#414: Jack Kornfield — How to Find Peace Amidst COVID-19, How to Cultivate Calm in Chaos

We were out wandering in the rice paddies on the way to a village to collect alms food one day with my teacher, Ajahn Chah, and some monks. And out across the rice paddies was this great big rock, a boulder. Ajahn Chah said, 'Is that boulder heavy?' ... We said, 'Yes, it is, master.' He smiled and said, 'Not if you don't pick it up.'

For anyone who is considering any type of psychedelic experience, it is incredibly valuable to put on a little bit of mileage with a regular meditation practice and to practice—even in a somewhat volume-turned-down sense—sitting with emotions that may be difficult or thoughts that may be unpleasant for, say, a consecutive 30-day period.

We have all these capacities... Thich Nhat Hanh used to talk about it as seeds in consciousness. Depending which ones we water and tend, those are what blossom. If we water and tend our anger, it will grow. If we water and tend and spend time on our fears or our conflict, they will grow. If we water the seeds of peace in us, they'll grow. If we water the seeds of compassion in consciousness and tend to it, it will blossom.

When people feel that they want to commit suicide, they're right that something needs to die; they're mistaken in thinking that it's their body that has to die.

Many of us have some significant trauma in our past. And if we're not aware of it or don't have a way to manage it, then we can... unconsciously manage it through addictions—by drinking or drugging... So, to understand trauma is really important.

Wisdom tells me I am nothing; love tells me I am everything. Between these two, my life flows.

We're in this complex of cultural anxiety [with] the spread of the virus... You can either give in to or get lost in your fear and anxiety, or you can take this as a time to begin to train yourself in steadiness, in trust, in the ability to have a vaster and broader perspective, and perhaps more than anything... to develop your sense of care and connection more deeply for everyone else.

The Ojibwa Indian Native Americans have this amazing, I find, poetic way of putting it: They say 'Sometimes, I go about pitying myself when all the while I'm being carried by great winds across the sky.'

When you face your own loneliness or longing or the way that you've been mistreated, all of a sudden, you realize loneliness and longing comes with being human; praise and blame come with being human; joy and sorrow come with being human.

I think as we mature [and] become wiser, we become comfortable with paradox. The way to put it most simply is you need to remember your Buddha nature and your Social Security number.

Trauma, in the simplest way, it speaks of an experience of suffering of some kind—physical or emotional pain of some kind or other that's happened in which our body goes into [survival mode]. And then, that gets locked into our bodies and hearts and minds.

Who you are is bigger than the thoughts and the fears or worries. And when you remember who you really are, which is awareness itself—a vast, loving awareness, then you can look at the circumstances, hold them with great compassion, and say 'How do I want to live now? How do I want to follow this?'

There's this long, beautiful human tradition of using sacred medicines to help us remember who we are. And because they're so powerful, they're also scary to people because they take apart our conventional reality.

Who you really are is consciousness itself, manifesting in the different forms that are experienced. But consciousness itself is timeless and pure and open, vast like the sky, containing all things but not limited by them.

I use the image that is so powerful from the Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh. He said, 'When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats are met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But, if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough; it showed the way for everyone to survive.'

The poet, I believe it's Hafiz, says 'Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly; let it cut more deeply. Let it season you as few ingredients can.'

What you take so personally is just what life is. Zorba the Greek says Trouble? Life is trouble; only death is nice.'

It's not about perfecting yourself; it's about perfecting your love.