Jack Kornfield on Inner Freedom Through Mindfulness

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jack Cornfield, who is one of the key

teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. Over the years, Jack has taught in centers and universities worldwide. He's led international Buddhist teacher meetings and worked with many of the great teachers of our time. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology and His books have been translated into twenty languages and sold more than a million copies. And amongst all that, he is also a father, a husband, and an activist. Hi Jack, Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric.

This is really such an honor for me. I think I shared with you briefly in our post show conversation. You were one of the primary introductions to the dharma for me. I listened to you a lot in my early years of sobriety, driving around owned listening to old sounds, true cassettes. So it's a really special conversation for me. I'm really happy to be doing this. It's my pleasure. And when you say the dharma, do you think the people who are listening to what that word means? I

think most of them do. Yeah, But if they don't, what we could spend the rest of the podcast breaking down the word dharma, But in this case, I would say the teachings of the Buddha. We're gonna have a conversation about a variety of different things, but let's start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that

you do. Well, it's now become a famous parable in a lot of places. And it says in another way that in our consciousness as human beings, are all kinds of possibilities to cut harm. Talks about them as seeds. Maybe that's another language from wolves, but also fitting and

depending which seeds you water, that will grow. So we know it is human beings if we water the seeds of anger, which is to say, if we practice it, and if that's something that becomes a response and it becomes easy and so forth, then gradually that becomes our way of moving through the world. If, on the other hand, with that same care and attention, we decide to water the seeds of kindness, or water the seeds of respect for another person who all going to be different than you,

no matter how you're saying. You think of everybody's weird in their own interesting way, and you are too. And if we can see that kind of mystery with respect or sense of each human being has a certain dignity, and water those seeds, if you will or feed them, then that shapes our consciousness, before then that it shapes our life. One of the first verses in the most popular teachings of the Boddh of the Damapoda begins the

mind and heart are the forerunners of all things. If you tend the heart and mind well, then beautiful things will arise. And if you do not, if you feed the angry wolf they hate the whole, the bitter or addictable for whatever it happens to be, then then that will lead you to suffering. And the beautiful thing is that, somewhere in our hearts we know this as human beings, we actually know that we can in fact turn ourselves toward what is in Sans Crugle's called sabanam is gracious

or beautiful in our being. And even though we've in many cases we've suffered, and some people have had enormous trauma. The way out of it is not to repeat the trauma, but to look and see there's that there's another place to live, and if that place is really more the place of planting and nourishing the seats of love and stuff with that beautiful It leads me into our first question that I wanted to ask you, which is there are often two approaches to dealing with difficult emotions that

are presented. One approach is to allow them to be what they are, to sit with them, to to use another tick knot han story, you know, invite them in for tea. You know, there's all these different approaches of allowing these emotions to be there. And then there's a whole lot of teaching in the Buddhist lineage and others around, as we said before, sort of letting go of the angry thoughts and cultivating the skillful thoughts, the more wholesome thoughts.

And so I'm kind of curious in your mind, how do you know when to do which of those things or how do those things work together, or just say a little bit about that, Well, how do you know is like riding a bicycle. You can tell a kid how to ride a bicycle, but they can't know till they're on the bicycle and they get it in their body.

And one of the things that I loved when I was teaching my daughter how to ride her bicycle, because I was foolish at first for a little bit, and she got honored little kid, and I held onto the back of the seat to steady it. And then somebody wise might have been my hex or someone around said no, no,

you don't hold the bike, you hold their waist. And when I shifted from holding the bike to holding her waist, she could feel underneath how the bike was moving and when she was in the center, and when she was tipping on one side or another. And that's really so for us as well. So if you ask, you know, what's the right thing. Should we let it go, should we make space? Should we accept it? But you can't really let something go until you accept it in some

way that it's there. Otherwise you're struggling against it, and it's as if you're pushing against yourself in some way that won't go anywhere. So a first step is to say this is the way it is. It's like this the suffering, or this difficulty, or these emotions beautiful or let us actually hold them, and then there can be a response to nurture ones that are helpful to say, all right, I see you, but I don't have to follow you. Maybe it's fear, or maybe it's anger or

revenge thoughts and so forth. All right, I see that. Because we don't allow ourselves to see it, they work silent underneath and we get taken over. So part of the gift of awareness and mindfulness are mindful loving awareness to see that we contain all these seeds, going back to taking on as all the seeds you contain, not to deny it, which would be to deny our humanity.

And you see it. Even the littlest kids. You know, they are cute and angelic and sweet and loving and so forth, and they also can be rageful and bitter meat evenly at all. One year old throws a tantrum, and you know, yanks, the other kids here, everyone, and that's all in us. All those possibilities are there. So

you have to acknowledge that. And in some way, one of the beautiful things about practicing I won't even say practicing meditation per se, although that's the way to get there, but practicing mindfulness and mindful loving awareness is that you expand your window of tolerance. This is the neuroscientist phrase, so that you can actually being the presence of the rage and the hurt that's underneath it, because almost always when it's there, it's because there's either hurt or fear.

And when you can tolerate the fear or the hurt with compassion, with kindness, when you hold on and say you know, this is part of being human, then you don't have to get so caught in it and react in ways that you often would regret. You say, oh, yeah, this is super painful, this is so hard, you weep, you grieve, you feel it. And then how do I respond in a way after accepting that this hurts so much or this is so scary, how do I respond in a way that actually planned seeds for well being

for me and others in the future. I love that idea of it being like riding a bike, that it really is a feel thing. One of the things I've noticed is I've gone on in in my practice and in my life and lots of people I've worked with is that different things work for different people, and different things work for us at ferent times. It's like something that like, well, that worked for me two years ago, but now you know, I need a slightly different approach, or I need to feel into it. I like that.

You know. It really is a feel thing. It's really noticing our own experience what happens for us instead of what do we think is the right thing to do. Guidance is helpful, but we have to trust our own experience. Yeah, someone says, testing it in the laboratory of your own experience. Yeah, exactly, And it's different at different times. Yeah, I forget who said it. Might have been Oscar Wilde said, consistency is

the hobgoblin of small mind. You know that it's always supposed to be this way, but in fact we are living organisms, like the trees around us that we interbreathe with. And you know, in seasons they unfurled our leaves, and in other seasons, as it's cold, they dropped they moved there. There are a responsive mechanism of or a life form in the field where they stand in that place, and

we are too. And so the beautiful thing of mindful attention mindful, loving awareness is that we can find the rhythm that's right at this moment and how we nourish ourselves. And intuitively we know it can be lost from our childhood and we can be traumatized in all kinds of ways, but with attention, we can reclaim and we can learn what's good for our heart, good for our body and mind.

In your recent book, No Time like the Present, you said, whatever the situation, widen the space, remember vastness, allow ease and perspective. And I'd like to ask you for some strategies for doing that. But first I'm going to share one of mine, which is there is something for me about listening to you and the way that you speak that helps me remember vastness and widen the space. So

that's one tool, hearing people who speak to us. What are some other ways of doing that, of remembering vastness, of widening this space, because the more knotted up we are, the harder this seems to be. So they're literal ones like get out of the house, go outside, walk in the woods, climb a hill and climb the mountain. Get some sense of a bigger perspective that you can look out over the landscape and widen the sense of time, so that there you are in the middle of oh

he said, and she did. And I might get fired or you know, they're going to do this, or I might lose that. And then reflect on the end of your life, how much will this really have mattered? Because at the end of the life the things that mattered. Did I love well? You know, did I give myself to life? There will be ups and downs and praise and blame and joy and sorrow. We all have this and gain and lost. Nobody is exempt from this. So getting a temporal perspective and saying, let me look back

at this, Okay, this is the season. It's a tough one. Maybe I'll write a novel based on how tough it was, you know, or tell the story to someone. But you get a temporal perspective, you get vast time, and then you also can reflect that whatever you're going through is not the end of the story, that it's actually a story in process and it will change. In fact. The great semestress Suzuki Roshi, who wrote Send Mind Beginner's Wine,

founded Scisco's in Center. His phrase for the teachings was so simple, he said, not always so and we get stuck in thinking that fear, the hurt, the anger, the difficulty, because that's what you're talking about, that they're always going to be there, and they're not. In fact, you're not going to always be there. First of all, in the same way you are today, you'll be a different person in a decade or two or three. You will if you dove that long and even beyond. You know, there's

like they're not going to be there. In that way, they're not the end of this story. In another way of widening the perspective is to become the field of compassion, to feel that we as human beings born into this human incarnation, we are bound to have unbearable beauty and an ocean of tears. And if your eyes and your heart are open in this world in which removed through, both are true. And it doesn't matter whether you're a zillion error, you know someone who has lost everything. It's

just the truth of the way things are. And when you see that, you can start to feel a kind of deep compassion for the journey of life. Everybody struggles at some times. Everybody has longing and love and hope

and fear. This makes us up and to step back and become the compassionate one, which is one of the names for the Buddha or for your own Buddha nature, if you will, not to make anybody into a Buddhist, but to say that you are actually a Buddha in training, to have that tenderness of heart that says we're in this and human life is unbearable, beauty and the hotian of tears. It has all of this, and we can hold it with a huge heart. And their practices to

do this is a nice thing. I was invited to be part of the first White House Buddhist leadership gathering under a former president. You might imagine it wasn't the most recent one prior, but it was under Barack Obama, and there was a hundred and twenty different Buddhist teachers from both immigrant communities and convert communities and people you know, all over and they were doing amazing things. They were

running soup kitchens and building schools. They weren't just meditating and sitting quietly, but there was this whole sense of engage ment, of compassion. And I gave one of the last talks kind of summarizing what we've learned and said to people. You've you know, heard all these things that folks are doing. And I said, in almost every tradition you hear that it's important to care for people, to develop your connection and compassion, to attend the earth well,

to live with a loving heart. I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's Christian or Jewish or Muslim, or you know, some other behind or into all of that, the spiritual traditions, I said, the beautiful thing that we have as a heritage in the Buddhist world is that we have practices to do it. I read a passage that says ancient passions thousands of years old that in a wise society, one cares for the vulnerable and the elderly, and one NEETs and listens to one another with respect. And so

I said, these are beautiful ideas. You can read them the Bible, you can read them in louds of But the beautiful thing is that their practices to learn to do it. And if you undertake a training in compassion, for example, it's a very simple meditative practice, and you do it over and over, planting the seeds, if you will, or feeding that wolf or whatever, till the wolf actually morphs into a lapdog, or at least a great, big, happy whatever it is, your favorite golden retriever or something.

When you feed that wolf, it turns out it's not a wolf at all. It's actually this loving being. But that there are practices and they're not that complicated, and modern neuroscience has shown that even a little training transforms your heart and mind. Because our education is so out of directed. You learn the A, B C s. You learn reading, writing, rhythmetic, all those things. That's half of the education. But how do you tend yourself when you're afraid,

which we all get. How do you tend yourself when someone hurts you, when you get angry? How do you practice forgiveness? How do you find compassion for the people around here suffering so you don't close yourself off and they aren't closed to you. And again, the beautiful thing is that there are simple practices that we can do that Noundera signs shows transform your heart and mind and

you can live in a different way. And I said so with the White House gathering, I said, it's not just that these are beautiful aspirations from Plato or Lautsu or the Great Stages. But here's how we can do them. Yeah, It's one of the things I've always loved about Buddhism is that sense of there is practice, there's something to do besides read in and believe in. It's what I loved about a early on For me too, there was a series of steps. There was, yes, something I could do.

You know, part of me has a doing nature. I've learned to tone that down as part of my spiritual path. That does lead me into one of of things I wanted to ask you, which is the spiritual landscape is vastly different today than it was as you were coming up. And it's vastly different even for me. You know, when I started, like I want to learn to meditate, and I found a transcendental meditation course in Columbus, Ohio is the only thing. There are so many options, so many choices,

so many different practices. How does someone go about even starting to sort out? Like? Where do I want to start? What makes sense for me? Do I want to do insight? Do I want to do breath meditation, compassion meditation? Do I want to be in the zen tradition? Like? There are so many options? What some guiding ideas that people might use as a way to orient themselves in this

paradox of choice. Well, the paradox of choice is also one of the kind of American sufferings that we have market and there's eighty seven kinds of beer, light beer, and you know, European beer in Japan Ea spirit you know, come on already, how many kinds of what you do? And now this the spiritual supermarket is the same. My recommendations are relatively simple because actually we have an innate wisdom and us. Some of you are body people who are listening, and you know that to meditate also it

would help to engage your body. And so yoga and meditation together is a good way to start because it kind of grounds you in your body. You know, some of you are drawn in an artistic nature to poetry and so forth, and there are you know, they're kind of poetic ways of entering reading poetry and beginning to sense, oh, there's a kind of creativity underneath. So partly it's to

take stock of your own nature. I tell people to try them and to start with the name brands that there's a reason why so many people are doing some of the larger communities of practice and try a mindfulness practice There are a lot of different versions mindfulness of body or mindfulness of feeling. But find something that's good. And I have a thing online that's free called Mindfulness

Daily together with Tara Brock. It's free, it's forty days, it's fifteen minutes a day, seven minutes of meditation, seven minutes of instruction. How do you deal with body pain? How do you deal with emotions regret or longing? How do you deal with repeated thoughts that come in healthy ways? Try a few, and we're Americans, we know how to shop right. But go to a place that sells good stuff and you can feel it, that has some integrity, and then listen to what resonates in your heart, because

in the end, that's where it matters. Does this feel like it's leading? There's a phrase onward leading. Is it leading me to greater well being or understanding or tenderness with myself and the world that I'm in and that people around that I care are about? And some of it is one great Tibetan bamba called the pretense of accident. That you think you're looking, but there's some other way in which the universe also is waiting for you. Something

kind of mysterious and I can't even explain that. But we're embedded in the universe that is really orderly. It's not like it's totally chaotic or wouldn't exist. And there's something about how when the heart is ready to open and understand um. Also, the teachings appear in their way, and you trust yourself and that if it feels off, can it drop it and listen and go try something else.

As you went through your spiritual path, I've heard you reference having a number of different teachers over the years, or studying in a number of different traditions, and I'm kind of curious, how did you decide when it was time to work with somebody different or to expand your path?

How did you navigate that? As someone who is thirty years into a spiritual path of my own, these are questions that come up for me, you know, do I stay in this tradition that I've been in for several years, or do I follow a curiosity or a leaning of the heart in this direction or that direction. I'm kind of curious how you did that as you navigated your path. Well,

there's a kind of interesting arc. I mean, sometimes you just find a particular teaching or teacher or tradition that just speaks to you, know, and it might be a rabbi who does the mystical teachings or Buddhist then teacher or whatever it is, and you just feel touched by it, and so you try that, you do it, and you get engaged and see what happens. Now. On the other hand, a lot of times people say, well, I don't know and I'm not drawn to something, So then try a

few things. We know how to shop or Americans, right, that's kind of our middle name. And you try if you and sense what feels like it fits for your own body and mind, what sense that it has integrity and honesty, that has love, that it's not like secret in some way. That then under the secrecy, all kinds

of things can be hidden. And after you've done that for a bit, and pick one and do it long enough to see the fruit of it, to feel as I did in meditation, or maybe you did into your twelve step work that you talk about when you go to your twelve step meeting. And first it's tentative, and then as you go along you realize these are tools

and I'm becoming a different person. I was identified with that part of myself that's an addict, and that's who I took myself to be, and they're helping me realize that's not who I am, and they work. So you try it. Then after you've done it and you feel like you have somehow been nourished and transformed. And sometimes you look around and you say, well, I was really nourished in these ways by this meal. But I hear they have a great salad over there and fantastic desert.

They realized, oh, now I want to explore again. But the oloration isn't kind of drilling lots of shallow wells because you can't stick with something. It's actually feeling like, Okay, I have a practice or a tradition that's really changed me. And now I hear that there's some beautiful things, some hard practices there, some body practice that I could learn from as well, and then they become a compliment. And

that how it was for me. You know, I had such deep training as a Buddhist monk with two very different styles of masters. And then after a time when I came back and I was living and did my graduate work and was teaching graduate work in psychology, we have to pass along all the things I learned as a Buddhist monk. I would hear of some amazing teacher or some beautiful teaching, say, oh, I'd like to go listen to that and glean and learn great things and

be inspired. Because we do. We treed each other, We resonate with one another, We get inspired by others. Yesterday I had the privilege of being part of a kind of group podcast with father Greg Boyle. He's the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which is the largest gang intervention community in the world. Probably people a year

come through their doors. They take people who are lost on the streets, who have been a added by their parents, who are in the undeclared war in their neighborhood, people who live in the kind of poverty and lack of opportunity. The gangs are like the only thing that's offered to them and brings these kids in broken often or you know some in out of prison meets them, loves them and says, you know, you're a worthy human being. You maybe have been dealt a really tough hand, but I

see who you really are. Now, come and try the things that we're doing and see how it goes for you. We welcome you, and it's extraordinary to see the transformation of these human beings. And he does it in this very simple way. It's not like on a high horse at all. He's just down with where humans. And it's so tender and I can't recommend tattoos on the heart more highly. It's a reminder that no matter how how things are, and we do get caught in things and

esses of life that are really painful. I readd My Heart's Offense, my eyes cheer up at times I go, oh, yeah, this is what it means to touch that which is difficult with the heart of compassion. It is an absolutely beautiful book. I remember, I think I listened to that one on tape. My memory is notoriously terrible, but I have an actual remembering of sitting in a parking lot listening to part of that book, and the same as you, sort of tearing up as I was listening to it

because it's just so beautiful. Yeah, And that's what we

can do for each other. That's why when in the Buddhist teachings the three refuges, the first is the refuge of Buddho, which means to see the Buddha nature and every being you meet, that there's a possibility of a secret beauty and in every single being, even if they're misguided and lost of times and so forth, that underneath there's that child of the spirit that was born in there to be able to begin to see the world with those eyes as father Greg does when people come

in the door, you know, out of prison and all tattooed and fighting with everybody, and underneath you know they're a child who was terribly mistreated on the streets are at home. So to see the Buddha nature in every being. Dharma is a word that means the truths, the path, the teachings that liberate the understandings, and we all have access to that. It's not held by Buddhism or some other tradition. It's the universal understanding that hatred never ends

by hatred, but by love alone is healed. The universal understanding that everything changes and if you hang on too tight you get rope burnt. You know that actually you have to be able to grow each day and each year in new ways. And then these profound teachings that our heart heres and goes this is true, and then the third refugees and refuge in community. That we can't do it alone. Known ever does it alone. The whole fiction of the lone cowboy in the American Independence and

so forth, it's nonsense. That cowboy on their horse. Somebody bred those horses for generations. The saddle was the result of a thousand or five thousand years of people learning to tan leather and work it and created into that, you know, the bridle and the metal, and it started back in the Bronze Age and before it when metal was beginning to be extracted by or and people learned. All those things are woven into that moment of that cowboy,

and our lives are like that. We're woven interdependently into the fabric of things. And when we open to this, especially in a spiritual life, learning how to transform our heart, we realize we need each other, We belong to each other, and the actually need when we're down someone else, you know it in a A that's what A is about, actually, or whatever twelve step program you've been in, that we need others to remind us when we forget, and we

can remind others, we become that beacon. And it's in this way that we become woven back into the world that our hearts been cut off from, Archbishop Tutu says in Africa, when you ask someone how they are, they usually answer in the plural we are well or we are not well, because even if they're well physically, maybe their grandmother is ill, and because who they are is not just this isolated human being, but woven into the community. The only possible responses we are well or we are

not well. We are in this together. I wanted to talk about a chapter in your book, No Time Like the Present that is all about trust. And I've joked on this show before. In the work I do with my spiritual director, literally every conversation ends up back at trust. It just seems to always come back to that, And so I wanted to ask a little bit about You just talked about one of the things the Buddhist tradition talks about trusting in, which is trusting in taking refuge

in Buddha, dharma, and sanga. What are some of the other things that you personally trust in, you know that when you're feeling uncertain afraid, that you're able to trust in. I'm looking at that chapter trying to remember if I said anything worthwhile. You know, one of the great sense sayings is that enlightenment or awakening is one with the trusting heart. There's a practice of trusting in the big picture.

That your body breathe fifteen that was in breath to day, your heart pumps ninety thousand times a day, you're in this ever pulsing field of life that inter breathes with the trees and the bushes and the turning of the seasons around you, and that you're part of something so much bigger, and our little minds get okay, this is

who I am. As if we're completely separate, you can relax and say it and open and feel that it's not that you are breathing, you are being breathed, and that there's something so much bigger caring for you, which is this universe. It's earth to you. So that's a way to open to trust. You begin as you get quiet, to also trust your inner knowing, because ordinarily we've been taught to look outside for the answers to things. And now our culture used to be television. Now it's online,

feeds us all this stuff, talk about the wolves. It feeds us gorgeous things, and it feeds this garbage and feeds just that that which is skillful and healthy and that which is really unhealthy. And when you why yourself, you know, and even in the confusing times when you don't quite know, you know that you don't know, and that you have to wait and be patient and listen.

That knowing isn't given to you yet. But in all of that, if you listen to your body, it will tell you really what it needs to be well and healthy. If you listen to your heart and your instincts, most often they'll say this is the way to go to live with some well being and beauty and dignity in yourself, which is your birth right, your self confidence. And it's not just intuition, but it's a kind of inner knowing.

And when you begin to live with trust, which you could say is the opposite of fear in a certain way in the psyche or in the heart. It's not that fear doesn't arise. You need to say, oh, fear, I know you, you know. Tick not On would say, invited in for tea a little bit. Yeah. It tells its stories and it has its reasons trying to protect you things you for trying to protect me, I'm okay right now, I'll find my way. So trust them is

the opposite of fear. It allows fear to be there, but sense that you are part of something mysterious and huge that's given life to you in this form. It's never done it before. It's kind of amazing, you know, with all the seven billion people and the trillions of life forms on Earth, and we don't even talk about the stars and the galaxies. Says I'm going to make a new one. Howland, Let's try this one. You know, whoever it is, it's a cosmic creative process, that's life.

And that you're not an accident, even if you were an accident to your parents, Oh my god, he said, we didn't plan to have this get But that's not true. You weren't an accident. You came because the universe and the conditions of this amazing life of consciousness said yes and outtime for this being again to arise. And so you shift to trust. It's your birth ride, and you know, you lose it. I mean, I think about little babies.

If they aren't held, and if they don't have secure attachment and things like that, people don't have a sense of trust and they have to relearn it. But the beautiful thing is that it's never too late that actually you can learn that. You can learn it with people you care about, you can learn it, and practices like meditation. I remember doing this training with guys coming out of prison, and there's a guy who would come out of nine years in prison Louisiana, and he had become the stage

of that prison. People would go to him. He had seen so much and he'd been through so much, and he said, you know, I've been through it all. I don't want to fight the world anymore. I want to live with it. And all these other people around him wanted to listen to him because he had a kind of deep trust that you could get through anything and that what would really true and matter to you in the end couldn't be taken from you, and people wanted

to sit around his light. You know, it seems that the place that trust breaks down for a lot of people, and where it breaks down for me is when I'm very attached to particular outcomes. I think I need this to be happy, this needs to go this way, this needs to go that way, And then of course what I do is I go, well, I don't trust in

anything to make that particular outcome happen. And for me, it's been about, as you said, opening up into a wider field of experience, trusting that what's happening can be lived with, can be born. Can you give any example, Well, let's say, for example, I am thinking of five years ago I left my career and software developed. No, it's been like three years. Sorry, about three years ago. I left that to do this podcast full time, do the coaching work that I do full time. And there's a

leap there, you know, I financial leap. So then I'll have moments where I'm like, well, I don't trust that this is going to work out. I don't trust that will make enough money. I don't trust that. So I'm very attached to that it has to work out this way. You know, this is what I want to have happen, and so I have to work really hard to make that happen. I'm the one that has to make it happen.

And then with it, you can see images of yourself out on the street with a shopping card as a homeless person, like, Okay, if this doesn't work out, it's all going to go downhill. I'll start using again. I mean, you know, the mind that has no pride, and when it gets a little bit nervous, and we're wired to be nervous, we're wired to survive, and then it spends out all these stories. I mean, what did you do? What help you? Oh? I think back to what we

talked about earlier. I have to widen my perspective and I have to say, like, this is what my current self thinks that it would prefer, but it doesn't have to be that way. And often I don't know what's best for me. I don't know even what will make me happy, and that letting things be is always the path that leads me to more freedom. And so I I sort of just open back up to vastness, that idea of letting things be the way they are beautiful. So you, in many ways, you answered the question for

yourself in a way that really worked. Yeah. I mean we all get afraid we're wired that way. We don't have to let that run our heart, we don't have to let that run our life. It's an a large Sometimes you pay attention this is important, or care and so forth, and I think the first thing is just to acknowledge it and do it kindly and say yeah, a lot of times we can feel insecure young when

that fear comes. Yeah, I understand, they're there, It's okay, these are understandable, and remember there's a much bigger picture. We have other ways we're going to make it, and only that you know, fear is sometimes I describe it as the membrane between who we think we are and something new that wants to happen. And so it's like one of those little lights on the dashboard of the car, you know that something. When fear comes, it's like about

to grow. You're about to stretch and grow, and to grow requires that you take a little bit of a risk and say, Okay, there's fear. That's fine. Thank you fear for telling me your story. I appreciate you trying to take care of me, but actually, let's grow. Let's

see what happens. Yep. I love that. I'm going to stay on the topic of trust for a couple of minutes because you wrote a lot of wonderful things in that chapter, and you know, one of them you wrote was that the best forms of healing, therapy and meditation are all about learning to trust when we're meditating, for example, you know, from your perspective, what might we be trusting in if someone will be sitting down to meditate and get very into a commonplace of I'm not doing this right.

I can't do this. My mind's too busy, all the stories about our individual effort we have to make. What would you say would be a place to turn for trust in that specific situation. That's a beautiful question, and it's you know, it's right in my industry. So it's something that I see all the time. It's called the doubting mind, and we all have it. But it can be a meditation, or it can be you know, am I doing this job all right? Or am I screwing

it up? You know? In this relationship? Whatever, We have it in all kinds of ways. The beautiful thing is that we also have the capacity to step back with mindful, loving awareness and say, oh, this is the doubting mind. Thank you for your opinion, thank you for trying to keep me safe, you know, and the moment that you acknowledge, oh am I doing it right? Am I not doing it right? Where this is the judging mind? Stop judging. I hate that judgment. I don't want to be judging myself.

I don't want to judging anyone else. I judge so much terrible stop it. But what's that it's more judgment, so instead what you learn in meditation, and it's kind of a combination, which is why I love this phrase, mindful loving awareness. It's also around us. This phrase is it's as if you can bow to the experience and say, oh you fear, oh you judging mind, oh you doubt? Am I doing this right? The doubting mind, thank you

for trying to keep me safe. I'm okay now. And then you can go feel yourself seated on the earth and breathing, and watch with loving awareness the moods that come and the thoughts that arise. So these things don't mean you're doing it wrong or that there's something wrong with you. They're part of a kind of programming, if you will, of self judgment. We won't talk about who programmed that in there, but you know them in the society whatever. But they arise and you say, yeah, thank

you for your opinion. I'm actually fine, or I'm resting an awareness and I can observe this with a kind heart, and you don't have to believe it, and One of the beautiful gifts of meditation and mindful meditation compassion practice is that you learn how to rest. You become more the loving witness of experience without reacting, not taking it. So personally you're good, you're bad. All those different things

saying get those are thoughts, thank you. And here I am resting on earth, breathing in my heart open, bringing inequality of presence and love. I love that you're in, you know, probably the last, let's say, third of your life. Yeah, I'm lucky. I hope I'm not surprising you with that news. And I'm seventy six. That would give me, you know, at least another thirty years. I'd be a hundred and six. Yeah, okay, but roughly, let's you know, roughly ever, take one to

thirty years. Yeah, alright. Is you look at your own spiritual practice, your own spiritual path. Is there anything that feels different or important to you as you go into this last third versus the other periods? Does it feel different or do you have a different focus. I've been a kind of type a person in a personality way. I'm a do or. I like to get stuff done,

whether it's creating a meditation, center or training teachers. This has been kind of my life or writing a book or you know, mentoring people who the kind of work that I've done, and I find myself really shifting. I'm still involved in the number of wonderful project x and things that I feel are an expression of these teachings of loving awareness that really healed the heart, that invite

people to be wise. And I'm on up seven different boards, one on climate change that's remarkable regeneration about how we can really change the climate in a generation. In these ways, What's happened is that in this phase, I've relaxed more less doing and more allowing things to unfold and putting myself into things and being engaged in ways, in creative ways and so forth, but also feeling like it will

turn out the way it turns out. You know, I'm working with some very high level people in the film world and the television world to create a ten part series on the history of mindfulness and these kind of trainings for Amazon Netflix. You know that it might turn out it might not working on the climate change things, Let's do what we can. This goes back to your original story, what are we feeding or Takna Han. I like his image. Which seeds? You know, there are all

seeds in consciousness and which ones do we water? And it's not given to me often to control the result. But what we can do is nurture, intend and feel ourself part of something bigger that even if I, you know, walk out and get hit by a car and die today, later that I'll planted some beautiful seeds and nurse some beautiful things and they will carry on in their own way. Yeah, a little by little, I'm getting a little easier and

possibly even a little bit wiser on a good day. Well, I could certainly say I think you have planted so many wonderful seeds. This podcast would not exist certainly without you. I'm curious is that my inset has shifted a little bit? Do you feel like that would have been a helpful mindset for you to have had earlier? Or it just kind of was everything in its own sweet time. That's part of the paradox of being human, you know. I had my own ambitions, and in some ways that they

were helpful. On the other hand, if I had held them more lightly, that might have been better. Who the hell knows. I think I think all of the above. You know, I feel tremendously blessed. I've had a really great, wonderful life so far, and it hasn't all been easy to Like, family of origin was really pained one. My father was kind of mentally ill in part and very violent and abusive and so forth, and a wife beater, and a family circumstance was really wanted, a lot of

fear often and pain. And we all have stuff in our background, not all, but almost everyone. And if you don't have it yet, it will come in its way. But because there's praise and blame and gain and loss and fame and misfortunate just part of the game, joy and sorrow. That being said, I feel so grateful to have found practices and teachings of a gracious heart instead

of being reactive to everything that happens. But to have this place to step back a bit with compassion and some tenders that say, yeah, this is what it means to be human. Can I navigate this with kindness for myself and others? Can I plant good seeds, you know, or water the good ones? And that's been the blessing. I think that is a beautiful place for us to

wrap up. Jack, Thank you so much has been a special one for me given as I said, I think I've listened to more dharma talks from you than than probably anyone else. Your voice has filled my head in lots of times of difficulty and struggle and joy and all of that, and so it's a real honor for us to have you on here. Well, thank you. And

there's a story. I think it was Hope John. He said sometimes at night he thinks about the problems of the world and the struggles in the church and so forth, and thinks, well, you know, I have to talk to the pope about it, and then he wakes up any reverers, Oh, I am the pope, you know. And I think that there's something we talked about listening to all these things that it actually the point is to remind people that

you are the one that carries the wisdom. That if you listen and you enjoy, you know, the words or these podcasts or whatever, it's not that somebody out there is something to admire. But the gift really is to shine it back and say you are this, that you carry this, that this is your nature. You have the seeds of awakening in you, and you have an inviolable child of the spirit that was born, even if it's buried from your trauma. There isn't you something so beautiful

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