Jack Kornfield explores the connection between spirituality and sexuality, emphasizing the importance of observing our hearts in relationships. He discusses karma, virtue, and intention, and how our sadhana and practice can be enhanced through relationships. The panel discussion delves into the profound experiences that can come from embracing sexuality, emphasizing commitment and non-attachment in relationships. The chapter explores the complex nature of relationships, discussing attachment, suffering, and the balance between self-expression and keeping the heart open.
45:05
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Quick takeaways
Relationships serve as a school for spiritual growth, teaching us about attachment, suffering, acceptance, and healing.
Balancing individuality and togetherness in relationships allows for growth, awakening, and understanding the impermanence and interconnectedness of life.
Deep dives
Relationships as a School for Spiritual Growth
Relationships serve as a school where we can learn and grow spiritually. Through relationships, we can discover and understand attachment, suffering, and the need for acceptance. They provide an opportunity for healing past wounds and learning about ourselves. By fostering commitment, acceptance, and mindfulness, relationships can become a platform for refining virtue, deepening meditation practice, and cultivating equanimity.
The Dance of Separation and Unity
Relationships involve a delicate dance between separation and unity. Balancing one's individuality while respecting the harmony of togetherness is crucial. By exploring the principles of attachment, surrender, and love with tenderness, we can create a space where growth and awakening are nurtured. Relationships teach us about the impermanence and interconnectedness of life.
Healing and Inner Cultivation
Relationships can be a source of healing, providing an opportunity to address past wounds and find inner peace. By opening ourselves to vulnerability and using relationships as a means of inner cultivation, we can experience profound transformation. Deepening our understanding of pleasure, pain, desire, and fear allows us to embrace the present moment and discover our true nature.
Relating Sexuality and Relationships to the Absolute
Sexuality and relationships can be viewed as expressions of the absolute and can deepen our connection to the true nature of love. By shifting our attitude towards suffering and embracing growth and expansion, relationships become a path of liberation. Love, in its essence, seeks growth and affirmation, pushing us to overcome difficulties and widen our consciousness.
Plunging further into last week's topic, Jack offers vulnerable perspectives on how sexuality and relationships play into our life and practice.
"If one wants to understand karma, or one wants to understand virtue, ethics, or morality—which are equally important and profound in developing a spiritual life—the way to do it is very simple: it's beginning to know, observe, feel, and understand what's going on in our hearts as we act." – Jack Kornfield
In this episode, Jack vulnerably explores:
Understanding karma, virtue, intention and action
How so much of our sadhana and practice comes through our relationships
Learning about ourselves and the universe through sex and relationship
Sex and relationship as a form of opening and surrender, as well as commitment, offering, acceptance, growth, and healing
Desire, grasping, reality, love, and the present moment
Relationships as a place to find the foundations of mindfulness
The nature of love as expression, growth, and unity
This episode from 1987 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.org