Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield

How do we hold life’s unbearable beauty and ocean of tears? Exploring the education of the heart, Jack Kornfield shares Buddhist wisdom for meeting troubled times with steadiness, compassion, and courage.

Exploring love as a spiritual practice, Jack Kornfield shares how Ram Dass grew into a living field of love and how we can cultivate that same loving awareness within ourselves.

Through a humbling story of Sri Nisargadatta and a guided meditation on loving awareness, Jack shows how love can become large enough to hold the full mystery of our human experience.

Jack Kornfield and Sylvia Boorstein explore how loving awareness helps us meet each moment as a friend, soften into aging and impermanence, and rediscover connection through simple acts of generosity and love.

Celebrating Sylvia Boorstein’s 90th birthday, Jack and Sylvia reflect on 49 years of friendship, meditation, and Dharma practice—and how awakening ultimately expresses itself through kindness, connection, and a willingness to stay amazed.

Exploring the gifts hidden within our most difficult emotions, Jack Kornfield shares how anger, judgment, and despair can be transformed into compassion, courage, and selfless service.

Reflecting on Spirit Rock's new stupa, Jack Kornfield shares how sacred places help us remember the timeless awareness, compassion, and freedom at the heart of our being.

Celebrating Spirit Rock's new stupa and 40 years of practice, Jack Kornfield reflects on spiritual community, resilience in times of suffering, and the timeless wisdom that helps us meet life with an awakened heart.

Through powerful storytelling, Jack Kornfield turns toward the deeper invitation of the spiritual path: to listen with the heart and respond to life with courage, compassion, and presence.

Beginning with reflections on global crises and personal difficulty, Jack reminds us that while suffering is inevitable, how we respond is what shapes our lives.

In the second half of this powerful wartime talk, Jack Kornfield guides us through the practice of lovingkindness and explores what it means to stay open-hearted in the face of exhaustion, grief, and overwhelm.

In this deeply moving talk offered to those living through war in Ukraine, Jack Kornfield reminds us that even in the most difficult conditions, the human heart has the capacity to remain open, compassionate, and free.

In this powerful dialogue, Jack Kornfield responds to questions from the community about some of the deepest challenges of the human heart.

In this illuminating talk, Jack explores the heart of freedom through the lens of his friendship with Ram Dass, reflecting on how to cultivate a heart that can meet it all with loving awareness.

In this deeply grounding guided meditation, Jack Kornfield invites us to rest in mindful loving awareness and gratitude for the miracle of being alive.

Celebrating the release of All In This Together, Jack shares stories and leads a guided meditation inviting us into the fear dispelling and protective practice of loving kindness.

Celebrating the release of All In This Together, Jack reflects on learning to bow to life’s mystery—and how doing so opens a path to liberation, love, and inner peace.

Honoring the release of All In This Together, Jack reflects on how stories awaken compassion, heal division, and call us back to meeting one another with respect.

In honor of All In This Together, Jack, Anne Lamott, and Tami Simon continue their heart-opening conversation on story, tenderness, and remembering who you are

Jack opens with reflections on the cosmic dance of life before guiding listeners into a meditation on stillness, breath, and embodied presence. Drawing on ancient imagery and gentle instruction, he invites us to take our seat in the still point of the turning world.

As winter deepens, Jack reflects on the quiet light that does not go out—the warmth of compassion, generosity, and courage that sustains us through dark seasons. Through stories of everyday kindness and ancient wisdom, he invites us to tend the inner fire that heals and connects us.

As we fully enter the winter season, Jack reflects on the ancient meaning of solstice—the standing still—and what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to pause. In a world shaped by speed, grief, and uncertainty, he invites us into stillness as a sacred act.

In a moment when the world feels uncertain, Jack sits down with Anne Lamott and Tami Simon for an intimate, deeply human conversation about stories of the heart—how they soften us, unite us, and remind us of our own beauty.

Celebrating the release of his new book of his favorite stories, All In This Together, Jack shares wise tales on living with integrity, presence, stillness, and generosity.

Celebrating the release of his new book of his favorite stories, All In This Together, Jack shares why ‘sometimes we need a story more than food.’

Jack Kornfield and Prof. Rajiv S. Joshi explore how facing suffering with love can awaken the courage to heal our world.

Jack Kornfield and Prof. Rajiv S. Joshi explore ‘inner climate change,’ guiding us through meditation and reflection on transforming the world by becoming the Tree of Enlightenment.

Jack Kornfield and Prof. Rajiv S. Joshi share uplifting spiritual wisdom on how inner climate change shapes outer climate healing, the environment, and the future of humanity.

Jack Kornfield leads a guided sound journey into spacious awareness—exploring meditation, mantra, and the freedom beyond duality.

Exploring spaciousness as the ground of awakening, Jack Kornfield shows how peace, impermanence, and love are all born from the open heart.

Jack shares a whimsical story on light and dark, birth and death, forgiveness and mercy, passion and sincerity, impermanence and immorality, and finding your inner light.

Jack Kornfield explores the nature of mind, offering playful practices and profound perspectives to uncover our true home of freedom, compassion, and ease.

In this inspiring poetry-infused talk, Jack weaves Rumi’s wisdom on the camel, lion, and child of the spirit into a journey from devotion, to courage, to wonder—inviting us to awaken the Buddha’s Lion’s Roar within and remember the inner royalty of the heart.

Exploring poetry, beauty, and art, Jack helps his dear listeners appreciate the harmonious dichotomy of all life experiences.

In this rich and often humorous talk from the 1990s, Jack explores the art of letting go as the gateway to freedom, inviting us into the coolness of nirvana, and the wholeness found only here and now.

In this tender and illuminating talk, Jack shares a Zen love story and a path of mindful presence that brings us home—from the stories of the mind to the truth of the heart. Through embodied awareness, we discover that the end of exile begins with loving what is here now.

From gender equity to joyful adaptation, Jack recounts how the Dalai Lama challenged teachers to reshape Buddhism for a modern world in need of heart.

Jack shares stories and insights from a rare gathering with the Dalai Lama on what really makes a teacher, and how compassion—not titles—spreads the Dharma.Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/heartwisdom and get on your way to being your best self.This time on Heart Wisdom, Jack thoughtfully explores these themes & topics:Spring renewal at Spirit Rock & the wider Buddhist boom1,000 U.S. meditation centers — a movement far bigger than any one sanghaThe Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra on gathering “in harmony and concord”The Dalai Lama: compassion over conversion; students over titlesWhat really authorizes a teacher? (Hint: their students’ freedom)“Spy on your teachers” — trusting slowly & wiselyThe scent-test of liberation: recognizing authentic peace“Bodhisattva off-duty?” — practice everywhere, even with late-night TV temptationsSpiritual life as engagement with, not escape from, difficultyInterdependence: why true emptiness embraces every creatureSpeaking out…

What if the blueprint for a more beautiful world is already within you? Jack explores how trust, joy, and imagination awaken transformation—from the inside out.

Jack invites us to walk the path of joy—no matter the circumstances—showing how living joyfully and tenderly is a courageous, radical, and transformative act.

Sharing deep spiritual secrets of love and attachment, Jack transforms our unhealthy attachments into Wise Relationships through vulnerability, inner joy, and shared humanity.

Exploring the ancient Zen teaching of the Great Way, Jack guides us toward freedom from attachment, clarity beyond preferences, and the liberating joy of letting go.

Jack and Ocean continue their deep conversation, exploring how to create positive change in the world without losing our spiritual center and loving essence.

Jack is interviewed by Ocean Robbins to explore the big spiritual questions—why there is suffering, how to navigate duality, making the ordinary holy, and cultivating a loving witness.

In this guided breath meditation, Jack Kornfield invites listeners into a space of ease, trust, and ardent gratitude for our bodies, hearts, and minds.

In this time of global uncertainty, Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman call us to rise with fierce compassion and become Bodhisattvas of the Great Turning.

Exploring how to let go of victim consciousness and awaken inner resilience, Jack shares how to rest in awareness and live from the trusting heart.

Who are we really? Jack Kornfield peels back the veil on our identity roles to uncover the deeper truth that we really are.

Exploring how to stay buoyant and balanced on life's great ocean of change, Jack sets our spiritual compass for letting go into what is.

Jack invites us to stop fighting what is and begin bowing to it—awakening the timeless wisdom and compassionate heart of a Buddha, right here and now, in the midst of our joys, sorrows, and the suffering of the world.