Jack Kornfield on Healing the Unfinished Business of the Heart - Heart Wisdom Ep. 254

Revealing how to calm the mind through meditation, Jack shares wisdom on self-acceptance, trust, and healing the unfinished business of the heart.


“Don’t live in the mind, rest in the heart and let the mind come and go as it will. This is discovering your Buddha Nature.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

- Working with the ‘unfinished business of the heart’ – grief, sorrows, longing, wounds, loss
- Honoring life’s ‘ocean of tears’ with love and kind attention
- Cultivating the courage to allow your heart to be broken
- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the tender heart of a warrior
- Self-acceptance, allowing yourself to feel, and reawakening a trust in yourself
- Healing the mind by seeing clearly and not taking it so seriously
- Resting the in heart and letting the mind come and go
- Discovering Your Buddha Nature, your fundamental ground of being
- The technique of seeing the world as enlightened, and the path as yours
- The healing encased within understanding emptiness, selflessness, and letting go
- Meditation as a truly courageous act

“The problem with the mind mostly is that we take it seriously.” – Jack Kornfield

“Healing of the mind is when we can hold in our hearts all that arises, and sense a rest and a goodness, a wholeness in us.” – Jack Kornfield

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[johnwibbels]

See true love and peace. Together and without separation or selfishness 🙏🏻

[STOLACE]

This was so timely — I needed this talk so much.

[jeffmcguire]

Thank you, Jack! I always learning from you. Jeff

[dabu]

I’m just commenting timestamps so I can find them later 6:30
Tibetan practice 20:24

[dalehodges]

My early habits for egos survival are falling away with acceptance of Nows bounty aka heart mind?

[Robert-isdu]

The Heart is a vortex Cone T wave Krystal Pink 🩷 Rosetta Khee Ra Sha Ha Sha Ashalum Ta Ec Ka Sha DUR Mu ah VA 💋🌈 Aurora's

[Kimoto]

"whole world's enlightened but you" doesn't work well and is least truthful. At best it's "whole world's enlightened, including you, and it's all seeking the truth" is most truthful of the two. Otherwise, it's just "seek to be most deeply honest with one's inner and outer experience."

Edit: I'll be frank, it's a crap teaching without judicious, wise clarification. 1) It contradicts dharma, 2) is untrue, and 3) can be toxic to many practitioners.

1) Dependent origination observes that every phenomenal occurrence arises from causes and conditions. That includes "the world" and "oneself", the "person." If one's unenlightened then both are and the other way around. The "person" is a product of "the world." It contradicts the non self principle. I.e. nothing, "self" or "world" has an independent "self". In fact, they exist mutually and in communion, even making one another. Finally, it contradicts the whole lived truth of the Dharma that there's no separateness. The whole purpose of Dharma is seeing/being non-separation directly (not intellectually). Seeing "you" as being "unenlightened" and "the world" being so keeps that separation in place.
2) see #1.
3) This teaching can be toxic to practitioners who have significant psych-emotional traumatic backgrounds, especially childhood trauma and other trauma with power-over factors like rape and other abuse. It basically says "you're wrong, those who've harmed you or who do harm you are right." Deeply abused as a kid? You're wrong, the abuses were right. Your village or country bombed and shelled in an unprovoked invasion, murdering thousands including your family? You're wrong, invaders right. Lost your family in the Holocaust? You're wrong. Face discrimination? You're wrong.

It's a horrible teaching. At best, it could be used in 1 on 1 instruction like those fake koans whose purpose is for the practitioner to realize the teaching's assumptions are false and the truth is much deeper. At worst... it can be like so many other religious and spiritual misdirection that cover up and excuse destructive, harmful behavior of leaders, institutions and teachers, putting everything on the practitioner rather than respectful sharing of responsibility. Also, see #3

Kornfield is usually pretty decent as a teacher but even the best teachers miss a swing from time to time. This one's a strikeout.

As a certain Indian saint asked "How is a teaching that assumes limitation supposed to deliver one from such limitation?" It can't. It only reinforces the limitation (and separation).