ancient art of listening.” – Jack Kornfield

“When the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree on his night of enlightenment, it wasn’t to do, get, or make something, but to listen inwardly with all of his senses to the nature of this world that we are born into for a time.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded on 9/21/1992 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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In this defining talk, Jack shed's light on his adventurous journey to Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, and how upon returning home, he had to learn to embody a heart of authenticity.

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“Being with Ajahn Chah was being with a person who rested in their Buddha Nature, their own true nature. He was just himself. He was really at peace with himself. You could feel it from the energy of his presence, rooted like a great tree in the earth.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• His mystical journey to learn with Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah,
• Needing to work his way down the chakras to fully live this human life
• Sudden awakening versus gradual change on the spiritual path
• Ramana Maharshi and liberation through facing one’s own death
• How to live in your soul and dance your unique dance
• What it’s like hanging out with monks covered in wild bees
• Ajahn Chah’s tree-like quality of roundedness, freedom, and openness
• Matching our thoughts and actions with our values
• His first time experience rapture in meditation
• The transformative aspects of therapy, bodywork, marriage, family
• Ram Dass and the healing quality of presence
• Navigating differences in our romantic relationships
• Learning to acknowledge the pain and loss beneath our anger
• Opening to life’s lessons of compassion, wisdom, and wakefulness
• The gift of spiritual community and sharing our authenticity
• Embodying the timeless eternal truth of mindfulness, intimacy, and wakefulness

“To love another person just as they are is the only kind of love that makes any sense.” – Jack Kornfield

“There’s an intimacy and a presence that is true about mindfulness: it’s either now or never.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded on 9/14/1992 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.