Ep. 275 – Desire, Love, and Spiritual Passion

Love is in the 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!

“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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.