EP 198: Jack Kornfield PhD | From Suffering to Joy

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Hi, welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. This is Fleet Maul, your host and.

I'm honored to welcome Dr. Jack Kornfield.

A renowned teacher of mindfulness and Buddhist meditation who trained originally as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma and returned to the west and became a psychotherapist and leading figure in the mainstream mindfulness movement. He's a best selling author and really beloved teacher of mindfulness and Buddhist meditation. And and we have a fascinating conversation about understanding the impact of mindfulness and compassion practices on resilience and physical healing and exploring the intersection of neuroscience and mindfulness, acknowledging scientific research in validating ancient wisdom. So Dr. Jack Kornfield Jack Kornfield, PhD.

Trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. After graduating from Dartmouth College and Asian Studies in 1967, he joined the Peace Corps and worked on tropical medicine teams in the Mekong River Valley. He met and studied as a monk under the Buddhist Master Venerable Achan Shah, as well as the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw in Burma. Returning to the United States, Jack co founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and the Spirit Rock center in Woodacre, California. Over the years, Jack has taught in centers and universities worldwide, led international Buddhist teacher meetings, and worked with many of the great teachers of our time. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology and is a father, husband and activist. His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies. They include A Wise A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, A Path with Heart after the Ecstasy, the Laundry, A much quoted Phrase by the way, Teachings of the Buddha Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, Living Dharma, A Still Forest Pool, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, the Art of Forgiveness, Loving Kindness and Peace and you.

But your most recent book is Time.

Like the Present, Finding Freedom, Love and.

Joy Right Where We Are, which is obviously a great title and I'm sure a great book. So Jack, you've been teaching mindfulness meditation around the world for decades and as a beloved teacher, author, therapist, and really guiding so many people towards greater well being and peace and compassion and so I'm really interested how this idea of being able to rewire our brains or reshape our neural architecture kind of connects with your work and your experience. I know you're well aware that there's been a lot of research done for several decades on mindfulness and compassion practices by folks like Richie Davidson, Sarah Lazar, Misi Jha, Judd Brewer, many others. And it's also the same period where our understanding of the brain has advanced dramatically, especially the phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. So I'm just wondering how this affects the topic of our summit, connects up with your work and experience.

So I'm going to be one of.

The.

Outliers in your summit. I know and love and respect Richie and Amishi Jha and, you know, all the folks who've been doing this neuroscience, and one of the best things that's come from it is they've shown that there's greater emotional.

Steadiness and greater resilience and clear physical healing and all kinds of benefits in that way, and reduction of fight flight and free stress.

But as far as the brain goes, they don't really know.

Part of what's happened is by doing this very good science that shows that there are benefits. The truth is, we already knew that. Those of us who've been practicing for 50 years. There's no surprise in that at all. But what it's done is science is part of our common modern religion. And when science says it's good, then it can be in the clinics and school systems and business. And it really helps. It helps social and emotional regulation for children and better education. It helps business to go better. It helps all kinds of wonderful ways because the science shows that it's some value. But the fact is, we knew it already.

I thank them. They're dear friends and so forth. As far as the brain rewiring stuff, sure, we're always rewiring. We have traumas, we have delights. And it changes more than our nervous system. It changes our consciousness.

The studies of the brain are so limited still. It's a little like putting a thermometer on an old television, you know, and trying to figure out where are the warm places when you see a comedy or a.

You know, a documentary or a war movie or something. Look like it's a little warmer over here. That's how simple it is. But it doesn't actually.

Tell us all that much of what's going on in the brain. It simply doesn't. I think, more importantly, what changes people are two things. What changes Them is the practices that they do.

If you practice anger, it grows. If you practice love, it grows. If you practice kindness, it grows. If you practice frustration. These are patterns in consciousness. And the beautiful thing about Buddhist psychology, it doesn't have some theoretical thing that you have to believe. It says, here are the tools to do it. The other thing that's absolutely critical is that.

It'S based in love. And actually more changes. More change happens for people when they go to see a teacher or learn these practices and they're met from the place of love. In fact, there's a saying in India about.

Called the glance of mercy. When you go to see some great teacher who can kind of see right through you and sees your foibles and your strengths and your history and your longing and all those things.

And then love is you anyway. And they look at you and you realize, oh my gosh.

It'S almost hard to take in when you're seen with that kind of compassion and love. It just changes you.

So. And then you start to direct it to yourself. So I'm sort of changing the channel from the neuroscience, which I respect and I'm grateful. And may it all go more to say to you who are listening. You know this, you know what you practice gets stronger. You also know that there's a capacity to see the others around you and yourself, the secret beauty, what Thomas Merton says to see with the eyes of tenderness and love as we all go through our human incarnation that Oscar Wilde called the tainted glory of being a human being. And that this is what changes you because it liberates you. It frees you, frees your heart to be spacious, peaceful and loving wherever you are. And that's where you can learn. So how's that for a little reset?

No, that's great. And you know, you're absolutely right. I mean, we've known humanity has known for thousands of years that these kind of practice have incredible benefits and potential for profound transformation. So maybe the science is just catching up. And certainly even I think what we're exploring is some of what most of the scientists concur with is it's really changes in mind, whatever we say mind is. But changes in mind, changes in consciousness that then actually reshape the neural architecture of the brain. But I think one of the good news is maybe we've known this for a long time, but now maybe people can have more confidence that the brain they have. By the time they're an adult, they're not stuck with that. They can actually can grow and thrive and change through the lifespan. And I think there's so many of us who think I'm just the way I am. Of course, if they practice, they, if they have a practice, they'll know that who we are is ephemeral and how we're going to be in the world and experience the world can really change over time.

Yeah, it's never too late to start again. That's the beautiful thing. It doesn't matter if you're 90 or you know, or if you, you have had some great injury in your life, you actually can start exactly where you are and plant the seeds of presence, of compassion, of steadiness, of wakefulness, of freedom exactly in the place that you are. And it transforms everything.

Well, speaking of starting where we are, you've often spoken about the importance of our willingness to be with the suffering that's in our life and to not be afraid of that suffering as a way of healing old wounds and, and really moving towards greater freedom. So I wonder if you could speak to that. The importance of embracing our suffering as a way to heal and move beyond the traumas and the attachment wounds and so forth.

The Sufis say, overcome any bitterness because you were not up to the magnitude of suffering that was bequeathed to you. Like the mother of the world, you are part of the heart of the mother of the world. And you are asked to meet your measure of suffering with compassion instead of self pity.

So you know, if I'm in a room with people and I say, how many of you have experienced quite a bit of suffering? Every hand goes up. It's not that life is suffering. That's not the Buddhist teaching. Life has suffering and has aging and death and sickness and loss and all the things that we know. The question is if we are afraid of the suffering, if we're afraid of the physical pain, if we're afraid of loss and emotional pain. And those are natural things to be afraid of. But if we actually believe and get lost in that fear and push it away, then the suffering gets stuck in us, whether it's in fight, flight or freeze in our nervous system. Or we live a life where we're not so free because we're frightened of the intimacy of relationship, or frightened of failure, or.

Don'T know how to hold the grief that's given to us when someone we care about leaves or dies.

And so one of the deepest trainings that comes.

Is to be able to stay present for your measure of tears and your measure of suffering and become like the Buddha or the Bodhisattva. Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva Vinka, compassion, and say, yes, this is the measure of suffering that I. That I experience in this life, and may I meet it with a. With an open heart, with compassion for myself, tenderness and for others. And Tibet.

One of the practices for.

Monks and nuns is to pray for suffering, grant that I may have enough suffering that my heart will open to the deepest compassion for all beings. Now there's a prayer for you to actually ask for it. But anyway, just to go on a little bit, we have our own suffering, and we also have the cultural anxiety and the global suffering, the continuing racism and continuing warfare and continuing climate destruction and continuing.

Pandemics. And all these things.

They'Re not going to be solved by more computers and nanotechnology and biotechnology and space technology, cause wars and conflict and racism and all these things. Their roots are in the human heart.

When we learn to quiet the mind and tend the heart, we start to learn that the heart is big enough to hold all of these things, the global and cultural anxiety and suffering. Then we learn skills to do it. If someone comes and is practicing with me and they're experiencing suffering in the moment, first I turn my gaze to them with a kind of tenderness that we give to someone that we care about who's having struggle. And then I might say, can you bow to this? Can you offer a gesture to say, all right, this is my measure of suffering. It's like Mara coming to the Buddha on the night of enlightenment and testing him. This is the difficulty granted you. And then I might say, where do you feel it in your body?

What does it feel like? Hot, cold, tingling, clenching.

Fiery, whatever it happens to be? And how are you holding it? How are you touching it with fear, running away or resistance which keeps it stuck, Then what happens? If you surround it with compassion, not trying to fix it or change it, but hold it in the heart of compassion, then what happens if you let it tell its story? And usually a story is pain and fear and it won't end. And this is. And like Mark Twain said, my life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened. And you hear the fear stories about how long it will last and all of these things, and you go, okay, to your mind, thank you for trying to protect me with these stories. Because all that fear, all the stories are a way of trying to protect yourself. You can say, thank you for this. Then you can say, I'm actually okay in this moment, in the reality of the present, you soften, you bring in compassion and you start to shift your identity from being the one who's suffering to becoming the loving awareness, the mindful, loving awareness that is the spacious or gracious witness of the suffering. And you can't do it all the time, but it liberates you. And it's the most wonderful gift to be able to do that. We see Nelson Mandela walk out of Robben island prison after 27 years with such magnanimity and graciousness of heart. Yes, if you read his autobiography, he suffered and he struggled, but in the end he held it with so much compassion to say they can put your body in prison or the. The world can throw terrible things at you, but no one can imprison your spirit. And this is really who you are, is the great heart of understanding and love. Might as well own it.

Well, that's an incredibly.

Empowering, liberating message. And it goes right, I think, to the very heart of mind training. And it's also pretty radically culturally counterculture. I. I would say at this time, I want to talk about the mind training first. So one of the things that we learn and experience through basic mindfulness training is we begin to notice and experience that all of our perceptual experience, thoughts, feelings, emotions, sense perception at all, rises across the spectrum from pleasant to neutral, unpleasant. And very quickly, with pleasant experiences, the mind of attraction, which could even go into greed and addiction, arises. And with the mind of. With unpleasant experiences, the mind of aversion arises, which can go all the way to aggression. And when things are neutral, we tend to just kind of check out. And so we're pretty hardwired to chase comfort and pleasure in our lives and avoid discomfort and pain. That's logical. It seems to make sense. But the problem is it keeps us locked into a very mechanical way of living. So it seems, as they're suggesting, one of the strategies for awakening is to be willing to embrace, to lean into that which is discomfort. And you're going even further with it to. To see it as potentially a gift, or at least as our measure of the shared collective suffering, and be willing to sort of accept that and work with that with some sense of benevolence and courage and dignity.

Yeah.

And.

We need each other sometimes to do it. We'll talk more about community, but the fact is that people have also been practicing together for a long time, so that when our heart is broken and we can sit in a circle, whether it's in a 12 step meeting or a monastery in Tibet, you know, and I'm not sure they're all that different in the sense of creating this space of radical compassion.

And wisdom. I think about a couple of examples. Some years ago, I was working with my dear friends Michael Mead, Luis Rodriguez, who was the poet laureate of Los Angeles, the great activist Meladoma Sommeil. And we were working with a group of young men who'd come out of street gangs in Chicago and LA and Oakland, did a series of retreats. And one day, you know, we started this retreat, and they were sitting there, and Louise was going to read a poem or two. And his poems are like.

You know, cutting open a vein. His poems are so genuine and real. Michael was going to tell the great myth about suffering from the African mythology and so forth. And I was going to do some meditation. And they looked at us and said, man, you got a poem, you got a story. Their hats are on backward. Their hoods were up. It's like we're out on the street. People have 9 millimeters pointing at us. You got to give us something better than that.

So we said, okay, we're not ready to start because there are too many people in this room who haven't been honored. Would you go out in the parking lot and pick up a stone for every young person you know who's been killed?

Bring it in. We lit a candle on a table and said, when you bring the stones in, say the name of each young person and place them by the candle so we can honor them.

Some of these kids came back in with their hands full of stones. No young person should have to carry that kind of a burden. And they put it down. This is for rj, and this is for Tito, and this is for Homegirl. And pretty soon there was a pile of stones and this very simple ritual, the candle. And we sat together. We didn't even say anything for a little bit. And the hoods came off, and the hats came, and they said, okay, this is a place where we can really talk about what's. What's touched our hearts and what we have to carry. So we need a way to do that with one another as well as in ourselves, especially when it's deep and it's touched. Touched us in that way. And, you know, I'll get people come to me whose children have died.

And what can you say?

There aren't that many things, but one of the things after a time is, what would that child want for you? Now you. Actually, we get into a dialogue with that child who's somewhere else, who's died and in a different dimension. What would they want for you now. And all of a sudden, instead of just being in your own cocoon of grief, you have a different relationship. Now, what you're pointing to, Khali, in your question is also the fact that we have the capacity.

To be aware of our experience and not so much lost in it or caught by it, no matter how terrible or how exciting or beautiful and so forth. You said, the feelings change, the thoughts change, the ideas change. When my teacher, Ajahn Chah, who was a great meditation master from the forests of Thailand and Laos and so forth, this whole tradition practiced on his early years, 10 years or more in the forests, in caves and tigers and all the old kind of stories.

He finally went to see the greatest Ajahn or the greatest meditation master of that time.

And he said, can I ask you about my practice? And he said, I dissolved my body into light. I've had these visions and experiences. I've had great experiences of compassion. I've also fought with my fears and desires and longings. And then I opened into, you know, wisdom and saw different things and insights. Will you guide me?

And the great master looked at him and said, you know, chaos, those are just experiences. Some are ecstatic and joyful, some of them are painful and hellish. He said, it's like a television, you know, one is a documentary, one's a more movie, one's a comedy. He said, there's really only one question, to whom are these experiences happening? He said, if you tried it fix suffering through managing the ever changing experiences, it's endless. But if you turn your attention back to awareness itself to become what he called Sikhi Bhutto in Pali, the one who knows to become the knowing itself.

Then it's like you're sitting back in the cinema, you know, and you see all these things, but who you are is the space of awareness itself. Then you can be there with this loving presence and caring, but not caught or frightened or lost or grasping at the pleasure and terrified by the painful ones, you actually learn to sit like a Buddha in the midst of it all with a graciousness and a loving heart. So that's the kind of instruction that I was given in the forests of Laos and Thailand.

Well, that's a wonderful thread that I think we can continue to follow, Jack. I think one of the things that.

Can really perpetuate our suffering and confusion are the narratives that we kind of hold on to and that kind of get embedded in our psychology. And you kind of referenced this earlier. And sometimes those narratives are about, you know, just feeling victimized by our lives. Which is not to say that people aren't victimized, but feeling, you know, resentful and victimized by our lives or powerless or. Or thinking this is going to go on forever or it's permanent and all these different ways. And so we have all these different narratives that kind of can keep us locked into various forms of suffering and then perpetuate further suffering from that. And then the thing that I think can really cement these narratives is they could connect it with our identity that we. We kind of think that's who we are. And until we've been introduced to some practices or experience where we get at least some glimpse that we're much more than that, or there is this awareness in which all that's happening, then it's, you know, it's. The identity is very sticky thing because, you know, if I'm not that, who am I? And until we've had some practice that allows us to relax into that question of who am I? A little bit, it can be very threatening to let go of our stories and let go of our narratives. So I just wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that, about the power of these identification with our narratives to kind of keep us stuck. And then as you were beginning to describe the pathway to loosen that and. And have a different frame from which to experience our lives. It could be much more empowering and liberating.

So one of the names for the vipassana, or mindfulness practice that I teach for all these last 50 years is also insight meditation. And people will come on a retreat, especially their first retreat, and they'll come and pay attention to their breath and body, to their feelings and thoughts, sitting quietly. And they might sit for six or seven hours a day and then do walking, meditation. One of the very first insights that happens, people will come in is called seeing the waterfall. Because what they come in and report is, wow, I had no idea how unceasing is that river of thoughts. The Buddha said we're made of five streams or five rivers. Rivers of thoughts, rivers of perceptions and beliefs, rivers of feelings, and rivers of sensation and so forth. I had no idea this non stuff, and I don't even know how to turn it off. It has a mind of its own, which it does actually. And there are ways to slow it down or even to go into states that are quite wonderful where there isn't thinking. But for the most part, that's not where we live. And so instead, what you're talking about, sleep, is the liberation that comes when we see the thought or perceive it with mindful, loving awareness and say, oh, look at that story, you know, and especially look at the repeated stories. So that one's come back. I call them the top 10 tunes. When they keep coming back, it sometimes helps to number them. Especially, you know, if you're sitting in meditation. Oh, here's number three. That my relationship with my father. Or here's number six, my worry about taxes. And it comes on again and you go, number six. Yeah. Thank you for trying to take care of me. I'm okay. So you can recognize and acknowledge it. Then there are other deeper things that you can do. So you first become aware of the stories. Then you can notice. Or you can practice and say, how. How am I? How do I feel? What's my life when I believe this story? What's its effect?

And then the Dalai Lama talks about stories that don't have your best interest in mind. So then you ask the next question, how am I when I don't believe this story? Because it is just a story. How about if I'm just here not believing that worry or that anger or that regret or that shame about myself or whatever story it is. And you start to realize that just stepping back from believing it, it's not that. It's not there. Opens a doorway to a kind of inner freedom that is beautiful because you again, step back and become the mindful, loving awareness that says, oh, yes, all this is trying to take care of me.

Take a breath. I'm actually okay. Just this moment, just in the present, just where I am. So the ability to see thoughts, to shift and to begin to trust that your awareness. I mean, those of you who are listening now, you hear these words, you see the images of Jack and Fleet and so forth. You know, you've got your body senses. Wherever you're seated, whatever the environment is like.

Become aware that also there is consciousness. There's awareness itself. It's not just the senses of your body or the words that are flowing by, but all this is received in awareness.

This is who you really are. This very simple. You're the awareness that was born into your body. In fact, it's what you're made of. It will leave your body when you die. Trust me, you know, you'll float out and you say, wow, that was an incarnation. Amazing, wasn't it? You'll see who you are is awareness, is consciousness itself. And as you relax and begin to trust this mindful, loving awareness, it becomes more available, it becomes more your home. And then the stories come and you say, wow, that's a good one. Oh, I remember I learned that one from my grandmother who went through when they burned all the villages where she grew up or something. And I carry it epigenetically. And she told me, I have to be worried.

But is it happening now? No, you're still actually living your grandmother's trauma, but who you are is something so much bigger than that. You are the Buddha, seeing all these come and go.

And resting in the great heart of compassion.

Well, I love that you. Earlier in our conversation, Jack kind of alluded that for any of us to kind of move into this way of beginning to experience ourselves, our lives, the world there it can often be necessary that we receive that look of mercy or there's some acknowledgment or, or like the process you did at that event of having them bring in the stones. And so it somehow begins with compassion, that there's some way that then opens the door to us to begin to, you know, have the courage to step into our suffering and develop this connection with this compassionate awareness. And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about.

About the importance of compassion practices and even in particular, as well as, you know, the basic mindfulness meditation practices, more intentional kind of compassion practices like the Meta practice and you know, is the. The more. The more modern versions like the mindful, self compassionate, Chris Cameron, Kristen Neff developed or Tomlin from the Tibetan tradition. So could you talk a bit about the importance of these kinds of compassion practices in terms of helping ourselves.

Have the courage and maybe the ability to embrace our suffering more and find our way into this sort of compassionate awareness you're talking about.

So it's a beautiful question. Fleet and when I first started with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and Joe G.M. trumba & Company, all in the 1970s, we taught a lot of mindfulness, but very quickly realized that even the mindfulness could be used to judge yourself. I'm not mindful enough. I should be more, how close am I to enlightenment? I see my shame and guilt. I wish it wasn't there. It didn't take very long to realize that the two mindfulness and love, now I'm calling it loving awareness, have to go together because the love allows us to see what's actually true in this human incarnation with an open heart. And there are these very beautiful practices. You mentioned Metta on my Love on my website, or Sharon Salzberg or Tara Brock or Trudy Goodman or so many others, you can get practices of forgiveness, of loving Kindness of gratitude, of.

10 different ways of doing compassion. And they're all worth trying. And finding your skillful means finding what really touches your heart. Some it's guided meditation, some you do on your own and visualize and sending out love. And since we've been talking a lot about suffering and compassion, which is necessary to open, I want to talk about joy. Because the first noble truth of the Buddha's teachings is that life has suffering. Okay, we all raise our hands. The second noble truth is that there are causes, greed, hatred, fear, ignorance. And we can see, looking around the world, that no amount of science, no amount of computers, of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology and biotechnology and space technology and Internet and all that are going to stop continuing warfare and continuing racism. We talked about this and continuing human suffering because they have their roots in the human heart. So kind of repeating that, we begin to realize, all right, then the source of all this is actually our human heart. And the first noble truth is not the end of the story, it's the first part. So yes, there's suffering and yes, there's causes. The more greed, the more suffering, the more hatred, the more suffering, the more fear, more suffering. But they have their opposites. And the opposite of greed is generosity, of connection and care. The opposite of ignorance is wisdom, clarity. The opposite of hatred is love. And so we can let go of those forces that create suffering. We can see them and acknowledge them, and we can begin to both cultivate or discover that they're in us, that they're part of our true nature. One of the most important things is to see that suffering.

Is just the beginning of the story and that meditation isn't meant to be a grim duty. Okay, I go to the gym and I go to therapy and I work out and I have a good diet and I got to meditate. And it can be another self improvement project. But in fact, the gift of meditation and of mindful loving awareness is to invite a sense of ease, of self care, of self compassion, of well being and of joy. The Buddha actually gives instructions for those of you who like the Buddhist direct teachings. This is from the Dhammapada. He says, live in joy in love, even among those who hate.

You know, there's a lot of hatred there. Don't buy into it. Live in love, live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted, even when there's illness.

Live in health, live in joy and peace, even among the troubled. Let your heart be at peace, free from fears and confusion and attachment. Know the sweet joy of living in the way. So this is actually. It's not a philosophy. It's a set of instructions. And then people say, yeah, but what about all the suffering in the world? You know, there's guilt and shame. I haven't done enough. And even though we have our suffering. So I'm going to read a very hard poem, one of my favorites. And it's. It's tough, so you have to listen to it. It's by Jack Gilbert, who died in the last couple of years and was one of our. Us great, you know, treasured poets. And it's called A Brief for the Defense.

Sorrow everywhere, slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they're starving somewhere else with flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's also what the gods want. Otherwise the morning before lavender summer dawn would not be made so fine. And the Bengal tiger would not be fashioned orange and black. So miraculously well, the poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they've known and the awfulness in their future. Smiling and laughing even while some are in the village are sick. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight not pleasure seeking, but delight not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit that there will be music despite everything. So this is really tough. And yet there are lines we can do without pleasure seeking but not to light. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. And when I've gone into refugee camps, they don't want you to come in frightened and depressed and desperate. They already have plenty of that. They actually want somebody to come in and say, you have a spirit that's undaunted. In spite of all this, we all have this. There's a freedom born in you, and you can cultivate and develop and expand. And you can bring the blessings from that to wherever you are and to those who are around you. So that then, I think the French philosopher Andre Gide said, then you realize that joy is a moral obligation to bring the beauty of your spirit into this world and to use it to touch and care for others. And that's part of the Bodhisattva.

Path.

Well, there's so Many powerful lines in that poem, Jack. Thank you for sharing it. And, you know, and it leads into the next question I wanted to ask, which is kind of a continuation of what you were talking about, and that's to explore the importance of compassionate action in our lives. And not only importance of it, or maybe our responsibility on one level, but also the potential, the transformative potential within acting compassionate, engaging in compassionate action. And on the one hand, we can endlessly get caught up in trying to fix the world and seeking who to blame for the way things are and just having no permission for joy whatsoever, feeling any guilt around that because the world is just so terrible and soulful of suffering. And so there's that extreme on the one hand, and, and even imagining that, you know, we could create some kind of eternalistic utopia without suffering, and then on the other hand, we could get into, well, life is just a veil of tears. It's just here to awaken people. And, and, you know, I'm just going to follow my own path. And, you know, I have really no responsibility to the collective. And that's the kind of a more nihilistic extreme. And so there's these extremes of getting caught in nihilism or eternalism or getting caught up in hope and fear or cynicism. And I think you're pointing to a middle way between those. And I really love what you said about the experience in refugee camps because I worked in Rwanda for a number of years training.

Genocide survivors to be kind of paratrauma counselors at the village level throughout Rwanda. And I lead types of trainings that are very empowering and grounded in embracing self agency to transform and empower and hold space for others. And people were telling, well, you can't do those kind of trainings or you can't. And they loved it because they don't. They, they, they. They think of themselves as survivors. They want to be empowered. They have tremendous dignity. They. They don't want to be affirmed as, you know, stuck victims. That's not what they're looking for. And so anyway, I wonder if you could talk a bit about the importance of compassion in action as a reflection of the kind of practice in life that we're talking.

About. Thank you, Fleet. And the image in Rwanda is so empowering and important.

One of my colleagues and friends was a West African speaking of Africa was West African shaman and medicine man named Maledoma Somay, who came from the dagger up people. He said, among the dagger of people, they believe that every child is born with a certain cargo. And they Use that word, cargo. Like the cargo canoes and ships and boats that ply the rivers of West Africa for centuries, he said. And the task of every child who's born in this world is to deliver their cargo, which is to say they're each born, you are, who are listening with certain gifts. And the only thing that really satisfies life in the fullest way you could say it, is to be able to love and be loved. Lots of languages. But one of the ways is to deliver your gifts. And they don't have to be. It's not. You have to take the world on and change the world. The world is the world. But you can reach out your hand and mend the places you can touch. You can bring the, the gaze of glance, of mercy. You can go, you can plant a garden, raise a beautiful child, you know, travel the world and work in places where people need better health care. You can make a conscious business. There isn't the right answer to it. But part of what underlies it is that our meaning and happiness comes through that delivering of our gifts, which is the African way of saying the Bodhisattva path. Bodhisattva means a being who's committed to the alleviation of suffering, to the well being of themselves and others. And in that fashion, I mean, I know it myself. It's interesting. I was Now I'm about 78, and last year I noticed that I was getting a little bored. 50 years of teaching and my family is doing okay and I've done all kinds of projects and things. I was getting a little tired and I thought, well, maybe I should retire and pull back a bunch. That's okay. Not a bad thing. But then I noticed that it had a little tinge of depression and like, okay, who will I be if I don't keep serving in the way I have? I noticed that that was okay. And then I thought about it just a little bit.

Said, okay, this is a tinge of depression.

And then I remembered my Bodhisattva vows because the okay, should I retire? What will I do then? How do I live? How do I serve or not? It always focused around one person, as Miss Piggy would say, moi. And the minute that I remembered the Bodhisattva vows that I've taken repeatedly for my life, to benefit and serve, that dissolved the media. I said, oh yeah, I can still make a difference. And it gladdened my heart. You know, whatever I do, it made me happy because this is part of what makes us happy. And it might be in the early days of the pandemic, people singing from the balconies in Italy or delivering food to people who are shut in. Or it can be some magnificent project that you work on. It doesn't really matter. It matters that you're able to both care for yourself with self compassion and that you reach out your hand and mend the world or plant a garden, or plant the seeds. What's true is.

The results are not given to you. What's given to you is. The deep intention is the action.

You have to get used to the fact that it's the universe that decides the results. You get to plant the seeds and with your seeds and your intention. Seeds of love, seeds of care, seeds of connection, seeds of tending and so forth. Eventually they bear fruit. That's the way seeds work. As Emerson said, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me you have a seed there and I'm prepared to expect miracles. But you don't necessarily get to see the fruits of the action. And this is what it says in the Bhagavad Gita, kind of summed up in some way the great teaching. It says to act without attachment, to act beautifully without attachment to the fruit of the actions. Because that beauty comes out of you and it resonates whether it's now or later. But it has its way in the world. And your gift has its way in the.

World.

So glad you framed it that way. And you know, although I think the Bodhisattva vow in some ways is a courageous vow to make in our lives, at the same time, it's not a burden, it's actually a source of freedom and joy in our lives. And you stated that so beautifully. We're just about at the end of our time. Jack, I want to circle back. Maybe just the last question. Just circle back to the Nosam community for a minute. You know, you are a co founder of two very venerable and beloved meditation centers and communities. The Inside Meditation center, not far from where I live here in Massachusetts and Barrie and. And then Spirit Rock and Wood Acre, California, Upper Marin County. And I'm just curious about anything you'd like to say about the importance of Sangha practicing and community. Doing this, doing this work together to being on this journey together with each.

Other. It's really simple to start with Fleet. You can't do it alone. There's a reason that in the Buddhist tradition, the three jewels are the Buddha and your own Buddha mind. The Dharma or the teachings, the truth, the way things are, and community. And they're actually Held as co equal. So we need each other. And one of the beautiful things when I work with people in community is that they'll ask a question, tell me about karma. My first response is, what makes you ask? Because it's not a philosophy. And they might say, well, my father was just diagnosed with advanced cancer or my brother just won the lottery. I would answer that completely differently because each of those or an opening to talk about what's real in the heart of that person. But then the next two questions, and often it's in a group, are, what have you learned about this? Instead of being the sage on the stage and giving the answer, what have you learned? It's amazing what people will find or discover in themselves when someone is the witness, someone is with them, inquiring, saying, let's look at this together. Then even better, I'll say, if there's a group, what have others learned about this?

Dealing with a parent who has cancer or dealing whatever it happens to be.

The room becomes wise. This beautiful understanding that's shared comes out of the hearts of others. First of all, community is critical. Then the second thing to say is that along with those centers that you mentioned, one of the things that I've been involved in and very happy with is founding a company called Cloud Sangha. Because almost everything that's online, including this summit, is primarily broadcast here. Meditations here are teachings, you know, here are, and so forth. But it's actually hard to have community. And if you're living in Nampa, Idaho, or Jacksonville, Florida, or Belfast, Ireland, or whatever, it's hard to find community. And yet we need it. So what cloudsonga cloudsonga co cloudsonga co offers for a very modest price is you can join groups of six people that meet every week on various themes of practice. You can join a parenting group, and there'll be a facilitator who helps. But mostly it's like, how do we deal with the tantrums of our toddler or the resistance of our teenagers to any guidance from us? Or what? And the parents share it. There's a group on grief or a group on, you know, anxiety, or a group on aging. How are you doing with aging? How are you doing with aging of your parents or your community? What do we have to learn from one another? And how are you learning to practice with it? How are you learning to find your freedom in it? And these groups, which are really simple, an hour a week, you start to feel first that you want to meditate and practice more because you want to be able to tell People, what you're learning, it's so that we sort of support each other and you learn so much from each other. And this is something that's actually, it's a gift, but it's also almost a necessity. Like meditation itself, it's a necessity to hold hands and you know, warm hand to warm hand to connect and in that to receive the sense that we're all carrying and learning how to navigate this human incarnation and we can learn and support one.

Another.

Well, this has been an extraordinary gift today, Jack. I'm really, really, really appreciate it. I've just so enjoyed just spending this time with you and, and, and the poetry you've shared and the really clear distinctions you've made. And so thank you so much for this, a wonderful contribution to our summit and people can find out more about your work. You have a website, just jackbornfield.com isn't.

It? That's.

Correct. And then you mentioned the cloud. What was it again?

Cloud. Cloud. Sangha S A N G H A cloudsonga Co and it's a totally cool way to find community and we all need it. Yeah, sounds wonderful, Leith, thank you for all the good work. You've been doing amazing, beautiful work now for decades, ever since back in the day when you spent your time inside and learned certain things and you came out, you know, with a lot of gifts actually, and a lot of compassion and now you turn them into all kinds of gifts for everybody else. So I deeply appreciate, you know, what you offer the world. I'm happy that I get to be a little drop in that part of.

It. Oh, thank you so much, Jack. And I mentioned some of your books that were quite seminal for me at a particular time in my life and that was during my time inside. So thank you very much for.

That. Thanks.

Lee. All right, you be.

Well. Take.

Care. Be well, Take great care. Bye.

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