Ep. 229 – Expectations

Mar 12, 2024

Jack Kornfield discusses Kabir, breakups, LSD, and Ram Dass, delving into how expectations lead to suffering and the importance of living in the mystery. He explores mindfulness, grief, meditation, and letting go of expectations to experience life fully.

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ANECDOTE

The Slap

Jack Kornfield tells a story about a woman grieving a breakup.
A Zen master slapped her, yelling "Let go!", which surprisingly helped her move on.

ANECDOTE

Manufactured Light

Jack Kornfield shares an experience of misinterpreting his meditation teacher's guidance.
He tried to "manufacture light" during meditation, thinking it was the goal.

ANECDOTE

The Rock

Two monks tried to have a quarrel but failed due to their inherent kindness.
One offered a rock to the other, who accepted the gift, preventing any conflict.

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Talking Kabir, breakups, LSD, and Ram Dass, Jack shares how we can unfurl from the suffering of our expectations in order to live the mystery.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

"Awareness has this quality of allowing change or openness to take place, because you're not trying to make it a certain way... you're observing it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

- Kabir and waking up in this very life

- Grief, breakups, disappointment, and letting go

- How expectation creates suffering

- Meditation and "manufacturing the light"

- Expectations, battling reality, and opening to the mystery

- How the mind measures, but the heart loves

- What Ram Dass told Jack about dealing with the death of his father

- Moving past the content of mind, and truly experiencing life

- The essence of Buddha's practice of mindfulness

- Labeling/noting feelings as a way to release them

- Albert Hoffman and LSD

- Relationships and how to make commitment without expectation

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield. The live version begins March 18! Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3T7Aafp

"Now, what's interesting to discover in meditation, is as you pay attention inside, it's the mind which measures, the mind with thought. The heart doesn't measure, the heart doesn't have that capacity, actually." – Jack Kornfield

"This is an amazing thing—bodies, and life, and cars, and planets hanging in space, and big balls of fire that we name stars and no one knows where they come from...beetles, insects, and strange things. What is this? So we sit and make ourselves a little bit quiet in order to turn the heart and the mind together to face directly this reality, this changing reality of birth and death, of change of life." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 10/10/1988 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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