You can take care of the whole past and future in only one place just now in the present moment.

And if you actually live in the present moment, moment to moment in this timeless present,

you take care of all of the past and all of the future.

Welcome to the Jack Cornfield Heart Wisdom Hour.

We are delighted to share with you Jack's innate common sense wisdom and his clear open heart.

If you are interested in supporting Jack's podcast, go to beherenownetwork.com slash Jack.

I want to talk about a variety of things beginning with the cycle of return.

When I returned from Asia sabbatical with my family this year after about five months,

I was struck by how complex and speedy and rich and crazy our culture is.

Long ago when I lived in the forest monastery of Asia,

one of the most wonderful things that we would do as monks would be to go out in the mornings

with begging bowls and walk just at dawn before the sun rose.

Three miles or five miles or ten miles to some nearby village barefoot through the rice

patties on those little dikes that are between the rice patties over the fields.

And then people would wait in the streets of the villages very respectfully and offer food to us in

silence. I stayed at one period in a very poor monastery up in the mountains near the border of

Laos, a cave monastery with my teacher, Ajahn Chah, and I remember walking down to villages

in the dry season when there wasn't much to eat.

And a few monks would go into each of the villages in different directions

and people would come out who were very poor in the dry season. Then it was still,

this was 20 or 25 years ago. There wasn't much development, there weren't cars and motorcycles and

TVs in the streets were dirt and earth and the work was done by water buffalo and oxen.

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