Ep. 260 – Creating a Sacred Container for Practice
Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield
Be Here Now Network
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2024
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jack guides us in creating a sacred container for spiritual practice—a space where, like a garden, our inner life can be nurtured, allowing us to transform life’s challenges into paths of awakening and growth.
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“Much of our spiritual life, to mature, needs a sacred container for transformation. It needs this container that is greater than our small self—the body of fear and the mind of desire—something that honors a larger spirit, a larger truth.” – Jack Kornfield
In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:
Creating a free and protected space, a sacred container for your practice
How the very difficulties in our lives are what actually awakens us
Using our hardships as a crucible for uncovering our own goodness
Rumi’s flavorful and delicious “vegetable fable”
Learning how to stay centered on your cushion
The mirror-like quality of meditation practice
Meeting our practice with commitment, constancy, patience
Honoring the cycles of nature and the universe
Feeling our feelings to heal our grief
Learning the value of staying with things, even through difficulty
Choosing the Dharma over the body of fear and mind of desire
Nurturing the sacred garden within yourself
The power of prayer and feeling blessed
“In a way, sitting is nothing more than looking in the mirror. You sit and face whatever arises.” – Jack Kornfield
“It almost doesn’t matter what we pick, who our partner is, or what we choose to do, as long as it’s reasonably wholesome. What matters is how much we can give to it, of our sincerity, of our earnestness, of our heart.” – Jack Kornfield
This Dharma Talk recorded on 8/1/1991 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In a way, sitting is nothing more than looking in the mirror. You sit and face whatever arises. |
| 0:10.0 | Now I know looking in the mirror itself is sometimes shocking. |
| 0:13.4 | I look in the mirror myself these days and I see this person looks like my father looking back. |
| 0:18.8 | You know and I wonder how that happens so fast. But to sit is to sit and just be with what's true. Whatever is in |
| 0:28.6 | the mirror, your father or mother very often are there as a matter of fact or whoever else is present. |
| 0:35.0 | To sit and sense and see and know what is true there. Hey there and welcome back to Jack Cornfield's Heart Wisdom Podcast on the Be Here Now Network. |
| 0:51.6 | I'm Ganesh, honored to open the door to episode 260, creating a sacred |
| 0:57.3 | container for practice. This is a really beautiful podcast all about tending the garden of the heart and using our difficulties and challenges as crucibles as catalysts for our awakening. |
| 1:12.0 | I want to give a big shout out to our be here now. for our Be Here Now Network team as well as modern technology because in years past this |
| 1:21.0 | audio would not have been able to be shared in podcast format, but the wonderful |
| 1:27.0 | work of Logan and Corey and updated tech helps us unearth what was previously just stuck in the archives. |
| 1:38.6 | This episode was first recorded back in 1991 on August 1st at Spear Rock Meditation Center, which I now have quite an embodied feeling for having gone for the first time to visit the beautiful lands which Jack picked out back in the 80s |
| 1:56.9 | for the center of darma and wisdom and compassion and love to be built. And it did not disappoint. |
| 2:05.0 | I went for Jack and Trudy's relationship course, |
| 2:08.0 | which was such a beautiful sharing of teachings around the spirituality of relationship. |
| 2:15.2 | And just being in that hall where I've seen so many of Jack's teachings emanate from |
| 2:25.6 | was something very special to be there live with Jack and Trudy was special but one of the things that really stood out to me there was a silent meditation retreat going on while I was there. |
| 2:36.4 | So I dipped into the essence of that in the sense that I took some time just to quietly and mindfully |
| 2:47.3 | explore the land and that was one of the more striking things about the trip being in such a beautiful, peaceful shanty in that kind of nature. It was pristine and the essence of that is lasting. |
| 3:10.0 | So if you have been thinking about going to a retreat at Spirit Rock, I highly recommend it if that is in flow for you. |
| 3:20.0 | And if you can make it, they have many online offerings, many of which Jack is a part of, |
| 3:28.8 | which is probably a great segue into how to steady the heart, mindfulness, love, and wisdom amidst wild times, a day-long online retreat with Jack |
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