Welcoming listeners into the gentle whisper of the breath, Jack helps us into a presence and ease beyond our anxieties, worries, and to-do lists. From this place of deep relaxation, he invites us into an easy-come, easy-go mentality with our thoughts and emotions. "Your breath is the Earth breathing herself through you." – Jack Kornfield For more teachings like this, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. This meditation was originally livestreamed by Spirit Rock on 12/19/22.

Jack offers a flowing guided meditation helping us skillfully move past the thoughts, emotions, and images of the mind, and into a state of stillness, spacious loving awareness, and relaxed embodied presence. "The invitation of meditation is to come into the present, to quiet the mind, to open the heart, to find an embodied presence and loving awareness." – Jack Kornfield This meditation was originally live-streamed by Spirit Rock for the Monday Night Dharma Talk on 2/6/2023.

What kind of seeds are you planting and tending with your words and your deeds? Every seed watered can become something that changes the world. If you want to practice, take a walk and look at the buds on the trees in the spring. Each bud is an answer to despair or apathy. You start to sense you are part of something so much bigger. Feel the survival of thousands of years of ancestors in your bones supporting you. “Though I do not believe a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”—Thoreau

Inviting listeners to breathe softly and naturally amidst it all, Jack helps us flow through waves of thoughts, emotions, and sensations in order to come to rest in loving awareness, the timeless witness dwelling in each of us—who we truly are. “When you notice that a wave has pulled your attention from the breath, receive it. Let go of the attention to the breath, and receive it with the same loving awareness, as if to bow to it gently.”

With your eyes closed, sense yourself seated here in the reality of the present, just now—be here now, in this moment. Feel a connection to the ground beneath you—you're held to Mother Earth by gravity. Feel the steadiness, groundedness of taking this seat half way between Heaven and Earth, under your own tree of enlightenment. Let the heart be soft to receive whatever arises in the spirit of kindness and compassion.

date unknown, location unknown

This dharma talk centers around teachings from The Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta which is a story about the last year of the Buddha's life. This text has two main themes: 1. The Buddha wanted to leave his teachings as guidance for his followers to empower them. 2. The Buddha wanted to encourage his followers to foster wise relationships to one another in the spiritual community and to the world.

Let your body be present and also relaxed. As you let go, feel how the Earth completely supports you. Let the heart be soft to receive whatever arises with compassion. Begin to notice how the body is breathing itself, exchanging air with the leaves of the trees around you and with the breath of every other living being on Earth—we share this atmosphere.

There’s no wrong way to do metta or lovingkindness. Sometimes the practice of cultivating lovingkindness is simply to radiate love without words. Sometimes it’s to begin by holding yourself with kindness. Lovingkindness can be an antidote to anxiety and fear. We become more gracious with the difficulties of life as we open the heart.

In India, when people greet one another they put their palms together and bow, saying namaste, “I honor the divine within you.” It is a way of acknowledging your Buddha nature, who you really are. When I was training as a Buddhist monk, I witnessed an aura of straightforwardness, graciousness, and trust around my teacher Ajahn Chah. Here was a community dedicated to treating each person with respect and dignity. In the monastery, the walking paths were swept daily, the robes and bowls of the monks were tended with care. We learned to value ourselves and others equally. Whether practiced in a forest monastery or anywhere else, mindfulness practice begins by deliberately cultivating respect, starting with ourselves. When we learn to rest in our own goodness, we can see the goodness more clearly in others.

Rest in the reality of the present with mindful, loving awareness. Sit like a Buddha, steady and kind, with heart open, gracious and wise in the midst of it all. You are the loving witness; you are the steady one.

When I first entered the monasteries in Thailand and Burma, I was taught everything is anicca (impermanent), dukkha (unsatisfactory), and anatta (no-self). The reason these were repeated over and over again is because if you see these, you see with the eyes of wisdom. Because everything is changing, the more you cling and hold on, the more you suffer. To free ourselves, we need to quiet the mind through some mindfulness in meditation. Then, instead of identifying with the changing conditions, we learn to release them and turn toward consciousness itself, to rest in the knowing. My teacher Ajahn Chah called this pure awareness, "the original mind," or resting in "the one who knows." As the Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “It is the truth that liberates, and not your efforts to be free.” With practice, we discover the selflessness of experience; we shift identity. We can be in the midst of an experience, being upset or angry or caught by some problem, and then step back from it and rest in pure awareness. We let go; we release holding any thought or feeling as "I" or "mine." We release the whole sense of identification, and the conditioned world is just anicca (impermanent), dukkha (unsatisfactory), and anatta (empty of self) -- it has nothing to do with our true nature. We learn to trust pure awareness itself. This is one of the ways Ajahn Chah taught about liberation. Awakening is always here and now. Practicing this way, your life is transformed.

Let yourself be settled. Turn your attention to here and now, and the present experience. You can rest on the Earth with ease and trust in this moment. With this embodied presence, begin to notice the experiences here and now. There will be sensations of the body, sounds, emotions, feelings. A parade of images and thoughts will come and go. You can take your seat just where you are, in the midst of these rising and passing experiences.

Let yourself settle here on the Earth. Feel how the Earth can completely support you. You can let go. Let the heart be soft to receive whatever arises with compassion. Invite presence. Acknowledge the waves of experience.

We are in a time of great transition. The climate crisis, the pandemic, war, injustice, racism: they're all pressing on us to live in a different way. And if you live with a peaceful heart, the point is not to let your heart get hardened. Don't turn your gaze away. But see another possibility—see with the great heart of compassion. My teacher Ajahn Chah said, "We human beings are constantly in combat, at war to escape the fact of being so limited by so many circumstances we cannot control. But instead of escaping, we continue to create suffering, waging war with evil, waging war with good, waging war with what is too small, waging war with what is too big, waging war with what is too short or too long, or right or wrong, courageously carrying on the battle. It's time to stop the war. " The sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson said, "The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology." The first response is tend the wounds, feed the hungry, and stand up for peace in whatever way you can. But there is also an inner response needed. We know where war starts—it starts in the human heart. We must make the heart a zone of peace. Set your compass to your highest intention. Something in us knows there is another way.

Reflect on the value of a peaceful heart. What is it like to have a peaceful heart among the worldly winds of praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, fame and disrepute. These are the worldly winds that constantly change. It's important to stop, take a pause, and feel that we are part of something so much greater than the individual life that we live. Our awareness is big enough to hold all of this, because we are awareness itself.

May your struggles and sorrows be eased. May you hold yourself in great compassion. May you be safe and protected. May your heart be at peace. May your life be at peace.

Tonight I had planned to talk about Thich Nhat Hanh, the great and wise Zen master and teacher who died recently at age 95. But it seems critical to also acknowledge the grief of the war in Ukraine. As it says in the Buddhist teachings (and in other wisdom teachings), in this world, hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. There has to be a better game than war for human beings. We have to look at the war within ourselves as well. Thich Nhat Hanh’s instruction was to stop—stop making enemies. Make prayers. Make blessings. This is our moral task.

Release whatever wants to be let go of in this moment. Let yourself become loving awareness itself. Feel yourself relax with each breath. You can nourish, connect, and come to rest. As you feel the breath come and go, there will likely be a stream of thoughts. Bow to your thoughts and say to yourself, “I love it when they come, and I love it when they go.” You can rest here and now in the reality of the present.

When we sit quietly and face the stillness, we start the feel the grief that we carry—and the immense beauty of life. When we get quiet we can see in a new way. Make of yourself a light. It’s never too late to start over and set an intention of the heart. It could be as simple as “I vow to be kind.” By aligning our dedication with our highest intention, we chart the course of our whole being. Then no matter how hard the voyage and how big the setbacks, we know where we are headed.

Gratitude is a gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us, a bow to our blessings, great and small. Gratitude is the confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life. Gratitude does not envy or compare. Gratitude receives in wonder the myriad offerings of rain and sunlight, the care that supports every single life.

Like the waves of the ocean, the breath rises and falls. Bring loving awareness to the breath. Shift your attention from the breath to all the sensations in your body. With mindful loving awareness, notice the whole field of sensations. If there are areas of pain or stiffness, bow to them and hold them with kindness. Hold them as you would a child who is going through a hard time. Notice how this kind loving awareness allows for the tension and knots to soften in their own way. Now as an expression of gratitude, say thank you to your own body for caring so much, for holding so much as you move through the days and nights. Tell your body, “I’m ok just now—you can relax. You can rest.” Now bring your attention to your heart that carries so much. Notice all that your heart has been holding: longings, fear, love, worry, frustration, excitement, sadness, appreciation, doubt, deep love. Say thank you to your heart for caring so much, for trying to help and protect you. Tell your heart, “I’m ok just now—you can relax. You can rest.” Let your heart be at ease. Now bring your attention to your mind that produces a stream of thoughts, images, pictures, plans, memories, ideas. Feel the energy of the mind, creative, sometimes obsessed, analyzing, exploring, opening. Say thank you for working so hard to take care of you, to protect you. Tell your mind, “I’m ok just now—you can relax. You can rest.” Notice that you’re not your body, feelings, thoughts. You are the loving witness, you are consciousness itself. You are the loving awareness that acknowledges the body, heart and mind. Relax into loving awareness. You are the silent, vast witness to it all.

We live in a culture of denial and youth. How can we find a freedom of heart in this world of birth and death? We can start by acknowledging that everything is subject to change. Death is an advisor that can give us clarity about what really matters. We can be the loving witness of this life, yet not cling to it. We can cherish life, yet in the end we will have to let go. As Mary Oliver writes: To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.