Your Buddha Nature

Jack Kornfield presents a dharma talk on "Your Buddha Nature." In this insightful relfection, we are invited to turn inwards and uncover the core of our truth, helping us to then develop our spiritual growth, evolution, and freedom.

Note: This is a live recording.

Transcript

Let yourself sit in a way that's comfortable and listen.

The teachings are not something for you to believe,

Nor is there any kind of quiz at the end.

I see them in part as a reminder of something that you may know already in yourself to be true.

And I see them also as a kind of a mirror in which you can contemplate or reflect and look at your own experience and your own life,

Because that's really where spiritual growth,

Evolution,

Freedom comes within the knowing in your own heart.

And tonight's talk in part is going to be on Buddha nature,

Or your true nature,

And remembering who you are in some fundamental way.

There is,

You know,

In this mystery of human life and human incarnation,

There is a fundamental question that we have,

Which is who are we?

And the Buddhist texts begin with a statement of respect,

Oh nobly born,

Oh you who are the sons and daughters of the awakened ones,

Do not forget who you really are.

Do not lose yourself.

And these qualities of awakening or Buddha nature are said to be inherent in all beings,

Although they can get confused and lost and so forth,

But there is a natural compassion and generosity and connectedness that's part of being human.

Now as the story is told,

A long time ago,

The Buddha that was born 2600 years ago in India was born in a previous lifetime,

Believe that or not,

We'll take it mythologically for the moment,

As you'll see,

In the era of a previous Buddha,

And he saw this guy walking down the road,

This previous Buddha,

With such presence and dignity and open heartedness and graciousness and said,

That's what I want to do,

That's how I want to be and live in this world,

And he sort of threw himself down on the ground and paid his respects,

And I make a vow that however long it takes,

However many lifetimes I will fulfill that same beauty and presence and graciousness and dignity that I see in this being in my own life.

So then how long did it take him?

It said that it takes or it took 100,

000 maha kalpas of practice along with four amenities,

And a maha kalpa is described if there is a mountain as high as Mount Everest,

Seven yojanas high,

Distance an ox cart goes in a day,

And every hundred years a bird drags a silk scarf across the top of that mountain,

Wearing it away with the silk scarf a little bit,

When that Mount Everest sized mountain is worn down by the silk scarf,

That's one maha kalpa.

So we're talking a serious amount of time here,

Right,

For practicing patience and compassion and generosity,

And people hear this and they go,

Wait a second,

You know,

I mean,

What time is it?

I mean,

It's tough,

And in my family,

And I'm,

You know,

A hundred thousand maha kalpas,

I'm having trouble like this week,

Right?

But the reason that that image,

Which is a really beautiful image,

Is used is not to make it sound impossible,

But to understand that these teachings are pointing to something that is outside of time,

That it can't be measured by an ordinary sense of time,

But rather they're an invitation to sense ourselves as part of eternity.

The question is not the future of humanity,

But the presence of eternity.

And so the teachings and the possibility of awakening have this kind of paradox in which there is this progression of patience and generosity and mindfulness and compassion that grows,

But where we're going is here,

In the eternal present.

And what we're becoming is what we already are.

Now these teachings are descriptions of ten dimensions of the awakened heart when we step out of our small sense of self,

What's called the body of fear,

The kind of confusion that we have,

And remember who we really are.

And because there are ten of them,

You can reflect or sense them,

You don't have to remember them,

There's too long a list,

You know,

The Buddha was a list maker,

So you can look it up if you really want to.

The real communication is the spirit of these,

And you will feel that and sense what's true for yourself.

So the first quality of awakening,

Of the awakened heart and mind,

Which is yours as much as any other awakened being,

Is the quality of generosity.

And generosity isn't something that we should do,

You're not supposed to be generous,

But rather it's simply a universal law that opening to generosity is the same as opening to freedom and joy.

Even Gandhi was asked one time when he was getting on a train somewhere,

How is it that you are motivated to do so much ceaselessly for the people of India?

And he said,

I don't do it for the people of India,

I do it for myself.

You understand?

Generosity fundamentally isn't for another,

But it's actually for ourself.

Because there is a freedom that comes in giving,

Which is the freedom of letting go.

The other thing is that there's joy in this.

Do you know a really generous person who's unhappy?

You can feel actually the happiness that comes from it.

Just look in our markets.

I remember back in the late 70s or 80s I had a friend who had just gotten out of Russia when it was still very much closed before Gorbachev.

He had somehow gotten out and they came here.

That was the time when you were still standing in long bread lines in Russia.

And walked into a supermarket and just looked at it and wept and said,

What is this?

And then we said,

Well there's one down the block and there's one over there,

There's like five in this neighborhood.

And they couldn't believe it because it's the food,

No emperor of China or Egypt or Mayan emperor.

He had food like you do at Safeway or Whole Foods or whatever.

It's amazing.

So here we have this.

We're already given so much.

And the joy really comes in the capacity to share.

I remember when Ram Dass had his big stroke 10 years ago or so and they gave him a 10% chance of living.

I was recently in Hawaii visiting him in February and it was such a pleasure to see him because he's doing pretty well at 80 and full of love.

But anyway,

There he was in the hospital near Stanford in the ICU and a number of us who were friends gathered around and will he make it,

Will he won't,

What can we do and what can you do for somebody in the ICU?

There's almost nothing.

They sort of thought about it.

And then a couple of people there,

Wavy Gravy was there and other good friends said,

Well,

We can't do anything for Ram Dass but let's do something for the hospital.

And so Ram Dass had been part of this social venture network kind of conscious business forum for a long time.

And so I don't know,

Was Wavy,

Larry Brilliant or somebody called up Ben and Jerry of Ben and Jerry's and called the person who started the body shop and people who are part of the social venture and said Ram Dass is in the hospital and he's having a hard,

You know,

Not clear whether he'll live.

We can't really do anything for him.

Let's do something for the staff.

And so a few days later,

These trucks pulled up with,

You know,

Huge baskets of lotions and ungions and all the things from the body shop and enormous amounts of ice cream and various of these various businesses and they were all wrapped up for everybody on the staff.

Now these,

The people on the staff,

A lot of them had come here as immigrants from various countries from the Philippines or Salvador.

They didn't Ram Dass,

They never heard of Ram Dass but big baskets of,

You know,

Oh,

Who is this guy?

You know,

What can we do for him?

And it was a beautiful moment because it just showed the joy that that brings to everyone.

This from Father Daniel Berrigan where he writes,

Sometime in your life,

Hope that you might see one starved person,

The look on their face when the bread finally arrives.

Hope that you might have baked it or bought it or kneaded it yourself.

For that look on their face,

For your meeting their eyes across a piece of bread,

You might be willing to lose a lot or suffer a lot or even die a little.

And there's so much mercy in that.

And then the next quality of the awakened heart,

This is really a mirror just to feel or remind,

Is the quality of virtue or integrity.

And my teacher Ajahn Chah loved to talk about virtue and integrity,

The beauty and joy of it.

There was a time when a person's word was gold,

When you would swear an oath or stand on your integrity and it meant so much.

And you feel it,

You feel relaxed and happy when you're with someone who you know tells you the truth,

Who's not hiding things.

The people you have to lie to own you,

The things you have to lie about own you.

When your children see you owned,

Then they are not your children anymore,

They're the children of what owns you.

If money owns you,

They're the children of money.

If your need for pretense and illusion own you,

They're the children of pretense and illusion.

If your fear of loneliness owns you,

They're the children of loneliness.

If your fear of the truth owns you,

They're the children of the fear of truth.

So there's something so refreshing and honorable about integrity.

And without virtue or integrity,

Truthfulness,

It's like getting in a rowboat and rowing to the other shore while the boat is still tied to the dock.

You don't get very far in your spiritual practice.

All other meditative practices are basically worthless.

It's pretty hard to meditate after a day of killing and stealing and lying.

It just doesn't work very well,

Right?

So spirituality is not about some special experience.

You can have all kinds of experience and they are reminders and inform you,

But it's about the life that we live.

And virtue is the living with the intention not to cause harm to ourself or another.

And it's a reverence for life not to kill.

To have a care or reverence for life,

No matter what,

You know,

The poem I like to read from Lloyd Reynolds,

He writes with this beautiful calligraphy,

A bug crawls across the paper,

Leave him be.

We need all the readers we can get,

Basically,

You know?

And in the temples,

You have a reverence for all the forms of life and it enables you to do that,

To not kill or to have reverence for life,

Not to steal.

As monks,

If we stole something more than a nickel,

We were kicked out for the rest of our lives.

And it made things so,

Nobody had to be paranoid or lock anything up because nobody felt somebody was going to take something of theirs.

And it made for a peaceful and beautiful culture.

And that really means taking care with the things of the world.

And then to speak that which is true and useful,

Refraining from false or harmful speech in all these ways,

Not to lie,

Not to create suffering through words.

To refrain from the misuse of sexuality is the fourth of the trainings of virtue.

How many people in this room have made idiots of yourselves in relation to sexuality?

Don't bother.

We already know the answer,

Right?

You know,

It's just the way it is.

So the point is that sexuality either can be used in ways it's powerful,

It can harm people,

It can cause a lot of suffering,

Or it can be beautiful and connecting and bring tremendous opening.

Don't cause harm through it.

And then the last one is to refrain from the misuse of intoxicants.

Ten million drug addicts,

20 million alcoholics,

The majority of auto fatalities,

The majority of home fires,

The majority of child abuse.

Take care with these.

And so this kind of virtue,

If you will,

Or care,

Brings a joy to life.

This is who we really are.

Martin Luther King said,

I still believe standing up for the truth is the greatest thing in the world.

This is the end of life.

The end of life is not to be happy,

To achieve pleasure and avoid pain.

The end of life is to follow a sacred path,

To stand up for truth,

Come what may.

And you start to feel the resonance of that quality of virtue and honorability that makes you happy.

Next quality of the awakened heart is renunciation.

Now there's a major change in the way Buddhism is being taught in the West,

Buddhist teachings,

But the outer form,

Because in the traditional countries the renunciation is to become a monk or a nun.

I don't see very many of you signing up to shave your heads and wear robes,

And yet I also see that you don't just want to go to the temple as was traditional in Burma or Sri Lanka and mostly make offerings to the monastics and do devotion and prayers and hope that in some other lifetime you get to practice meditation and so forth.

There's some way in which we as Westerners are looking for very genuine practice,

But not in the form of monastics.

And instead this is the natural renunciation that the heart longs for and simplicity,

Which we share.

The simplicity to be where we are fully,

Our garden,

Our friends,

The work we do,

The creative work.

Who in this room would like to simplify their life?

Again,

I hardly have to ask because almost every hand would go up.

And that's a kind of calling of the heart.

And the Buddhist teachings,

The most basic renunciation is the renunciation in the heart,

The renunciation of grasping and greed that keeps driving us,

The renunciation of hatred that would allow us to attack another person.

He abused me,

He beat me,

He threw me down and robbed me,

Says the Buddha.

Perpetuate these thoughts and you suffer.

He abused me,

He beat me,

He threw me down and robbed me.

Abandon these thoughts,

Abandon the past,

Learn to live anew and live in happiness.

Renounce hatred,

Renounce greed,

Renounce judgment,

Which means mostly renounce being right.

You'll notice that the people that you live with like that very much.

I mean,

It's true.

You can be in a conversation and if you're listening and not trying to be right but trying to understand,

It brings a whole different flavor to it.

So the Bhagavad Gita says that true renunciation is to renounce the attachment to the fruit or the result of your action.

That you do what you can with dignity,

With virtue,

With care,

But you don't get to choose the outcome,

Whether it's with your children or your family or your work.

You do the best you can but without that clinging and grasping.

Act beautifully without grasping the outcome because the outcome isn't given to you.

That's given by the universe and it's not up to you to decide.

Freedom is to act well without grasping the outcome of the act.

And something in us knows the wisdom of this simplicity and longs for it.

And sometimes it's things.

You want to have a huge garage sale.

Thank you and put all that stuff out.

And sometimes it's a renunciation of all the things that we do.

How important they seem to be.

And even in the good things,

It can be too much.

You're not living true to your own life,

True to the rhythms of your body,

Your family,

Your community.

There's a renunciation of things and a renunciation of spirit.

And renunciation means open the windows and doors and cross out things in your schedule.

I remember being in Hawaii in February and doing quite a bit of snorkeling and swimming a bit with Ram Dass and so forth.

Anyway,

We were out off of Kihei and that side of Maui swimming and somebody said,

Oh,

The whales are out.

I see all these whales leaping because it was the whales mating time and so forth.

And you can hear them.

I said,

Listen.

And the way to listen was to take a nice deep breath and then just be silent with your ears under the water.

And then you'd hear all these amazing whale songs.

But you couldn't hear them even if you were kind of bubbling and trying to get somewhere.

But if you just stopped and made room to listen,

There was a kind of grace that happened.

In this case,

The grace was this amazing song of whales that was traveling under the ocean.

But it's true with the people that you live with and the work that you do and so forth.

To take a breath,

To stop doing so much,

To make space is part of that renunciation.

And it then allows your spirit and heart to open for you to be present in this beautiful way.

Fourth quality in this mirror of Buddha nature is energy,

The wise use of your life energy and power.

And the first understanding of this is that the wise use of energy is simply the energy to be present.

Frank O'Connor,

An Irish author,

Tells his books how as a boy,

He and his friends would make their way adventuring across the countryside.

And when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to get over,

They would take off their hats and toss them over the wall.

And then they had no choice but to follow them.

The fact that you are here tonight,

I am sorry to tell you,

Means that in some way you are on your spiritual journey,

Like it or not.

And what are you going to do?

You could go back and cultivate greed and hatred and ignorance and so forth,

But you know,

It doesn't really get you anywhere.

So you've started,

You've tossed your hats over the wall.

And the energy that's asked is simply the courage to be present and to see your life clearly and to see the life that we share as human beings.

To bring the quality of mindfulness and presence to where you are.

When you get still and you bring your attention and energy to the present,

Then you can notice,

Ah,

This is healthy,

This is helpful for myself,

For another.

And so you pick it up,

You respond to it,

You use it.

You say,

Oh,

This is unwholesome,

This is unhealthy,

This doesn't help me or anyone else,

And you can release that.

To be present in this way also requires one other quality.

And that is,

How shall I say it,

Foolishness,

Quite honestly.

This is Zen Master Ryokan,

My favorite poem,

And he's the beloved poet of Japan.

Spring morning,

My begging round is finished.

I hang my bowl by the side of the Buddhist shrine to play with the children.

This year,

A foolish monk.

This year,

No change.

And what this means is that you're not afraid to make mistakes.

I mean,

Because the point isn't to live some kind of organized,

Perfect life.

Nobody does it.

But to be willing to be present with attention and goodwill and to engage in life with that kind of presence.

If you meet with triumph and disaster and treat these two imposters just the same,

You will have discovered the secret.

So this energy or liveness is really a courage,

A steadiness of heart to open to what is so and to work with what comes.

And this is really the spiritual energy,

The courage that's asked of you to realize that you can be here and that that's what brings awakening.

Quality five,

The perfection of wisdom,

The capacity to open and see this world with a wise heart.

And what that means is that what you have been born into is the realm of birth and death,

Praise and blame,

Gain and loss,

Pleasure and pain,

Sweet and sour.

Anybody not have this?

And we sometimes think,

Well,

If I can organize it right and get my body to the gym and do enough therapy and get a big enough in my bank account and so forth,

I'll have only pleasure and no pain and I'll have gain and no loss and I'll have praise and no blame.

Did that work for anybody?

But to see with the eyes and the heart of wisdom is to see that life offers us the 10,

000 joys and the 10,

000 sorrows and that wisdom is not about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or whatever,

Kind of making it a certain way,

But a capacity to say,

Ah,

Here we are in this amazing and mysterious incarnation that nobody knows quite how you got here and here I can be present and mindful and attentive and free in the midst of the joys and sorrows that come.

And it's a beautiful thing to live with a wise heart,

To live with things as they are to see them,

To see the opposites and that your life will include joys and sorrows and that they can't be separated in some way.

So instead it's as if you can bow to it and say yes,

This too and allow what has come to you,

What is your life,

To be the place of your awakening.

I went to a conference over at Berkeley this last year,

I gave a talk for mindfulness and the law.

Berkeley Law School where my daughter is studying human rights law so I particularly had to go because my daughter was there.

You know,

Anyway,

Dad,

If we come over,

Okay,

Okay,

I will,

I will.

But anyway,

And it was fabulous because it was full of judges and professors and lawyers from all around the country and so forth.

And one of the guys who was a federal judge got up there and he said I'd had a meditation and a sitting practice and then when I was appointed to the federal bench and they told me I had to sit on the bench,

I realized,

Oh,

Okay,

I've been doing this practice,

I knew how to sit.

You know,

And he said there was this direct translation and so he was trying to be mindful and then he made instructions for the jury.

He said and this is what I say,

I want you as you sit in this courtroom to bring a mindful attention to what happens.

Don't jump to conclusions.

As best you can,

Try to suspend judgment and simply witness with your full being that which is presented to you moment by moment.

If you find your mind wandering,

Bring it back to your breath if necessary.

This is the judge,

Right?

And then to what you're hearing again and again and when the presentation of evidence in the case is complete,

Then it will be your turn to think and deliberate as a jury.

He gives us his,

You know,

And it was a beautiful thing to hear because you could sense the wisdom in it.

He was asking people to bring their presence and mindfulness to see not with prejudice but with an open mind and a clear heart the best that they could.

And to live wisely,

You know who's wise around you and they can move graciously with difficulty and they can enjoy beauty and they're really able to show up and be present and you can too.

The next of these qualities of Buddha nature,

This wisdom is married with patience.

We live in the hurried society.

Hurried children,

Hurry up,

You know,

They've got to get in the right preschool or they won't make it to Harvard,

Right?

Hurried adolescents,

Hurried adults.

And it's again Ajahn Chah,

My teacher said,

It's like in the modern world we pick the fruit green and then hope that it ripens in the truck on the way to the market instead of letting it ripen and it doesn't taste the same.

How many people have more time now that you have computers and laptops and iPads and things?

You know,

Come on,

Right?

They're faster and faster but so are we,

The hurried society.

And I know this because basically I'm a pretty impatient person and I'm sort of a speed freak a little bit so meditation has been my compensation to learn how to slow down and not be so hurried.

The passage that I sometimes read from Zorba where he says,

I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case,

Preparing to come out.

I waited a while but it took too long to appear and I was impatient.

So I bent over and breathed on it to warm it and warmed it quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes.

Faster than life,

The case opened,

The butterfly started crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled.

The wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them.

Bending over I tried to help it with my breath in vain.

It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings needed to be a gradual process in the sun.

Now it was too late.

My breath had forced the butterfly to appear all crumpled before its time.

It struggled desperately and a few seconds later died in the palm of my hand.

There is a quality of patience that I think is a better word.

Suzuki Roshi also used it.

He said a better word is constancy or maybe another word that we might use is trust.

To rest in your Buddha nature and trust the unfolding of life with the graciousness of heart and it doesn't mean you don't tend it and plant the garden and weed and you know pick off the insects or do whatever you need to do.

You tend to your business or your family and so forth but you don't do it with this grasping of impatience instead there is a kind of tending with trust and love and allowing things to open and this again is living from your own Buddha nature.

The next of these is truthfulness.

In the hundred thousand Mahakalpas of the Buddhist lifetimes of practicing compassion and patience and generosity and virtue he blew it.

He messed up.

He hurt people.

He killed people.

He did all kinds of,

You know he had a lot of time on his hands so many things he did were good but certain ones he didn't.

But the one thing that he never,

Never made a mistake about is he never lied about it.

He always told the truth and seeing with truthfulness is the redemption.

Is that which liberates.

When the mind is silent and still says Krishnamurti,

Neither grasping nor resisting what is so it becomes possible to see what is true and it is the truth that liberates and not your efforts to be free.

It is seeing what's so that frees the heart.

So just as the Buddha let himself see what's true and I remember being with the Dalai Lama because in one of our meetings there was all this stuff about the Chinese government calling him a demon and a devil and all the things that were really lies about what had happened to Tibet and the people in Tibet and so forth.

And we were talking about truthfulness and at some point he said speaking about how he had characterized what happened in Tibet he said this tongue has never lied and it gave me chills first of all because it wasn't I couldn't say it for myself but also there was something magnificent about a human being saying that you know and the heart that was behind it.

Truthfulness brings a lamp in the darkness,

A light into our lives and there are so many important ways it would change our whole world if people became more truthful and to be able to speak what is true,

What is timely,

What is useful to see what is true is really living from the truthfulness of your heart is living from your own Buddha nature.

The eighth of these qualities of Buddha nature is Adhita which means dedication or determination.

It's a kind of courage or steadiness to be with things however they are and this doesn't mean that you can't respond to injustice or change the things around you that need your attention but it's a willingness to bear witness to the suffering of the world and your own life to see its cause and also its end.

And a lot of times when people come on retreat they sit and all the trauma they carry in their bodies and their shoulders and their throats and so the past things come up and for them to heal,

To transcend,

To find another way of being which isn't mired in the cycle of their suffering they actually have to allow that to be felt and known and honored and then come to recognize that it doesn't define you.

We tend to be so loyal to our suffering but in fact it's not who you are and to find the space of awareness and compassion that is bigger than the struggles that they've gone through and to begin to trust this but it takes a lot of determination and dedication.

This is a story from John Lewis about his childhood and John Lewis was one of the great figures in the civil rights movement and he talks about being a young child with a whole group of a dozen of his cousins and siblings and so forth on a Saturday afternoon at his Aunt Seneva's house playing the dirt outside when the sky got dark,

Clouding over,

The wind had started picking up,

Lightning flashing and suddenly we weren't thinking about playing anymore,

We were terrified and ran inside.

And Aunt Seneva was the only adult around as the sky blackened and her house was not the biggest place and it seemed smaller with all these children squeezed inside and all the shouting stopped and the wind began howling and it got worse and now the house was beginning to sway and the wood plank flooring beneath us began to bend and then a corner of the room started to lift up in the wild wind.

We couldn't believe what we were seeing,

None of us could,

The storm was actually pulling the house toward the sky.

That was when Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands,

Line up she said,

Hold your hands and then she had us walk as a group toward the corner of the room that was rising up and from the kitchen to the front of the house we walked with the wind screaming outside and sheets of rain beating on the tin roof and then we walked back in the other direction later as another end of the house began to lift and so it went,

Fifteen children walking with the wind holding that trembling house down with the weight of our small bodies.

More than a half a century has passed since that day and it struck me more than once over these many years that our modern day society is not unlike the house,

Rocked again and again by the winds of one storm or another as if the walls might fly apart.

She said,

And this is the way that the civil rights movement was,

But in this the people of conscience never left the house,

They never ran away,

They stayed,

They came together,

They clasped their hands and they went to the corner that was the weakest and this is what America is for me,

Not just the movement for civil rights but the endless struggle to respond with decency and dignity and a sense of justice and brotherhood to the challenges that face us as a community,

As a nation and as an earth.

That's a very beautiful story and it gives you a sense inside of what it means to be dedicated.

It's the outer dedication,

If you will,

Of these storms and so forth but more than that it's asking you what are you dedicated to?

You know,

What really,

Really matters to you and where are you willing to give your life energy?

The ninth of these reflections of your own true nature is compassion and loving kindness.

It is the connection that we share with all living and breathing beings and when we release the sense of separateness,

The body of fear,

We all know it intellectually that we breathe together with the trees and the rainforest and that the water we drink is affected by the radioactivity drifting across the Pacific from the Fukushima reactor it is and it's not just ours but every animal and plant and so forth,

That the world is small and we are interconnected and knowing this we can rest in fear or we can feel our interdependence and our wish for well-being for ourselves and for others.

And love is that connectedness and compassion is the quivering of the heart when we feel the brokenness in that connectedness,

When we sense the suffering of ourselves or another being.

If I speak with the tongues of men and angels but have not love I am become a sounding brass and clanging gong and if I have the gift of prophecy and know all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to move mountains but have not love I am nothing.

We all know this biblical passage from Corinthians but it's very much the same in every tradition,

In the Buddhist tradition,

In the Hindu and the mercy that you find in all of the great spiritual traditions.

And more than a practice or an aspiration it is a way of life,

A presence,

A nourishment.

I saw it with my teacher Mahagosananda who was the Gandhi of Cambodia who did these peace marches across Cambodia during the war for 15 years in his robes and hiking boots,

This little old Cambodian man saying you can't go back to your villages after all the tragedy that's happened.

We can't take a bus back or a train back because we have to reclaim this land and so I'll lead you and we'll walk back and with every step you make a prayer of loving kindness.

And so he would be ringing a bell or beating the drum and chanting the verses of hatred,

Never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed and walk with these hundreds and hundreds of people back to the different villages.

I remember one story where this one soldier came and he had this beautiful bell that I guess the monk behind him was ringing and said could I have that bell it's just so beautiful and it will inspire me and the monk behind him says I'll give you this bell in exchange for your rifle.

And the man said well if I give you my rifle I might be shot by my officer I can't do that and the monk was ringing the bell he said alright I'll give you this bell in exchange for all the rounds in your gun and he emptied out all the bullets in his gun and put them in the hands of the monk and the monk gave him the bell.

I mean how do you want to move through this world?

Yes there's suffering,

Yes there's unbearable beauty as well and the perfection that's asked is not the perfection of your personality or not the perfection of the world it's really the perfection of love.

And then this is balanced by the last quality of Buddha nature which is equanimity the resting in the crown chakra the seeing of the big picture a hundred thousand maha kalpas and four immensities.

This is from the alchemical tradition.

Perceive that you are not yet begotten that you are in the womb that you are young middle-aged then old that you have died and that you are in the world beyond the grave and hold in your mind all this at once the whole dance of life with its times and places and qualities and then you begin to see with the eyes of the divine.

I remember actually one of my favorite museums in the world and I remember the one that I remember most is the museum in Boston.

I remember actually one of my favorite museum experiences there's a museum in Boston called the Gardner Museum and the painting that I love there the most was a Rembrandt of Jesus on the Sea in Galilee and it's a very dark painting as many Rembrandt paintings are but in the middle of it there's this huge storm and all these waves and there's this little boat and of course the mast and the sail kind of is painted in a way to look like a cross and there's a little bit of illumination as if from the light of the moon or the sun or something like that and there is you know all these people are frightened and there is Jesus standing in the middle and you can feel him calming the boat and beginning to calm the whole sea and it's just this beautiful quality of standing in the midst of the storm and still having the most peaceful and centered heart.

And this quality of equanimity or balance is to both be present for life to tend to it to care for it but not to fall under its spell.

Like the earth that receives the rain and all the beautiful things but also recycles compost and garbage and everything else.

The mind of equanimity is like the great earth or like the sky in which all weathers come and hurricanes and beautiful things and clouds and rain and openness and the sky remains untouched and the Buddha says make your mind like the sky or like the earth vast and timeless.

And then with this equanimity you look around and you see that all beings around you are the recipients of their own actions,

Their own karma.

Their happiness and suffering depends on their actions and not your wishes for them.

This is a tough one but it's true.

You can love people,

You can care for them,

You can tend to them,

Do everything you can but you can't love for them.

You can't let go for them,

You can't be wise for them.

So you do everything you can but their happiness and suffering depends on their actions and not your wishes for them.

And so this equanimity allows you to be present for this great dance of life with its joys and sorrows,

With an open heart.

Not a withdrawal or an indifference but standing in the center of the boat.

As Thich Nhat Hanh said the same image he said when the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates,

If everyone panicked all would be lost but if even one person on the boat remained centered and calm it was enough.

It showed the way for everyone to survive.

And so that one person is guess who?

This is the gift that you can bring to the world.

And so these qualities they're whispered in the ear,

Oh nobly born,

Oh you who are the sons and daughters of the awakened ones,

Remember who you really are.

Remember the Buddha who has taken birth in your own form of virtue and generosity and determination and truthfulness of wisdom,

Compassion and loving kindness of generosity.

This is your true nature.

Trust it,

Live with it,

Sense it in yourself and there's actually quite a beautiful practice that may be helpful to you and that is to pretend that you're enlightened.

This is a serious practice.

Pretend that you're enlightened and act as if you were,

You know,

And then who knows?

Someday you might not be able to tell the difference.

Now and then writes Guillaume Apollinaire,

Now and then it is good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

And these qualities invite a presence with the world as it is that is your wise heart,

That is your own Buddha nature.

Reviews

What beautiful thoughts spoken with beautiful words. Thoughtful and enlightening. A delight to hear. 🙏🌈

Thank you For Reminding Us of our True Buddha Nature 🪷🪷🪷

Listening to Jack fills my heart with love and hope and my mind with inspiration. Thank you.

Such a beautiful and inspiring talk. I will return to listen to this again and again. Thank you 🙏🏽

Lovely to reconnect with the wisdom and profanity of Buddha teachings - thank you 🙏❤✨

Thank you for this timely teaching. This has reset my central nervous system and my heart ❤️ In gratitude, Robin

Thank you 🙏🏻 I really get so much out of your teachings.

So very good. I will definitely listen to this again many times. Thank you 💜

The way you explain Buddha nature is so enjoyable and easy to grasp. I feel your wisdom through your words and it makes me feel I too have great Buddha nature within me. Thank you 🙏

That was amazing on so many levels. Everything was so calmly and nicely explained. At the end, it gave me so much peace, as it was exactly what I needed to hear. I will be listening again.

I love you so much. I so grateful for your teachings. Thank you.

Excellent. very insightful, and inspiring. It warrants a second listening to.

Thank you Jack. See you at Spirit Rock
From San Diego , the 20th I think.
Much love, Susie who used to live in Fairfax 💗

Wonderful talk on the qualities of our awakened heart, Thank you very much so helpful.. I shall listen again many times
💗🙏💗

Excellent talk so much to remember and remind myself and act upon. But what else would we expect from dear Jack. Thank you so much. I’ll share this for those who have the time to listen and maybe learn. So good. 🙏🏼🙏🏼❤️

This is the one that I will come back to. I don't say this lightly. Practice. I can practice and during my practice I will be opposite of the habits that possess me when I'm not living in the present moment. Thanks

Wonderful. I will listen to this again. Thank you. 💚💚💚🙏

Thank you Jack for this sharing of wisdom, insight and understanding infused with lightheartedness. It made my day

Spot on as always, Jack is a great teacher for those of us that reside in the west but can draw from the east

The essential Jack Kornfield. Jam packed with keys.
Thank you.