The True Meaning Of Mindfulness | Eckhart Talks With Jack Kornfield

Now this is some. Many of you will know him, Jack Cornfield, renowned writer of many spiritual books and spiritual teacher and meditation teacher. That's a mountain and a lovely formless presence. And that's where the books came out of. Zach has been bringing Buddhist the essence of Buddhism to the west for the past 40 years through his books. And you were a Buddhist monk for a while in Thailand, and then how many years were you a Buddhist monk?

I was there initially for about five years, and then I've gone back at different periods.

And if you haven't read any of his books, many of you will have. I'm just rereading Wise Heart and one book I haven't read yet, but it has a wonderful title. It's after the Ecstasy, the Laundry, which of course is about incorporating presence or mindfulness, as it's called in the Buddhist tradition. Incorporating it into everyday life rather than just experiencing it in a meditation setting or meditative environment where you can go and then you have to go back into daily life. You have to bring it in there. Mindfulness is the term that of course, is used in the Buddhist tradition. I don't use the word because although I respect it because it kind of implies that your mind is full. I don't know who first came up with it. In a trans. What is the original Pali or Sanskrit word that has been translated as mindfulness?

The Pali word is sati, S A T I. And the very best Buddhist scholar that I know, a man named Ana Lio who lives in Hamburg, Germany, says that the closest translation to sati that he would give in English is presents.

But it's too late now because.

Mindfulness has become a kind of industry. You know, there's mindfulness in education and it's a good thing. In mindfulness there's all this wonderful neuroscience. Another translation that I like a lot we talked about a moment ago is loving awareness, which has both the quality of presence, of awareness, and also somehow weds or gives the sense that we can rest in love, that love and awareness actually are the same.

Yes, yes. Metta is another word. Loving kindness is sometimes translated as the loving. There are meta meditations where we send out loving kindness to your surroundings. The meditation that you teach mainly is called vipassana, which is to do with bringing awareness into the body. Is that right? Maybe later on you can give us a little taste of it towards the end. So can you say a bit more about what vipassana is?

Yeah. So vipassana is a Pali Sanskrit word that means basically to see clearly and the primary practice of it is mindfulness or loving awareness. And it's generally established, although not always through first in the body, partly because there's this line from James Joyce where he wrote, Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body. That characterization that somehow we're so lost in our thoughts that a first step in coming into presence is to recognize that there's this body and breath that are actually present here and now, and that the body experiences a here and now experience. And then from awareness or loving awareness of body and presence, then it becomes possible to first notice the rivers of feelings and thoughts and so forth, and then to actually become the space of awareness, the knowing that. To recognize that there's experience and there is also the knowing of experience. So that's kind of. There you have it. You don't have now. You don't have to go to the Himalayas or, you know, travel all the way. That's the essence of it. Yes, save you airfare.

I also talk about that as. Although the meditation is very structured, and when I talk about inner body awareness, it's the same thing in an unstructured way. So, for example, as we speak now, I could invite everybody here, while we listen to actually have some awareness in the inner energy field of their body. As you have it now. I have it now. You can have it now. And it's. So I call that sometimes an anchor for presence, to have awareness in the inner energy field of the body. And you can. You have plenty of awareness left for sense perception, sensory perception. So a very quick way, I would say you. You would probably agree, of getting out, of continuously being trapped in the movement of thought, is to consciously decide to direct awareness into the body and then look around. And you can then give some people the first taste of being able to have sensory perception without the continuous involuntary interference of conceptualization and judgment. So you can look around, you feel the energy field. We can do it now. And this is, I'm doing now, an unstructured body awareness meditation. Later on, Jack is going to do with us a slightly more structured. So right now, just as you listen, feel the energy throughout your body. It's easy. And then you don't have unnecessary stuff that you add mentally to this moment. Let's see, Vipassana, then, has been around for a long time. It is possible that that was actually one of the original meditations taught by.

The Buddha, it's believed. So of course you get history and myth and so forth. You never know.

But.

But it's certainly been taught for thousands of years.

Yes, yes, yes. And of course the breath awareness is also probably was also taught by the Buddha. And breath awareness is big part of vipassanas.

Yes. And the point in doing it isn't to become a good breather particularly or to have particular special kind of breath. It's just what you're saying, Eckhart. And it's to use the ever changing life flow of the body of breath to just invite presence and to be. If you're trying to control the breath, you already start to struggle and suffer. But if you realize, oh, it breathes itself and in fact the world starts to breathe itself more as you feel it, it invites that quality of presence or loving awareness through the breathing. And one of the beautiful things is that as people deepen in their ability to be quiet, for the mind to quiet and the breath to open, then there comes quite naturally a lightness and a joy. Very often that is just innate in us when we're not fixated in past and future.

Yes. So breath is also thousands of years old. Also breath being a term similar to I just talked a while ago about the sky, heavens or emptiness. Breath is also something that has no form as such. And this is why traditionally it's a word that sometimes means spirit, breath. And why in the German language, for example, the word to breathe is atman, which goes back to Sanskrit. Atman, the spirit within or to inspire.

In English, the same thing.

Exactly. Yes. This mind made sense. Sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation.

It.