The Bodhisattva and the Power of Intention

A talk given by Jack Kornfield at the end of a retreat on setting intentions and taking your insights and practice back out into the world.

Transcript

There have been 2.

6 million meditation hours in this room.

You've added your frequent flyer meditation miles.

And it's such a marvelous and special thing to have a temple that people can come and learn in the way that you have.

So tonight I want to talk about the identity of the bodhisattva.

So the question people have is how to leave the temple.

Going back to work,

To family,

To relationships,

To the society and world and madness that's out there,

And beauty.

And so there are just a few simple things to remember.

The first,

To not be so judgmental.

And to remember not to judge yourself and not to judge others.

It's really a treasure to walk through the world in this way.

During my first year of teaching,

A girl named She was assigned to my middle school seventh grade class.

She was a desperately unhappy child and rebelled against the most basic rules such as stay in your seat,

Raise your hand to speak.

She and I battled for control of the classroom.

I tried every technique I knew,

Behavioral contracts,

Praise,

Reprimands,

None of them worked.

I even called She's home every week,

But no one answered.

She lived and was being raised by an older sister.

I went to the school counselor who said I'd done my duty and offered to transfer She to another classroom.

I declined.

She was my student and I wasn't going to pass her on to someone else.

In the faculty lounge,

The older teachers patted me on the back,

Thankful they didn't have She in their classroom.

June finally came.

On the last day of school,

She was quick to head out the door.

As I sat contemplating my failure with her,

She walked back in.

Oh great,

I thought,

One last act of terrorism.

In She's hand was a small bowl,

The kind that students make in ceramics class.

She thrust it into my grasp.

Here she said,

It's the only thing I could think of to give you.

I turned the slightly misshapen bowl over and saw She's initials etched on the bottom.

Thanks for trying to like me,

She said.

And before I could speak,

She turned and left.

After several more years of teaching,

I went on to become a school principal and now a superintendent.

She's bowl is nevertheless my desk.

Thanks for trying to like me.

From Nelson Mandela,

It never hurts to see the good in someone.

They often act the better because of it.

And so there is something that's not even personal,

It's something bigger than taking the experiences that we have personally.

But it's allowing yourself to become a stream of benevolence.

Thanks for trying to like me.

You leave with great powers.

It's quite wonderful.

You leave with the powers of mindfulness and compassion,

And with them a particular key in mindfulness and compassion that's central to the awakening of the Buddha,

To Buddhist psychology,

Which is the key of wise intention.

Karma,

That off-used word that has all kinds of meanings and mismeanings,

But in its simple essence,

Kama-vipaka,

Or karma cause and result,

Or action and result,

Comes down to one simple thing.

Karma is created by intention.

So if you get in your car,

In the driveway,

If you have a driveway at home,

And you pull out and you crash into the next door neighbor's house through the hedge and into their living room because you are so pissed that they cut down all those beautiful trees right along the property line and also that they called the pound on your dog because it went over and did its duty on their lawn and they tried to get it confiscated and they did terrible things and you're just enraged and you do that,

The little blue lights will join you and the police will take you away and you'll have to deal with the consequences of that violent act.

But if you do the exact same act,

You pull out of your driveway and you crash through the hedge and into the living room of your neighbor because the gas pedal stuck,

One of those models that happens,

Right,

And you couldn't stop it.

Instead of the arrest for your action,

Even though the neighbor might be upset,

There will also be sympathy.

Are you hurt?

Are you okay?

What can we do?

How do we fix all of this?

Exact same action,

Car,

Hedge,

Crash into the house,

You at the wheel.

The only difference was the intention.

Your intention is that which creates the unfolding of your life and your karma.

If you study all the texts that talk about dying,

You know,

The moment of death,

There's weighty karma and habitual karma and proximate karma and random karma,

All these kinds of karma.

But the most powerful one is the habitual karma,

Or the most significant one.

What we practice becomes who we are next.

To be able to pay attention to your karma,

Or your intention,

If you will,

Takes mindfulness,

Takes care,

Which is why you practice.

There's no such thing as a one-walk dog,

Right?

You have your dog and every morning you walk your dog and hopefully every day also you do your mindfulness practice.

So the key in relationship,

In work,

In action,

Is intention.

There is both short and long-term intention.

Short-term intention can be most usefully described when you work with it as a practice,

As the mindful pause.

There you are in the middle of a conversation with your beloved and there comes to be a little bit of friction,

Which doesn't happen very often,

But could happen,

Even with such enlightened people as ourselves.

Couldn't it?

I suppose.

Yeah,

I suppose.

And when you find yourself in conflict,

In relationship,

Or in work,

Or in other kinds of circumstances,

If you can take a single breath or two,

Just make a little space of pause and ask yourself,

What is my best intention here?

What is my highest?

What's my best intention?

All of a sudden things will change because how you respond or speak,

You can say,

What did you mean in a kind of upset,

Angry way?

What did you mean,

You know,

Where you're trying to be right and be strong and defend yourself and so forth?

Or you can say,

What did you mean?

I want to understand.

You want to listen,

You want to learn,

There's a caring in it.

The tone of voice and the intention to understand versus to barricade and be right takes the conversation in entirely different directions.

Or you're about to answer that email or that text,

You know,

Where someone sent you something.

And you know,

There's some concern,

Some conflict,

And you look and you take a breath,

A mindful pause and you read it and say,

What's my best intention?

Oh,

I want to get along,

I want to solve this.

I care about this person.

Usually it's true,

Even I love this person.

And then you read it and say,

I think I'll change a couple words there,

I'll soften the language,

Make it a little more connecting before you press the send.

It's not so complicated.

To have a mindful pause is making space in which you can then see with the heart and not with the habit of reactivity.

And you know,

When you build a fire,

The,

See if I have the verse from this beautiful poem,

What makes a fire burn is the space between the logs,

The breathing space,

Too much of a good thing.

Too many logs packed in too tight can swelch the fire as quickly as water.

So there's something about making space and makes a huge amount of difference.

Now when I was in the middle of what was a painful divorce,

There are apparently some divorces that aren't painful,

But they're in the minority.

And when dealing with the lawyers and things,

And in that divorce,

You know,

After a long marriage,

And I was very devoted,

But it became clear that we had different needs and my ex really didn't want to stay married.

I'm quite loyal and I would have,

But she didn't want to.

So anyway,

But then when it came to dividing everything and various other things,

It was pretty painful.

And meeting with lawyers was not easy.

And she was,

She was,

Yeah,

Very concerned,

So worried,

And so it made it all fuel more.

And I would go in and I would take a breath or two or ten.

And then I would envision that on one arm was Kuan Yin,

Compassion,

And the other was the Buddha,

Great equanimity and wisdom,

And we would go in together.

And I would sit down,

And by taking the breath and bringing in the Buddha and Kuan Yin,

I was so much better off than if I'd gone in alone,

You know.

And it was all because I took the breath and what is my best intention and let me get support for this.

I mean,

You can imagine some difficulty in your life,

And what would happen if you brought,

You know,

The goddess of compassion and the Buddha or whoever it is in with you?

Makes it easier,

It turns out.

They handle it better.

They have both concern,

Listening,

Tenderness,

There's a lot of equanimity,

And also a kind of courage,

A courage to be present without reactivity.

A courage,

Well,

Here's a courage.

Here's my passage.

Ah,

Yes.

To me there's no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.

I'd call it the courage to forgive.

You know,

That there's kind of something really brave to say,

All right,

I'm here and I'm present and I will tend to what needs to be done,

But I'll do it with an open heart.

And so you have all that,

All coming with a simple pause and saying,

What's my best intention?

What's my highest intention?

Now the other dimension of intention,

Jay-tana,

Is long-term intention.

And long-term intention is a way of setting the compass of the heart,

Setting the direction of your life,

The compass of the heart,

Toward some north star that really matters to you.

And star is a good image for me to use because when I was a kid one of the things I liked to do was to go out and lie on the grass on a clear night and look at the stars.

But for me what was fun was to imagine that I was on the bottom of the earth because there really isn't a top and bottom,

You know.

The maps were made by certain people who thought they should be on top,

Mostly European white folks,

You know,

And they put themselves on the top,

Here we are,

You know,

But there isn't actually,

There's no top or bottom.

And I imagine I was at the bottom and I was stuck onto the earth by the magnet of gravity held on there so I didn't fall down and then I would look down into the sea of stars.

And there was this kind of little thrill that would come because I'm holding on and I'm not going to fall down into it.

But it was marvelous to do.

And there's something about long-term intention in which you sense the vastness of time,

Not an election cycle or not the rise and fall of a business or,

You know,

Concerns for individuals and people that you love and so forth,

All those matter.

But they're all taking place in the turning of the seasons and the vastness of the solar system and the galaxies and the enormity of space and time unfolding.

There's these extraordinary vows of the Bodhisattva,

Beings are numberless,

I vow to save them all.

Now there's a little problem with this that I've often mentioned when I talk about this,

And that is that the beings that you know personally don't want to be saved by you.

You might notice that in your family and in your community.

So it has to have some other kind of meaning.

And it does.

Listen to this Bodhisattva vow from Shantideva that the Dalai Lama recites every morning when he wakes up.

May I be a bridge,

A boat,

A raft to ferry those across the flood.

May I be food for the hungry.

May I be a resting place for the weary.

May I be a lamp in the darkness for all who are lost.

May I be medicine for those who are ill.

May I be the light that brings awakening to beings.

For as long as beings exist,

Time and space beyond all that,

Until all beings are awakened together,

May I carry on this work of serving all beings.

Some little vow like that,

Something like that in the morning.

But what's beautiful,

If you listen to it,

Is it's not about saving the person next to you in some kind of misguided way.

But it's saying,

I set my heart in the direction of compassion for myself and all beings,

No matter what happens.

The sun can rise in the west,

The Bodhisattva has only one way,

Which is the way of compassion,

No matter what happens.

And one of my favorite examples and stories I like to tell about this,

Trudy and I got to see him this last year when we were teaching together in Singapore.

There's a wonderful elder in Sri Lanka named Ari Ratana,

A.

T.

Ari Ratana.

And he came to this wisdom conference in Singapore.

There were all kinds of great speakers,

Both spiritual and corporate heads and government people.

And then there was Ari,

Who was like coming and having the Dalai Lama or one of these feet.

Just a different energy.

And Ari Ratana,

Who is now 84,

85,

Started a movement called Sarvodaya in which he became the master of service and community development in Sri Lanka,

Digging wells,

Building schools,

Creating roads,

Making community for more than half the villages in the entire country.

And he said,

We're not in it to build schools or dig wells or make roads.

We're in it to make people love one another.

That's really why we're doing this.

And that intention underneath is what made it work.

But in the middle of a peace accord that was faltering during their recent civil war,

Ari called all his followers together to the great temple at Anuradhapura.

And 650,

000 people came.

And this is in a country of only 18 million people.

They all gathered there.

And he said,

We need to support peace in our country after the civil war.

And so what I would like to present to you is the Sarvodaya 500-year peace plan.

So he said,

It took 500 years to get into this conflict.

And so what I propose is the 500-year peace plan because that's how long it will take us to undo it.

Five years of ceasefire,

10 years of rebuilding roads and schools,

25 years of learning each other's languages and religions,

50 years of an economic program to develop the poorest parts from the richest parts.

And every 100 years we'll have a grand council to see if we're going in the right direction and tune it and then we'll do it again for 100 years.

And I say,

Within 500 years we can solve this problem.

I got to tell this story to the Dalai Lama at one point when I was giving some teachings at a place where he was.

And I partly did it because I thought he would like it because he's sort of in the same position in Tibet.

You know,

All kinds of terrible things have happened.

To have the long view.

Here was somebody who didn't care about the next election cycle or what was going to happen between one faction or another.

He said,

This is the direction we go.

Ceasefire,

Peace,

Caring for one another,

Even if it takes 500 years.

Dalai Lama,

Of course,

Was very happy to hear it,

And their buddies anyway.

So the Bodhisattva is a being who is committed to compassion and tending life in all its forms no matter what.

Compassion and freedom.

And there are all kinds of modern Bodhisattva vows.

May I put down the guns,

Bandage the wounds,

Carry the water,

And share the bread.

Here's a modern Bodhisattva vow.

Or Diane Ackerman who writes,

I always have loved this poem,

In the name of daybreak and the eyelids of morning and the wayfaring moon and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred,

But offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature,

A healer of misery,

A messenger of wonder,

And an architect of peace.

So you set your heart in a direction,

A compass of your heart,

With your own Bodhisattva vows.

And then,

The important and interesting thing,

And the secret,

You've said all these days,

And now you get the secret.

The secret is to act well without attachment to the fruits of your actions.

To plant beautiful seeds in the world and trust that sooner or later those seeds will bear fruit.

So this is Thomas Merton again,

Christian mystic.

Do not depend on the hope of results,

He writes to a disillusioned activist.

You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all,

If not perhaps at times bring about its opposite.

As you get used to this,

You start more and more to concentrate not on the results,

But on the value,

The rightness,

And the truth of the work itself.

And it turns out that you don't know what the results will be.

That's not what's given to you.

So I saw this documentary that the BBC had done on the siege of Leningrad,

The end of World War II,

Three years in which more than half a million people died,

Just horrendous.

And there was an old woman they were interviewing who lived in Leningrad.

She'd been a child during the siege.

She described how terrible it was.

And as she talked,

She said,

Here I have something else to show you.

And walked down this narrow corridor in this apartment,

She had this sort of railroad apartment.

And she said,

When I was seven or eight in the siege,

And the food was so scarce,

We would stand in a bread line once a week,

And they'd give us a piece of bread.

And it was a rainy day,

And there was ice on the streets,

Kind of slippery.

And I came out carrying the bread,

And I fell into the mud.

And the bread fell with me and got all muddy.

And I was sitting there in the rain with the bread and the mud.

And a woman walked out,

An older woman,

And she came over to me,

Helped me up,

And she tore her bread in half and gave me half of her bread.

And she said,

Here,

Look.

And she opened her cabinet and took out this ceramic bowl and opened it.

And inside a blue napkin was a little piece of that bread.

And she said,

That,

That gift,

That act from that woman is what kept us alive.

And it wasn't the bread.

It was that spirit that kept us alive through all those years.

So it doesn't have to be big things.

It's the moment of your intention and your action.

And what you start to feel,

And you have been empowered to know this,

Is a shift of identity.

Many of you have been rather loyal to your suffering.

You know what I mean?

And that's okay.

You have to suffer it and grieve it and experience it and so forth.

But my mother would say something in Yiddish,

Enough already,

She would say.

It's time to let go and not to live your life or your meditation as a grim duty.

Know that you are not alone and that this darkness has its purpose.

Really it will school your eyes to find the gift your life requires hidden in this night corner,

Illuminating your heart.

It's from a poem of John O'Donoghue.

You have suffered,

Everybody's suffered.

Use it well.

Instead of being loyal to it,

Go through it and let it empower you to care for yourself and others in a deeper and more beautiful way.

For its purpose,

Its true purpose,

Is to open the great heart of compassion in you.

And then you can do what my friend Maledoma Somae,

A West African shaman,

Medicine man,

Says in this beautiful West African metaphor.

Then you can deliver your cargo.

He says,

Among the Dagara people,

They believe that every being who's born is given a certain cargo to deliver to the earth,

Of your particular gift,

Your art,

Your love,

Your voice,

Your connection,

Whatever it is.

And the only thing that satisfies you in the fulfillment of your human incarnation is to deliver your cargo.

I love the metaphor.

It's kind of a West African,

You know,

Cargo ships and canoes on the river and all of that and water culture.

So to deliver your cargo,

There are a few things that are important if you're not so caught in your own suffering.

One is,

And there's a beautiful new book by the Dalai Lama and Tutu called The Book of Joy and some friend of ours who helped bring them together in Dharamsala,

Bishop Tutu flew to Dharamsala.

And they spent a week together talking about how they could be happy even amidst the sufferings of their life.

It's really kind of fun to read parts of it because they tease each other a lot.

Tutu is 85,

I think,

And the Dalai Lama is 80.

So yeah,

The Dalai Lama is saying,

The problem is that our world and our education remain focused on external materialistic values.

We're not concerned enough with the inner values of the heart.

And Tutu says,

It's difficult to follow your profound pronouncements.

I thought you were going to say that in fact when you're pursuing happiness you're not going to find it.

It's very elusive.

You don't find it by saying,

I'm going to forget about everything else and just pursue happiness.

There's the title of a book by C.

S.

Lewis called Surprise by Joy,

Which I think expresses how it works.

Many people look at you,

Tutu continues,

And they think of all the awful things that have happened to you.

Nothing can be more devastating than being exiled from your home,

From the things precious to you,

And having the families and people you knew imprisoned or killed.

And yet when people come to you they experience someone who has a wonderful serenity,

A beautiful compassion,

A mischievousness.

That's the right word,

The Dalai Lama.

I don't like too much formality.

Don't interrupt me,

Tutu says.

Stop that,

You know.

Oh,

The Dalai Lama says,

I'm sorry,

I'm sorry.

It's wonderful to discover that what we want is not actually happiness,

He goes on.

It's not what I would speak of.

I would speak of joy.

Joy is a far greater thing.

So the Dalai Lama says,

So much has been taken from me,

My home,

The temples,

They've burned our texts,

They've locked up the lamas,

And so forth.

Why should I also let them take my happiness?

So to become a bodhisattva doesn't mean that it's a grim duty.

In fact,

Your gift in what you offer,

Your cargo,

Is best offered with joy,

Best offered with a smile.

And if you go to work in the worst places,

And the bodhisattvas sometimes willingly put themselves in the realms that are the most difficult,

I'll go there,

It doesn't help to be morose when you do it.

It doesn't help anybody.

It helps when you're able to be there and express a love that is not limited by the circumstances itself.

So it can't be done by imitation,

In this vast universe which now,

Recently found to have two trillion galaxies,

There's never been anyone like you.

Ever.

Isn't that far out?

Life created something completely different and unique in yourself.

And you have to trust that you have something beautiful to offer.

Somerset Maugham said,

There are three rules for writing the great English novel.

Unfortunately,

No one knows what they are.

So no one can tell you how to do this,

But you set your heart in the right direction,

And moment by moment,

Being present,

You plant the seeds of beauty.

And you can't be idealistic about it.

You know,

In my industry,

I get to be with lots of swamis and mamas and lamas and gurus and things like that,

And they have marvelous teachings and all kinds of benefits and so forth.

And,

You know,

Because they're human,

They all have their foibles.

There's a great Dzogchen master,

Who's a friend of mine,

Who's really afraid to fly in airplanes.

He can sit there and tell you to make your mind like sky,

But when he's in the airplane in the sky,

It's much harder for him.

We talked about trauma work for him.

We're just human.

So the idea isn't to be somebody else.

The point isn't to perfect yourself.

It's to perfect your love.

And trust.

Trust that you have the great powers of mindfulness,

Compassion,

Loving awareness,

And forgiveness.

You now have them.

They are yours.

And you've learned to trust that the heart is big enough to hold the whole world,

To hold your tears and sorrow and love and longing and joy and expressions,

All of it.

And your neurosis.

Yes.

And then the bodhisattva is unafraid to love.

There's been so much anti-Muslim rhetoric and,

You know,

So much prejudice and hatred.

The greatest peace army the modern world has ever seen was in the 1930s in what was known as the Northwest Frontier Province,

Which is part of now Pakistan and Afghanistan,

Organized by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

Over 100,

000 men,

Warriors,

All devout Muslims,

Vowed to resist British rule without weapons in their hands or violence in their hearts.

And they kept their vow despite great provocation and many killings.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was a good friend of Gandhi's.

It's an amazing thing to think that what we see is this dangerous place and people who we project our fears upon.

But really what that speaks to is the dignity of the human spirit,

That if you give human beings something that's a great and beautiful thing to do,

They will rise to it.

So being unafraid to love is the bodhisattva,

No matter what.

And Wes again went to interview Gary Snyder,

A great environmentalist now in his mid-80s.

He was a Pulitzer Prize winner,

You know,

Wrote Earth Household and all these things as environmental visionary and said,

Gary,

Now that you see global warming,

Climate change,

Loss of species,

What message do you have for us at this time?

And he said,

Don't feel guilty.

Don't feel guilty.

If you're going to save it,

Don't save it out of guilt or anger.

Too many burned out activists.

Save it because you love it.

The other energies,

Guilt,

Anger,

All those are part of the problem itself in consciousness.

If you're going to save it,

Save it because you love it.

And that's the power of the bodhisattva,

The power of love that lets mothers pick cars off their children.

And I remember going to see Deepamma,

This wonderful meditation master and teacher of mine and Sharon and Joseph Savars in India,

And I visited her in Calcutta.

And I was having a hard time.

I was a youngish teacher.

I suppose I'd been teaching for six or seven years and I was going through a period of some self-doubt and other kinds of struggles.

I went to see her and get some teachings.

And then after a couple days with her,

I'd been in Bodhgaya before that and visited her in her little apartment in Calcutta.

She said,

Well,

Let Ma bless you before you go.

And she was this tiny little person.

And Bengali's hug,

It's really great.

She kind of threw her arms around me.

And then she began to bless me using her hands and she just whispering metaphors and patting me all over my body like this for five or ten minutes,

A long,

Long blessing,

Metta,

Metta,

Metta,

Metta,

Metta,

Metta.

She was also a real yogi with great concentration and deep meditation and amazing kind of presence,

Metta,

Metta,

Metta,

Metta.

And she says,

Okay,

Go with Ma's blessings.

So I walk out of the apartment and it's a hot day in Calcutta and the streets are filled with,

At that time,

Honking taxis and ox carts and people pulling man-pulled rickshaws and people selling things.

And I go into this traffic jam and it takes me two hours to get to Dum Dum Airport,

Which is the name of the Calcutta airport.

And then I wait in line for like two or three hours and the plane is always delayed and it's no air conditioning.

It's sweltering and finally I get on the plane.

I fly to Bangkok where I was going and I get out in the long line through Thai Customs and then it's a really hot season there and the taxi's stuck in traffic.

And the whole time I am just grinning.

For three days I couldn't stop smiling.

Go with Ma's blessing.

I was stoned.

Love.

Woo.

You know.

And the power of the Bodhisattva is to take that love wherever you are.

When we see suffering,

We respond.

It's the Bodhisattva.

Barbara Widener,

Who founded Grandmothers for Peace,

Describes it this way.

I began to question what kind of a world I'm leaving for my grandchildren.

So I got a sign,

A grandmother for peace,

And stood on a street corner.

Then I joined others kneeling as a human barrier at a munitions factory because the U.

S.

Is the largest exporter of weapons in the world.

And then we worry that we're not safe.

It's crazy.

I joined others kneeling as a human barrier at a munitions factory.

I was taken to prison,

Strip searched,

Thrown into a cell.

Something happened to me.

I realized they couldn't do anything more to me.

I was free.

And now Barbara and her organization Grandmothers for Peace works in dozens of countries around the world.

So the Bodhisattva is not afraid to love,

Both in the vast way,

In the politics,

In the environment,

In the social justice,

In Black Lives Matter,

In,

You know,

Care for global warming,

And all the things that,

You know,

Are on our collective conscience and weigh on our heart.

And in the most personal way,

A man talking to Nisargadatta,

My teacher in Bombay,

Talking and complaining about his mother who was abusive and not a very good mother and not caring.

And he goes on and on and finally Nisargadatta just stops him and says,

Love your mother,

Love her anyway.

And the man looks at Nisargadatta and says,

She wouldn't let me.

And Nisargadatta just rests for a moment and says,

She couldn't stop you.

No one can stop you.

No one can stop your love.

And it's never too late.

That's the beautiful thing.

It's never too late to be a Bodhisattva.

It's never too late to love.

You can start today and right on the money.

Perfect timing.

So in the face of racism and war and violence and fundamentalism,

The Bodhisattva has one direction like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan,

A kind of dignity and compassion and presence that will not harm yourself and will not harm another.

And not only unafraid to love,

But unafraid to be happy.

I see in each one of you the child of the spirit.

And if you do mudita,

Joy practice,

One of the best ways to open the heart of joy is to vision people and see their happiest moment as a child,

Their best adventure.

I mean,

Look around for a moment.

Just take a peek at your fellow yogis.

And when you look at somebody,

Imagine their best adventure as a girl or a boy.

Laughing,

Running,

Playing tag,

Doing whatever,

Some great adventure.

That child of the spirit is there in every single one.

Just like the Dalai Lama and Tutu,

They still have it.

And I'm about to leave this retreat and go back to Boston to be with my twin brother,

Who is back in the hospital and very difficult cancer treatment.

And he's been really an inspiration for me when we were eight years old.

I lived in Buffalo where there's lots of snow.

It was one winter day,

It was freezing cold.

And we went out with our mittens and hats and coats and things.

I didn't tell this story,

Did I?

No?

Well,

And I'm shivering.

I was skinny as a rail and really shivering.

And he's much kind of stockier and stronger and played football.

I was in the orchestra and he played football,

Right?

That just tells you how it was.

And he watches me shake and shiver.

And then he says,

It's not cold.

He takes his hat off.

It's not cold.

He takes his scarf off.

It's not cold.

He starts dancing.

He takes his jacket off.

Then he takes his shirt off.

He strips to the waist and he's dancing around in the snow in the woodland saying,

Cold,

It's just in your mind.

It's not cold.

You know,

That's his spirit.

So a couple of years ago when my mom was 91 and she was dying and she was kind of drifting in and out of Coman in bed here in San Francisco and my twin brother and my other two brothers were all there.

And my mom,

Sometimes in her when she'd come back,

Say,

Mom,

What do you think about this?

It looks like you're dying or you're letting go.

She said,

I wish I could be around more.

I know people are going to go to Mars.

They're going to go to other planets.

I wish I could see it.

She's a little sense of adventure.

So there she is and she's close to dying the next day or two or whatever.

And she's making a little noise as her goes and says,

Mom,

You're going to go to the planets.

You're on a rocket ship.

And he starts shaking her bed.

Come on,

We're taking off.

You're going to go.

And our mouths are like,

What are you doing?

Come on,

Mom,

You're going to go for a big ride.

He just has this irrepressible spirit.

And there's something so compelling about carrying it as a bodhisattva.

This is a story of a woman who took her husband to the Mayo Clinic for an evaluation after he was diagnosed with ALS,

Lou Gehrig's disease,

Which usually it's just a couple of years until you die.

We heard a pianist playing in the crowded atrium and realized as we walked in that it was the first song we had ever danced to and the song we chose to dance to at our wedding years and years before.

Randall put down his briefcase filled with the doctor's reports and test results and took me in his arms and danced me all over that floor.

And when it was over and folks were applauding,

We became aware of how many people gathered around were in wheelchairs and walkers.

We suddenly realized that in that spontaneous moment of celebration,

We'd been dancing on behalf of the life and love that lived in each person gathered together in that place.

We looked around the room lined with those waiting in wheelchairs and we found ourselves thinking of the pool of Bethesda.

And we imagined Jesus asking,

Do you want to be healed?

We thought,

We heard him say,

Then pick up your feet and dance.

So there's something that the Bodhisattva also brings to the world of a kind of joy.

Now and then writes Guillaume Polinere,

It's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

So close your eyes for a little bit and do a reflection.

If you were to create your own Bodhisattva vow to guide your life,

To set the direction of your heart through all the many seasons and changes that human incarnation brings,

Make it simple.

If you were to set your heart and make a vow,

It could be as simple as,

I vow to be kind.

What would it be?

Focus into your heart.

Let your eyes open.

And if you are inclined to,

Write it down.

And if you want to take it a step further,

Show it to someone else that you love.

It's a very shy,

Tender thing to do.

But you can say,

Oh Jack told me I should do it,

You know,

Gives you a little excuse.

It's a beautiful thing because when you show it to someone,

It's almost like you're saying out loud this,

That's your heart's Bodhisattva intention.

From Mary Oliver,

A poem called The Buddha's Last Instruction.

I think of this every morning.

I think of the Buddha every morning as the East begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness to send up the first signal,

A white fan streaked with pink and violet,

Even green.

An old man,

He laid down between two sow trees and he might have said anything knowing it was his final hour.

Behind him the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen.

No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life.

Slowly beneath the branches he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Make of yourself a light,

He said.

Make of yourself a light.

Reviews

Thank you Jack. I love the stories and poems you share. I will also be watching again the programme of the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu on joy. So helpful in my current healing journey

Thank you for this beautiful teaching - I am deeply moved.

Your talks are always so insightful, easy to relate to, yet profound. Thank you for sharing!

Jack held my hand and walked me to my identity as a bodhisattva, although We’ve never met. My vow: May I see you as you are, and serve the needs I sense, surrendering the outcome into the hands of God.

Timeless lesson and important reminder in this historical moment. Thank you beyond words

Dealing with Alzheimer’s, my love for my family has been stressed. So hard; your talk gave me the break I needed. Thank you.

This was such a beautiful talk. Thank you Jack and everyone that has come together to put this recording on here for us to listen to. Make of yourself a light 🙏

I am simply blown away. Thank you, thank you, Jack. I’ve been your fan and your friend for many decades. Bringing new peace from Israel.

Thank you, Jack. I appreciate your lessons and talks very much.

Wunderschön. Danke van einen lieben Menschen, der mich wieder an Jack Kornfield und Bodhisattva erinnert hat :)

Wonderful thoughts,which point to the relevant in life.

Wonderful words for a thoughtful start to my day. Thank you 😊

Endearing, inviting, engaged.
A talk I can walk. A path I am on but didn't have the words to describe it, until now. Thank you sir.

So interesting and fulfilling. I will come back to this again. Thank you.

So moving. Quotes are inspired. Reflection..
I vow to be happy and in that is love, kindness, compassion and intention. Thank you.

One of the most beautiful and inspiring talks I’ve ever heard. I am a mindfulness MBSR teacher and building my sangha and a community of more teachers. This talk is something I will be sharing over and over again with all my fellow teachers. Everywhere. Thank you very much! 🙏🏻❤️

So many words of wisdom in this talk. Blessing and thank you 🙏

Beautiful. I love the way he makes the profound seem simple and attainable by sharing stories, and then 'sets' his point in the mind, seals it, so to speak, with a line or two of poetry.

Beautiful and poignantly appropriate for my day. Thank you 🙏🏻

Brilliantly delivered! Wonderful wisdom! Thank you!