Program Notes
Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speaker: Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield
Mickey Hart
Today’s podcast features Jack Kornfield speaking at the 1988 International Transpersonal Conference in Santa Rosa, California.
Kornfield is an American writer, teacher, and psychologist who is known for his work in making Buddhism more accessible for Westerners. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, India, and Burma, and has been teaching meditation internationally since 1974.
He has also spoken about psychedelics in the context of spiritual practice. His views on the intersection of Buddhism and psychedelics highlights the importance of intention, caution, and ethical boundaries when considering their use.
Kornfield also recommends getting trained in mindfulness, compassion and equanimity before using psychedelics. As he says, they are not for beginners.
Are Psychedelics Useful in the Practice of Buddhism? by Myron StolaroffJOURNAL OF HUMANISTICC PSYCHOLOGY
Previous Episode
Podcast 691 – The New Berzerkers
Next Episode
Podcast 693 – The Braided Self
Similar Episodes
- 060 - The Future of Human Consciousness - score: 0.71282
- 622 - Nirvana Is Where You Are - score: 0.70803
- 614 - Meditation and Psychedelics - score: 0.70163
- 169 - Truth is a Dangerous Thing - score: 0.66315
- 579 - Meditation and Psychedelics - score: 0.66131
- 326 - Avoiding the Pitfall of Words - score: 0.65960
- 388 - Wherever You Are, Be There! - score: 0.65881
- 637 - Become the Bliss - score: 0.64774
- 477 - What is this medium called consciousness_ - score: 0.64464
- 196 - Timothy Leary vs. Notre Dame - score: 0.63374
Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Three-dimensional, transforming, musical, linguistic objects.
00:00:08 ►
Alpha Chains.
00:00:16 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:23 ►
And today we get to listen to Jack Kornfield speaking at the 1988 International Transpersonal Conference.
00:00:32 ►
And by the way, two other speakers at this conference are people you already know.
00:00:36 ►
Albert Hoffman and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead.
00:00:40 ►
But they won’t be here with us today.
00:00:42 ►
but they won’t be here with us today.
00:00:45 ►
Now, this podcast is going to be a little different because it’s focused on mind manifestation through meditation
00:00:49 ►
rather than by using psychoactive substances.
00:00:53 ►
In fact, in the course of his presentation,
00:00:56 ►
Kornfield includes two five-minute meditations.
00:00:59 ►
Now, I’ve not included the first one,
00:01:01 ►
but during the ending meditation, his accompanying dialogue is, well, it’s really worth the time to re-listen to and give some thought to what he suggests.
00:01:10 ►
As you may know, Jack Kornfield is an American writer, teacher, and psychologist who is known for his work in making Buddhism more accessible for Westerners.
00:01:26 ►
for Westerners. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, India, and Burma, and he has been teaching meditation internationally since 1974. Jack Kornfield has also spoken about psychedelics
00:01:34 ►
in the context of spiritual practice, and his views on the intersection of Buddhism and psychedelics
00:01:41 ►
highlights the importance of intention, caution, and ethical boundaries when
00:01:46 ►
considering their use. He also recommends getting trained in mindfulness, compassion, and equanimity
00:01:52 ►
before using psychedelics. As he said, they are not for beginners. Now let’s rewind time back to
00:02:01 ►
October of the year 1988, before many of you were born, I assume. And
00:02:06 ►
let’s join the audience at the International Transpersonal Conference in Santa Rosa, California.
00:02:16 ►
Welcome to the International Transpersonal Conference, October 1988. This presenter is Jack Kornfield speaking on How Could the Buddha Teach in
00:02:29 ►
California?
00:02:31 ►
I’ve been training as a Buddhist monk in monasteries in India, Thailand, Burma for many years.
00:02:39 ►
I’m also a clinical psychologist and a father. And most frequently I teach Buddhist meditation retreats,
00:02:48 ►
ten days and month long and so forth.
00:02:51 ►
And apparently this morning in 45 minutes I’m supposed to teach you
00:02:54 ►
all of Buddhist insight meditation, loving-kindness practices,
00:03:00 ►
the whole of Buddhist psychology and the transition of Buddhism
00:03:03 ►
from the East to the West.
00:03:05 ►
So, hold on to your chairs, and we’ll do what we can, anyway.
00:03:13 ►
There’s a story from the very beginning of Buddhist practice.
00:03:17 ►
Shortly after the Buddha was awakened or enlightened, it said he was walking down the road,
00:03:28 ►
enlightened. It said he was walking down the road and some people saw him coming to them and he was apparently told to be a very handsome prince. And after his enlightenment, he must have been
00:03:34 ►
very happy, at least in quite a good mood for that day. And so they said to him,
00:03:41 ►
you look very special. What are you? Are you some kind of a god? He said, no.
00:03:48 ►
Well, are you a devil or an angel? No, he answered. Well, are you a wizard or a magician?
00:03:55 ►
No. Well, are you a man? No, he answered. Hmm, gets interesting. Well, what are you then? And his reply was, I am awake.
00:04:08 ►
And in those three words, I am awake, he gave the whole of the teachings of Buddhism that
00:04:14 ►
follow for the next 2,500 years and more. The word Buddha means awakened one, or someone who has awakened to the nature of life, of birth
00:04:28 ►
and death, and who has awakened in relationship to the body, to the heart, to the mind, and
00:04:35 ►
the world around, the interactions with that, and found a sense of freedom in all of those
00:04:42 ►
realms. This is to say, to discover one’s Buddha nature.
00:04:50 ►
Let me read you a quote which comes not from the Buddhist tradition.
00:04:55 ►
This is from Pope John XXIII, but it speaks to this point.
00:05:00 ►
It often happens that I wake at night
00:05:03 ►
and begin to think about a serious problem
00:05:05 ►
and decide that I must tell the Pope about it.
00:05:09 ►
Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
00:05:18 ►
He was a good guy.
00:05:29 ►
The practice of Buddhism is to return or to discover to that human capacity of tremendous compassion and understanding of the changing dance
00:05:35 ►
of light and dark and up and down and birth and death,
00:05:39 ►
and make not just one’s peace with it,
00:05:41 ►
but to enter into it with wisdom and with love.
00:05:46 ►
Now a wonderful Zen master who brought Buddhist practice very much alive in
00:05:51 ►
California, Suzuki Roshi, died in 1971 of cancer. And as he was dying he brought
00:05:58 ►
his students together and spoke to them. He said, if when I die, the moment I’m dying, if I suffer, that’s all right,
00:06:08 ►
you know. That’s just suffering, Buddha. No confusion in it. Maybe everyone will struggle
00:06:15 ►
because of the physical agony or the spiritual agony too, but that’s all right. That’s not a
00:06:21 ►
problem. We should be very grateful to have a limited body like mine or like
00:06:25 ►
yours. If you had a limitless life, it would be a real problem for you. If would I die, if I suffer,
00:06:33 ►
that’s all right, you know. That’s just suffering Buddha. Sun Buddha, Moon Buddha, Happy Buddha, Sad
00:06:39 ►
Buddha. Not just some idea, some spiritual ideal that we hold,
00:06:47 ►
but in one’s body and cells and heart and being,
00:06:50 ►
a reality of facing the truth of life
00:06:54 ►
and living in it in a wise and compassionate way.
00:06:58 ►
Now, how is this taught,
00:07:00 ►
and how might it connect with modern society?
00:07:08 ►
The first thing that we’re asked to do,
00:07:15 ►
if we want to look at how the Buddha might teach in modern California, and I’m not sure how different it would be than teaching in ancient India. Perhaps he would see California and decide to
00:07:20 ►
teach elsewhere, I don’t know. But if he were to look clearly, or we were to look at our society,
00:07:27 ►
we would see a very complex, speedy society where faster is better and where
00:07:35 ►
more is better. And the basic tenets of our culture is that the more you can do and be and have and accumulate
00:07:45 ►
in the shortest time,
00:07:47 ►
whether it’s money or control over others or whatever,
00:07:50 ►
that will make you happy.
00:07:53 ►
We would also see, we can see if we look,
00:07:56 ►
a society that has a very great degree of addiction.
00:08:01 ►
In the Buddhist tradition it’s called attachment or craving. It’s the
00:08:07 ►
literal addiction of 10 million drug addicts and 20 million alcoholics and 50 million people
00:08:13 ►
in their families who suffer in very difficult ways because of it. And the majority of car
00:08:20 ►
accidents and the majority of child abuse because of intoxicants. In the most number of
00:08:26 ►
houses, 85% of all fires in homes have to do with abuse of intoxicants. But it’s not just drugs and
00:08:34 ►
alcohol. It’s addiction to work and addiction to sexuality and all of it keeping ourselves busy to avoid facing ourselves, our loneliness, our fears,
00:08:46 ►
the mystery of birth and death.
00:08:49 ►
So what would Buddha have to say
00:08:51 ►
to a culture that is so speedy
00:08:54 ►
and in some ways so out of touch with ourselves?
00:08:59 ►
First of all, that happiness,
00:09:02 ►
what we most long for and most deeply seek, is to be found
00:09:08 ►
here in the heart.
00:09:10 ►
Not through money, not through being rich or poor, or accomplishing or not accomplishing.
00:09:16 ►
You know rich people who are very happy and rich people who are miserable, and poor people
00:09:20 ►
who are happy and poor people who are miserable.
00:09:23 ►
I’m not extolling the virtues of one over another.
00:09:27 ►
But if we look deeply,
00:09:29 ►
the source of human happiness is the heart,
00:09:32 ►
is our ability to love or to give or our understanding.
00:09:36 ►
So it challenges us in some way to look at our own lives.
00:09:42 ►
Is your life a sane life?
00:09:45 ►
Is it crazy and busy and complicated?
00:09:48 ►
Is it involved with getting things and possession and accomplishment
00:09:54 ►
to the detriment of your being and your heart?
00:09:59 ►
The heart actually opens more through simplicity than anything else.
00:10:03 ►
It can’t be forced open.
00:10:05 ►
It opens more like a flower.
00:10:08 ►
Through calm,
00:10:10 ►
through listening to the body,
00:10:14 ►
through spending time with your children.
00:10:17 ►
And we have a society where children are being raised in daycare centers.
00:10:22 ►
Why not raise our own children?
00:10:26 ►
Through spending time in nature?
00:10:33 ►
We get two weeks vacation a year and spend a week of it maybe in the mountains and 51 weeks in our cars in California. When the Buddha lived in India, although he would walk into the cities of Benares
00:10:41 ►
and Delhi and so forth, he didn’t live there. I don’t think he would live in Los Angeles either, for that matter.
00:10:47 ►
He would visit and do some teaching
00:10:49 ►
and then retire to someplace that was a little saner.
00:10:54 ►
So the first piece of understanding that’s necessary for us
00:11:00 ►
is really to open our eyes and our hearts and say,
00:11:03 ►
what is the values of our
00:11:05 ►
society and is it sane? How are we living and how might we live our own lives? Because
00:11:12 ►
someone may need to change in the world for the world to change, and that person is ourself.
00:11:22 ►
I went to a very great Tibetan Lama named Bhoujam Rinpoche, who along with the Dalai Lama is the head of one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
00:11:30 ►
And I went to see him to ask for an interview. Talked a lot about my meditation practice.
00:11:37 ►
And he’s the master of all of the higher tantric teachings of Ati Yoga and Anu Yoga.
00:11:43 ►
And at the end I said, I have a difficulty, Rinpoche.
00:11:48 ►
I teach these ten-day and month-long meditation retreats, and after teaching three or four
00:11:54 ►
of them in a row for fifty or a hundred people at a time, I tend to get very tired. I get
00:11:59 ►
burnt out, perhaps. I get impatient. It’s hard to take in when I’m supposed to be with people to really listen well,
00:12:09 ►
my body doesn’t feel so good.
00:12:11 ►
Is there some practice that you could give me
00:12:13 ►
by which I could do this work, teach Buddhist practice,
00:12:17 ►
and not be so vulnerable and so overwhelmed?
00:12:21 ►
And he asked a number of questions.
00:12:23 ►
How is my virtue?
00:12:24 ►
Was I careful with speech
00:12:26 ►
and sexuality and those things? Did I live the teachings? I’d do my best for that. And
00:12:33 ►
then he asked the details of how I taught the retreats, and he said, yes, I think I
00:12:37 ►
can help you. And I thought, wonderful. He’ll give me a Tibetan tantric practice, surround
00:12:42 ►
yourself with white light and visualize the bodhisattva
00:12:46 ►
of infinite compassion, and then none of that yucky stuff will get in and I’ll be able to
00:12:50 ►
march through the world and teach good things and be unaffected. And he asked a few more
00:12:56 ►
questions, some details about the way I taught and practiced. And he said, yes, there’s a
00:13:00 ►
way that you can work with this. So I’m waiting for the higher tantric teachings.
00:13:06 ►
And he said, what I recommend for you
00:13:09 ►
is that you teach shorter retreats and take longer vacations.
00:13:19 ►
Now before we go any further,
00:13:21 ►
because some of this, probably all of this,
00:13:24 ►
is things that you’ve heard before,
00:13:26 ►
the teachings of wisdom are really reminders to our own Buddha nature.
00:13:30 ►
Let’s do the first of the two short meditations we’ll do today.
00:13:34 ►
So put your things down and put your feet on the floor.
00:13:38 ►
This will be about a five-minute meditation.
00:13:42 ►
And it’s a beginning introduction to Buddhist insight practice
00:13:46 ►
it’s also a good way to start the conference
00:13:50 ►
in a sense of an emptying or listening
00:13:53 ►
so with your feet on the floor
00:13:55 ►
sitting up relatively straight but still comfortably
00:13:59 ►
let your hands rest easily and your eyes close
00:14:03 ►
and first just come into your body Let your hands rest easily and your eyes close.
00:14:08 ►
And first just come into your body.
00:14:13 ►
What we’re after is something called an in-the-body experience.
00:14:15 ►
You’ve heard about the body experiences.
00:14:19 ►
The reason starts with the other end of it, and it’s more difficult.
00:14:22 ►
There’s a line from James Joyce where he says at one point, Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body
00:14:25 ►
Let your eyes open when you will. You’ve just completed the equivalent of a ten-day meditation retreat.
00:14:52 ►
Beside the understanding that the happiness and the connection with life that we so long for
00:14:55 ►
isn’t through our doing,
00:14:57 ►
but it’s through a resting and a settling,
00:15:01 ►
a connecting with our bodies and our hearts and with one another.
00:15:05 ►
That what we so long for in our loneliness isn’t done through activity,
00:15:11 ►
but through a settling into this moment.
00:15:14 ►
The next understanding that the Buddha has us look at
00:15:19 ►
is that we’re a society which seeks comfort.
00:15:23 ►
We have comfortable cars and heat and air conditioning in the house,
00:15:27 ►
and we do everything to avoid discomfort.
00:15:30 ►
We avoid our fear, we avoid our pain, any way we can.
00:15:35 ►
We put old people in old age homes,
00:15:39 ►
and poor people live in ghettos and the freeways go around them,
00:15:42 ►
so you don’t have to see them very much except for the homeless, unfortunately,
00:15:47 ►
because the last eight years of the government
00:15:49 ►
has cut all the funds for low-income housing.
00:15:53 ►
We even dress up our corpses with makeup and fancy clothes
00:15:57 ►
like they were going to a banquet or something.
00:16:00 ►
Our society is not very good at facing its shadow,
00:16:03 ►
at facing difficulty and pain.
00:16:07 ►
And yet life itself is up and down
00:16:10 ►
and sweet and sour and light and dark
00:16:13 ►
and pleasure and pain.
00:16:14 ►
Anyone in this room not have pain as a part of their life,
00:16:17 ►
please raise your hand.
00:16:21 ►
It’s what life is made of, birth and death.
00:16:25 ►
So to awaken, to live wisely, we need a willingness and a courage and a greatness of heart
00:16:33 ►
to face the suffering and sorrows and loss of life as much as the beauty and the joys.
00:16:42 ►
There’s 50 wars going on in the world right now, and there have been 115
00:16:46 ►
revolutions and wars since World War II. There’s only 150 countries. Not a very good track
00:16:54 ►
record as a species. There is starvation in a number of countries, and terrible ways,
00:17:01 ►
and grain elevators full of food in other places. It’s not just in India or in Africa.
00:17:08 ►
You just walk down the street of a city in America, there’s fear and depression, people
00:17:14 ►
afraid of the Republicans, people afraid of the Democrats, of the Communists, of the
00:17:18 ►
Liberals, afraid of losing money, afraid of having money, people grieving for things that they wanted and that they’ve
00:17:26 ►
lost. People not understanding, people confused. What’s the source of this suffering in the
00:17:34 ►
world, I ask you? It comes from the heart. It comes from greed and fear and prejudice and confusion.
00:17:47 ►
Why is there war?
00:17:51 ►
Why is there food in one place and starving people in another?
00:17:55 ►
We don’t need more oil or more food.
00:17:59 ►
We need more love, more understanding, less prejudice.
00:18:03 ►
Now the Buddha said, I teach one thing only.
00:18:09 ►
I teach the truth or the fact that in life there is suffering. If you don’t want to face that, you might as well leave at this point. You’re on the wrong planet, basically.
00:18:16 ►
And that there’s an end to it, that there’s a path to the end of suffering. And spiritual life is to learn how to stop running away from things we don’t like,
00:18:27 ►
and to face the whole of our life, birth and death, and live here now with what Zorba the Greek called
00:18:34 ►
the whole catastrophe, with your heart open, to face the 10,000 joys and sorrows. Now I read you a passage from the diary of a friend of mine.
00:18:50 ►
I’d served as a field medical corpsman
00:18:52 ►
with the Marine Corps
00:18:53 ►
in the ground forces
00:18:55 ►
in the early days of the Vietnam War
00:18:57 ►
on the DMZ.
00:18:59 ►
Our casualty rates were high,
00:19:01 ►
as were the villagers
00:19:02 ►
that we could treat
00:19:04 ►
when circumstances permitted.
00:19:06 ►
This is very intense.
00:19:09 ►
It had been eight years since my return from Vietnam when I attended my first meditation retreat.
00:19:16 ►
At least twice a week for all those years, I had sustained the same recurring nightmares common to many combat veterans.
00:19:24 ►
sustained the same recurring nightmares common to many combat veterans.
00:19:29 ►
Dreaming I was back there, facing the same dangers,
00:19:33 ►
witnessing the same incalculable suffering,
00:19:38 ►
waking suddenly, alert, sweating, scared, over and over.
00:19:44 ►
At the retreat, the nightmares did not occur during sleep.
00:19:47 ►
They filled the mind’s eye during the day at sittings,
00:19:50 ►
during walking meditation, at meals.
00:19:55 ►
Horrific wartime flashbacks were superimposed over a quiet redwood grove at the retreat center.
00:19:59 ►
Sleeping students in the dormitory became body parts
00:20:03 ►
strewn about a makeshift morgue on the DMZ.
00:20:07 ►
What I gradually came to see was that as I relived these memories as a 30-year-old spiritual seeker,
00:20:15 ►
I was also enduring for the first time the full emotional impact of experiences which as a 20-year-old medic,
00:20:24 ►
I was simply unprepared to withstand.
00:20:27 ►
Through private interviews and through the practice I began to realize that the mind
00:20:33 ►
was yielding up memories so terrifying, so life denying, so spiritually eroding,
00:20:40 ►
that I had ceased to be consciously aware that I was even carrying them. I was, in short,
00:20:47 ►
beginning to undergo a profound catharsis by openly facing that which I had most feared and
00:20:54 ►
had therefore most strongly suppressed. At the retreat I was also plagued by a more current fear
00:21:01 ►
that having released the inner demons of war, I would be unable to control them,
00:21:07 ►
that they would now rule my days as they had my nights. But what I experienced instead was just
00:21:15 ►
the opposite. The visions of slain friends and dismembered children gradually gave way to other half-remembered scenes from that time and place.
00:21:27 ►
The entrancing, intense beauty of a jungle forest, a thousand different shades of green,
00:21:35 ►
a fragrant breeze blowing over beaches so white and dazzling they seemed carpeted by diamonds.
00:21:43 ►
What also arose at the retreat for the first time
00:21:46 ►
was a deep sense of compassion for my past and my present self,
00:21:52 ►
compassion for the idealistic, young, would-be physician
00:21:56 ►
forced to witness the most unspeakable obscenities
00:22:00 ►
of which humankind is capable,
00:22:03 ►
and for the haunted veteran who could not let go of memories
00:22:06 ►
he could hardly acknowledge he carried.
00:22:10 ►
Since the first retreat, the compassion has stayed with me.
00:22:15 ►
Through practice, it has grown sometimes
00:22:17 ►
to encompass those around me as well,
00:22:20 ►
when I’m not too self-conscious to let it do so.
00:22:24 ►
And while the memories have also stayed,
00:22:26 ►
the nightmares have not.
00:22:28 ►
The last of the sweating, screaming evenings
00:22:31 ►
happened in silence, fully awake,
00:22:34 ►
sitting on top of a meditation cushion
00:22:36 ►
somewhere in Northern California ten years ago.
00:22:41 ►
It’s a very powerful story
00:22:43 ►
and almost a difficult one to read to you.
00:22:46 ►
But I read it at the beginning of this conference and in our time together, because it’s important
00:22:52 ►
to understand if you’re going to undertake a spiritual practice or if you want to work
00:22:58 ►
to face nuclear war or to heal the planet, what’s necessary in spiritual work or the psychological or transpersonal
00:23:07 ►
work is that you turn your heart and face the sorrow as much as the joy. It’s absolutely
00:23:15 ►
essential. And without that, there is no real spiritual evolution. It’s not just love and light and it’s not just some ideal it’s a real inner transformation and fire
00:23:29 ►
and out of this comes healing
00:23:33 ►
out of this comes the heart of compassion
00:23:36 ►
and the eyes of wisdom
00:23:37 ►
spirituality is not a withdrawal from the world
00:23:42 ►
in the Buddhist tradition
00:23:44 ►
there’s a teaching from the world. In the Buddhist tradition,
00:23:47 ►
there’s a teaching called the near enemies,
00:23:50 ►
that is, certain qualities of the heart and mind which masquerade as spiritual life but are different.
00:23:55 ►
There are four divine states
00:23:57 ►
that come through true spiritual practice,
00:24:00 ►
loving-kindness, compassion,
00:24:03 ►
sympathetic joy, the happiness of others,
00:24:06 ►
and profound equanimity or peace.
00:24:09 ►
And each of these has a near enemy.
00:24:12 ►
The near enemy to loving kindness is attachment.
00:24:16 ►
Anybody ever notice that?
00:24:18 ►
You start out loving this person, and after a while, or this thing,
00:24:22 ►
you get to where instead of loving them and feeling one with them,
00:24:26 ►
you get attached and they’re separate
00:24:28 ►
and you want to possess or control in some way.
00:24:31 ►
It feels like love, but it’s not the same, is it?
00:24:35 ►
The near enemy to compassion
00:24:37 ►
also separates.
00:24:39 ►
It’s pity.
00:24:40 ►
Oh, that poor person, they suffer
00:24:42 ►
as if somehow they were different than us.
00:24:46 ►
The near enemy to sympathetic joy or joy and happiness of others is the comparing mind.
00:24:53 ►
He has more, less, or equal to what I do or what she does.
00:24:57 ►
It’s that mind that tries to compare things.
00:25:01 ►
And the near enemy to equanimity is indifference. It’s that place that says,
00:25:07 ►
I’m fine, I’ve got mine, it doesn’t matter, everything changes anyway. Who cares if we
00:25:12 ►
get divorced? Or who cares, I’ll just find a different job. Or it’s all changing anyway,
00:25:17 ►
it doesn’t matter. And all of those states of attachment and pity and comparing and indifference are really based on fear
00:25:26 ►
and separateness. Leave the world away, push the world away so that I can feel safe. True
00:25:34 ►
equanimity is an openness of heart and being in the midst of the changing world. And spiritual
00:25:43 ►
life is not a withdrawal from the world,
00:25:46 ►
but it’s opposite.
00:25:47 ►
It is a willingness
00:25:48 ►
to face our relationships,
00:25:51 ►
our society,
00:25:52 ►
our work,
00:25:53 ►
and to enter into that
00:25:55 ►
with awareness and compassion.
00:25:58 ►
It’s entering into the heart of life.
00:26:01 ►
Now there was a poster I saw one time
00:26:03 ►
that explained meditation very well. It was a poster I saw one time that explained meditation very well.
00:26:06 ►
It was a poster and a picture of a Hindu guru, Swami Satchitananda, who has a long gray beard
00:26:13 ►
and flowing hair. He’s a yoga teacher and a master of meditation. And he was standing
00:26:19 ►
in the tree pose like this, with a little orange loincloth on, but he was balanced on a surfboard on
00:26:28 ►
a really big wave like this.
00:26:32 ►
It said, you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
00:26:38 ►
Meditate with Swami Satchitananda or something like that.
00:26:48 ►
to Nanda or something like that. And that gives you in a summary the best sense I can of what meditation and spiritual life is about. It’s not leaving the earth. If anything, it’s
00:26:54 ►
caring more deeply because we listen enough to feel that we are connected with it in one one another. Now all these are terrific ideas. So what? The secret of the whole
00:27:09 ►
Buddhist tradition for 2,500 years and more is one word, and it’s not faith, and
00:27:16 ►
it’s not enlightenment, and it’s not awareness. Training. That’s the secret. training.
00:27:27 ►
That’s the secret.
00:27:29 ►
It’s the deepest respect for the power of our habits,
00:27:33 ►
the depth of our fear,
00:27:35 ►
our sorrow,
00:27:36 ►
the things that we haven’t looked at,
00:27:38 ►
our conditioning.
00:27:39 ►
And seeing that there is a steady,
00:27:42 ►
demanding, heartful journey
00:27:44 ►
to awakening
00:27:45 ►
that’s required of almost everyone who wants to do it.
00:27:50 ►
You come here to this conference and in a sense you get little tastes of things, which is wonderful.
00:27:55 ►
But there’s no such thing as instant awakening or instant meditation.
00:28:00 ►
It’s not like McDonald’s.
00:28:02 ►
We get used to things so quickly.
00:28:04 ►
It’s not like McDonald’s. You know, we get used to things so quickly. Meditation. I’ll drive in, get a quickie, and then go back and it will be fine.
00:28:11 ►
We sometimes get letters addressed, instead of Insight Meditation,
00:28:15 ►
we get letters addressed to the Instant Meditation Society.
00:28:19 ►
But it’s not that way. The secret, the reason it’s called meditation practice
00:28:25 ►
instead of, say, perfect,
00:28:28 ►
is because it’s practice.
00:28:31 ►
And if you were to learn piano,
00:28:33 ►
how long would it take you?
00:28:36 ►
Some months and years of lessons and practicing
00:28:40 ►
before you could play even moderately well.
00:28:43 ►
If you wanted to learn to program a computer well,
00:28:46 ►
or if you wanted to be a painter,
00:28:49 ►
or to play tennis well, it’s all the same.
00:28:51 ►
How about if you wanted to cultivate and open the heart and the mind?
00:28:56 ►
You don’t do it quickly.
00:28:57 ►
It’s the greatest art.
00:29:02 ►
And whatever we practice, that’s what comes.
00:29:06 ►
If you practice being hateful,
00:29:08 ►
after a while it becomes easy for you,
00:29:09 ►
and a situation arises, and you’re hateful.
00:29:12 ►
It’s just how it works. Have you noticed?
00:29:14 ►
If you practice greed, what happens?
00:29:16 ►
After a while, that’s your response.
00:29:18 ►
On the other hand, if you cultivate kindness,
00:29:22 ►
after a while it becomes your way.
00:29:24 ►
If you practice awareness, it a while it becomes your way. Or if you practice awareness,
00:29:26 ►
it follows the law of karma,
00:29:28 ►
you become more aware.
00:29:31 ►
The law of karma means something very simple.
00:29:34 ►
In a few words, it means
00:29:35 ►
you don’t get away with nothing.
00:29:38 ►
That what you do and how you act
00:29:40 ►
creates how you will be
00:29:42 ►
and how the world will be.
00:29:46 ►
The heart can be opened.
00:29:49 ►
The mind can be calmed and cleared.
00:29:53 ►
The heart actually opens through melting, by the way.
00:29:56 ►
You don’t force it open. It’s more like a flower. It melts open.
00:30:01 ►
And awareness can grow in the deepest way,
00:30:04 ►
in eating, in connecting with one another,
00:30:07 ►
in walking, in driving.
00:30:10 ►
That’s our modern meditation, probably, driving meditation.
00:30:14 ►
But it requires something.
00:30:17 ►
All of these things do.
00:30:18 ►
It asks what we can give.
00:30:21 ►
Can we face our suffering?
00:30:24 ►
Can we give up the complexity
00:30:25 ►
and live more simply
00:30:26 ►
are we willing to train ourselves
00:30:30 ►
are we willing to find some path
00:30:33 ►
find a path with heart
00:30:36 ►
as Don Juan says
00:30:37 ►
and work with it
00:30:38 ►
and do it over and over and over again
00:30:41 ►
take it as a training
00:30:42 ►
and take it to the depths of your being. Find
00:30:46 ►
some path where you can face your fear and your aloneness and your death. You want to
00:30:52 ►
face a few things. And find that unshakable quality of heart. My recommendation is that
00:31:00 ►
you stick with brand names also, as far as pathfinding. There are a lot of good ones that have been tried for a thousand or two thousand years around.
00:31:11 ►
You might rely on those generally.
00:31:13 ►
If it’s something that’s just been invented in the last few years,
00:31:16 ►
you might let them work out the kinks before you take it on.
00:31:21 ►
It’s not very complicated, but it asks of us a surrender and a discipline
00:31:27 ►
and a kind of love
00:31:30 ►
to enter some spiritual path
00:31:33 ►
and the deeper one goes
00:31:35 ►
the greater the mystery
00:31:37 ►
and the more connected one can be
00:31:43 ►
in listening to the world around
00:31:44 ►
the process of spiritual life the more connected one can be in listening to the world around.
00:31:52 ►
The process of spiritual life is not one of acquiring things.
00:31:54 ►
You want to acquire more knowledge,
00:31:58 ►
or if you do, that’s kind of incidental and unimportant.
00:31:59 ►
It’s not becoming something. I’m now a meditator or a wise person or a Buddhist or something.
00:32:04 ►
God spare you from all of that.
00:32:08 ►
It’s really a process of emptying,
00:32:12 ►
of listening, of simplicity of the heart.
00:32:17 ►
It’s not getting, it’s a letting go.
00:32:20 ►
If you want two words, you want a mantra,
00:32:22 ►
you don’t have to pay $80 for this mantra.
00:32:25 ►
You get it free this morning, along with your fees for the conference, of course.
00:32:31 ►
Here’s a mantra for you.
00:32:33 ►
My old Chinese teacher taught it to me in Chinese.
00:32:37 ►
Let go.
00:32:39 ►
That’s all.
00:32:40 ►
You can say it over and over if you like.
00:32:42 ►
Little things, big things, your opinions, your views, how it should be, how it shouldn’t have been. This teacher said, I don’t understand
00:32:50 ►
you. You people want what you don’t have and don’t have what you want. Why don’t you simply
00:32:56 ►
reverse it and want what you have and not want what you don’t have? It was so simple.
00:33:11 ►
not want what you don’t have. It was so simple. It’s a move of emptying because the only place that we can love, where’s the only place you can love? Anyone interested in love in your life?
00:33:18 ►
The only place you can love is one place. That’s now in the present. The past is just a memory, right? The future, what’s that? A fantasy.
00:33:29 ►
The only place one can love is in the present. It’s opening in that present to the mystery of
00:33:36 ►
not knowing. There’s a story of an old Hasidic rabbi who walks across the town square every morning to pray in Russia. And one morning he’s
00:33:47 ►
walking to the temple and the police chief says, good morning, rabbi, where are you going? The rabbi
00:33:53 ►
says, I don’t know. The police chief says, what do you mean you don’t know? He’s in a bad mood.
00:33:58 ►
He said, for 25 years, every morning you walk across the square to the temple to pray. Don’t
00:34:03 ►
give me that kind of an answer. And he grabs him by the arm and drags him to the police station. He’s just pushing him in the jail
00:34:10 ►
cell when the rabbi turns around and says, you see, you don’t know.
00:34:22 ►
Now you think it’s just that rabbi, but it is not.
00:34:26 ►
The mystery and the truth is that there’s some odds about what’s going to happen tomorrow,
00:34:31 ►
but you’re going to be surprised very soon.
00:34:34 ►
You don’t know.
00:34:36 ►
It’s not always so.
00:34:38 ►
It’s not the way you think it is.
00:34:42 ►
So practice isn’t so much a gaining or getting, but a presenting and an opening.
00:34:49 ►
Buddhism in Asia was monastic, withdrawn a little from the world in monasteries in certain
00:34:55 ►
countries. It was hierarchical. As it comes to the West now, it’s going to become, borrow
00:35:01 ►
some things from Western psychotherapy, some of its tools probably,
00:35:05 ►
to work with our peculiar personality disorders.
00:35:09 ►
It’ll probably become more democratic and less hierarchical.
00:35:13 ►
And it’s already growing a whole Buddhist ecological movement whose seeds were there,
00:35:18 ►
but is going to fit with the suffering and the needs of the whole of the earth in this time.
00:35:24 ►
It gets more integrated as it comes to the West.
00:35:27 ►
But the essence is still simplicity, living in the present.
00:35:32 ►
And in doing so, ethics, not killing and stealing and harming other people.
00:35:37 ►
When you’re aware, you can’t do it.
00:35:39 ►
It’s very hard to hurt other people if you’re attentive to what you’re doing
00:35:43 ►
and you’re not lost in some ideal.
00:35:47 ►
Kindness comes naturally when you live connected with your own body and the moment with others.
00:35:53 ►
Calm and concentration come naturally. And wisdom, which really sees that we possess nothing,
00:36:00 ►
that we get it for a little while. Even our children are not our own. We can love them,
00:36:06 ►
and that’s our whole task. And in the end, when you die, there aren’t really very many questions
00:36:13 ►
that a human being asks when they’re on their deathbed. You know, not, what did I build,
00:36:19 ►
and how much did I make, and what did I do? That becomes irrelevant and you can’t take your bank book and turn it in at the change booth there.
00:36:28 ►
They don’t take that kind of currency.
00:36:31 ►
The only currency that’s taken
00:36:33 ►
in the times of real life change
00:36:37 ►
is the currency of the heart,
00:36:39 ►
is what you have learned
00:36:41 ►
through your own opening
00:36:42 ►
and facing yourself
00:36:44 ►
and compassion and discipline.
00:36:47 ►
And the questions are simple ones. Did I love well? Maybe that’s the only question. In this
00:36:53 ►
life did I really let myself love the people around me, the earth, myself?
00:37:01 ►
Perhaps another way of putting it is, did I live fully?
00:37:06 ►
And perhaps also, did I let go?
00:37:09 ►
Did I learn to let go?
00:37:10 ►
Because if you don’t learn to let go
00:37:11 ►
through the changes of life,
00:37:13 ►
at the very end then they give you a crash course.
00:37:17 ►
You know?
00:37:21 ►
But spiritual life is learning to do it before you die, basically,
00:37:26 ►
so you don’t have to kind of cram it all into the last few weeks,
00:37:29 ►
so that you can live with those eyes of wisdom and understanding and ease in this life.
00:37:36 ►
But it takes training, and it takes willingness to face oneself and discipline.
00:37:43 ►
And the last thing that it takes is great kindness. The greatest
00:37:48 ►
teachers that I’ve been with, Ajahn Chah, my master, the Dalai Lama, various others,
00:37:53 ►
more than anything one feels their great kindness and compassion. And we went to interview a
00:37:59 ►
number of people in India some years ago, friends of mine and I, for National Public Radio on spirituality and social responsibility, interviewed Mother Teresa and various Swamis
00:38:11 ►
and disciples of Gandhi, and interviewed the Dalai Lama. He was gracious enough to see
00:38:15 ►
us. And he poured tea for us. It wasn’t like he sat on a throne, but can I give you something
00:38:21 ►
to eat, and here’s some tea, and what questions questions can I answer? How may I help you? He was really gracious and kind. And when we finished the
00:38:32 ►
interview, we were about to leave, he said, don’t you want to take my picture? Because
00:38:36 ►
we all had these cameras, but we were so excited being with him that we’d forgotten. So we
00:38:41 ►
said, of course we do. He said, all right, good. Let’s do it this way. You give
00:38:45 ►
your cameras to my attendant. He knows how to work all those Western cameras. And then we can be in
00:38:51 ►
the picture together. So my wife and I and these two other journalist friends stood there and he
00:38:55 ►
put his arms around us standing there. It’s a wonderful picture. We had it on our refrigerator
00:39:00 ►
for years. There he is. And we’re all just grinning because he’s such a good guy.
00:39:08 ►
He’s really wonderful. And the interview is all finished and the pictures are done. And he turns
00:39:14 ►
to me and he holds my hand. And I know him a little bit from visits he’s made to America. He
00:39:20 ►
came to our large Buddhist center and gave a whole talk and presentation. He knows I’m a Buddhist teacher and was trained as a monk and so forth.
00:39:28 ►
So I thought he was going to ask me how it’s going, you know, basically how’s business,
00:39:33 ►
because we’re in the same company and everything.
00:39:36 ►
But he didn’t at all.
00:39:37 ►
He turned to me and he held my hand and he looked and he said,
00:39:41 ►
You’re so skinny, you should eat more.
00:39:59 ►
I would like us to close our eyes and to close a five-minute concluding meditation.
00:40:07 ►
Just as we did insight meditation in five minutes,
00:40:10 ►
now we’re going to do the complementary practice,
00:40:13 ►
which is the practice of loving compassion.
00:40:22 ►
So let your eyes close and your feet be flat on the floor and rest.
00:40:32 ►
Come back to your breath.
00:40:40 ►
And breathe as if through your heart.
00:40:43 ►
Let your breath come in and out as if it could move through your heart.
00:40:55 ►
Feel your heart with your attention as you breathe there.
00:41:01 ►
Notice whether it feels closed or open or soft or pained or whatever.
00:41:08 ►
Feel what barriers there are there, what’s held around the heart.
00:41:16 ►
Let me ask you first a question as you feel the heart.
00:41:21 ►
What would you need to forgive?
00:41:27 ►
Or who would you need to forgive or who would you need to forgive in order to let your heart be more open
00:41:31 ►
and present
00:41:33 ►
to live now and let go of the past
00:41:36 ►
and if you’re ready to do so
00:41:41 ►
only if your heart is ready
00:41:42 ►
let yourself forgive ask and extend forgiveness
00:41:49 ►
for anything from the past that you’re able to let go of.
00:42:03 ►
That’s a way of clearing the heart a bit.
00:42:06 ►
Now, as you feel the heart in your breath,
00:42:10 ►
we’ll begin to generate thoughts and feelings of loving kindness.
00:42:16 ►
First toward ourself, because you can’t be loving to yourself.
00:42:20 ►
It’s hard to be kind to others.
00:42:24 ►
The traditional words are,
00:42:26 ►
may I be peaceful
00:42:27 ►
and may my heart open in loving kindness.
00:42:34 ►
And as best you can,
00:42:36 ►
feel a kindness toward yourself,
00:42:39 ►
your whole body and being.
00:42:57 ►
body and being. May I be peaceful and filled with loving-kindness. Picture yourself as a little baby, as a young child perhaps.
00:43:05 ►
You don’t need to do anything to deserve love.
00:43:08 ►
That baby simply is to be loved.
00:43:12 ►
And feel your heart and your feelings and your body and your mind.
00:43:17 ►
May I touch every part of my being
00:43:21 ►
with loving kindness. Now bring into your heart someone else you love very much.
00:43:33 ►
Picture them. Let the heart open further. May they be happy and their hearts be peaceful
00:43:46 ►
and let the feelings spread to them
00:43:50 ►
and fill you even further.
00:44:02 ►
And just as you want your loved ones to be happy,
00:44:05 ►
now let your heart open to let everyone in this room in.
00:44:09 ►
All of us have our sorrows and our struggles in our life.
00:44:15 ►
Feel a kindness
00:44:17 ►
and a love that encompasses the lives of everyone in this room.
00:44:23 ►
that encompasses the lives of everyone in this room.
00:44:30 ►
Let your breath and heart open as if you could touch the hearts of everyone here.
00:44:36 ►
And then let it open further in every direction,
00:44:43 ►
filling the whole of the conference center and all of California and
00:44:50 ►
spreading to the far ends of the earth. May the heart of loving kindness and peace open open and touch all beings.
00:45:12 ►
And may all beings on the earth be awakened in their true nature.
00:45:18 ►
May they all find loving kindness
00:45:20 ►
and wisdom
00:45:23 ►
and may they all live in peace.
00:45:45 ►
To close in just a few words,
00:45:51 ►
the practice of Buddhism is the practice of wisdom and compassion which requires training, finding some path of practice.
00:45:57 ►
It requires that we face the dark and the shadow as well as the light,
00:46:02 ►
that we let our hearts touch the sorrows and
00:46:05 ►
suffering and the joys and beauty equally, and that in doing so we allow
00:46:12 ►
ourselves to come into the present and into a wiser relationship with our
00:46:17 ►
bodies, our hearts, the people we live with, the community, and the world around.
00:46:23 ►
You are invited into that perennial wisdom,
00:46:27 ►
and I hope something I’ve said today reminds you or inspires you.
00:46:32 ►
And the brief practices we did, the practice of listening, the breath,
00:46:37 ►
noticing the movement of mind,
00:46:40 ►
and the practice of the heart of loving kindness and compassion
00:46:43 ►
are ones that one would develop for a day or ten days or a month or a year of practice.
00:46:49 ►
And for anyone interested in the particulars of the way I teach,
00:46:53 ►
there are some brochures for workshops near the door
00:46:58 ►
and a place for a mailing list if that interests you.
00:47:03 ►
But most of all, I wish you a good conference
00:47:05 ►
and I hope that you can keep somehow
00:47:08 ►
the spirit of listening and emptiness
00:47:10 ►
and kindness alive.
00:47:14 ►
Keep it simple in the midst of all this complexity.
00:47:17 ►
Take some time to sit, go back to your room,
00:47:20 ►
skip a session if you need to,
00:47:22 ►
so that you’re more connected with your heart
00:47:24 ►
than with all of the ideas.
00:47:27 ►
I thank you, and I appreciated being with you today. I hope that you take the time to go back and listen once again to Kornfield’s comments
00:47:59 ►
during that last five-minute meditation.
00:48:01 ►
It may be just what you need right now.
00:48:06 ►
The thing that I remember most clearly, however, from this talk is Kornfield’s gentle voice telling us to have compassion for
00:48:12 ►
ourselves, particularly our younger, more naive selves. However, I have to admit that I find that
00:48:20 ►
forgiving my younger self is much more difficult than it sounds. And that’s where I’ve discovered psychedelics can be some help.
00:48:28 ►
And for now, my friends, let go. Thank you.