Mindrolling – Ep. 223 – The Space Within with Jack Kornfield

[Music] hi everyone Raghu Marcos back with last time we did this Jack actually because I listened to it Jack and I did a podcast around his new book which is still new no no time like the present and I said yes I'm introducing an old friend and people would say he's low-hanging fruit as far as a chatting with a guest on mind rolling and so here we are again and I'm gonna I'm gonna dispel that whole idea of low-hanging fruit especially with someone like Jack I am low-hanging fruit I know it's true the fruitiness part is certain and I'm hanging lower as I get older you and my whole body it's sort of drooping in different parts but anyway sure yes welcome back jack thanks and so we're just set the jack off off the air that there there are so many different it's such rich material in this book that we could do five podcasts on it and so there are some things that I didn't get to last time and there's some other things that I want to chat with with Jack about and let's let's start with something again that is it's very topical actually want to read something it's a quote in your book that I think is so directly affecting and just subject matter that is undeniably something that we we are all involved with thinking about and it's I said I think it's a quote [Music] well years I think it's who is it I'm gonna read it and then you're gonna tell me so I didn't write this down I keep encountering young people who in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening also give hope there are hundreds of thousands working for the good everywhere to be hopeful in hard times is not just foolishly romantic it's based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion sacrifice courage kindness what we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine determine our lives if we see only the worst it destroys our capacity to do something if we remember those times in places and there are so many where people have behaved magnificently this gives us the energy to act and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction the future is an infinite succession of presence and to live now as we think human beings should live in defiance of all that is bad around us is itself a marvelous victory if that doesn't apply to us right now and is addresses especially next generation concerns and and possibility of just getting just out and out depressed on a daily basis seeing what is going on in this world I don't know it's a HL Mencken I believe right is that correct no it's Howard Zinn Howard Zinn Howard Zinn who was the author of the poems history of the US a very powerful read and volume about our whole national project and development from the earliest days but written from the point of view of the farmers and the laborers and the slaves and women people who are all written out of history um and it's quite magnificent and what Howard has to say there is truly the result of years of his own teaching and being one of our great contemporary kind of social philosophers the truth is that you know the news which has caused so much anxiety for people you know and there are these really big problems about the environment or about continuing warfare and racism and injustice and economic inequality and so forth the news almost always focuses on the negative if it bleeds it leads and basically during the course of this podcast there will be 1 billion acts of kindness and care people helping one another in all these ways and the ones that make the news will be that minuscule fraction where somebody hurts another person or someone gets overwhelmed with anger or fear or prejudice and so forth and we get a really skewed view of who we are as human beings we also get a skewed view because sadly the dynamics of politics and especially of electoral politics is that people get elected on promises to protect you and usually or often that's done by scaring people if we can scare the populace that was HL Mencken then we get elected we will save you we will protect you from blank and blank can be the immigrants or the Mexicans or the gays or the blacks or the Browns or the yellows or the Communists or the Muslims or we have the enemy too sure and we project it out as if something out there is dangerous and these politicians are going to make us secure but the truth is that we are already secure when we know who we are not secure in the sense that things won't change not secure in the sense that we won't Oh older that you know that life doesn't contain joy and sorrow and gain and loss that's human incarnation but when we know that who we are is awareness itself is consciousness taking human form and then we can play in this human realm and do beautiful things as a bodhisattva is a being who cares for the world and not be hooked by the fear and terror not let the terror outside which is being spewed by the media not let it terrorize our heart because we are we're bigger than that we are freer than that and that is our birthright hmm there's a another place in the book where I like this it's a it's a quote that from dr. Rachel Raymond and it's a I guess the Spanish word is carencia if I'm pronouncing it correctly and it's it's a job of the matador to know where this sanctuary of the bull would be to be sure the bull does not have time to occupy occupy his place of wholeness so it's it's the safe space in our inner world what we're talking about here and I think in terms of what the the quote that we just read the idea that we need to find that safe inner space I've actually noticed Jack I've been uncharacteristically alone over the holidays my wife went off to India and I I've had more time to spend with myself and a little bit more time just dangerous how are you well I'm surviving and and I'm noticing talking this that's why I brought this up this safe space in our inner world there's there I've getting a little bit more continuity of that inner space and relating with that place I'd love for you to talk more about how people can enter into and create that safe space in our inner world well our culture keeps us busy most of the time now we're multitasking we're doing other things and we're looking at our little screens at the same time as Albert Einstein was reported to have said in the Scientific American if you can drive safely while kissing a girl you're simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves so we live in this way in our modern society that fragments our attention and keeps us busy or AM us in an addictive way with news and busyness and contact with other people and doing over and so forth that we lose touch with ourselves and of course when we first try to slow down for some people it actually can feel unfamiliar like what do I do my friend Annie Lamott writes my mind is like a bad neighborhood I try not to go there alone you know so we have this okay well what will I do I'll be bored I don't know or I'll have I'll have feelings or whatever it happens to be lonely or something but if you tend your inner life which is what that beautiful passage of the currency of the place of wholeness that the bull finds in the bullfighting ring by walking in nature or by taking time to meditate by spending time listening to sacred music by spy connecting with your own body and heart after a while your whole nervous system the alarm of it learns to settle down more and you can return to that place even though you have obviously busy and active engaged times and from the place of still this you can both see more clearly you can love more attentively because you're actually present in your body and heart and being and more than that there's a vastness when you get quiet you sense not just the little dramas of your daily life or week but you feel as we are here around the Solstice in the New Year the turning of the spheres and the seasons and that you're part of life your life is coming through you in this vast turning mystery and you can take your seat if you will in the center of this mystery and know that you are connected with it and part of it and it changes everything without presents it's very hard to love because we're scattered or we're lost in a fantasy in the future or a memory of the past the only place we really can love is where we are in the present and so to be present allows us both spaciousness and didymus and ironically in the stillness comes deep connection and I think part of it that that is really important is the the word safe because many many many people these days of course do not feel very safe yeah they're being told they're not safe over and over again by the news you know and everything around them and and it's not a matter of looking for well let me make a billion dollars and I'll create a wall and guards and I'll be safe it's obviously not that but the safety I mean again I'm relating to my own experience there the I think safety safe content I think is a good corollary to safe us being content in in the moment in the presence that you're talking about but it's beautiful that's beautiful and the truth is that our notion of safe is childish in a certain way we get worried about I don't know airplane crashes or terrorist attacks which are scary there's no question and terrible but more people die driving their cars you know or slipping on the floor in the bathroom when they step out of their shower by a hundred times then terrorist attacks and yet we're not afraid to go in the bathroom you know and we fly all over the place Helen Keller writes security is mostly a superstition children on the whole realize this and understand that very well life is either a daring adventure or nothing and the idea somehow that you know we're supposed to build the walls and save the money and have the relationship where that person won't change and we won't everything will be secure and safe is a fiction there's a deeper safety and the deeper safety might teacher ajahn Chah called the the wisdom of uncertainty or the wisdom of insecurity people would ask about things they were worried about or concerned or even things they just won't understand tell me about meditation tell me about enlightenment and he would laugh and smiley say it's uncertain isn't it and you ask something else he's here it's uncertain and he said become comfortable with uncertainty and this wisdom of insecurity means we know things will change that there will be praise and blame there will be gain and loss there will be joy and sorrow this is human incarnation and we can't protect ourselves from that and no amount of money can protect you from gain and loss and pleasure and pain and no relationship can what is safe is the awareness itself awareness has the loving awareness has the capacity to hold it all and a wise heart and say yeah this is human incarnation and now what seeds will we plant how will we respond in this world of the opposites of praise and blame and joy and sorrow and that's the place of security the security that we know that the heart is big enough to hold it all the great heart of compassion that awareness and then then we can respond so it's a it's a radical act to come back to ourselves and to find that place of trust that we again could call the wisdom of uncertainty and say it is uncertain let's not fool ourselves and here we are with life renewing itself every morning at breakfast you have a whole new birth what will we do with it it's just like the grass that pushes itself up through the sidewalks life constantly renews itself and we are life renewing ourselves which of course brings up impermanence which is an extraordinarily important subject and of course Buddhists have discussed this and for thousands of years and loss is very difficult in fact right and I'm right in the midst of it myself deep loss of somebody who I cared for very dearly and and I phoned a friend of mine in India who was very close to this being and who in my mind is an extraordinarily advanced being who had been with neem Karoli Baba for since he was a child and and we were just talking about this loss and he was I mean he was very broken up about the idea basically of the impermanence he'll never be able to have that the quality of the relationship that he had with this being and I was you know he just set me off into into this terrible feeling of loss and not being I had I thought prior to that for the few hours prior to that the I was dealing with it but the the the the there's the philosophizing about impermanence and then there's the moment-to-moment thing and being human and there's such a tough juxtaposition in in that sense talk about that a little bit there I know you have gone through it yourself very recently so yes this this year my twin brother died and I spent a lot of time the last two years being with him in hospitals and transplant and all things like that and it was very difficult I could feel it and resonate deeply in my body all that he was going through as a twin because we are we are beings of paradox of multi dimensions and so grief is actually important there are behaviors that we love there's this life that we love and connect to and my dear friend melanoma samay who's a west african shaman the medicine man also has a couple of PhDs from the Sorbonne and Brandeis and so far it's a very elegant medicine man he said when he first came to the US after some really a couple of years of very powerful shamanic training and initiation he said and his energy body was open he said your streets are full of the un-- grieved dead he said what kind of society is this people who died who were homeless people who died in old-age homes people who died in icy used heaven by caring doctors and nurses but not with their family in our culture he said the dog are people we agree if everyone aged murdered in green and that passing and that willingness to let ourselves feel the tears and the connection and that we won't see them in that form again that grief is really a way of honoring our own hearts caring our own love so the grief you feel for the loss of this Saint in India that you've known and loved of course you should weep and you should allow that and grief has its own life and rhythms and you also know that it's just part of the story it would be too easy kind of to make a spiritual bypass and say well everything is impermanent so and she was a saint she's fine and I'll be fine and so forth and but then your harness closed so you let it touch who you weep you weep for all the losses today for every water in the world that shares this tenderness and at the same time you also understand at the deepest level that she hasn't gone anywhere that death is a death is a fiction that we return we are consciousness we returning itself has taken out Han likes to talk about he says you look in the sky and then you see the most beautiful cloud the color of it and the shape and the form it's like oh this is just that the most enticing cloud I've ever seen and then it gathers more fully and then it dissolves and it turns into rain and it waters the light on the new earth it eventually goes through the rivers and streams back to the ocean where the Sun heats it up and it becomes he had a cloud again he said that's who we are who we are isn't death is not some [Music] moment death is the changing of consciousness in some way and truth to tell city MA who you were talking about she's still here you can talk to her you can listen to her you can't touch her body anymore but there are other ways in which there's if anything more of her because she's everywhere now wherever you go you'd say had need a little conversation with you heart to heart and so we carry both truths we carry the tears and they're not just personal they're also in our grief we enter what is called the tears in the way which is to say there's a poignancy to life that's ever-changing and when the heart is open and allowed to be touched by the world there's an unbearable beauty and an ocean of Tears and this is what humane carnation offers to us and from this place you can both honor the waves of grief because grief comes in waves as you know like the waves of the ocean and you can also be the ocean and saying yes the waves come and go and who we are as the vastness who we are as consciousness itself so yeah and I go through the same and I wouldn't want it any other way I wouldn't want to be oh yeah everything changes and I'm chill with that and I want my heart to be touched I want to be able to weep and then I want to also be able to laugh oh yeah actually in the book you talk about you quote the Native Americans I believe grief brings a person closer to the Great Spirit it's a little similar to our friend who is quoted as suffering brings me closer to God so yeah yes there there's another so now kind of turning a little bit to giving people an idea of that consciousness from which we can see an experience in the way that you've just explained and it's the concept of the the one who knows that's that's in the book actually and you know it's about as your heart opens as you've been speaking about it you could rediscover the vast perspective you had almost forgotten a spacious mind talk about the one who knows in that perspective well one of the ways that I understood this came very early in my practice and training in the forest monastery is that when living as a Buddhist monk with ajahn Chah because he I was trying to have all these meditation experiences and I was having all these interesting you know lights and visions and dissolving body and all kinds of cool stuff and I'd go and tell him he just smile and say carry on you know he didn't really make much of a fuss about it as good Zen masters don't and then I heard the story he that he told to some of us he'd been in the forests himself for ten years as a young monk doing very intense austerities and living in caves and living out where there were Tigers and practicing in such a way that he to both overcome a lot of inner and outer obstacles and then had visions and light at deep insights and expansion of consciousness he went to the greatest master of the time this other on John I'm John Mun told him all about it said do you have any advice and under-run looked back and said cha you missed the point the point isn't to have experiences there experiences it's like being in the movies there's a romantic comedy in a war movie and a documentary and you know a love story and he said those are just movies he said the only question that matters for freedom is to whom are they happening who is the one seeing these movies turn your attention back said his teacher a gentleman back to the one who knows to the knowing itself which which around us calls loving awareness or consciousness and become the witnessing to all things become the one who knows become the knowing that sees the dance of life from a place of timeless piece of a it represents because the question is not the future of humanity but the presence of eternity can we as human beings be connected with the sacred and the spiritual and the great turnings of the galaxies and when we are connected then it brings both a you call the content renta a deep sense of connection with all life and it also brings a kind of fearlessness because then we can go out and mend the world and work for justice or do things that you know really stand up for those who are vulnerable and so forth but we don't do it out of anger or fear which just makes more of its opposite we can do it because it's us you don't say oh my poor left hand I heard it on the stove maybe I should help it in the right I'll send my right hand over to you immediately tend it 10 the burn it's us it's it's part of our our life body and from this place one of my teacher said wisdom sees that I am nothing from this place the sense of separateness dissolves and love sees I am everything and between these two my life flows so from this place of witnessing of being a loving awareness we both contained all things and yet at the same time there is a spaciousness and freedom to love it all the one who knows I love that there's another something from the book and it's you have all this book by the way everybody I think I said this last time when we first talked about the book is as usual if you've ever been with Jack there are so many different sources of quotations to enunciate these concepts they're absolutely wonderful not to mention all the stories that's just very rich with it so great Jack there's but a German Zen master so I'm introduced to many of these people like I didn't any Lamont who eventually have done some podcast with and Jack introduced me I didn't hear her till Jack mentioned it you know Jack comes to every year to our retreats with ROM does so I'm getting educated slowly but surely a German Zen master and psychotherapist call freed the daughter caller Durkheim right yeah I have to I have to quote this because it's very special the person who being really on the way falls apart god bless the person who being really on the way falls upon hard times in the world will not as a consequence turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages their old self to survive rather he will seek out someone who will faithfully and in exer ibly help him to risk himself risk himself so that he may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it only to the extent that a person exposes himself over and over again to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found within in this daring lied dignity and the spirit of awakening that's fantastic yes let's talk about that risk I think that that's the crux of it here well before I say something about the risk it actually makes me also think about the death of this saint this wonderful woman City MA and with her death I see almost a kind of transmission to you Raghu and to those who knew and loved her you have to become City MA you know it's not like you can now go and hold their hand and say here bless me and you know fill me with your love and tell me this stories and so forth you now carry her and this become you go through her loss and death and you grieve and it's very it's it's honorable and then if you ask there okay ma I've grieved I feel the loss I I've wept and she acknowledges she wouldn't turn away from your tears and then she wouldn't you'd say so what now MA and you'd say okay Raghu all right now you must become Sydney MA you must carry this and so in some way as you as she dies and there's some thing dies for you then something new that's more indestructible it's born in you hmm thank you and you carry that and then you say oh I'm unworthy I don't have I mean she was great and I'm small she was wise whatever nonsense no I'm sorry you have your you have your task thank you for that thank you yeah what Durkheim is saying to us and we're all going to go through loss we're all going to go through difficulty it's part of the a lot it's part of human incarnation how do you do it oh poor me oh it shouldn't have happened though on worthy oh you know all the kind of ways that we can get sadly that we can lose a sense of our own dignity and our own own capacity and get overwhelmed and it happens we don't get overwhelmed too but those very difficulties he's saying those are the places where we learn the real deal where we learn what it means to stand up again to love in spite of you know to bring our best of the world to not be taken over by the kind of marketing of terror I'm going to take over our hearts to say this is not what I will carry and this is not who I am in this world you know to go through the very great many people listening and their families and communities and Lawson and the you know the medical calamities and other kinds of things like that and then of course the tears we carry and concern for the vulnerable of the world in so many ways around us and beyond and to say alright let me die - some small fearful self in Buddhism it's called the small self or the body of fear and let me remember how nobly born that I too AM the sons and daughter new to whoever is listing are the sons and daughters of the awakened ones that you're placed here and as consciousness itself you've taken birth and you can do beautiful things in this world even in the smallest gesture doesn't mean you have to go out you know save the world you save the world with each gesture of kindness you've saved the world with every beautiful child that you raise with every conscious business that you start with every with every time you go and drive you have a chance to drive in a way that is respectful of this world that we share and those around us and somehow you become the light that you want the world to be hmm I liked I liked the word risk in all of this because that's something that many of us don't want to take a risk it implies encountering something bigger than ourselves or feeling of this is more than what I can handle and so it's it's easy not to take that risk that's why I love this little this little passage and and that risk implies courage yeah I think they're connected very much so well there's two kinds of the risk you know the thing is that the risk will find you you you too can take it but it's gonna come anyway and some way you're gonna have difficulties it's just how it is and one part of the risk is can you risk feeling it and marrying it and go through you know the risks to go through the loss the risk to go through what is difficult the risk to go through a confrontation the risk to stand up for what you believe and give voice to it even if it's not what others are saying but you know it to be true in your heart the risk to be true to yourself I'm not what others expect of you those are all risks then ennoble us we are gonna have devastating things happen to us because we all get old and sick and die for example that's one small little devastating thing right and many other and that happens to everybody else around it you look around and say who to whom will that happen holy karoli as they'd say everybody you know and in not many years almost all the people that are my peers and the people I love and from gone through you know 70 some years of life with all gone that's the truth so we don't have to look for risk living is risky and then we die right but how do we carry ourselves can we speak up for what matters can we stand for what's right since we're gonna die anyway we might as well make it a magnificent dance you know you know in the past we've you and I have talked quite a bit about anger and we've had a bit of similar back backgrounds with angry fathers and and in the book you do talk also about the value there's a value anger as a value is a legitimate thing so I love that but III think it'd be great to there's one story that if you don't mind telling it it's the story of you trying to get a Cohen Cohen right with Joe Shuster Saki Roshi do you recall that III know this story very well you know anger is a in in the Greek tradition it's called a noble emotion because anger has tremendous can have tremendous clarity with it you know it's Noble when it's used in the service of some higher values and so forth the problem is that often when we act on anger and we get overcome by the emotion of it we're actually not very skillful but and if we look really honestly underneath our anger there's hurt and pain and fear and often if we can express and acknowledge this is the pain or this is the hurt to another person instead of being angry with them saying I really feel hurt when you say that I'm really afraid when this happens around people listen in a very different way we get a much more useful response than the anger that also has blame in it but there's a clarity in anger that says there's something wrong here and it really needs our attention and often it needs our action and so you know people think well getting angry isn't spiritual so there I was with Joseph Sasaki Roshi who is this one of the oldest and most respected Rinzai Zen masters in the world and we lived in the west for a long time he had some other problems unfortunately as a womanizer and other things like that which we also hear about in the spiritual world but anyway and I was sitting one of my first retreats or Szczecin with him and maybe a co uh I think it's sit instead it's hitting do a little walking sit and then they'd ring the bell and then you had to run and get in mine and go and see him and answer the co op four times a day you would see this and he'd sat there like a mountain then you go in and he would say quahog and I would say what is the sound of one hand clapping or you know which is a famous sin co-op does a dog have buddha-nature he gave me a different cone than that which I won't say but and I'd give him my answer and he looked back at me and he would shake his hand oh no good and ring the bell then I go in rush back after four hours more I'm sitting it's a cone then I'd say what is the sound of one hand clapping he'd say they'd look at me and say what is the sound of one hand clapping in the minute he asked the co on all rules are off you can do whatever you can to answer it but I thought my Cohen had to do with letting go dying being reborn so I flung myself up in the air and fell down on the ground and died and after lying there for a while I sort of opened my eyes and peeked at him oh you know teacher no good rang the bell not dead either you know then I went in another time trying to answer it badly two percent no good you know and then another time he said oh you ah too much thinking rang the bell over and over and over again and I was getting more and more more frustrated I went it again he said oh yeah yesterday 2% today 1% ring the bell and I started to get very angry like over and over it and he was you know pushing my buttons you teach her come on so I I'm furious and I ran in to see him sitting sitting they ring the bell rush get in line and I thought I am just really pissed and he's a Zen master he should be able to deal with this so I go in and I bow and he looks at me and he says go on and I look at him and I say you Roshi and I put put out his candle with my hand and I grab the bell and I ring it myself and I started marching out quite pleased with myself and I said get me in the door here and say oh no not the answer you know and it was a great moment firstly because Zen allows for everything all right show me your anger here it is all right not quite the answer to your code and see what else you got show me everything I did eventually get an answer to the KO on that satisfied him but in the process it was a kind of letting go of everything I thought who I was letting all the emotions all I let it all spill out and he would just know that I'll go and keep coming until finally I was somehow empty and I could see with the eyes that he had to see the answer to this co-op and so yeah yeah I love the boy well as I mentioned to you before we got on I had had a very insightful podcast with a man named dr. Robert swaboda who had an amazing teacher in India in the seven he's kind of round the time when we were all there and and he wrote these books around the Gauri's and his teacher who was an Agora practitioner and which Tantra is a central part of their practice and the third book was around the law of karma and we did this thing around it and it just stimulated me to to want to discuss with you a little bit around Karma one of the things that he said and I'll quote a few different things and we can just sort of comment on it that that got me Krishna from the Bhagavad tum Krishna said karma is the Guru nay it is the Supreme Lord and this is from the srimad-bhagavatam and and that kind of started our whole conversation off around the import of having awareness of what karma is and its effect in terms of our not in the big philosophical thing karma or in the I'll poke you in the eye and you're gonna poke me back cause you know the the the materialistic cause-and-effect thing but can you just talk a little bit about what in the teachings of certainly Buddhist teachings and just karma and and our experience of the world and what karma is and how we experience it well I'd like to I'd like to talk about it in a very simple way because there's cosmological ways of what is the Karma that you make from one lifetime or birth to another which is not really available to most people to see or know so it would only be a kind of intellectual belief but when he says karma is the Guru what he means is that at least from my sense of it and if beautiful is that we can observe then how we act and move through the world creates the kind of life and world that we will have so that if we treat people angrily and disrespectfully after a while the world is going to get angry and disrespectful back to us and we see it that's what happens if we treat the with love and compassion and kindness and so forth not only do we become that but the world starts to also respond to us in that way and you know the people that you care about who are the most loving or the most caring how you see them how you respond to them how you care about them because it goes both ways so you begin the first thing is that you begin to see that the first verse of the numb autumn the grape this text begins mind and heart is the forerunner of all things and how we tend our heart and mind and and then use that to express ourself creates the kind of life and world that will experience doesn't mean we won't have pleasure and pain and gain and loss but as we go through these things we go through them in completely different ways so that when Nelson Mandela walked out of 27 years in Robben Island prison with so much magnanimity and generosity of heart so much compassion and forgiveness and wisdom they can put your body in prison but no one can imprison your spirit but that spirit that he had changed it so that we're going to change the imagination of the world in some beautiful ways so this is really what karma means that you can see how you are how you tend your heart how you act becomes the way that you move through the world now the world responds to now the beautiful thing is that it's available moment to moment and this is where it's most helpful because the key to karma is intention jatin ah is its word in poly or Sanskrit and so for example if you if a guy gets in his car pulls out of his driveway and crashes through the gate of the next-door neighbor and smash into his living room because he's angry that his neighbor cut down the trees that bordered their property and you know men threw rocks at his dogs and it was it's just a terrible neighbor all these ways then the police will come with their blue lights and card him off and handcuffs and so forth but if a guy pulls out of his driveway crashes through the gate and into the living room the house of the neighbor next door cause his accelerator pedal stuck in the car and he couldn't stop it same guy same car same crash all the physical things are identical but the intention was different you know the guy might be upset whose home it was but he'll come out are you all right were you hurt let's call the ambulance you know let's see what insurance we have the response is entirely different because the intention was different and when you're in a conversation with somebody let's say you're in conflict with a person or it's a difficult conversation or even if you're texting or email it was someone from there his problem if you can take a break take a moment and pause take a few breaths oh and say well what's my best intention or what's my highest intention and very often in that conflict whether it's in your family or work or community or something when you stop and ask that question the answer will come home I want to work this out you know instead of I want to prove that I'm right and so forth that underneath my very best intention is more based on love more based on connection we're based on working things out in some way because we have to live together as creatures and when you feel that then you look at the text you composed or the email or you feel what's about to come out of your mouth and you change the words you realize oh when I send this it's really the way I wrote it it's aggressive on attacking and it's gonna get more of that back but actually I really do want to solve it I want to connect with them let me change those words or even you say what you have to say to that person instead of attacking you can say this is really hard for me you know this really hurts her this scares me in this way and and your whole tone of voice change is talking about the very same problem because your intention has changed so this is really the way that we understand karma moment-to-moment and if you understand that all the rest of karma will take care of itself mm-hmm well what it reminds me too is the idea that well we are constantly creating new karma that's correct moment and yeah we at the same time it's like we can it get it's an opportunity it's an opportunity to change with our future absolutely that's beautiful and quite correct yeah so I think one of the most difficult things around creating karma is is the self identification with actions and reactions most particularly and he said the more strongly we identify with our karmic actions the more closely our experience will conform to the reaction they promise as you just mentioned in that example I think that there's one great concept actually from the book around creating spaciousness and creating a gap that goes a long way to helping move our karma into a positive direction and so maybe talk a little bit about creating the gap in the spaciousness that allows us to make the that little little turn well that was exactly what I was saying that when you can take three breaths or two breaths in a conflict or in a situation that's difficult or dicey or problematic and as you quiet yourself for those moments then you can ask what's what's my best intention what's my highest intention the heart then becomes the guide rather than reactivity or the ideas I'm Kate I'm gonna you know make sure they know I'm right and they're wrong or or whatever it happens to be the ability to take that loving mindful pause is part of what grows as we develop a meditation practice as we walk in the mountains as we quiet the mind and tend the heart in whatever spiritual way we can as we chant or as we do whatever our nourishing spiritual practices that brings us back to our self and then when these things escalate like oh let me take a pause let me take a breath let me listen to my heart might say that I could do it's a response and it's why in a certain way why we practice not to get something or have some special state but actually to be available to life with our heart it's not about self-improvement it's really about being available to love loving ourselves look to others becoming that loving awareness and then the availability of those gaps and those spaces instead of being the doer who's always trying to get things done and finish and conflict and make and so forth we can be as Ramla said in his very first book be here now we can actually be where we are intended tend this life and those people that were with and so forth with a more spacious and loving heart because our identity shifts we're not so much the one who's doing it in conflict where the loving awareness and say alright how do we how do we respond what's the the most the highest or the the you know the Mast intention we have hmm well that just brings up one one interesting thing that is part of this whole dance and that is when we speak about intention we speak about an action that we hope will result in positive Karma's obviously so I think we need to talk a little bit about freewill and fate here well in from your point of view and everything that you've garnished over the garnered over the years how do you how do you see that I'd rather talk about it this way because that gets people saw or some people put some in their heads mm-hm Thomas Merton explained it beautifully the Christian mystic to a somewhat burned out a young activist he said as to do the work for justice as you do the work for the care of humanity or the earth and so forth he said you were your task is to plant beautiful seeds and to be to carefully tenure best intentions so the intention isn't to you know get over on somebody or fight with somebody but it's to really make something yeah he said and then as you do this work sometimes it will succeed sometimes it won't sometimes it might even bring about its opposite this is not up to you more and more what's necessary he went on this for you to simply concentrate on the value the truth and the rightness of the work you do and so again the the beautiful teaching is that you get to plant the seeds of karma but it's not up to you to determine the fruit which is to say you get the simplest way is to act beautifully without attachments to the results because you don't get to choose when the results happen and how there will be there might happen much further down the line it's not up to you but what's up to you is how you carry yourself and what seeds of beauty do you water in this world the new plant and that's really the key to karma and intention hmm beautifully said well we're we're probably out of time here I don't want to take up any more of your time and I do I want to thank you for being here in in this moment for me actually it's a very warm and connective as you always are and any of the time that we've spent together so I appreciate you I really do thank you Raghu and I'm glad to do this and you know thinking about all those who are listening I'm grateful for your attention and for the goodness in you or for the wisdom or for the loving awareness that is your true nature that you can trust and that we're in this all together so it's a pleasure to be part of the podcast thank you Raghu hmm and please everybody no time like the present and there is no time like the present to go and get no time like the present I see here we are no time like the present yeah yeah it's a wonderful book and as I said we can do well we probably will do a few more podcasts around the years yeah so again thank you very much and everybody go to be here now network.com slash mind rolling and you're gonna see links to get the book and links to any of the other things that we've been talking about and highlights and show notes make it easy for everybody to to get in to get a feel for the podcast and we shall see you next week on mine here you

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 11,946

Rating: 4.8036809 out of 5

Keywords: raghu markus, mindrolling, david silver, mind rolling, podcast, mind rolling podcast, mindrolling podcast, spirituality, eastern spirituality, be here now network, be here now, bhnn, meditation podcast, spirituality podcast, love podcast, loving podcast

Id: pFU_4R_FxMA

Length: 59min 58sec (3598 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2018