Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 733: Jack Kornfield

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

Jack Kornfield, one of the greatest living Buddhist teachers on the planet, re-joins the DTFH!You can learn more about Jack, and find info on his new book All In This Together: Stories and Teachings for Loving Each Other and Our World, on his website: JackKornfield.com.This episode is brought to you by: Head to FactorMeals.com/duncan50off and use code duncan50off to get 50% off your first Factor box PLUS free breakfast for 1 year. Gallowglass' special edition of Giordano Bruno and The Hermetic Tradition by Frances A. Yates is almost sold out! Recommended by Terrence McKenna to all his students, this book has been restored by Gallowglass Books and contains colored images, new high-resolution scans, and translated Latin titles. Only 200 copies remain! Get yours today! Get 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code DUNCAN. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information.

Greetings to you, my sweet friends, and welcome to the DTFH. Today, we have an incredibly special episode with potentially one of the great Buddhist teachers living on the planet today. Jack Cornfield changed my life, and I am one of millions of people to say that. He was a monk, came back to the United States, and much like Rom Dost figured out a way to articulate the Dharma in a way that people like me could not just understand, but implement in our own lives. I've been lucky enough to see Jack give Dharma talks, and it's one of the most mystical, beautiful things to watch the effect he has on a room full of people. Everybody gets peaceful. Everybody gets happy. And I still think about some of the things I've heard him

talk about years ago every week. He is a brilliant, beautiful person, and we are lucky to have him on this planet. He just wrote a new book, All in This Together, Stories and Teachings for Loving Each Other and Our World. So if you feel a little freaked out by the world right now, perhaps this conversation I had with Mr. Cornfield will make you feel a little better. So now, everybody welcome back to the DTFH, Jack Cornfield. Jack, welcome back to the DTFH. It's really good to see you. Great.

Off mic, we were talking about, what Jack was asking me, Aaron just had a baby. And the first question I had for you is based on the experience of being with a newborn, which is this mystical, heavy, beautiful experience. But Aaron saw this too, and this was probably less than 24 hours after the baby was born. This like very deep look of sadness and grief and lucidity that was not a baby's sadness. like came across this baby's face. It reminded me of like memes I've seen of like sad babies standing in front of the Buddhist

wheel of life. Like, are you kidding me? I incarnate it again. But in that moment, it really felt like some fleeting memory of whatever life she was in before this one. And I, you know, I don't think we've ever spent very much time talking about reincarnation. And I was just wondering, what are your views on that? First, I'm just with you, Duncan, in that extraordinary moment when a new human being pops out and says, okay, world, I'm here. I grew inside another person's body, my mom's body, and now I'm alive.

Yeah. And they all come in in character. My daughter is a pretty sanguine person. She came out after long, difficult labor. But she was a hack. Hold on. I lost you, Jack. Say that last sentence again, please. Sorry, it just flickered for some reason.

Yes. Oh, that's better. Your audio's better, too. I guess it flipped to your mic or something. Go ahead. I flipped it. Okay. My daughter came out after long labor,

and she smiled. She was like a happy camper. that's her temperament. I remember working with a colleague who's a really famous meditation teacher, and he'd always felt like he didn't belong here. And the earth was like a bit of a trial, and he was doing his best and, you know, helping. And I said, well, you want to do a past life progression, which I do periodically. And he said, sure. And so, So we did this past life regression. I said, let's go back to your last life.

And he was in this realm of light. He was like a Deva, an angel. And I said, how is he since beautiful? But my light is beginning to dim. And I can feel I'm moving toward another incarnation. So we're really talking about something incredibly mysterious. Yes. And because with this, let's talk about, we're going to talk about death and birth.

Is that okay? Can I keep going on this rip? So I was sitting with my father when he was close to dying. And he was in the University of Pennsylvania where he had attended in the medical school, in the hospital. and he was terrified of dying. And he'd been a really difficult father. He'd been violent and a wife better and stuff like that. I'd come to terms with it.

And he was my dad, and I loved him anyway in spite of it. And he was late at night. I'd been with him. He said, please don't go. Don't go. He just wanted someone there, which we should have, right, when we're dying. Yeah. And I said, so what's going on?

He said, he didn't say I was terrified, but he could see his eyes. It's really scary. And he kept looking at the monitors, which he'd helped design, to see if he was still alive or not. Wow. So I said to you, what do you think happens when you die? And he said, nothing. You go back to dirt. That's what you are.

He was a materialist and a scientist. The brain does it. And I said, well, let me tell you a few things, Dad. I said, I trained in a monastery, and I had these out-of-body experiences where I could float out of my body and see things happen at a distance in the monastery. And later, I checked them out. That's what happened. I said, I sat with a lot of people on the edge of death in hospice, and they'll leave their body and, you know, flirt with death, go to, and then they come back and talk about it. I've done past life regressions around the world. It's not my main thing, but I do it for fun. And people go back to different lives.

I said, the thing is, you think you're your body. But the reality is you are consciousness that was born into this body. You're the play of consciousness. And when you die, what will happen? And this is in all the dear death literature from the Tibetan Book of the Dead to the Egyptian Book of the Dead to the Ars, Moriendi in the Middle Ages, when you die, you're going to float out of your body. You'll probably kind of take stock and say,

wow, that was quite a ride because that's what people report, right? Wow. And then you start to move toward the next step or the next incarnation. And I said, you're a scientist. You have to be open-minded. This is an experiment. see what happens. I talked to Dalai Lama about this.

I said, what do you really think happens? He said, I don't know, but I'm very excited to find that. So I said to my dad, if this happens, remember, I told you so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the reality is not enough people get to be around dying people and not enough people get to be around new people. And something about those two components missing, I think it would create a real materialistic view of reality if you don't see the bookmarks in any human life. But that experience of being around a new person is not that far away from being around a person who's about to die.

They're the same. We have these portals into the mystery. When you're with a newborn, there's some sense of the miracle of life rebirthing itself. And Trudy, my beloved wife, was very young as a mother and somehow found herself alone in a hospital back in the early 60s in a time when birth wasn't explained. She didn't even know really how it was going to happen. Yeah. And with a lot of pain and a lot of difficulty. And then she cracked open and she felt her body be in the stream of 10,000 generations of women who were all birthing the planet.

And it was her first big mystical experience that what we are is this earth re-giving birth to itself. So there's a mystery at birth that you're attending to. And it's the same death as a kind of birth. You sit there. and it's the birth from this body into the spirit. And if you sit with someone when they're dying, there's a moment when the spirit, consciousness, leaves the body silent as a falling star.

And something momentous has happened, and that body is not a person anymore. And that's not who you're not your body, and you're not your history. And I think about Ram Dass when he was first teaching, and he was on stage. He'd come back from India with his beard and his white robe, Baba Ram Dass, and be here. Now he became very famous. And there was a woman in New York who shook her hands in the first row and said,

Ram Dass, are you Jewish? You know, what's with all this Hindu stuff? You can picture it. You can picture the lady. Come on, Rambos. Let's get with it. That's a perfect heckle. Sorry to go out.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he said, yeah, of course I'm Jewish. She said, so what's with it, Ram Dass? And he said, listen, he said, I was bar mitzvahed, you know, there's beautiful things in the Jewish tradition, there's the Hasidic mystics, and there's the Kabbalah and things. So I love it. It's really beautiful, but then he looked back at her and he said, remember, I'm only Jewish on my parents' side, which was witty, which he was.

But also really deep, because who you are in this life is not limited to your family or your history. Who you are is something timeless. And we know it when we make love sometimes, if we're lucky, when we're climbing in the high mountains, when we sit with someone in that mysterious moment of coming in or leaving, you know, or listening to a music that you dissolve into and realize you're not just this body or this history. You are consciousness. Right. That's who you are.

You are spirit. And we know it. And the society distracts you. In fact, Ellen Watts said most of religion is an inoculation against the mystery. Wow. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by my friends, a factor. And I do mean friends. Let me tell you, when your wife gives birth, you become like the person who has to, like, cook for her.

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heavier word, but it seems antithetical to the way we're living in the world. That, that experience and it true it is interesting that when you're around someone who's dying it's not like you're dying your heart might be breaking but you're there is this ego dissolution that seems to be happening with them and when I'm around this baby I it's easier to shift into that pre-linguistic state around this baby and I guess this makes me only because you've been your friends with a Dalai Lama. You've... And I sat in charnel grounds,

and part of the monastery training was to sit and picture your own body as you watch another one for her. But when you're like, your teacher... Yeah. Did you get that same sense being... Or some of these monks or any of these people you've encountered along the way? Does it feel like you're around a dying?

person or someone who was just born, but they're middle-aged? They're not dying. Is that what actualized beings look like? Big talking babies? I love your description. I think we're all big

talking babies, baby. I think there's some people that are closer to the mystery. You know, we get pulled off. And in India, there's a saying that a baby gets born and saying do not let me forget who I really am.

And then the second thing they say is, oh, I'm forgetting already. Oh, wow. Because there's a kind of veil of things seem so real, and they are. And this is the thing. And Brown does, again, just for whatever reason, quoting him because he was so good. He said, you have to remember your transcendent nature, your true nature, and your social security number. Right. Right.

This is the human dilemma in some way. But there are people, and it doesn't have to be some fancy-ass mama-swami, whatever in my industry. I know a lot of them. Some are cool. But there are people who are close to the mystery who know that that's true. And I was sent a poem by this Australian stockman who's kind of an elder, you know, spiritual eldest. and he sings a kind of song, and I certainly wouldn't do it as his accent, but he says, I tell you this story about the way you feel. Listen carefully this. You can hear me. I'm telling you

because earth just like mother and father and brother of you, that tree, same thing. Your body, my body, I suppose, same as you, anyone. Time. Wait, tree, working when you sleep and dream, daytime, sun, working for you. And he goes on. The stars up there, see, he's working. I can see it. At night, you lie down, look careful. He working when you sleep.

Blood, he pumping, you look, the star, he go pink, he come white, see him working. In the night you dream, you lay down that star, he working for you. tree, grass all working for you. And there's something so beautiful that he's saying you're not alone. You're woven into this life that's keep pulsing and keeping you alive. This is somebody who's close to the mystery. And this, that view, yeah, you hear it in like shamanic traditions. But that view that humans have this distortion because the way we quantum,

to find intelligence is based on some kind of technological production accruing stuff. But when you look at it from that perspective, that that tree is just doing its thing for everything else. It's just purely giving. The sun purely giving. The grass, purely giving. The stars is just giving. Then you realize, yeah, you don't have to go to India to find some guru.

Just find the closest. tree, there you see a very advanced being, something that is fully engaged in just giving itself to everything. Chop it down. Doesn't care. By the way, the giving tree. Have you read that? Did you read that? My God. I read that children's literature. I read it the other day. I didn't know. I didn't know. I'd heard it was good. I'm reading it to my kid by the end of that book. You're just like, What are you doing? This is making me cry. You know,

but it does seem to sum up the other thing that goes along with the fantasy of the actualized being, which is fully in service to everything else. Well, and, you know, being around children, you now have four? Four.

Yeah. Being around children at their best, when they still have that connection, sometimes the young and mysterious and, wow, how do I get into this incarnation? Whoops, this was a mistake. I was like the last time, like your new baby, you're that teacher. Or sometimes like my daughter, great. This is, I'm here for Earth. Let's see what happened.

Yeah. But there is it. We have, it's called the child of the spirit. And there's something beautiful in the Buddhist practices of joy to remember that what was born in you also was the child of the spirit that can't be taken from you. If you think back to the most happy times, even people who have terrible childhoods, you know, rolling grass and tickling and laughing and stuff, that there's a spirit of, wow, this is amazing, that's always in there.

Yeah. And anyway, I want to read a little poem from Fadi Judah. My daughter wouldn't hurt a spider that had nested between her bicycle handles. For two weeks, she waited until it left of its own accord. If you tear down the web, I said, it will simply know this isn't a place to call home and you'd get to go biking. She said, that's how others become refugees, isn't it, Mom? And there is some part of us that knows that there's a huge mystery. And children can be very close to it and remind us of that.

Also because of the free spirit of play. Yeah. Otters play and raccoons play. Yeah. Baby foxes play and bears play. Yeah. You know, and what is play? What is it?

It's the universe saying, hey, baby, where are you? Yeah. Yeah. And again, like, maybe I've just been watching the wrong stuff, but all of the things you're describing. Yeah. These stand in stark contrast to the adult world, to a world of treaties, to a world of tariffs, to a world of borders, to a world of laws, to a world of power. You know, all the, which is, you know, somehow these two things are working together, but one seems like it would be quite pleased to get rid of the other. What, you know, one... That's not how it works. We're in the dance of joy and sorrow and birth and death and hot and cold and sweet and sour and pleasure and pain.

And that's what it means to come into form in this universe. If there's birth, there also has to be death. Otherwise, everything would just be light eternal. That's cool. But to have, actually to have form means things are changing and things are born and they die. And this is the revelation from the Buddha that all things arise and pass away. And when we make our peace with it, there's this beautiful chant that we do in the monastery. When you make your peace with that, there is a joy that comes because you feel the eternal game.

And you realize who you are is not this little separate person that you've been taught to buy things or, you know, climb the ladder or identify with your people as different than other people. But when you get quiet, you realize deeply you're part of this whole game. and you get to open and soften. And in these times, you're talking about, you know, the political conflict and the continuing warfare and racism and all those things. And two things to say, first of all, no amount of technology, not AI and not computers and Internet and space technology and biotech is going to stop continuing warfare, continuing climate change. continuing racism and destruction because they're all born in the human heart. And unless the human heart awakens to this mystery, we're going to keep repeating that. The beautiful thing is, even though it can feel like a difficult time at the moment,

the great explorer way David said, despair is an insult to the imagination. That's awesome. And Gandhi says when I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. Yes, there have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Think about it. Always.

And so there's a bigger truth. And really, it's a true. truth of love. Not that I'm preaching love, but love is like gravity. We are love. We are connected. Right. And then we act out in ways out of fear. You could say, okay, there's love and fear. Fear comes from separateness. Yeah. When we feel separate, we're afraid. Right. And that's one that's one dimension of consciousness. You know, you have to protect your body from the, you know, the wild animals from going back thousands of years or whatever. And the ones who see realize, oh, we're part of this gorgeous, difficult, amazing, mysterious dance.

Right. And then, okay, I'm not preaching a philosophy, you might believe it. But it brings a certain kind of joy. It brings, when you talk about, you know, know, the sages and the wise people and so forth, my experience mostly is that they're really happy. And here's that beautiful book of, called the Book of Joy, the meeting of Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu.

And they're teasing each other. And the Tutu is, you know, patting the Dalai Lama's head and the Lama's reaching, tweaking Tutu's nose. And, you know, they said, we're supposed to be holding. holy men and they just break out and laughter. And somebody says, the Dalai Lama, wait, and Tutu, apartheid, all these people you cared about were killed. You know, there was so much divisiveness for years.

It was so horrible. And you, Dalai Lama, you've lost your country. You can't go back. They closed the monasteries. He said, yeah, they've, you know, imprisoned our monks and nuns. They've taken our sacred text and burned them. They've taken so much. why should I let them take my happiness?

Yeah. Yeah, you know, that is where I think mysticism becomes a kind of revolutionary technology, which is Of course. That's the, to me, that's the place you start zeroing in on is there is an entire universe that is unquantifiable, unmonetizable, you can't tax it, you can't take it, you can't punish somebody by removing them from it. And when you stumble upon that, it really is a delight. It's hilarious, too. And somehow, to me, only because I am neurotic, there's a real sadness that goes along with it. There is a, I don't know how to put it. Like, it's, it's sweet. But man,

there's something so poignant about it and i hate to say it you'll probably disagree tragic there's something tragic about it that right next door to everyone's like twisted sad warped confused distorted diluted heart is this place that you're talking about this place regardless of whatever is going on geopolitically interpersonally there it is all the time and I don't know. That always, maybe I'm just a party pooper, Jack. But whenever I stumble upon that thing you're talking about, I always feel like crying. It makes me sad.

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check it out. Copies are available for only 60 bucks at galloglassbooks. Dot shop. That's galloglassbooks. Dot shop. So, okay, a few things. First of all,

you like Ram Dass are a public neurotic. Yes. And in some way, it helps because you say, oh, okay, you know, Ram Dass will say, I flunk the course, right? Yeah. And we go, oh, I'm not the only neurotic person in the world.

Because what you're giving voice to is also the suffering. Yeah. Which is the Buddhist First Noble truth. First noble truth is there is suffering. Yeah. And it's kind of a relief to have a deep realization of it because it doesn't mean you did something wrong, you know, that it's not your fault. Right. Right.

I know Duncan, you're powerful, but this is, you know. No, it's just the nature. of things. And then it goes on to say there are two kinds of suffering in the world. There's the pain that is just woven into birth and death and joy and sorrow and pleasure and pain and gain and loss and aging and death. That's just the natural fact of things, right? And you could grieve about that because you love people and they die and so forth. But basically, it's a description of duality. And then the real suffering is what we add to it. I want it to be different.

I don't want it to change. I don't. I hate this. You know, and I long for that. And the beauty, when I invite people who are listening and you to remember a time in that your childhood when you were rolling down the hill on the grass, when you're teasing or tickling or something, like those trees. nobody can monetize it because it's just it was born in you the child of the spirit yeah and there's a

kind of innate freedom and yes earlier that day you might have had something difficult but who you are is so much bigger than that and then the thing that changes it is when you love your neurosis instead of judging it. And even, you know, when love turns to compassion, when you see all the ways that beings are suffering and causing suffering. And you were saying it, and you realize it doesn't make sense, but they're lost. It makes the heart tender. And then we're in it together.

We're on this amazing human ride, and the heart becomes so tender. because you look at all sides and you say, how did it get there? And you go back in the history of Russia and Ukraine, you know, or in the history of, and you go, oh, these people, oh my God, they've been, or the, whatever it is. And instead of the judgment, there's kind of an awe that we can survive through this. And the children are born and they roll down the hills and they tickle and they laugh. and we have that too because the world is unbearably beautiful along with the ocean of tears

and that's the hand of your doubt baby yes it is and you see it when you when you like I mean you as a parent you know that the thought will maybe not I'm sure with you the thought does come into one's mind what if something happens to this kid you can't even fathom the heartbreak.

That's correct. And you, at that moment, get a glimpse of how vulnerable you are to this impermanent nature of things. How, yes. That's, and, yeah, you know, you've known unbearable things. But that's the, that's the worst. That's the worst. And I've had a ball chopped off. And you, you, at that moment to not respond with, like, tightening up, you know, batting down the hatches,

scanning for all potential dangers in the environment, always on the lookout is very difficult. It's very difficult to not shadow that experience of pure love with pure absolute feet. that something might happen to this beautiful being, even though you know something will happen. So there's that. There are also the moments when they act so difficult that impulse arose in me, I want to take this kid and throw her out the window and just be done with her. So they bring out every part. What's beautiful is that you're describing a kind of pure love that's there that we have. have. And that's, you know, that's part of who we really are unless we have had some such

significant conditioning drama, whatever, that doesn't give us access to it. But there you are. You love you. You would give your life for your kids. I would. You know. And what is that? Now, that is something way beneath all the other things that we talk about, the depth of that love. You do it a second. Wouldn't think about it. Yeah, just like it's the depth of, you know, that joy that that child has at times that's still in you in some way. And so you have all that. And part of, you know, part of your game as a public neurotic or whatever you are, is, you know, is to give voice to all of this and not be afraid to talk about also how painful it is.

Because it is painful. It is. It's, you know, some of it's unbearably painful. The loss of a child and that fear, of course you live with fear for your children, that something could happen. I certainly have and do and would. And my daughter, when she was working in Cambodia after college for the world, whatever they were doing kind of a world court.

And she had some real difficulty in she, you know, emailed me or contacted me and I said I'll get a plane tick tomorrow I'll be there you know because we would do that yeah we will do it um but we won't do it for other people's kids and that's where it gets weird maybe yes maybe I would get on the plane but I'm not sure I would give my life for another person's child that's exactly correct that's right that's where it Isn't that mysterious? That's really mysterious. That's right. But there's something about love that says, it's almost like what can you touch?

And, you know, you expand your circle of love and compassion in this deep way. But the willingness to sacrifice everything is such a mysterious thing. you know, I'll give my life for this other person. I mean, honestly, in the military, it becomes a really important quality. And people forget about it when they look at, okay, our military expeditions and the wars and all the horror that are with it. But the reports, the words from people from the battlefield is that they weren't dying for their country or their patriotism or their cause most of the time,

they're dying or they're putting themselves out there for their comrades and their buddies that they trained with. And they become a family. And so the game is to, Einstein said it, is to wipe it in the circle of compassion to see that the world is your family. That's it. You know, you should check out my new book.

And then you say, well, Jack, you should check out my new book. It's called All in This Together. And it kind of covers some of the things that you're talking about here. It does. It's a book about respect. Oh, you have my book. It's mostly storytelling. Exactly.

I'll tell you one, like, very, very brief story. There's lots of long stories of, you know, of the Dalai Lama or of, you know, great tales of King Arthur's court and what women really want, which is a great story because one would like to have the answer to that. Yes. But there's little stories, too. Like this kid goes, a seven-year-old goes into a restaurant or eight-year-old with his mom and dad. And the waitress comes and says, what will you have? She turns to the kid and he said, I'd like a hot dog and a Coke.

And his mother says he will have the meatloaf, the mashed potatoes, and some milk. she takes all the you know orders from the other adults at the table and as she's leaving the table she says turns to the kid and said you want ketchup or mustard on your hot dog and he beams and he says she thinks i'm real and that's part of the book is reminding us of our of our inner nobility that no matter where we are there is a kind of dignity to your humanity and it's to be treasured and to be valued. And part of what meditation does, it reminds you that it seats you in yourself in the middle, opens your heart to your very own life, which lets you love other people and the world.

Why is this, you know, it haunts me this Krishna-Murdy dialogue with, I think it was Chogim Chumpa. and Krishna-Murdi, I believe, was saying to Chogim Chumperimperimpechei, why are you bothering people with this meditation stuff? Like, why meditate? You know, this episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Blue Chew, the boner sorcerers who have just created something incredible. Blue Chewold gold is the newest innovation from the number one chewable ED brand. Blue-chew gold dissolves under your tongue and works in as little as 15 minutes.

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Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. and I thank Blue Chu for sponsoring this podcast. Isn't it hard enough without having to add to it? You know how Krishna Murdi was, you know? He's very like stern. He was a curmudgeon. He was stern. He was actually a world famous curmudgeon, a spiritual curmudgeon.

A spiritual curmudgeon. We needed him. It was a good balance. No, he was a very important teacher, and he was a curmudgeon. A curmudgeon. But also, though, I don't look at it the way he looked at it, which is like he was acting like Buddhists were recommending some extra chore to reality.

But it always astounds me when I finally get back on the cushion how incredible that moment is. And yet, I don't want to do it. I don't want to meditate. I don't want... This is, I guess, the bull's eye of my neurosis is that I recognize and have experienced this beauty that you are a master of reminding people of.

But I don't actively pursue it. So first of all, meditation can kind of get into the category of, I have a good diet, I go to therapy, I work out. And it's like a new duty, a grim duty. Okay, I effing meditate in order to become whatever I'm supposed to be. And actually, it's not a grim duty. Now, the thing to do with what you're saying is to get curious. It's not like you should meditate.

I mean, the point of meditation is just to be here. So you can actually be here for this life, for yourself, for the things you care about to be freer rather than loss and all that tumult of worry or whatever. And so when you notice the resistance, I'm always interested in resistance, instead of getting rid of it, say, something's cooking underneath. And what is it? And maybe if you pay attention a little bit, you notice it's the fear I have with my due child that was born. How will I be able to take care of all my children?

And then if you open to it, you name it, you say, this is not just your fear, Duncan. It's, you are woven with all the fathers of the earth, all the mothers of the earth. And you go, oh, okay, I can hold this, and I can sit and breathe, and great compassion comes. Or you notice that I don't want to sit because my mind is racing and I hate, you know, sitting in the middle of my racing mind because I don't want it to race. And then you say, how about if I just love it? okay baby you're in a hamster will you run it around they thank you thank you for trying to protect me which is what it's doing thank you for trying to keep me good and make some money and be safe and thank you you can relax yeah we're just going to sit yeah so you shift from trying to change who you are

to put your hand on your heart sorry this is a little bit too you know west coast i love whatever but but you sit and you make a feel of presence and courage. And it's really the courage to love it all and say, okay, I'm going to sit and love the whole, you know, the whole whatever. So this is from Lori Chapman. She writes,

I like nothing more in the world than sitting on my ass doing nothing. Right. So already, this is like the instruction. If you want, forget Krishna-Murdy and Jodhya Prong, they're both on the wrong page here. Lori's got the teachings. And it's not my fault that I have this attitude because I happen to have an amazingly comfortable ass. It may not look like much, but if you could sit on this baby for two minutes, you'd realize that getting off this ass would be a crime against nature.

All right. So there's your meditation instruction. I don't have an ass. Yeah, well, you got something under there. Maybe you are an ass, right? Not only you have one, you could actually be one. Jack, I'm so excited to read your book. You know, your books have been fundamental to me and so many, to my mom,

like to so many people are, I'm sure, thrilled to hear that we've got a new Jack Cornfield book coming out. And thank you. I'm really excited because at these Ram Dass retreats, it's the story. You just have this fountain of the most beautiful stories, and you're so good at telling them. And, you know, it's a wild thing to be in a room when you're teaching. Well, you know, stories are what keep us together. Muriel Ruckheiser, the poet, said, the universe is made of stories, not Adams. Right.

And that there's some way we know who we are through our stories. What we tell each other. So I want to read you a short one-page, little piece of a story, story because it ties together the notion of stories, and I think it's in this new book, but also the question of despair and the difficulties of our times. And the Bodhisattva vow that says, I vow, you know, through the ups and downs, joys and the sorrows of the bed, to keep a compassionate heart, to hold everyone in the heart of compassion.

Tell me the weight of a snowflake, a tiny mouse asked a wild dove. Nothing more than nothing came the answer. In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story, the mouse said. I sat on the branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk when it began to. snow, not in a blizzard, no, just like in a dream without a sound, without any violence. And having nothing better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and branches of the tree where I sat. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,7401,952, when the 3,770,7,712,000,000, hundred forty one thousand nine hundred and fifty-third snowflake dropped onto the branch nothing more than nothing as you say the branch broke off and having said that the mouse went away and the dove a spiritual authority since the time of noah thought to herself perhaps there's only one person's voice lacking for peace to be created on this earth Wow

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Wow. That is so cool. Where does that story come from? It's Kurt Cowr, and I think it's in my new book. And the thing is that, honestly, we don't know. Somebody has Somerset Ma'am, you know, famous, British, all this way, about. being a novelist, he said, there are three rules for writing the great English novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

And I mean, that's our position, right? What we get to do, it's not given to you that you're supposed to save the world, God spare us all, or whoever Buddha, or something, or fix it. What we get to do is reach out and bend the places that we can touch, to offer our seeds of intentions, of goodness, our care, and that transforms the world like that story. That becomes the next snowflake. And it happens in the smallest ways,

and we tend to think these giant problems, but it really also is hand-to-hand and heart-to-heart. And heart-to-heart with the trees, or Australian Stockman said, The tree e working for you. The stars are working for you. Every breath you take, you exchange with the trees around you. And the practice of meditation and feeling your breath isn't like, okay, now I can concentrate

and I'm feeling my breath. Okay, cool. So what? But to feel that you're breathing with the whole, the world is breathing you. And the breath you take in also comes from the people in your family. You're exchanging it. and your neighbors in the raccoon in the backyard and the earthworms. And it also dusted the Rockies and Monakea and the Fukushima nuclear reactor.

And we're all breathing together. And then you remember, oh, here we are. Let's hold. How do we want to hold this? And you come back. And the beautiful thing, it's kind of like resetting your intention. If you're in conflict and an argument, say, and I mean, it wouldn't happen to someone. my level.

Never. In case Trudy and I had some little tip, should it happen, in the moment that you're struggling, if you take a breath, it's called a mindful, the sacred pause, just one breath in 30 seconds.

And you tune in and you ask yourself, what's my best intention? What's my highest intention? And usually if there's a conflict, there's a part I want to be right I know I'm right and she's not or they're not right and I am you know that and then I remember

oh my best intention is that we love each other yeah and immediately my tone of voice changes my spirit I'm not trying to win a contest anymore I'm trying to connect it's not far away

right that's all right and then people say yeah but the world is harsh and what happens if you encounter and whatever. There's a really beautiful story in this book about an Iketo master, Terry Dobson, and meeting this belligerent tough on a subway in Japan when he was training in martial arts. And Terry's like, I'm going to take him apart. And as it's just as he's about to do it, this old man sitting there with his wife, says, come here a second to that belligerent guy who's drunk.

Tell me what you drink and we like to drink sake. And all of a sudden, instead of that conflict, that moment of attention and connection changes the entire game. It's an amazing story and a friend of mine is actually going to go make a film of it in Japan. But we can change this world in a moment. I mean, that story, right? It ends with that drunk weeping with... In the lap of the lap of this old man and his wife

talking about sitting under their persimintry. Because his wife had just died. You know? And then he says, you know, he says, yeah, he says something about how, you know, how sad he's, how sad he's been because his wife has died and he doesn't have any friends and so forth. It says, they're there. Come over and sit with us.

You know, and that moment, an incredible moment of connection. Here, I read you another poem. Great. Okay. This is from Stella Nassanovic called Everyday Grace. It can happen like that, meeting at the auto repair, buying tires amidst the smell of rubber, the grating sounds of jackhammers and drills. Anywhere we share stories, grace blows between us.

The tire center waiting room becomes a healing place as one speaks of her husband's heart valve replacement, bed sores from complications. A man speaks of multiple surgeries, notes his false appearance as strong and healthy. I share my sister's death from breast cancer. Her youngest, only seven. A woman rises, gives her name, Mrs. Henry, then takes my hand.

Suddenly, an ordinary day becomes holy ground. And that's also who we are when we pause in our busyness, which is what meditation does. It says you can pause and hold all this in your heart. You're the best. Jack, I cannot. Thank you so much. giving me your time. You are just, that is, listen, everybody out there, even if you haven't had your baby yet, listen to this a week after you have a baby. Medicine. Check, thank you so

much. Your book is out now, all in this together? Is it out? Yeah, it is. And Guilloma Pollaner, the great French philosopher, said, now and then, it's good to pause in your pursuit of happiness and just be happy. Ah, yes. Thank you very much. It's radical for you, curmudgins. You know, you can enjoy being curmudgeon.

I know you do. You actually love that. I absolutely do. I do. It's good. You can be happy in it. Savor it. It's good.

I'll die. I'll cease to exist. Anyway, you yeah you'll like i said to my dad you know you wait you'll see and remember i told you so jack cornfield everybody his new book all in this together all the links you need to order that book will be down below also jack is one of the great dharma teachers in the world right now sorry if that um sorry for that jack but it's true so anytime you can talk to my daughter she'll straighten you out Thank you, Jack.

You're the best. Thanks, Tom. That was Jack Cornfield, everybody. Check out his new book, All In This Together. Stories and Teachings for Loving Each Other and our world links are down there. And thank you so much, Jack, for coming on the show.

And thank you all for listening or watching. I love you, and I'll see you next week.