Jack Kornfield – Heart Wisdom – Ep. 275 – Desire, Love, and Spiritual Passion

05/02/2025 1h 5min
Jack Kornfield – Heart Wisdom – Ep. 275 – Desire, Love, and Spiritual Passion

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Episode Synopsis

Love is in that air as Jack explores the nature of desire, relationships, and spiritual passion—offering wisdom on stabilizing the heart, navigating distractions, and awakening to the timeless and sacred.

Learn How to Thrive in Love: Buddhist Secrets to Transform Your Relationships with Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman beginning Feb 17 – join anytime at bit.ly/ThriveInLove

“If you know what it’s like to really fall in love with someone, then you can begin to sense what it means to bring the full presence of attention to your life.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:
The Buddha on mindfulness and awareness
Stabilizing the heart, mind, and body in the present
Overcoming distractions and difficult moods
Being aware of desires arising and passing
Chanda – spiritual passion, the desire for awakening
The connection between power, insecurity, and fear
How to stop feeding the hungry heart in unskillful ways
The difference between desire and love
Relationship, marriage, and staying in love
A moving love story from Thich Nhat Hanh
Reclaiming our humanity and animal nature
Reawakening mystery, gratitude, awe
Touching that which is timeless and sacred
Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of infinite compassion
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and living your fullness
Noticing what tempts you away during meditation

“What direction do our personal desires take us? It’s good to study them. As my teacher Ajahn Chah said, ‘It may be a very fast car, but you ought to look at what road you’re going down and which way it’s headed.'” – Jack Kornfield

“Perhaps what we most deeply desire is immensely simple—to reclaim our humanity, our animal nature that Jung talked about, the wondrous senses, the sense of the spirit of awe, the remembering, the reawakening of that sense of gratitude and mystery for life.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded on 9/28/1992 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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