Ep. 248 – Sacred Effort

Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield

Be Here Now Network

Kornfield, Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Jackkornfield, Buddhism, Spirituality, Jack Kornfield

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Exploring how to direct energy in a wise way, Jack shares how embracing Sacred Effort nourishes joy, ease, beauty, equanimity, mindfulness, and loving kindness in your life.

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"Right Effort, or Wise Energy, most fundamentally is the effort to pay attention, the effort to be present, awake, and see what is true in front of us. Out of all the kinds of efforts we can make, the most fundamental wise effort in spiritual life is to be where we are and see it clearly, to be conscious, or mindful." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

Directing the energy of your life to be awake, aware, and present
Seeing the Eightfold Path as a lotus or mandala
Carlos Castaneda, impeccability, and becoming a spiritual warrior
How to wake yourself up from sleepwalking through your life
Having a full heart, deep attention, and clear seeing
The two levels of spiritual friends and spiritual practice
Using suffering to develop a wise heart
Remembering death and impermanence
What Jack taught his daughter about death
Bowing to our difficult emotions and moving on
Disentangling ourselves from greed, fear, and obsession
Nourishing equanimity, ease, joy, beauty, and loving kindness
Tending each moment as if you were planting a seed
Balance and the Buddha stringing the lute
Ramana Maharshi and the wisdom of letting go
Making your life and activity an expression of the Tao

"The teaching of Right Effort or Wise Effort is a reminder of our nobility. It is a reminder of the human inspiration of spirit not just to get through our lives, but to honor it, to respect it, to be present for it, to delight in it." – Jack Kornfield

"Unclench the heart, steady yourself, and be present for things as they are, and then your activity becomes an expression of your awakening, it becomes a vehicle for the Tao." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded on 3/1/1992 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Unplench the heart steady yourself.
0:08.3	Be present for things as they are.
0:12.2	And then your activity becomes an expression of your awakening. It becomes a vehicle for the Tao.
0:24.0	Hey there, and welcome back to Heart Wisdom,
0:32.0	Jack Cornfield's podcast on the Be Here Now Network.
0:36.7	I'm Ganesh. I'm so grateful to open the door to this podcast for you,
0:41.5	episode 248, Sacred Effort. this is the first part of a two-part
0:45.0	this is the first part of a two-part talk on right effort and
0:52.0	mindfulness which was first given in March of 1992,
0:58.4	amidst a series of talks that Jack gave about the eightfold path. Now when I think of effort I think of like
1:08.7	Sisyphus and the rock or um shoveling snow with my grandpa when I was younger.
1:16.7	It's this very masculine, this very, just gritty pushon at all costs kind of vibe which generally we've come to find out
1:30.1	that that leads to burnout, meaning the effort, while intense and strong, wasn't actually
1:37.8	a very skillful effort at all.
1:41.8	So what this podcast is about is how to use our energy in a wise, balanced and mindful
1:51.9	way so that the efforts we put forth can be used in flow with the
1:58.6	Tao in flow with the universe so we're not efforting our way swimming upstream and that's why Jack
2:07.6	shares that so much of right effort of this wise energy is about seeing clearly.
2:15.7	Meaning effort, which feels like this big external,
2:21.6	ugh is actually started most skillfully from the inside from a point of
2:29.7	listening and seeing reality as possible.
2:34.6	And from there, from that place of mindful vantage, finding a way to best work with the flow
	...

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