Jack Kornfield — Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy in the Present | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)

1. 0:00 – 5:56

   Intro

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Optimal minimal At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

   2. JKJack Kornfield0:16

      The Tim Ferriss Show.

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:24

      This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. You might remember Four Sigmatic for their mushroom coffee, which was created by those clever Finnish founders. And when I first mentioned that coffee on this podcast, the product sold out in less than a week. It lights you up like a Christmas tree, which can be really useful. However, recently I've been testing the opposite side of the spectrum, a new product, and that is their reishi mushroom elixir to help me end my day, to get to sleep. As you guys may know, longtime listeners at least, I struggled with insomnia for decades. I've largely fixed that, but still shutting off my monkey brain has never been easy, still isn't easy very often. And I found reishi, which I've been fascinated by for a few years now, has been very, very effective in calming. Their old formula, however, Four Sigmatic's old formula, included stevia, and I like to avoid sweeteners, all sweeteners, for a host of reasons. And I then just pinged them and asked, "Hey guys, I would love to experiment with this and maybe actually suggest it, but I'd like a version without sweeteners if you'd be open to it. If too much of a headache, don't worry." And they are always game for experimentation, and so they created a special custom version without the stevia, without sweeteners. Now it is part of my nightly routine. Their reishi elixir comes in single-serving packets, which are perfect for travel. And in fact, I'm about to leave the country right now, and I have a packet in front of me that's just gonna sit in the end of my carry-on bag. You only need hot water, and it mixes very, very easily. Here's some recommended copy that they put [laughs] in the read. So I'm gonna read it, and then I'll give you my take. Quote, "A warning for those in the experimental mindset. Reishi is strong and bitter, in parentheses, like any great medicine, so if the bitterness is too much, I recommend trying it with honey and/or nut milk such as almond milk." End quote. So I'm gonna say, no, you should suck it up, and you should drink the tea because it's not that bitter, and maybe you should take the advice of old Chinese people when they're criticizing youngins when they say, " 不 能 吃 苦 " which means, "You're not able to eat bitterness." Bitter is, in many cases, an indication of things that help liver detoxification and so on. Not saying that's the case here, but I've tested this reishi elixir on family members, on friends. Everybody has liked it. It's a little bit earthy. It's not that hard. So I would just say suck it up, and no, don't put in honey or nut milk or any of that shit. Just drink the goddamn tea. It's delicious, I think, right? If you like pu-erh, that kind of stuff, that type of tea, you're gonna dig it. So just try it. Okay, back to then my read. If you'd like to naturally improve your sleep, both onset and quality, I think naturally, you might just enjoy this reishi elixir without any sweeteners. It has organic reishi extract, organic fueled mint extract, organic rose hips extract, organic tulsi extract, and that's it. No fancy stuff, no artificial whatchamacallit, anything. So check it out. Go to foursigmatic.com/ferriss and get 20% off this special batch. I don't know if they're gonna be making much more of this, uh, since it was made specifically for you guys. So do me a favor and try it out so that they continue to be open to experimenting with me to create products for you guys specifically. Check it out, Four Sigmatic. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/ferriss, F-E-R-R-I-S-S, and get 20% off this special batch. And, uh, you must use the code FERRISS to receive your discount. F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to foursigmatic.com/ferriss and then use code FERRISS for 20% off of this rare, exclusive, limited run of reishi mushroom elixir for nighttime routines without any sweeteners. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Man, oh man, do a lot of listeners of this podcast and readers of mine love FreshBooks, to the extent that I ended up meeting with the CEO not very long ago. Why are they so popular? Well, they are the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals, that's many of you, and used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time, and get paid very, very quickly, which suits the needs of a lot of freelancers, a lot of entrepreneurs and beyond. You can take pictures of receipts. You can link your credit card and debit card, so all the things you buy automatically appear in your FreshBooks in the right category. So on and so forth. Makes taxes easy, makes invoices easy, makes your life easier. And also, in fact, I would recommend a PDF. Uh, they didn't ask me to read this part, by the way. They put together a PDF a while back, uh, called Breaking the Time Barrier, subtitle, How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential. So you can search for Breaking the Time Barrier. A lot of people ask me, "How can I get a 4-hour work week with a service business?" And the story in that e-book, it's a PDF, is the short answer. It's really, really good. So I think you should also check that out. So Breaking the Time Barrier, check it out. But also, why not test out FreshBooks? Claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com/tim and enter Tim Ferriss, two Rs and two Ss, in the how did you hear about us section. That sounds [laughs] like we're gonna get very little tracking. That's a lot of work. But just go to freshbooks.com/tim and try it out because it is a very good product, and I

2. 5:56 – 8:55

   Jack Kornfield’s background and why this conversation matters to Tim

   1. TFTim Ferriss5:56

      think you will find it simplifies your life. Enjoy. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job every episode to deconstruct world-class performers, people who are excellent, if not the best, at what they do in many, many, many different fields. And that scratchiness is Tim Ferriss coming off of antibiotics [clears throat] because I had some little gremlins inside me that I brought back from the Amazon. That's a separate story. In any case, my job, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, deconstruct, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, many fields. And this particular episode, we have a wonderful guest, Jack Kornfield. Alice Walker calls Jack, quote, "One of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time," end quote. Jack trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, shortly thereafter becoming one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974. That's before I was even a glimmer in my papa's eye. So he's been teaching for a very, very long time, and he has had a profound and direct impact directly on my life. So I'm thrilled to finally have him on the podcast to share our shared history, his incredible stories, and the practical tactics and very detailed techniques that you can use, and we dig into all of that. And you can also say hi to him on the internet at Jack Kornfield on Twitter. Check it out. Jack's history, just a little bit, won't spend too much time on it. Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg, who's also been on this podcast, and Joseph Goldstein, and later the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California, which is where I did my first silent retreat, and we talk about that. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology, which is important to me and comes into this conversation because he has a very, very diverse toolkit for dealing with many different types of personal challenges, issues, questions, and so on, and is a father, husband, and activist. His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies. He is prolific. His books include, and I polled some of you for your favorites, A Wise Heart, that's number one, A Lamp in the Darkness, A Path with Heart, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, one of my favorite book titles of all time, and his most recent book, No Time Like the Present, subtitle, Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are. He is quite possibly the most purely compassionate human being I've ever interacted with, and compassion isn't a word that I use very much. But Jack is unique, and I'm thrilled to give you a window into his story and his teachings. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Jack Kornfield. [static] Jack, welcome to the show.

   2. JKJack Kornfield8:52

      Oh, thank you, Tim. Pleasure to reconnect.

3. 8:55 – 12:12

   Paragliding, flying dreams, and staying adventurous at 72

   1. TFTim Ferriss8:55

      I have wanted to have you on the show for some time now, and you've had certainly a, a tremendous impact on my life, uh, both through your writing and through, uh, firsthand in-person interaction, which I think we'll touch upon. But first, I wanted to ask you a complete non-sequitur from that, which is something that our mutual friend Adam Gazzaley suggested I ask you about. And Adam, for people who don't know him, is an incredible, uh, PhD, MD neuroscientist based at UCSF. And he suggested that I ask you about hang gliding, and I have no idea why he suggested that, but I'm gonna start there, and if it d- doesn't go anywhere, we can, we can change direction. But I figured we would just start with that, and then we're gonna rewind the clock. But why did he suggest I ask you about hang gliding?

   2. JKJack Kornfield9:50

      Well, it started, um, many years ago when I cross-country with a friend who had a hang glider, and we would stop periodically and go off different hills. Um, and it was fantastic. And then I wanted to do paragliding and started to learn it now because everything is developed, and paragliding's a lot, you know, is a lot more official. You need a license, which I don't have. But one of my favorite things is to tandem paraglide and go off the top of places like Grindelwald in, uh, um, uh, in Switzerland, where you can take the ski lift up to 9,000 feet and then jump off and float silently like you're a bird among the clouds. The birds actually do come by sometimes and, like, check out, "What's this big bird flying up here?" You can catch thermals and go way up above the glaciers, and, um, it's one of the most thrilling and delicious experiences that I know.

   3. TFTim Ferriss10:52

      [laughs] That's incredible. So you've, you first experienced that at what age? And-

   4. JKJack Kornfield10:58

      Uh, probably in my tw- you know, late 20s, um, and did some, and then sort of put it aside. Uh, and then I was traveling and teaching in Europe, um, and I saw a sign for, um, paragliding, and I said, "Oh, gosh, I really wanna do it," um, and started. And now each time I go where there's high mountains and paragliding, that's one of my things that I love doing. You know, there's something about, uh, uh, I've had... Most people have these dreams once in a while, if you're lucky, a dream of flying, or maybe in your meditation you have this sense of not being limited to your body. Um, and, and this is the closest thing that I know, 'cause it's absolutely silent, and you're floating there. It's quite fantastic.

   5. TFTim Ferriss11:44

      [laughs] And this is something you still do?

   6. JKJack Kornfield11:46

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TFTim Ferriss11:47

      And how-

   8. JKJack Kornfield11:47

      And hope to do it, and hope to do it next summer when I'm back in the Alps.

   9. TFTim Ferriss11:51

      And how, how old are you now?

   10. JKJack Kornfield11:54

       72.

   11. TFTim Ferriss11:54

       72. Good man. Well, we're gonna then go back a bit in chronology and ask about childhood. I would love f- to hear you describe your childhood. What were you like as a child? What was your upbringing like?

4. 12:12 – 17:48

   A volatile childhood: abuse, instability, and becoming the family peacemaker

   1. JKJack Kornfield12:12

      Well, first thing to say is I remember when I got to Dartmouth College in 1963, um, and I called my mom from the payphone in the dorm sometime in that fall. I didn't call very often, but you know how it is.

   2. SPSpeaker12:27

      [laughs]

   3. JKJack Kornfield12:28

      And I said, "Mom." I said, "Guess what? There are a lot of other really fucked up families beside ours." [laughs]

   4. SPSpeaker12:37

      [laughs]

   5. JKJack Kornfield12:38

      So that's kind of where we s- where we, where we start.

   6. SPSpeaker12:41

      [laughs]

   7. JKJack Kornfield12:41

      So, uh, there, uh... Yeah. I had three, three brothers, um, and my father was a, a mixture of a, um, tyrant and then a really abusive person, and a brilliant guy. Um, I was born on, in, on a Marine base in, uh, toward the end of World War II, and they didn't send him overseas to do... They put him in the medical part of the Marines because he tested so high on their tests that they, you know, "Okay, we're gonna use him for something." Um, so he was brilliant in certain ways. He was a biophysicist who, uh, helped design some of the first artificial hearts and lungs, worked on the space program, but also did other kinds of weird stuff like work for the Army, um, biological weapons people. Not making biological weapons, but trying to design things that were kind of computer, um, biological interfaces, all kinds of creative stuff.

   8. SPSpeaker13:45

      Hmm.

   9. JKJack Kornfield13:45

      But he was, uh, he was all... He had mental problems, and so we didn't know when the car pulled in whether we were gonna get Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. He would come in and, you know, either [clears throat] he could shout, be abusive, throw my mother down the stairs, rant, ch- chase after us, try to hit us, whatever, or we'd get this interesting, creative person. But we hardly ever had people come over when he was around during the daytime. It was a way we would, um... because you never knew what you would get. And so, um, our family life, and my family life in some way was also, there were great parts of it 'cause I had my brothers and we were like our own gang. We moved all the time, but we had each other. Um, and because he was s- uh, wacky as well as smart, my father either quit or got fired every year or two, and then we would go from one place to another. I went to, I don't know, eight schools by the time I finished high school. Um, so my childhood, uh, partly it was there were the, the happy things of roughhousing and being a boy with, with three other boys. Um, uh, and adventures. Um, and then in the basement, my father had all kinds of scientific equipment. He had all this stuff from World War II, this huge radio from a battleship that you could tune into 1,000 different, you know, shortwave stations around the world, um, and projects he was trying to design stuff, and so we learned from him. You could pretty much take or design or do anything the, in the physical world. Um, a- and at the same time, uh, I felt like my whole childhood was also, uh, how to say it? Um, colored with the fear of his, um, violence and his u- unpredictability. Um, so, and I became kind of a peacemaker in the family. We all sort of had our roles, and n- now I do it as a profession, right? Um, trying to kind of make it a little smoother between my parents so that they didn't kill each other. Um, and m- each of my brothers had their own strategy. My twin brother, who was a lot bigger, um, and much more outgoing, um, played football, which I certainly didn't. I was skinnier and, you know, I was in the orchestra, and he was the football player. But anyway, I remember when he first got in a, um, fistfight with my dad 'cause my father was abusing, um, our mom. And, um, the, my twin brother had been, as young men sometimes do, he was probably 13, 14, and he grew pretty big, and he was looking in the mirror, you know, making muscles in the mirror to see how strong he'd become. Anyway, he just, you know, s- uh, got into a fistfight with my father, um, and I was both thrilled and terrified. Um, and, uh, but it worked in some way because the abuse, uh, settled down quite a lot after that. So that was his, his strategy was just to get angry, and then later kind of to go his own way somewhat more, although we're all s- a- all have been very close as brothers. Um, so there was that. A- at the same time, there was a lot of interest, intellectual interest, so we read and learned about all kinds of things. Both my parents were, um, really interested in the world around us, and, um, uh, so it was sort of this mixed, uh, thing of the, you know, the gift of being together with my brothers and a mom who was basically pretty nurturing, although she kept trying to leave the, him, and never got it together. I think it was too scary in the '50s to have four boys, you know, no job. Um, and so we were in, in the middle of this. And the kind of healing

5. 17:48 – 20:50

   First deep healing in the forest monastery: meeting anger rather than suppressing it

   1. JKJack Kornfield17:48

      that it took, it took a long time, um, to do the inner healing work from, um, the pain of my family. Um, and I remember when I became a Buddhist monk, and I was sitting these first years with my teacher, Ajahn Chah, in the forest monasteries of Thailand, on the border of Thailand and Laos. Um, and I'm sitting quietly, and then some of these m- memories or energy would come where I remember one monk who had a hut near mine in the forest did something that annoyed me, and I just got enraged inside.

   2. TFTim Ferriss18:27

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JKJack Kornfield18:28

      And, and I sat, and then I went to the teacher and I said, "You know, um, I'm really getting angry here."

   4. TFTim Ferriss18:35

      [laughs]

   5. JKJack Kornfield18:36

      And, uh, he smiled. He said, "Yeah? Um, where, where do you think that comes from?" Or something like that.

   6. TFTim Ferriss18:42

      [laughs]

   7. JKJack Kornfield18:42

      And I said, "Well, I don't know." I said, "I thought I was a peaceful guy. I was never gonna be like my father. I won't, you know, I'll be peaceful." But it turned out I'd just stuffed all that stuff, and so when I told it, my teacher about it, he said, "Good." He said, "Go back in your hut. It's the hot season. You got a little tin roof, and close the doors and windows, and put all your robes on, and if you're gonna be angry, do it right. Sit in the middle of that, you know, and sit in the middle of the fire, and don't be so afraid of it, 'cause if you're afraid of it, you're just gonna keep stuffing it. And on the other hand... or if you're afraid of it, it'll just explode. There's another way to be with it." Um, and so that was the beginning of some healing, just to realize that I could actually tolerate the suffering, um, and the energy that was in my, still carried from trauma in my body and heart.

   8. TFTim Ferriss19:30

      So we're gonna absolutely come back to Ajahn Chah, because I have many questions on that chapter in your life. But just, just so that I can create the proper visual in my own head, so you sat there in your hut in the sweltering heat with all of your robes on.

   9. JKJack Kornfield19:47

      Mm-hmm.

   10. TFTim Ferriss19:47

       Were you, were you angry in silence? Were you yelling? W- what did-

   11. JKJack Kornfield19:51

       I was, I was pretty much angry in silence, and that's an interesting question. Yeah, I, you know, in the monastery, the, the culture was not, was not much that you would yell. You could go somewhere-

   12. TFTim Ferriss20:01

       [laughs]

   13. JKJack Kornfield20:01

       ... out in the forest and yell, but it was, it, it wasn't decorous or something. People went, "What the hell is wrong with that monk?" Um, so mostly, uh, I was sitting in silence, and then scenes would come, and I would realize, "Wow," you know? "I thought I was peaceful. I carry every, in every cell of my body, I also carry both the pain and anger of my childhood and my father, and just the, the anger that comes with being a human being, a human incarnation." And I was never gonna have that, but of course, there it was. Um, and it lasted, you know, this was, I had days of, and, and actually, um, much longer, weeks or months of waves of, of this coming, um, and learning how to, you know, be present for it and not get overwhelmed by it.

6. 20:50 – 24:27

   From pre-med to Asian philosophy: discovering an end to suffering

   1. TFTim Ferriss20:50

      S- so I want to backtrack and then connect those dots, so between childhood and ending up in Thailand. Uh, you mentioned Dartmouth earlier, and from what I've read at least, you were initially pre-med and then ended up Asian studies. Could you describe that experience in Dartmouth or how you went from pre-med to Asian studies?

   2. JKJack Kornfield21:15

      Well, you know, we all get turned in these mysterious ways in our life. We think we're going one direction, and then something happens unexpectedly, and a gateway opens. So I was coming from an organic chemistry class to the class that I'd signed up for out of interest on Asian studies, uh, or Asian philosophy or something, and it was an old professor, um, Dr. Winksit Chan, who'd come up from Harvard. He was kind of emeritus there. Um, and he even sat cross-legged sometimes, you know, in the front of the room, and would talk about Lao Tzu and Daoism, and they'd talk about, uh, Buddhist teachings and how the Buddha taught suffering, um, and its causes and its end. And that really, I, all of a sudden I sat up. I said, "There's an end to suffering? There's a way to d-" And he said, "Oh, there's all these teachings and practices where you can transform your heart and mind." And I became thrilled about it, and realized that whatever impulse I had to go to medical school, um, probably part of it came from wanting to heal myself. Um-

   3. TFTim Ferriss22:32

      Mm-hmm

   4. JKJack Kornfield22:32

      ... and so I started to take more and more courses, and then it was a, it was the '60s, and I became a card-carrying hippie. Um-

   5. TFTim Ferriss22:40

      [laughs]

   6. JKJack Kornfield22:41

      ... a card-carrying, LSD-taking hippie, as a matter of fact. And, um, uh, at the end of, i- in, yeah, when I was g- getting ready to graduate, there was still the draft, and I thought, "Well, I, I definitely don't want to go over and kill people in a war that I, that I'd been protesting a- protesting against." Um, so I decided to go into the Peace Corps instead, and asked them to send me to a Buddhist country where maybe I could find a, one of those old Zen masters that you read about, um, and got assigned to Thailand. Um, and when I got there, um, people, you could kind of request where you went, and they, and, and I said, "Send me to the most remote place you can." I wanted adventure, but I also wanted to kind of, reading all those old Zen stories, I wanted to see if that, that still existed. So, um, you know, and there were little detours, like being in Haight Ashbury in the Summer of Love and things like that, that definitely, um, [sighs] th- it changed my life also in a very deep way, um, because for, at least for a time, there was a window when people were just giving things away. There was such a sense that the world could be transformed. Um, some of it, as we know, very, very naive. But on the other hand, it also felt like a greater sense of brotherhood and sisterhood than I had ever known, um, um, except with my own brothers, who I love a lot, and we've done a lot of things together. And I started to feel like there are other ways for me and for the world to be and live, um, and that was, that was also very, um, wonderful.

7. 24:27 – 38:45

   Psychedelics, intention, and waking up from “automatic” life

   1. TFTim Ferriss24:27

      You mentioned, you mentioned a three-letter acronym that we're probably not gonna spend too, too much time on, but I, I, you and I, [laughs] you and I have had quite a number of conversations where I've wanted to ask you about some of your experiences, uh, with psychedelics, including LSD, but we've never really gotten into it, so I figure why not do it in front of a few million people? Um, the, the LSD at that point, your experiences with that, did that inform your decisions at all to then go into the Peace Corps and end up in-

   2. JKJack Kornfield25:01

      It did

   3. TFTim Ferriss25:01

      ... a remote area?

   4. JKJack Kornfield25:02

      It did, and I've written a little bit about it in, in a couple different of my books, uh, chapters in my, in the books I've written because, um, th- th- the m- most of Buddhist teachers and Hindu teachers of my generation, um, also started with psychedelics. You know, myself and almost all my colleagues, um, you know, in the spiritual industry that I'm in, um, that was a beginning. And for me, um, it showed an incredible possibility that all is created out of consciousness, um, and the possibilities of inner freedom and, or basically I was able, at the, at the best of it, to see my body and my personality, um, and my history and realize that that's not who I am. To become much more the conscious witness of it all, to see, yes, birth and death, and to go through those kind of, um, uh, death, rebirth experiences that can happen, um, at times in a deep session with LSD, um, or death of ego or sense of self or removing and realizing, wow, there's a freedom and a, and a life force that's what we're made of. Um, and that profoundly influenced my interest in spirituality and also interest in what the world can be. Now, um, just a few days ago, I was on, um, Maui with my beloved wife, Trudy, um, and we were visiting, spending time with Ram Dass, who, um, for listeners that don't know, was, um, the author of this bestseller in the '60s called Be Here Now, and now he's, uh, 86 and in a wheelchair. Um, but Ram Dass, who'd been at Harvard University and was one of the early explorers of LSD before he went to India and became a spiritual teacher, um, uh, r- in the living room wh- while we were there two days ago, um, Roland Fisher, who is one of the senior professors and psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins University Medical School-

   5. TFTim Ferriss27:13

      Oh, Roland, Roland Griffiths

   6. JKJack Kornfield27:14

      ... Roland, Roland Griffiths rather.

   7. TFTim Ferriss27:16

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JKJack Kornfield27:16

      And Roland, excuse me, Roland Griffiths, and Roland, um, laid out all the research that's happening now on psilocybin that he's been doing, um, and its success for people, terminal cancer patients, all losing a great deal of their, the fears that they had, um, uh, working with people with, um, severe depression. Um, and it was a beautiful session because you could hear how these sacred substances and these mind-altering substances, when they're used in the right context, can really transform human beings. Um, and NYU, Johns Hopkins, there's a whole series of, uh, studies that are happening now that are finally bringing it back into the mainstream.

   9. TFTim Ferriss28:08

      S- so I'd love to underscore just a few things that you mentioned. Uh, number one, uh, Ram Dass, for those people who want to do additional reading, formerly known as Richard Alpert, if I'm getting that right.

   10. JKJack Kornfield28:20

       Yeah.

   11. TFTim Ferriss28:20

       Uh, also has a fascinating story coming full circle with psychedelic research, beginning, I guess, at Harvard in some respects. Uh, so it makes sense to me why Roland's research would be mo- so meaningful to him. Uh, and a number of other just, just quick comments for people. Uh, number one is if you're interested in, in looking into these psilocybin, which is, uh, considered the active, psychoactive, uh, ingredient in m- magic mushrooms, uh, at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere, I've actually been involved with, uh, crowdfunding and funding myself some of the research related to, uh, treatment-resistant depression, uh, at Johns Hopkins with Roland Griffiths as the senior investigator. Uh, and I'll be posting some updates to that, but fascinating work looking at everything from... And this is also, as you mentioned, NYU and at other very well-regarded universities, um, alcohol addiction, nicotine/tobacco addiction, as you mentioned, uh, end-of-life anxiety in cancer patients. The implications are, are, are really profound and the data very, very promising. And I, I wanted to also mention to folks who are perhaps saying to themselves, "Well, I'm not interested in taking ps- psychedelics myself," that there are people I know, good friends of mine, who do not currently use psychedelics, but had the ego-dissolving, uh, experience of a non-ordinary reality through psychedelics that then led them to become, uh, or contributed to them becoming very, very dil- uh, diligent meditators. Uh, s- and, uh, Sam Harris, who's a PhD in neuroscience, uh, and thought of or very well known as, uh, an, a- an atheist, uh, or, you know, one of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse, [laughs]

   12. JKJack Kornfield30:19

       Yes

   13. TFTim Ferriss30:19

       ... uh, along with Richard Dawkins and others, uh, is a very close friend and extremely diligent meditator, and he's, he's written about how his psychedelic experiences, which were in some respects very, some of them uncontrolled, and you really have a coin flip there, uh, as, as terms of which direction you can go, but showed him possibilities within his own mind that then led to a, a very, very, um, I'm not gonna call it devout, [laughs] although I should just to bother him maybe.

   14. JKJack Kornfield30:47

       Oh.

   15. TFTim Ferriss30:47

       Diligent practice. So I, I don't wanna take us too far off the rails, but- You go to Southeast Asia-

   16. JKJack Kornfield30:56

       Well, I went, I maybe just wanna say one more thing-

   17. TFTim Ferriss30:58

       Oh, sure

   18. JKJack Kornfield30:58

       ... before we move on, um, because we are talking about this. It turns out, for those who are listening, that set and setting and intention are extremely important if one uses these, you know, psychedelics like psilocybin or something. To set the intention to learn, to open, to have a quiet, it's not, not as a party experience-

   19. TFTim Ferriss31:19

       Absolutely. Mm-hmm

   20. JKJack Kornfield31:20

       ... um, makes, m- m- you know, s- s- s- brings your attention inward, and then all the kind of discoveries, um, become right in front of your, uh, right in front of you. Um, the, but the other thing is that whether it's right for somebody to use psychedelics or to use meditation, these are all, uh, invitations to step back and see the mystery of your life because we tend to live in the, you know, daily minutia and checking off our list of, um, tasks that we have to do and completing them, our work or, or, you know, or eating or all the kind of things that make up a day, and we go onto automatic. Um, and whether it's meditation and difference or other spiritual disciplines, or for some people it also can just be that they have what in Greek is called a katabasa, blow. You know, somebody close to them gets cancer or, or is dying, or they have some accident or something, and all of a sudden you step back and you realize, "Whoa, life is uncertain the way I've been taking it, and it's not just, um, checking off the list. This is a mystery human incarnation, and what am I gonna do with it? And wow, look at this. How did I get in this body? Look at plants and trees and, and, um, language, the air coming out of your mouth that you shape it different ways and it vibrates a little drum in the ear of someone else, and I can say Golden Gate Bridge and they can envision it." And you start to realize that all of it is alive and made of consciousness, and then the whole sense of who you are and what matters begins to shift, and you start to realize that life is not just getting through the hoops, but it actually also can be a celebration of the heart, of something that you have to bring to the world that you come out of life. And my friend Malidoma Somé, who's a West African shaman and medicine man, also two PhDs, a kind of remarkable guy, um, he says with the Dogra people in West Africa f- that he's from, that, um, they say that every child comes into the world, uh, with a certain cargo, is their metaphor, like the cargo ships that ply the rivers of West Africa, and that, that they're given gifts to bring into the world, and that we have gifts to bring to this mystery which include opening to it. And as we do, love grows, connection grows, and, and a whole different way of being in the world happens that we need, um, so much at this time. So that's a little interlude there before we move on to the ne- your next question.

   21. TFTim Ferriss34:12

       I welcome as many interludes as you would like to interject, and I wanted to just ask you to say one more time that it was, I believe, Greek word for-

   22. JKJack Kornfield34:22

       Katabasa, which means a blow. It's like something comes and it just sets your life spinning in an entirely different direction.

   23. TFTim Ferriss34:29

       Right, like a catalyzing event, and that, that's something-

   24. JKJack Kornfield34:31

       Exactly

   25. TFTim Ferriss34:32

       ... I've, I've had a few of those recently that I'd like to selfishly ask you about later, but so I can bookmark, just so I can bookmark this name, uh, s- uh, Stanislav Grof, if I'm saying that correctly.

   26. JKJack Kornfield34:44

       Yes. That's correct.

   27. TFTim Ferriss34:45

       When, just when did you meet him roughly? What age or what date, just so I can come back to it, because this is another thing I've been meaning to ask you about for a long time and get into, but I haven't had the chance.

   28. JKJack Kornfield34:57

       So I had... There's two things, um, to, to say. Um, when I came back from the monastery, and now it's, you know, I guess the year that I connected with Stan was maybe 1973, I made two really important connections. I came back and started a psychology in graduate school. Um, it was in Boston. Um, and the first really important connection happened when I went to a meeting of the s- Massachusetts Psychological Association, and there was this guy who looked like he'd... He didn't look just like the straight psychologist, and it turned out he'd just come back from India not long before, named Dan Goleman, um, who was a, who was a graduate student at Harvard, and he'd projected on the screen this Tibetan wheel of birth and death that you see in the Tibetan thangkas that, that normally would be taken as some kind of primitive, um, icon, iconic, uh, you know, symbol. And he said, "No, no, no, this is a psychological diagram. The Buddha was actually more than anything else, um, he was, uh, a scientist of the mind and a, a s- a, a profound psychologist, and here is how craving turns into contentment, and here's how aggression can be transformed into powerful energy to heal yourself and others." And he was going through this diagram, and I went and I talked to him, and he said, "Oh, you, you've come back from monastery. You've got to come over." Um, and so he took me to David McClelland, who had been the chairman of the Social Science and Psychology department at Harvard at that time, the one who hired Tim Leary and Ram Dass, and then later had to fire them for their LSD work. Um, and his house, he and his wife Mary were Quakers, his home was a kind of soiree- Um, where Ram Dass and Tibetan Lamas like Chogyam Trungpa and I think Krishnamurti and various spiritual figures would come. Um, people were going to India and coming back. Um, and, and, um, I connected with this whole group of folks who've now been friends for 45 years. Um, Richie Davidson was another that I met there, who's now one of the preeminent neuroscientists in the world on studying contemplative neuroscience and, um, affective emotional neuroscience. It was a whole collective of people. Dan Goleman, who wrote Emotional Intelligence, that sold 10 million copies, and, um, many others. And then I got a job working for, uh, an Esalen-like growth center in Boston at that time, 'cause I was excited at all the new Gestalt bioenergetics, what are the things that are transformative here. Um, and they asked me to help set up programs, and I thought, "Well, who do I wanna, uh, who do I wanna meet?" So I set up a program with John Lilly, and I set up a program with Stan Grof, who was still at Johns Hopkins, and married at that time, just married to Joan Halifax, Joan Grof, and we became friends. And so we have, Stan and I have now worked together for 45 years. I went out to join him at Esalen for many, many years, spending many months together, helping during his development of the holotropic breathwork that's, uh, this powerful breath transformation, and, um, he has been, uh, a partner and a, and a, and a heart friend for, um, exploration, and we've traveled and we've taught in Russia and in, you know, places in Europe and, um, various places around the world.

8. 38:45 – 42:53

   Meeting Ajahn Chah: ordaining, forest training, and “I hope you’re not afraid to suffer”

   1. TFTim Ferriss38:45

      So this is, this is definitely a path that we're gonna come down and dig further into, but I, I'm gonna steer us to, uh, Ajahn Chah, because I wanna know how do you land with the Peace Corps in a remo- remote, well, what most people would consider a remote corner of the world, and end up finding a living master? How does that, how does that actually happen? I, I don't know, I, but I assume you didn't speak Thai at the time. [laughs]

   2. JKJack Kornfield39:17

      I did, actually-

   3. TFTim Ferriss39:18

      You did

   4. JKJack Kornfield39:19

      ... because the Peace Corps-

   5. TFTim Ferriss39:20

      All right. I didn't know that

   6. JKJack Kornfield39:21

      ... and then I had to learn Lao. I did because the Peace Corps at that time, it was very early in the Peace Corps, had really good language training. They borrowed it from the Monterey Language Institute. So, you know, initially I didn't speak that well, but, um, because I'd also studied Chinese at Dartmouth, [clears throat] it came more easily. Um, and I was there working in these, um, in the health, rural health department on tropical medicine teams, mostly malaria, but also typhoid, and teams going out to different villages and taking, drawing blood and, um, giving out medicine and things like that. And then somebody said, "There's a, there's a Western monk in this province we heard about. Um, do you wanna meet him?" I said, "Of course I do." So I, I went to this little mountain and, and walked up 2,000 steps to the old Cambodian temple ruin at the top, and there was this very interesting guy, um, who had just finished, a couple years before, the first Peace Corps, I think, in Borneo, and then got interested in Buddhism and come and ordained as a monk, and I talk with him. He's now, he's named Ajahn Sumedho, is his, um, monk's name, 'cause he's still a monk, and he became quite famous in Thailand and then became the abbot of a temple in, in England. Um, and I've, I became friends with him. And he said, "Oh, I found, I found a really fine teacher." He said, "You know, a lot of them, they kind of take you, you're a Westerner, and they treat you special." He said, "This guy doesn't treat you any differently than anyone else. He just wants you to do the work, you know, and learn the, learn, learn the deepest way you can, and he's in this forest jungle." And I said, "I'm going there." So having heard that, I went and I visited Ajahn Chah, and he was a little bit like the Dalai Lama. He was funny and wise and very warm-hearted, but also very strict and very demanding, but he did it in this loving way. Um, and I thought, "Okay, this is the real deal. This guy looks like, uh, like what I was reading about in all those Zen stories."

   7. TFTim Ferriss41:35

      [laughs] So I've, I've read that he said to you, and, uh, I'd love for you to tell us when he said this to you, "I hope you're not afraid to suffer." Uh, if that's true, when did he say that, and why did he say that?

   8. JKJack Kornfield41:52

      He, uh, so I visited him a number of times and told him I was gonna become a monk, and then I ordained in the village where I was living in the Peace Corps. People wanted me to do that. It was a beautiful ritual. And then after some days, um, made my way down to his temple, and he said, that's, that was his opening gambit.

   9. TFTim Ferriss42:13

      [laughs]

   10. JKJack Kornfield42:14

       I'm walking in, into the gates, and I see him, I bow. I say, "I'm here." And he looks at me, you know, kind of leans back a little, a little skeptically. He said, "All right. I hope you're not afraid to suffer. Welcome." And it was-

   11. TFTim Ferriss42:28

       [laughs]

   12. JKJack Kornfield42:29

       ... it was a, it was like, you know, you didn't come here just to kind of do some interesting, cool anthropological s- experiment or something like that. If you're gonna do it, we're gonna put you through the training.

   13. TFTim Ferriss42:42

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JKJack Kornfield42:42

       Um, and, and, and he did, but he, you know, there was, like, this little smile as he said it, like, "Okay, you, are you up for it? All right, dude, come on in."

   15. TFTim Ferriss42:52

       [laughs]

9. 42:53 – 50:35

   Monastic intensity: 3:30 a.m. bells, one meal a day, cobras, pain, and charnel ground practice

   1. TFTim Ferriss42:53

      W- uh, what did, what did the training cons- consist of? What were, what were some of the first things that you had to do, and then what, what was this suffering that he alluded to? What were some exam-

   2. JKJack Kornfield43:03

      Well, the-

   3. TFTim Ferriss43:04

      Give me some examples

   4. JKJack Kornfield43:06

      Um, okay. So of course the, the first training was just how to walk around and not have my robe, you know, fall on the ground and embarrass me and everyone. Oh, there comes ... So they all loved it. Oh, yeah. Right. Look at the Westerner. He's-

   5. TFTim Ferriss43:17

      [laughs]

   6. JKJack Kornfield43:18

      He can't even chew gum and wear his robes right or whatever.

   7. TFTim Ferriss43:22

      [laughs]

   8. JKJack Kornfield43:22

      So part of it was just the unfamiliarity of it culturally and otherwise.

   9. TFTim Ferriss43:27

      Right. [laughs]

   10. JKJack Kornfield43:28

       Um, uh, there were the, there were the two kinds of suffering. The big suffering, of course, was being alone with my own mind. I mean, [laughs] there you go. You know? Having to do hours of meditation, um, when I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Um, and then as I talked about with anger or fear or confusion or, you know, all those kind of states, um, learning to deal in a very conscious and mindful way, and then more importantly, in a compassionate way, in a kind and loving way with all the energies that make up our, my humanity and our humanity. Um, and that means when you sit and you get quiet, anything unfinished in your heart will also come up, all the unfinished business. So, you know, um, relationships that I'd had that ended badly in college or, or, um, certainly stuff from my childhood and family, um, dreams that I carried, things fulfilled and not, all that comes up. It's, um, yeah, my friend Annie Lamott, humorist and writer, says, "My mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try not to go there alone."

   11. TFTim Ferriss44:40

       [laughs]

   12. JKJack Kornfield44:41

       Um, and there's some way in which, um, in community, sitting together with others in meditation, and then sitting in my hut, um, it was really facing myself and my full humanity. That was the, that was probably the mo- most difficult thing. 'Cause then you get insanely bored or insanely restless or, and then how do you deal with all those energies? Normally, when we're restless or bored, you know, what do we do? We, you know, um, open the refrigerator or, you know, go online or something 'cause we can't be with our own loneliness-

   13. TFTim Ferriss45:12

       Hmm

   14. JKJack Kornfield45:13

       ... or our own fear. Um, so that was the inner, and then there's the outer ones.

   15. TFTim Ferriss45:19

       What are the-

   16. JKJack Kornfield45:19

       And the outer one-

   17. TFTim Ferriss45:20

       Yeah, the outer suffering

   18. JKJack Kornfield45:21

       ... outer ones were things like, hmm, uh, getting up, the, the bell would ring at 3:30 in the morning and, and I'm not an early riser by nature. I go, "Oh, God. Here we go." Then we walk through ... It was actually very beautiful. Then we'd walk through the forest at night, either by moonlight or sometimes you'd have a tiny little flashlight. Um, and in one of the forest monasteries where there were a lot of cobras, we'd have a little stick, and you'd tap the path so that the snakes would know you or feel you coming and move out of the way. You wouldn't step on them. Um, and then we would sit, uh, silently for a couple of hours, and then do an hour of chanting on a hard stone floor, mind you, where everybody else seemed comfortable, and my body was killing me. Um, and then at least once a week, we would sit up all night with the teacher, and he would sit there comfortably meditating, maybe talking with another colleague that would come, and we'd just be sitting and meditating, and he would kind of peek over at us like, "How are you doing?" I'd go, "God, it's been four hours. When are we, when is he gonna let us go back to sleep?" And he didn't. You know? So sitting up all night, um, it got very cold in the cold season, um, and it got insanely hot in the hot season. Um, and somehow learning to live extremely simply with a set of sandals and a set of robes and an alms bowl, and then you would eat what you got offered in the village, and we would share it in that monastery with others, uh, around us. Um, and sometimes you'd get nice food, and a lot of times in the dry season, you'd get really, really skimpy food, and there wasn't that much to eat. Um, and so picture a day where you get up at 3:30 in the morning, you know, um, you sit for a couple of hours in meditation and do long, uh, then an hour-long chanting on a stone floor. Then it's getting dawn, and you walk barefoot, you know, three miles, five miles, 10 miles with a alms bowl and a handful of other monks, and get your food and come back, whatever you've been offered, and that's the food for the day. Um, and then you go back to your meditation or to the work of the monastery of sewing robes or drawing water from the well. Um, and it's, you know, muggy and 105 degrees hot season. Um, and, uh, then you go back and you join in the community for more meditation, and then the teacher smiles and say, "How are you doing?" You know? Um, a- and then other kinds of practices, for example, we had a charnel ground there, and so there w-

   19. TFTim Ferriss48:07

       I'm sorry. A what, a what ground?

   20. JKJack Kornfield48:08

       A, a charnel ground, which is where, a cremation ground where people, bodies would be burned, and so on occasion would go to a cremation and then sit up all night and contemplate death.

   21. TFTim Ferriss48:23

       Hmm.

   22. JKJack Kornfield48:24

       Um, and, you know, look at the body and then watch as it burned, and then do these meditations where you would reflect on, well, this is gonna happen to the body that you're inhabiting as well. Who do you think you are? Do you think you're this physical body made of, you know, hamburgers or, you know-

   23. TFTim Ferriss48:41

       [laughs]

   24. JKJack Kornfield48:42

       ... lettuce or whatever you happen to eat? Is that your ... Are you hamburgers and lettuce?

   25. TFTim Ferriss48:46

       [laughs]

   26. JKJack Kornfield48:46

       You know? Or, or are you your feelings or are you your thoughts? Who are you really born into this body?

   27. TFTim Ferriss48:55

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JKJack Kornfield48:55

       Um, like koans.

   29. TFTim Ferriss48:57

       Mm-hmm.

   30. JKJack Kornfield48:58

       Um, so anyways.
10. 50:35 – 1:02:46

    500 days of silence and unusual states: out-of-body experience and the ‘movies on the screen’ lesson

    1. TFTim Ferriss50:35

       Ex- exotic mystery meat. [laughs] What was the, what was the longest period of time that you spent in silence during that time in Thailand?

    2. JKJack Kornfield50:43

       Well, then I went to a Burmese monastery 'cause I wanted to do this very intense meditative training, and I spent about 500 days, so-

    3. TFTim Ferriss50:53

       [laughs]

    4. JKJack Kornfield50:53

       ... less, less than a year and a half in silence, the, with the exception that I would talk to the teacher.

    5. TFTim Ferriss50:59

       Mm-hmm.

    6. JKJack Kornfield50:59

       Um, uh, every couple days I'd have a little 10-minute conversation about what was happening in my meditation, and the rest I was just sitting and walking 18 hours a day when, when I could or, or so, sleeping a little bit. Um, and I remember, um, at one point, uh, it was relatively early on, I'd been sitting and walking and, and pushing it as young men do, you know, I'm gonna get enlightened and, uh, all of that, and not moving, sitting with a lot of pain, which is also part of what happened at, at the forest monastery, sitting on a stone floor for hours, um, without moving. Um, you really had to learn how to deal with your own physical pain. And, um, I was exhausted from sitting and walking in my little hut that I had for, uh, that long retreat, and after a couple months, I thought, "I'm really tired. I d- I gotta lie down." But then I thought, "Well, but I'm not gonna nap for very long 'cause I'm, I'm on my way to enlightenment, whatever. Um, I'm gonna do this right." [clears throat] So I said, "All right, I'll lie down on the wooden floor rather than on the little mat that I had, and that way I won't sleep so long." And I'm lying there, um, and then I wake up, and I get up, and I walk very slowly, doing this mindful slow walking to the end of the hut, and look out the window toward where some of the other monks and the teachers live some, some way down, some way down through the trees. Um, and then I turn around and I start walking the other direction in this, this meditation hut that I had that you could walk probably it was maybe 15, 18 feet long. It was long and narrow. And I see this body lying on the floor, and all of a sudden I go, "Oh, that's me." And then I realized that, um, I'm having an out-of-the-body experience, and what had happened is that I was so intent, "I'm not gonna sleep long. I'll get up very soon," that intention was really strong, but my body didn't wanna get up, so I got up.

    7. TFTim Ferriss53:11

       [laughs]

    8. JKJack Kornfield53:12

       But it wasn't, it wasn't in my body, and I walk very slowly, and I peered down at my body, and I turned around and walked the other way, walked back. [clears throat] And then the second time I walked back I, I got closer and then I fell into my body, and I woke up, and I said, "Oh, wow, that's interesting." But what I saw out the window wasn't just like a dream because I was watching, you know, my teacher and talking to these other monks and, and then I got up again, and that's exactly what was happening. And that was the first of a, a series of all kinds of very interesting experiences that happened.

    9. TFTim Ferriss53:45

       And those, the, what, what would, uh, other examples of those types of unusual experiences be and, and did, was it your time in Burma that found you experiencing these for the first time?

    10. JKJack Kornfield53:59

        Well, um, first of all, the, the first experiences, even though I had experimented with meditation back in, in, uh, in, in college and so forth, um, were experiences, again, that came through psychedelics. Um, and so I was familiar with a- all kinds of weird and, and powerful and, and m- m- mysterious or mystical kind of experiences. Um, but they, but there's something about learning how to navigate it without taking a substance and learning that your own consciousness is the field that you can, that, that you can learn to navigate. First all the personality and emotions and history and so forth, but then you start to realize that you're bigger than that, that who you are is not just your thoughts and feelings in your mind. Um, and so whether it's out-of-body experience or the experience of vastness, of becoming the sky, um, within which everything arises and passes, or the experience of profound silence or of the void where you enter, enter a stillness before experience even arises, or the experience of luminosity where, um, uh, where my body would dissolve into light. Uh, there are times sitting as you get concentrated and samadhi, your concentration builds, that your whole body and mind open up. And, you know, first you get the elements. Your body can feel, um, heavy like a stone, the earth element, or it can feel so light that you have to peek your, open your eyes and make sure you're not floating 'cause it feels like you're floating in the air. Or it can be filled with fire, and you feel like you're in the middle of a raging fire, or it can get icy cold, you know? Or all kinds of vibrations and kundalini energies and chakras start to open, and sometimes it's present, sometimes it's not, you know? As deep energies start to move through your body, they also kind of push open the places that are held closed so that when your heart starts to open in deep meditation, sometimes it feels like you're having a heart attack. It's physically painful because all the, all the things that you've held around your heart to protect yourself start to loosen. Or when the energy hits your throat and it starts to open, weird sounds come out, you know? And then you get to v- visions that come in the, the, you know, brow chakra, and you start to see all kinds of colors and visions and hear things. All possibilities of the play of consciousness can start to open after, um, both period of silence, but also really deeply training attention and concentration.

    11. TFTim Ferriss56:48

        So th- these experiences, just to put them in, or at least part of, uh, what you said in context for people listening, uh, there, there are a number of things you mentioned, uh, but one in particular, that opening in the chest that I experienced in the 10-day retreat done at, uh, Spirit Rock, uh, which, which, for which you were one of the, the instructors or the lead instructor. Uh, and I ... It was an incredibly powerful experience, and listening to your description of some of the feelings, it makes me want to go to the jungle and, and s- [laughs] spend time doing this type of training. However, the 10-day retreat, as you know from firsthand observation and in- interacting with me, was incredibly difficult for me and terrifying at a number of points, where I felt like I had crossed a boundary into maybe even madness, where I, I, I was fearful I wouldn't be able to return from. And so I'm curious to know, during that period of time in Thailand, in Burma, could be afterwards as well, but when you were in the, in the jungle and doing this very intense work, were there any particular points when you wanted to quit to go, to go home? How did you-

    12. JKJack Kornfield58:10

        Oh, absolutely. I mean, and I remember I g- I got what I think was malaria. I had a really high fever, and I was sick as a dog, and I'm lying in the bottom of my little hut there, um, high fever and shivering, and, um, Ajahn Chah came to visit me. And i- in the Lao language, and he was, he was also funny and quite blunt, um, and the Lao language is a very straightforward kind of ... The sentence structures are fairly simple. So he looked at me and he said, "Sick, huh?"

    13. TFTim Ferriss58:41

        [laughs]

    14. JKJack Kornfield58:41

        And I said, "Yeah."

    15. TFTim Ferriss58:43

        [laughs]

    16. JKJack Kornfield58:43

        And he said, "Hurts all over, huh?" I said, "It sure does." He said, "Hot and cold?" "Yeah." He said, you know, "Makes you afraid." I nodded. He said, "Makes you wanna go home and see your mother, doesn't it?" And I'm nodding there.

    17. TFTim Ferriss58:56

        [laughs]

    18. JKJack Kornfield58:56

        And then he looked at me and he said, "You know, this is the jungle fever. This is malaria. We've all had it. Um, but now there's some good medicine. I'll send the medicine monk over, and in a couple days you'll be fine." Um, um, and then he looked at me and he said, "You can do this, you know. You can do this." So, I mean, that was an example of wanting to go home [laughs] to my mother. What am I doing here? [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss59:19

        What kept you g- what kept you going? I mean, I don't wanna interrupt, but it's like what kept you going? I'm imagining 500 days of silence. I could barely handle 10 days. Um-

    20. JKJack Kornfield59:29

        You know, Tim, I mean, what's kept you going? What keeps any of us going about things that we care about? I had somehow, I don't know, kind of a wacky, but I think also, um, important kind of passion to say, "I wanna understand," or I w- I, you know, I've started down this road and I wanna see where it goes. And I think all of us find at a certain point in our life that there, or if we're lucky, that something really matters, and you've done it in your work and your travel. You want to explore what your human capacity is. Um, and I'd read, read these old Zen stories and this, and I said, "I wanna see if this is true. I wanna find out." And then as I s- I started, things started to happen like that out-of-the-body experience and rapture and changes and, and openings, um, and I realized there's really something to learn here. But there are a couple other things that, that I wanna add to this. Um, one of them that's the most important is that it turns out that it wasn't, uh, and it isn't so much about the actual experiences. So Ajahn Chah, my teacher, talked about how in his own training for the first eight years in the jungle, um, he had been a very ardent meditator and had all kinds of insights and dissolving and samadhi and jhana experiences, all kinds of, um, special-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:00:53

        Samadhi is awakening or-

    22. JKJack Kornfield1:00:54

        Samadhi is, uh, y- yeah, or certainly it's profound

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:00:57

        ... nirvana? How would you translate that?

    24. JKJack Kornfield1:00:58

        Samadhi is, it has a lot of meanings as a word, but it, it can mean profound states of concentration in which the mind dissolves into light or into joy or bliss or, um, becomes absorbed with, uh, any one of all kinds of states. So he went to the most famous teacher of that time, another Ajahn, Ajahn Mun, and told him about all these experiences, and the, the, the master looked back at him and said, "Chah, you missed the point. These are just experiences." You know, it's like going to the movies and you have a romantic comedy and you have a war movie and you have a documentary, you know, and you have-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:01:35

        [laughs]

    26. JKJack Kornfield1:01:36

        ... uh, you know, a Disney movie. He said, "They're just movies on the screen, some pleasant, some unpleasant. The only question is to whom do they happen?"

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:01:45

        Ah.

    28. JKJack Kornfield1:01:46

        Turn your attention back and ask, look to see who is the witness of these. What is the consciousness that is knowing these ch- ever-changing experiences? This is where your liberation will come. He said, "Become..." W- His language, if I translate it, is the one who knows become the knowing rather than the experiences, and then you can tolerate anything and you can respond with love and understanding because you rest in the timeless consciousness, which is your true nature. So part of what I also learned in meditation and teach is that it's not so much about the experiences, oh, I wanna have this or that experience, but it's this profound turning back to ask, who am I? What is this consciousness itself that was born into this body, that will leave it? We can talk about death at some point if you want. Um, uh, what is

11. 1:02:46 – 1:28:44

    Compassion and reclaiming the heart: Maha Ghosananda and love amid trauma

    1. JKJack Kornfield1:02:46

       this mysterious consciousness itself? Um, so there is that. Um, and then, um, then I also had the opportunity of being with a few other teachers, and one of my f- uh, the, one of the people that I was very close to and, um, inspired me profoundly was a Cambodian monk, um, named Maha Ghosananda, who was the Gandhi of Cambodia. And when I met him, we were living and training together in a forest monastery in Thailand, and it was during the time the Khmer Rouge came to power and, and eventually killed two million Cambodians in a kind of genocide. And he was, he survived because he wasn't in country, but all 19 of his family members were killed.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:03:37

       [clears throat]

    3. JKJack Kornfield1:03:38

       His temple burned. Um, you know, uh, all the, all the Buddhist texts and so forth were destroyed. Um, and when he was able to, he went to the refugee camps. Refugees were pouring out of Cambodia by the hundreds of thousands, and he went to the refugee camps on the border of Thailand and Cambodia and, um, I was able to go with him and at, uh, a certain point. And he decided to open a temple in the middle of one of the biggest refugee camps. Here's 50 or 100 thousand people, these tiny little bamboo huts. Um, and got permission from the UNHCR, High Commissioner of Refugees, uh, and built a platform with a little roof over it and put an altar with a traditional Cambodian Buddha on it and so forth. But it was a camp with the Khmer Rouge underground, um, lots of them. And so they put the word out that if anyone went to be with this monk, when they got out of the camp back to Cambodia, they would all be shot.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:04:48

       Sh-

    5. JKJack Kornfield1:04:48

       So we wondered who would, if anyone, would come. And, uh, went through the camp the day, the opening day with a big kind of temple gong ringing it, and 25,000 people poured into the central square around this little temple.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:05:07

       Oh my God. Wow.

    7. JKJack Kornfield1:05:09

       And he, Maha Ghosananda sat there. He was a scholar. He spoke 15 languages, and he was a, you know, extremely, um, kind-hearted human being, um, who'd suffered enormously, um, and had transformed it into the kind of compassion that we think of with the Dalai Lama or something like that. In fact, they became friends, and Ghosananda became the head of all of Cambodian Buddhism. But there he was at this point, sitting, looking out at 25,000 people who had suffered immense traumas. And you could see there was a grandmother and the only two surviving grandchildren that she had, or an uncle and one niece, and their faces were the faces of trauma, um, and of survivors. And I thought, all right, what is he gonna say to them? And he sat very quietly for a long time just in their presence, and then he put his hands together in this kind of modest way, um, and began to chant in the microphone, he had a sound system, uh, in Cambodian and in Sanskrit or Pali, the Buddhist language, one of the first verses from the Buddhist texts, um, that goes, "Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law." And he chanted it over and over in Cambodian and in Sanskrit Pali, and pretty soon the chant was picked up and in a little while 25,000 people were chanting this verse with him. And I looked out and they were weeping, many of them 'cause they hadn't heard their sacred chants for years, um, but also because he was offering them a truth that was even bigger than their sorrows, that hatred never ends by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. And they were sitting in the middle of the, the, the healing energy of the dharma, of the teachings of the heart that can liberate us. Later on, Ghosananda, who was nominated for the Nobel- Peace Prize a number of times. Um, spent 15 years walking through the killing fields and the, you know, mined areas and so forth, leading people on foot back to their village. Um, and he said to the refugees, "You can't go back in a bus or the back of a truck or something like that. You have to reclaim your land with love." [clears throat] And so he would lead 1,000 people, and he'd be in the front with a bell and a gong and a few other monks, and the whole way back, they would be chanting the chants of lovingkindness so that by the time they got to their village, uh, whatever had been destroyed, there was this sense that they were reclaiming not just the land, but they were reclaiming their own hearts.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:08:22

       That's a beautiful, really beautiful story, and it, it prompts me to ask a question that I struggle with answering myself. Uh, and, and it's also a, a question many of my friends have asked themselves, and I'll take a stab at it. Uh, how do you decide when to do deep inner work and take an extended period to do that versus being in the world and trying to impact others in the world? B- And to, to just provide a little bit of background on that, I have friends who are building businesses or building careers of some type or families, and th- I, at this point, do not have wife, kids, or company to build, at least with a, a large organization, and I've come back from various experiments, sojourns, experiences over weeks or months and shared these with them, and they've, they've expressed this longing, this deep yearning to do something similar. And then they ask this question, like, how do I, how do I best decide h- if and when to do the deep extended work versus being in the world? And I, I know it might be a false dichotomy. You might not have to choose, but, um, I'll talk a little bit more just, [laughs] just to fill the space. But the, uh, the ... I, I had this experience personally not long ago when I was in South America and had someone telling me, uh, in sec- in Spanish, which was not their native language, uh, this, an indigenous tribe, but this, uh, apo, this mayor effectively, who worked a lot with different, uh, plant medicines, and he said that he recommended one 15-month diet, very, very strict 15-month period with many different restrictions, uh, no sex, no alcohol, no pork, et cetera, and, uh, uh, to develop certain capacities and to practice, in effect, I mean, uh, certain types of meditative practices. Uh, ha- so I struggle with this myself as well. How do you, how do you suggest someone think through-

    9. JKJack Kornfield1:10:35

       So did you give up sex and pork? [laughs]

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:10:37

        Uh, I've done it for short periods of time. I've done-

    11. JKJack Kornfield1:10:40

        Not a year and a half. [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:10:41

        I've done it for weeks at a time, but not for-

    13. JKJack Kornfield1:10:43

        Yeah

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:10:43

        ... 15 months. But what appealed to me about that, definitely not the lack of sex and pork. I like both of those things. It was, he said, "That's something you only have to do once in your life, and it opens doors and creates opportunities that are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve otherwise." So of course, that's very tantalizing, but 15 months is a really, really long time to opt out of everything else. Um, and I'm not saying it has to be 15 months. For some people, as you know, setting aside even 10 days to do a silent retreat is hard. Uh, and I know there are things that they can do on an ongoing basis, like morning meditation and so on, but for, for those who are really drawn to this extended deeper work, how do you think about ... And that, that's why Gosananda brought it up for me, 'cause he'd spent so much time outside of his country and then went back and was really on the f- on the ground doing work with locals. How, how do you think about that or suggest someone think about it?

    15. JKJack Kornfield1:11:39

        Uh, first, my answer is yes.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:11:41

        [laughs]

    17. JKJack Kornfield1:11:42

        You know? [clears throat] Because all of the things that you say are true, that yes, there, you know, m- most cultures, um, encourage at some point human beings, most wise cultures, human beings, to step out of their ordinary roles and their ordinary routine, whether you go to the mountains or the ocean, you know, or, or a temple or change, um, how you're living so that you can open up to the mystery, um, and so that you also can open up to love. 'Cause what I saw with my teachers, and Gosananda as well, Ajahn Chah, another, is, um, that they were able to love no matter what. And it was really, uh, because they, they inhabited consciousness in a very different way than, um, just the small sense of self. There was something, um, much, uh, a possibility that we could live with forgiveness and love and be really effective in the world at the same time. Um, so they're not separate, and that's sort of what your question is. How do we live in the world, um, and at the same time, you know, what trainings and how do we connect with something deeper? And part of it is just intuitive, you, you know, Tim. Um, uh, if you have newborn, you know, or young children and so forth, it's not the time to go on a long retreat. Your kids are your practice, and in fact, you can't get [clears throat] a Zen master who's gonna be more demanding than, you know, an infant with colic, right?

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:13:14

        [laughs]

    19. JKJack Kornfield1:13:14

        Where you, or, you know, or a teenage, you know, certain teenage kids, where you ... But with the young ones, you know, your Zen master might say, "You've got to get up early in the morning," and, you know, once in a while you might roll over. The kid is crying and sick. You have to get up. Um, your family needs tending, and, you know, if you're even vaguely, um, a responsible and caring p- parent, as you... Uh, that becomes your practice. And if you think, "Well, if only I could be in the great Zen temple of Kyoto, or an ashram in India-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:13:50

        [laughs]

    21. JKJack Kornfield1:13:50

        ... or down in the Amazon with Tim, you know, taking ayahuasca or whatever the plant medicine they give.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:13:57

        [laughs]

    23. JKJack Kornfield1:13:57

        You know, your kid is, can be like ayahuasca on steroids. Okay, you wanna, you wanna face yourself and your own limitations-

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:14:06

        [laughs]

    25. JKJack Kornfield1:14:06

        ... and your own, you know, you wanna look at the, the small sense of self and find out how to live with a, with a freer and bigger spirit. Here, we've just hired someone to live with you and train you full time. [laughs]

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:14:19

        [laughs]

    27. JKJack Kornfield1:14:19

        So it's really, it, you know, um ... And that's an important thing, but, but what makes it work is that, um, you have that intention, not just to soldier through it, but to say, let this be a place where I awaken, um, graciousness and inner sense of freedom and peace as things come and go, where I awaken the possibility of presence, um, in pleasure and pain and joy and sorrow and gain and loss, and all the changes that I find a, a, an inviolable or a, a timeless place of, um, becoming the loving witness of it all, becoming the loving awareness that says, "Yeah, now I'm having a family experience, um, and this is the place to find freedom." 'Cause freedom is not in the Himalayas or in the Amazon. The only place it's found is in your own heart exactly where you are, and that's what Gosananda taught and what Ajahn Chah, that's really what they wanted to, to communicate. Now, that being said, if you have an opportunity and you're drawn to it, like somebody you might... Do you know Jack Dorsey? The, uh-

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:15:33

        I do. I do know Jack, yeah.

    29. JKJack Kornfield1:15:34

        So Jack just did his first 10-day, um, meditation retreat.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:15:39

        Oh, good for him.
12. 1:28:44 – 2:04:09

    Loving-kindness as antidote to self-criticism: practice steps, resources, and “perfect your love”

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:28:44

       after, uh, many, many attempts. Had a, a very absurdly high number of false starts over many years, uh, and it's, it b- it really stuck after a number of experiments and experiences I had, uh, f- doing three or four-day trainings with, say, Transcendental Meditation, and having the social accountability. Being accountable to someone else is very helpful. But another turning point was experimenting with loving kindness meditation, and I think in part it succeeded because it took the focus off of me, me, me, I, I, I, and allowed me to focus on others. But I'd like to read a brief paragraph from a profile of you in The New Yor- New York Times. This is from 2014. And feel free to correct anything that is incorrect, but I'll, I'll give it a read first. And I quote, "In the West," Kornfield says, quote, "We encounter a lot of intense striving ambition and a lot of self-criticism, self-judgment, and self-hatred." End quote. Concerned, he initially turned to the Dalai Lama for advice, but self-hatred was such a foreign concept to the Tibetan Buddhist that he wasn't able to offer any real insight. Over time, Kornfield and his colleagues began to believe that Americans needed particular meditation closely... I'm sorry, practice closely linked to the concepts of self-forgiveness and loving kindness, a training in the unconditional acceptance of imperfection. "Without such a foundation," says Kornfield, "meditation can easily become," and this is the part that I underlined and starred. "Without this foundation," says Kornfield, "meditation can easily become yet another form of striving." Quote, "Another thing you do to make yourself better," end quote, "instead of a path to c- true contentment." So could you please describe for folks, uh, what loving kindness meditation practice looks like, and elaborate in any way that you feel might be, might be useful or helpful for folks?

    2. JKJack Kornfield1:30:37

       Yeah. Um, and, um, l- that meeting, which was some decades ago, with the Dalai Lama, um, yeah, he didn't understand when we talked about self-hatred. He couldn't even... There's no word for it in Tibetan.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:30:48

       [laughs]

    4. JKJack Kornfield1:30:49

       We went back and forth with his translator.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:30:51

       [laughs]

    6. JKJack Kornfield1:30:51

       "What does this mean?" Finally, he looked up and he said, "Hmm, but this is a mistake. Why would anyone do this?" But then he asked, "How many of you..." Uh, there was a group of us who were teachers that have experienced this, and almost everyone raised their hand. So we see that when people begin in our culture, in the, in the West, to m- meditate or to turn in- turn inward really, that, um, it's very common, um, to encounter a lot of self-criticism, uh, self-judgment, or even self-hatred. Um, and, you know, there are all the causes from our... Th- these are all kind of conditioning that we got from, um, from our childhood, our education, and so forth. But what it means is that you're sitting there saying, "I'm not doing it right. I'm no good." And you turn the meditation into one other, one other thing that you don't do right 'cause you can't control your mind. The truth is that you can control your mind easily. That's not the point. Um, there's a different way of approaching your mind, which gives you tremendous capacities, but it's not, "Oh, I have to stop my thinking," or, "I don't wanna have these feelings, and I hate having all these judgments. I don't wanna be so judgmental. I wanna stop all that. I hate this judging mind." What is it? It's just more judgment. So instead, as you become first able to become the loving witness, the, uh, the mindful loving awareness that says, "Oh, this is the judging mind, and it's been trying to protect me. Thank you for trying to protect me. I don't need you now. Thank you." Um, all of a sudden, there's a distance from the, from the painful or destructive or, or, um, self-critical thoughts simply by witnessing them with loving awareness and acknowledging them. This becomes the gateway to the practice of loving kindness and self, self-compassion. Um, and very often, people can't do it for themselves. They feel that's too much of a stretch. Like, why would I wish myself well? It feels egotistical. Um, and so the way that this practice, um, begins for, uh, in skillfully for, for such folks is instead to think of someone that you really care about a lot, um, and to picture them, remember them, put them in your mind's eye, and feel the kind of well-wishing you would want for them. You know, may they be protected and safe from difficulty. May they be held in loving kindness. May they be well, healthy, strong. And you wish them that may they be happy. And you do this for a time, a kind of inner well-wishing. Um, and also maybe you feel, as you think of this person that you care about, if you let yourself also tune into the measure of sorrows they have, the struggles that every human being has, you know, and it tenderizes your heart as you think of them because you don't want them to suffer. You feel a kind of rising of compassion and care. So may they hold themselves in compassion. May they be, uh, safe and protected and well. And you do that with one or two people that you care about for a time. And then you can imagine, even as I'm describing this and you follow in your own heart, you can imagine these two one, loved ones looking back at you with the same kindness and saying, "Just as you wish us protection and safety and happiness and well-being, you know, and compassion," they gaze at you and they say, "You too, may you be safe and protected, and may you be filled with tender compassion for yourself and kindness. May you too be healthy and well, and may you be happy." They want you to be happy. I think about when I'm doing this, I'm visualizing some loved ones, and I know that as I do it, I can feel they want that for me. And then finally, as you feel that from these loved ones, you can put your hand on your body or your heart even if you like, and take it in and, and then begin to realize that you can wish this for yourself. May I hold all of the joys and sorrows of my life with tenderness and kindness. May I hold my struggles with compassion. May I be filled with, uh, loving kindness and loving awareness. May I be safe and protected. May I be well, strong or healed. And as you repeat these simple intentions that have been done for thousands of years, s- it's as if your cells are listening, and this is the research of people like Liz Blackburn and Elissa Epel, who, who... Liz Blackburn got the Nobel Prize for discovering the, um, telomerase and, uh, the telomeres at the end of the caps in the DNA. Um, it turns out that your cells listen to your heart and, uh, to your intention, that consciousness affects your body. And little by little, even though the, it can bring up its opposite, "I hate myself. I'm never be good enough," and you see all those and you say, "Thank you for trying to protect me. I appreciate that. May I be well. May I be safe. May I be held in love." And little by little, like water on a stone, it starts to soften the places that are holding your lack of self-forgiveness, your lack of, um, care. Um, and loving kindness starts to grow in you, and it's a very beautiful practice. There's lots of places you can find it on my, in my work and teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Pema Chödrön and Tara Brach and, and, and so forth.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:36:58

       Are there any, uh, particular... Do you have any, uh, guided loving-kindness meditations or audio that you can recommend people listen to?

    8. JKJack Kornfield1:37:07

       I do, um, and, uh, I don't know. They could go on my website, jackkornfield.com. I think they will be on there. I do know for sure, I have a whole series of great programs with Sounds True, soundstrue.com, that include, um, meditations on the mind vast as the sky, meditations on compassion and loving kindness. Um, and I did a book, one of the books I've done is called, um, A Lamp in the Darkness, and it contains, uh, I think eight or nine different, um, guided practices that you can get either with it on the CD, but no, you can get it as a download basically. Um, and Sounds True also has that, and it has a compassion practice and a grounding practice and a- Um, kind of vast sky-like mind practice and so forth. So y- so you can look a- look for all of those things.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:38:01

       Wonderful.

    10. JKJack Kornfield1:38:02

        The, the beautiful thing is that you can learn this, and [clears throat] I was, couple of years ago, invited to be part of the first White House Buddhist Leadership Gathering. Um, there were 120 Buddhist leaders from around the country from different communities. I don't think that's gonna happen again very soon, but there it was. Um, and, uh, one could hope. And, um, uh, w- we talked, most of the communities did beautiful things. They were involved in, uh, soup kitchens and tending the homeless, and projects, you know, um, to support healing, um, for whether it was malaria, other, other diseases, um, in different other parts of the world, and so forth. All kinds of great stuff, and certainly meditation. A- a- and when I got to talk, which was kind of a summary talk, toward, uh, toward the end of it, um, I mentioned that in the, in the, in the s- historical record, whether it's true or not, the, uh, uh, the texts and so forth describe the Buddha meeting with kings and princes and ministers and so forth, and probably if the Buddha were, were around now, he would go to the White House if he were invited. He certainly would've met with Obama, and who knows now. Um, uh, and he had advice about wise society, um, which he would give to leaders, and he'd say, "If, uh, you can train your people to meet, uh, one another with respect, to listen with respect to differences, and to come together peacefully listening to one another, and then, uh, then your pro- society will prosper and not decline. And if your society, um, tends the vulnerable among them, the, the young people, the old people, those who are sick, it will prosper and not decline. And if your society tends the environment around it in a healthy way, it will prosper and not decline." And so th- these are, these are principles of compassion and wise society that you could read perhaps in a number of great traditions, from the Iroquois Nation or from the Daoist sages. But here is the beautiful piece. Yes, these are, these are good things, meeting in harmony and discussing in harmony and being respectful for one another and so forth. Um, there are practices that you can teach and learn that develop this capacity, so that in our elementary schools now, you know, through organizations like CASEL, which is a consortium for social and emotional learning that's worked in, you know, 10,000 schools, um, kids learn social and em- emotional learning. They learn compassion. Um, and it changes their lives. They're better academically. Um, and all these kids carry the, you know, the troubles of our times. They hear the news. They see the trouble even in their own family. Um, to teach you how to steward your own heart, um, from when you're young, uh, and then these capacities are now being incorporated, as we know, mindfulness-based stress reduction, in clinics, in hospitals, in businesses, in, you know... There's the mindfulness teachers that for the, th- when the Seattle Seahawks won the championship or the, the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers, when they were championship teams, they had a, they had a meditation coach, a mindfulness coach, George Mumford, a good friend. Um, that these capacities can be learned wherever we are, and they transform our life. It's not just by accident or that you have this beautiful experience on the mountains or making love, but you can make that alive for you through these trainings every day, every part of your life.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:41:53

        Jack, there was a question I was planning on asking at some point anyway, and I think this is a good segue, which is, how can you get a busy person hooked on mindfulness practice? You know, what would be a first step or how to start? And since we're talking about loving-kindness, I would like to give a bit of a hard sell for loving-kindness meditation as one option, because I recall, perhaps it was two years ago, I was really beating myself up. And for people who don't know this about me, uh, I've spent the majority of my life being, uh, the, the, my own worst enemy in terms of inner dialogue. I'm extremely brutal and hypercritical and loathsome of myself, uh, in, in so many different respects. And I was going through a particularly intense and difficult time with that inner critic, uh, just ruthlessly, uh, beating myself up. And at, at that point, another friend of mine, uh, Chade-Meng Tan, who created the Search Inside Yourself class at Google, he was a very early on engineer, which became w- the most oversubscribed class for employees at Google, uh, recommended that I take a look at loving-kindness meditation. And, and I didn't have any particularly sophisticated approach to it, but I decided, with nothing to lose, uh, and that I was having so much trouble during that period sitting still, uh, and trying to focus on, say, the breath or anything like that, that at night, this was, happened to coincide with book deadline, probably, uh, not pure coincidence that my beating myself up was exacerbated during that time. That was a f- a few years ago. And I began at night, uh, i- in my case, in, uh, when I would take a, a shower at night or sit in a sauna, I ha- I, I very often go to hotels to write, which is something Maya Angelou and a, a few others [laughs] convinced me might be a good idea, uh, th- that I would consider two people, just like you had mentioned, two people I really cared for and wish them well. That's all I did. And, uh, Chade had said to me, Meng is usually what I would call him, that at one point a woman in one of his classes had done this for, uh, one day at work. Every hour on the hour, she would just look out of her office and wish someone well that she could see in her mind's eye for 60 seconds or so. And she says, she said it was her best day of work in seven years, and I found that unbelievable, so I decided to try it myself. And that week of just spending maybe two to four minutes at night before going to bed ended up being one of the most blissful weeks, uh, in memory, certainly at that point, uh, in several years. It, it was really profound, and I couldn't pick out any other variable that had changed. Uh, so for me, I just want to, for people who are listening and saying, "Ah, you know what? I'm type A driven, super hyper competitor, this doesn't apply to me," that it very well could apply to you, and that by taking a little bit of the harmful edge off, you don't automatically remove your competitive edge. Uh, and in fact, I would argue, just as you mentioned, that the Bulls and so on used to have, or still do, but used to have a, a mindfulness coach for competitive advantage, that, that it can be another tool in your toolkit and doesn't take you out of the game, so to speak. It just makes you more aware of the games that you're playing. So, uh, that's a long sort of infomercial sales pitch that I wanted to just make sure I got in, uh, because I discounted a lot of these practices for a very long time because I thought it would, uh, at best be a waste of time and at worse, uh, take away some of my skills or tendencies that allowed me to get to where I am. Um, so that, that, that is more of a confessional than a question, but I would love to hear your thoughts, any additional thoughts on, on loving-kindness meditation, but also any additional thoughts on how, if you wanted to get a, a busy, uh, maybe even impatient person hooked on mindfulness practice, [laughs] what first steps or approaches you might suggest.

    12. JKJack Kornfield1:46:05

        Um, so, um, a lot of different questions sort of woven into what you said. Um, and the first is that there's a kind of misunderstanding in our culture that love is a weakness, and it's not. There is a way in which, um, it's the force that can... Uh, probably the only force that can meet the level of aggression or violence and o- other such things that are happening in, um, you know, in the world. Um, it's the power that lets mothers lift cars off their children, or to let somebody like Dr. Martin Luther King stand, um, you know, after his church was bombed and children were killed, and say, "We will meet your physical violence with soul force. We will not harm you, but we will love you so deeply that we will not only transform ourselves, but we will transform you in the process." And so the notion that love is somehow a weakness, um, I think we do everything out of love. We want to be loved, even in our, you know, ambition and our desire for, for success. Underneath it, um, is, you know, we want to be well. We want to be, find our happiness, and that's part of, part of love. So it's, it's actually a power. And my c- colleague and friend, um, Wes Nisker, went to interview Gary Snyder a couple of years ago. Gary is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, um, and environmentalist for 50 years, been writing about bioregionalism, and one of our great kind of l- elders in this, um, environmental movement. He said, "Gary, what do you have to say to us now that oceans are rising, the world climate is changing, you know, hotter and hotter, the species extinction?" And Gary looked back and he said, "Don't feel guilty. If you're going to save it, don't save it out of guilt or anger or fear. Those are the very things that are actually making the world worse. Save it because you love it, because it's part of you, because it ma-" And that's the, that is the, is the power. Um, whether you're starting a company, but also it's not just that you, you know, some vision, "Oh, okay, now I'm going to become this wealthy, you know, playboy or whatever, you know, zillionaire." Um, that what does your life mean for you, and what do you really want? And when you listen, there is something in you, and it's part of your birthright, um, to both be able to give your gifts, but also to love and be loved in return, and it's turns out that it's a power. So then what you talk about is that, um, it doesn't take much to begin the training, and your, you know, two minutes or four minutes in the evening, or this woman at her work taking once an hour, you know, 30 seconds or a minute to look at somebody there and offer a, a well-wishing can transform everything. Um, for people who want the practical support, because it is hard to do on your own, if you go to soundstrue.com and look up, um, the programs that I have, first there's a 40-day program called Mindfulness Daily, which is 15 minutes a day or t- 12 minutes a day, depending on the segment, that both gives instructions in mindfulness, loving awareness, and loving-kindness practice. Um, and it's 12 or 15 minutes a day, and by the end of those 40 days, you really have learned the inner skills. And then it builds up. There's then a deeper training called Power of Awareness, and for those who are interested, we're about to open an online teacher training for people interested in mindful Um, uh, in, in passing along mindfulness and loving kindness to others. Um-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:49:53

        Jack, just to interject for one second. For people listening, I will also link to all of these resources in the show notes, which you can find at tim.blog/podcast. So you don't necessarily have to remember all these things. You can go to the URL, and, uh, we will have direct links to these resources. Uh, sorry to interrupt, Jack.

    14. JKJack Kornfield1:50:11

        Sure.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:50:11

        Just wanted to mention that for people listening.

    16. JKJack Kornfield1:50:13

        And with it, then, there is also, of the programs there, there's one called Guided Meditations that's, you know, a download. It's, like, 10 bucks or something, and it has a loving kindness practice, a compassion practice, a forgiveness practice. Um, I think it may even have a joy practice, s- uh, and, and so forth. So you can... And it's really helpful to have guided meditations at first, 'cause otherwise, your attention... We have a very short attention span in modern society. Albert Einstein, at least according to Scientific American, uh, said, "If you can drive safely while kissing a girl, you're simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:50:54

        [laughs]

    18. JKJack Kornfield1:50:55

        And we are in this kind of multitasking world with our devices, and, and we've forgotten how to tend our own hearts. We've forgotten how, in some ways, to really be present for one another, uh, and more importantly, for our own life. And so getting guided meditations, um, is tremendously helpful, and doing these little mini practices that you talk about, one minute, two minutes, several times a day, um, can transform you. Now-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:51:27

        Oh, I was just gonna mention to people also, if you look at behavioral change, if you look at BJ Fogg, uh, formerly of the Persuasion Laboratory at Stanford, you, you look at diet, uh, dietary change, any of these things, uh, do, doing less than you think you're capable of doing is a really good long-term strategy, um, in, in terms of starting off rigging the game so that you can win in the beginning, so that your pass-fail mark in your mind is a really, really low hurdle. So I just wanted to reiterate guided med-

    20. JKJack Kornfield1:51:57

        Beautiful

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:51:57

        ... guided meditation. Don't white-knuckle in the beginning. Like, make it-

    22. JKJack Kornfield1:52:01

        Beautiful

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:52:01

        ... as easy as possible.

    24. JKJack Kornfield1:52:03

        And the, the same principle from the, from ancient, you know, texts say that you start in the easiest way. For some people, s- kindness for themselves seems impossible, but then you pick a child you care about or someone else, or even when you do go to yourself, you think of yourself when you were an innocent child, um, and wish yourself well. The game is to do where whatever naturally opens the, the gateway, whatever's the easiest. For some people, it's their dog. You come home and, you know, the, the most non-judgmental being in their life wags its tail and loves you, and it doesn't care, you know, what's going on in your head. Um, so you take the avenue that most naturally opens your heart, and then you do this just a little at a time, as you said, and it doesn't take long. But the other thing that's important is that sometimes as you do it, it can actually d- display or show you the hypercritical nature of your mind, the shame that you carry, um, the, you know, the self-judgment or self-loathing. And so then you, then you say, "Well, what do you do then?" Or it brings, it brings up its opposite, is that's the place that you just breathe and hold all that stuff with kindness, 'cause this is our humanity, and we all have some of that, and the point isn't to get rid of it or judge yourself for having it or try to fix it. It's almost as if you put your hand on your heart and you say, "You know," this is, like, mindful self-compassion of deep training, "this is part of the measure of struggles that I've been given, like every human being. Uh, these things have tried to protect me, and now, um, I can hold them with tenderness and say, 'All right,' you know, 'thank you, but I don't need your help anymore. I can be kind to myself.'" And in, and, and in that way, you're not trying to fix yourself or perfect yourself. Um, if anything, you're trying to perfect your love.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:53:57

        So Jack, I wanted to give you, uh, credit for help that you gave me and also tactical advice that you gave me during the 10-day silent retreat. W- you gave me a lot, but I wanted to, I wanna highlight one that's related to what you just said. I was going through a very, very difficult time, particularly, uh, days seven, eight, and nine, and you, you gave me the advice that you just mentioned, and there's, there's one component I wanna really h- underscore for people, and that is when you're, for instance, trying to do loving-kindness meditation, and instead, you get the opposite, or you get this self-ridicule, uh, who are you to try to p- meditate in this self-indulgent way? This is ridiculous. Or this voice starts to pop up that is angry or hateful, whatever it might be. The process of not simply dismissing it or fighting against it, but recognizing it as a coping strategy that helped you in the past in some way, that you developed because, in my case, you know, the rage was a fuel that if I had i- th- th- without which I probably would never have left Long Island, where I had friends who later overdosed on opiates and so on. So it, it was a gift in a way, and a tool, and as you said, you can thank that response or that part of yourself and then put it... And I remember you recommended even visualizing, and please correct me if I'm wrong or elaborate, but visualize taking that part of you that is a coping strategy, thanking it, and then putting it, say, on a shelf, uh, where you can use it later if need be, along with, say, other icons or figures who, uh, whether it's Buddha or other, that, that you recognize as wise, and then continuing with the meditation. So that thanking that part of yourself for the function that it once served, even if it is not serving you now, was such a key insight, uh, for me that then helped me to um, manage my internal states or, or observe and appreciate my internal states for the next several days, uh, where I really felt like I was lost at that point. So that was a really direct tool that, that helped me tremendously.

    26. JKJack Kornfield1:56:22

        Yeah, thank you, um, for bringing it up, 'cause it's so important for people when we come to that hypercritical shame, ashamed place, um, we're v- we feel very vulnerable, and we've been identified with it, um, because you needed it. I needed these things for survival. So, and if you try to get rid of this stuff, you just end up in a fruitless battle against yourself, and it's just more judgment. So what you described of saying, "Thank you for helping me survive. I appreciate it. Let me put it on the shelf or the altar. I'll put it in the lap of the Buddha or whoever, you know, the goddess of infinite compassion. You hold it for me. If I need it, I'll pull it back." Um, and that sense that this isn't who you are. Um, it doesn't describe who you are. It isn't who you are. It was, it was a strategy because we're vulnerable beings, and you were tender as a child, you know, and you had to make sure you could survive. Thank you for that, and now I have a different capacity. Um, and let me just talk about that capacity a little bit because the capacity for presence, um, and the great heart of compassion that's said to be your birthright, um, is a really mysterious thing. Um, talk about identity. Um, and when my, um, youngest brother's wife, Esta, was dying of, uh, cancer, um, and she was just a beautiful being, and I spent quite a bit of time with her and with my brother. Um, I had gone home. She was close to dying. I'd gone home to sleep, and I wanted to get up early and hurry back because it was very close, and I, uh, got in my car. I had to stop at the drugstore to pick up a prescription, um, hurriedly running, you know, dashing through the aisles and so forth, and I'm at the checkout counter, and all of a sudden, my whole body relaxed, and I thought, "Oh, Esta died." And I got out to the car, and I called my brother. I said, "How's it going?" He said, "Oh, Esta died, uh, a few minutes ago." And I said, "I know. You know, I'll be there shortly." Um, and the, we've all had these experiences. If I ask in a room how many have had this particular kind where you knew someone died when they died, you know, a quarter of the hands will go up. Why is this? It's because who we are is not this body. We are, we are the consciousness itself. And so with all these practices, what they allow us to do is to step out of what's called the small sense of self or the body of fear and reconnect with a, with a field of connection, of interdependence, of compassion, um, and to take our history and to honor it, but not be bound by it. One of my favorite stories, um, is of Ram Dass, again, this wonderful spiritual teacher. In the early years when he came back from being with his guru, um, in India, uh, he was sitting up there and teaching, um, you know, devotional practices and meditation practices, and he had a beard and white robes and, uh, and, and beads, and he was sort of in the guru outfit.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:59:45

        [laughs]

    28. JKJack Kornfield1:59:46

        Um, and a woman in the front row raised her hand and said, "Hey, Ram Dass, Ram Dass, aren't you Jewish? What's with this Hindu stuff?" And Ram Dass said, "Well, yes, I am, actually. I was bar mitzvahed as, as I was too. Um, and there are many things I love about the Jewish, uh, spiritual tradition, the generosity of it, the, the Kabbalah, all the great, you know, teachings on the many stages and states of consciousness, the Hasidic masters who are like Zen masters." And then he paused and looked at her, and he said, "But remember, I'm only Jewish on my parents' side."

    29. TFTim Ferriss2:00:19

        [laughs]

    30. JKJack Kornfield2:00:20

        And there is something both witty, which he was, but also profound about it because we are not just our parental history or, or the historical circumstances of this place and body that we were born into, and something in us knows this, so that when you look at the... There's a wonderful book that came out last year or the year before called The Book of Joy, which was a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu, and both of them have marvelous laughs. I think people go to hear the Dalai Lama by the tens of thousands, not just for the Tibetan teachings, some of which are actually hard to understand, um, or even the fact that he's this Nobel Prize-winning, you know, world figure. I think people go to hear him laugh, that somebody who's carried so much suffering from the loss of his country where he can't return and the burning of temples and texts and all of those things. And he and Tutu had a week together when they were asked and to, and this created this book, "How can you be joyful? How can you laugh like this when you've lived through apartheid and the death of so many people around you?" And Dalai Lama, I mean, they, they banter back and forth and like brothers, and Dalai Lama says, "So much has been taken from me. You know, they've taken our sacred texts. They've taken our ability to make prayers in public. They've taken, you know, um, so much of our culture. Why should I let them take my happiness?" And then Tutu starts to laugh and giggle and say, "You know, I've been through so much, um, but I am not going to let myself live in that place. I'm going to let myself live in that which affirms life and in a, in a kind of profound, uh, joy, um, that we made it, that we're still alive, that we can contribute, that we can be here on this beautiful earth." And this shift of consciousness is what's needed for the world. Um, because if we look honestly, um, no amount of technology alone is gonna save us. Nanotechnology and space technology and biotechnology and worldwide web internet computer or supercomputer technology is gonna stop continuing warfare and racism and, uh, tribalism and environmental destruction. Those are happening based on consciousness of the human heart. And so we are now, you know, these, we've made these enormous developments outwardly where you have the great Library of Alexandria and your smartphone in your pocket, along with a million, you know, cat YouTubes or whatever.
13. 2:04:09 – 2:24:52

    Anger, boundaries, and a guided visualization: the “blue pyramid” and efficient energy

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:04:09

       Jack, I'd love to ask you, and these interviews are always s- driven by some self-interest. [laughs] I always have some issue or challenge or problem that I'm trying to figure out, so I reach out to someone like you to help me do it, but I record the conversation. Uh, as, as we chatted about before we hit record, and you know this already, but the, the last several years have been very, very important for me in terms of addressing certain traumas, and the last eight weeks in particular have been transformative in a lot of beautiful ways. [lip smacks] And the periods, the, the, the duration of periods, uh, within which I don't berate or attack myself have become longer. But there are still times when the wheels fly off the car, and this last week has been one such example. Uh, and I tend to, when I make a mistake or feel like I'm backsliding or relapsing, to compound the problem by beating myself up, which then I start to ... Then I beat myself up about beating myself up, and you know where that goes. So let me paint a picture. So I f- I found out recently, uh, that my Japanese host father, and I've been in touch with this family since I was 15, I'm very, very close to them, 40 now, and I found out that he just was admitted, uh, because the host mother sent me an email, to the hospital with liver cancer. And-

    2. JKJack Kornfield2:05:38

       Mm

    3. TFTim Ferriss2:05:38

       ... and this, they're, they don't have the details yet. I just sent a follow-up email. They don't know what the prognosis is exactly, but, uh, needless to say, the worst case scenarios are, are certainly being conjured in my mind, or the potential of those. And then, uh, simultaneously have been contending with, and I believe you have some experience with this [laughs] , uh, contending with a, what should be a very simple construction project of a cabin up in the mountains. Uh, and it is, it has been delayed and delayed and delayed, and there have been cost overruns and cost overruns and cost overruns, and promises made, promises broken, expectations set, expectations missed. And v- a f- a friend of mine called with a whole new slew of problems yesterday related to this place, and I lost my shit, for lack of a better term. I mean, there, there are many other things going on simultaneously, but I got really pissed, and I was like, you know what? This extending the olive branch being understanding ga- gambit is not working with these people. Like, I, I need to-

    4. JKJack Kornfield2:06:42

       [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss2:06:42

       ... I need to, I need to take out the baseball bat and, like, pull old Tim off the shelf, who was just this, like, juggernaut, head through brick walls, and be like, "Listen, fuck face. Like, if you don't do A, B, C, D, and E, here, well, these are gonna be the consequences." And then I'm like, "Well, wait. I'm supposed to be compassionate, but how do I not be a pushover?" And it turns into this big dramatic play inside my head, and then I wa- then, this is gonna end soon. I'm not gonna keep going. But what I then often do is self-medicate with caffeine, and I think it's a way of feeling productive without actually being productive, and it also creates so much volume on the noise, I think I use it to tune out a lot of feelings. Uh, so when someone relapses or has this kind of experience, what do you suggest to them? I mean, is there, uh, i- is there a particular pattern interrupt or approach that you've found helpful for regaining footing?

    6. JKJack Kornfield2:07:44

       Oh, so there's a number of things to say. Um, yeah, first of all, um, you could call it relapsing or you could just call it, like, yeah, just being human.

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:07:56

       [laughs]

    8. JKJack Kornfield2:07:57

       The, the, the, the po- one of the po- the most, most beloved poet in Japan was a Zen master named Ryokan, and there's a two-line verse that, of his that I particularly f- find fitting for this, where he wrote, "Last year, a foolish monk. This year, no change." You know?

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:08:17

       [laughs]

    10. JKJack Kornfield2:08:18

        And you can sort of feel the humor and the tenderness in it. Um, and, and there's a way in which you see your personality. The point, you know, you have a body. You have this particular body you're born with, and you can transform it in certain ways within the limits of the body that you were given. Um, a- and similarly, you have a personality, and anybody who has a number of kids realizes that you don't come in tabula rasa, that you actually ... This kid is born and has this kind of temperament. So you have a personality, and just like you don't wanna look too closely to the bo- at the body sometimes, you don't wanna look that closely at the personality either. Um, you know, it has its foibles and its fears and, you know, all of that. Um, and so you start to kind of look at it and say, "Oh, now there's a really good example of how neurotic I can get. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me." You know? And then you get a little, sort of like the keeper of the zoo, a little more tender with those, those kind of creatures.

    11. TFTim Ferriss2:09:12

        [laughs]

    12. JKJack Kornfield2:09:14

        Uh, so that's, that's ... It's bringing in the non-judgment, you know, uh, or the loving kindness for the way that you actually are, and not your ideal. Um, or bringing compassion, you could say. Yeah, this is a tough one, and it's triggered. I get triggered. So what? Um, now the other thing is that I had the same experience where we had a, a, a big remodel of our house when I was ... some years ago, um, um, raising my daughter and, and in my first marriage, and we were supposed to go and teach and travel in Europe. And this guy, who was a good contractor, but, you know, everything of course gets more expensive when you gotta do this, and it kept getting slowed down. And I said, "You are gonna get this done so we could make these decisions before we go to Europe, and it's not happening. You've gotta hurry up." I do that like three or four different times, and it doesn't happen. Finally, I go in. I get pissed, and I say, "Listen," you know, "you said this in our contract. It was gonna be done by this. And if you don't fucking get this done by the time, I'm gonna haul your ass in court and sue you 'cause I, I need this done, and I'm not gonna pay you the goddamn money," blah, blah, blah, blah. He looked at me and he said, "Oh, you really want this done, don't you?" I said, "Yes." Next day there's a huge crew, it starts to get done-

    13. TFTim Ferriss2:10:27

        [laughs]

    14. JKJack Kornfield2:10:27

        ... and then I realized, okay, what I've been sort of talking meditation speak, yeah, nice, get it done. He was a fucking contractor-

    15. TFTim Ferriss2:10:36

        [laughs]

    16. JKJack Kornfield2:10:36

        ... and I just had to speak, I had to speak contractorese. Get the goddamn job done or I'll haul your ass in ... "Oh, okay. I get, I get it. Yeah, I'll, I'll send a team over." And that's all it took. So it ... But there's something playful about that as well. It's not that you can't ... I, I've seen the Dalai Lama get angry at people. It's not that you can't use that power and that understanding, um, you know, when it's necessary to get p- very strong or forceful. Um, m- uh, and you don't have to judge yourself unless you hurt people, and then of course that's the misuse of it. Um, but it's just, it's part of being human. Um, so-

    17. TFTim Ferriss2:11:16

        Is there something you say to yourself when ... Now, I, I think ... I don't know. You are, uh, certainly in person and any- with any contact I've had of you- with you, uh, one of the most compassionate people I've ever met, and I, I, I've ... I don't use that word very much, but your, your presence of listening and being with someone is really incredible. Uh, and I, I don't know how much of that is in- in- intrinsic versus trained, but for better or for worse, y- coming out of the womb, I've been very, uh, impatient [laughs] since day one. So I worry about ... I, I can get m- it seems like my default is the yel- is, is speaking contractorese to, uh, more than just the [laughs] -

    18. JKJack Kornfield2:12:10

        The contract

    19. TFTim Ferriss2:12:10

        ... way- the wayward contractor who's, uh-

    20. JKJack Kornfield2:12:12

        Yeah, yeah

    21. TFTim Ferriss2:12:13

        ... who, who's putting off work. Is there some ... When I feel that, the sensations of anger beginning to bubble up, is there something that you would suggest as self-talk or just a temporary pumping of the brakes to make it an informed decision versus just a lashing out?

    22. JKJack Kornfield2:12:37

        Well, um, I could give you an answer, but in a minute I'm gonna guide you in a little practice-

    23. TFTim Ferriss2:12:42

        Perfect. Perfect

    24. JKJack Kornfield2:12:42

        ... so that you can find the, find the better answer. First, I just wanna say that, um, that anger, you know, yes, it's your habit or maybe your temperament. That's energy, and there's nothing wrong with energy, you know? It's, it's the power that let you do all the kind of things you, you've done in your life that are tremendously, you know, creative or resourceful or daring or whatever kinds of things. So you wanna respect, "Okay, I'm getting filled with energy," um, and you, you know, it might be then you wanna l- lash out, but first you wanna respect that energy. "Wow, let me feel this in my body. Woo, anger. How big is it? Woo."

    25. TFTim Ferriss2:13:18

        [laughs]

    26. JKJack Kornfield2:13:18

        Okay. Then your question is, then your question is, "What can I do to modulate it?" I could give you, you know, okay, take some breaths, ground yourself, look at that other person, blah, blah, blah. But instead-

    27. TFTim Ferriss2:13:30

        [laughs]

    28. JKJack Kornfield2:13:31

        ... as we're talking, um, let yourself, um, picture a circumstance recently. It might have been with your, you know, the contractor who's doing your cabin or something else, and you're s- you know, that uprising of, um, the injustice of it and how right you are, you know, and how you're gonna get this goddamn thing done, you know, and how you have to, have to be hard and strong. You feel all that, and feel the energy in your body. First thing is just remember what it felt like, and now you're becoming the, the kind of mindful, loving witness of it and saying, "Wow, this is a lot of energy."

    29. TFTim Ferriss2:14:11

        Okay.

    30. JKJack Kornfield2:14:11

        So can you feel that and remember that?
14. 2:24:52 – 2:39:31

    Bridging Buddhism and clinical psychology: trauma work, prisons/vets, and creating safe containers

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:24:52

       S- s- one of the, one of the reasons I've, I've wanted to have you on the podcast for so long is that, uh, for me, you represent a very, a wide spectrum of tools. You have developed a toolkit that it has enabled you to work with everyone from the, uh, the, the seekers of, say, the Buddhist, um, a- along the lines of the Buddhist traditions to, say, adolescents who are cutters to war vets with PTSD, missing limbs, and so on. You've worked with a very, uh, diverse set of, uh, students and, uh, patients maybe even. Uh, a- and that leads me to my next question, which is after these experiences abroad, w- why did you decide to pursue, to come back ... Why did you decide to come back to the US, period, and then why did you decide to, uh, go back to school and study clinical psychology?

    2. JKJack Kornfield2:25:54

       So, um, after the first five years in Asia, um, there were certain, there were a few other Westerners who had become monks. It was a handful, and some were gonna stay for the rest of their lives. I'd learned a lot, and so that was kind of a choice. Am I just gonna stay? And I realized, no, I want a family. I want a lover. You know, I was a young man, after all, and just the celibacy for those years was actually pretty hard. Um, I want, um- I wanna see if what I have learned really translates, um, into the life back home. I don't wanna just leave it. Um, and so it was some wrestling, but it became very clear to me that, uh, that, uh, I wasn't fit for the m- monastery for the rest of my life. I had other, not only other desires, but also, and longings, um, but also a real interest to say, "Does this work elsewhere?" Um, so I came back and thought, "Well, what can I do?" I got, got a couple jobs and right away, and of course what, what I knew how to do was be a student, but I was now a student of the mind and the heart. And I thought, "Well, how do I learn more about what happened to me in the monastery? Oh, I'll study Western psychology." And so that started me on that particular path, and I learned a lot of complementary things. There's some very good trauma work in the West that I've learned about that really enhances the compassion and loving kindness and mindfulness things that I learned in, in the temple. Um, and, uh, you know, now I've done a lot of years of teaching Eastern and Western psychology together. These principles that I've learned are spreading so widely in Western psychology. I went to the largest therapy conference in, in, um, the country, um, in December, and down in Anaheim, and gave a talk. You know, here's a room full of 3,000 or 5,000 people, and I ask, "How many of you have, um, some experience of meditation or mindfulness practice?" And the majority of the hands went up, and that would not have happened, you know, 20 or 30 years ago. So, um, the Eastern psychology is now becoming more invisibly woven into the understandings, um, of, uh, clinical psychology in the West, and it's beautiful. Now, I, I wanna say something else. You know, when you talk about working with a variety of population, you know, um, s- yes, people in prisons, yes, um, vets or kids coming out of gangs, but also, uh, um, CEOs. And there's a, uh, a dialogue that Bill Ford and I did. He was at that time the, um, chairman of Ford Motors. Um, he was actually the CEO perhaps before that, but then he was, he's the chairman of Ford Motors, and, and he talks about it too. It was in, um, 2008, I guess, when the auto industry was just about to melt down. Um, and, uh, he called. We'd had some contact, and he's a meditator, and he said, "You know, I'm gonna lose the, the c- my grandfather's company and maybe the whole industry on my watch, and it's hard to sleep. What can I do?" And we did loving kindness practices and, and, um, mindfulness practices together and so forth, and I gave him some practices that he could use. Um, and it turns out that at whatever level you're on, whether you're incarcerated or whether you're a CEO or whether you're a returning vet, th- that these inner capacities that we have to be present without getting lost, to bring a, um, a, an understanding attention to these energies, just as you were doing with anger in ourselves, um, c- are really, really liberating. And sometimes, you know, what's needed, like for the vets or the, the people coming back from the war, is, um, also a kind of forgiveness practice and trauma work. Um, and we'll come together and, you know, they'll say things like, um, "I can't tell you what I saw," because in fact, people don't wanna hear the horrors of war. You... They can't tell the story, and if they do, often they re-traumatize themselves, and the people around them couldn't bear it. But there's something worse, because they'll say, "I can't tell you what I had to do." And so it's locked up in their hearts, you know, and then what do they have? They can drink or they can, you know, um, distract themselves or, or, or get in, you know, blind rages periodically. But if you get a room of returning combat vets and hold it with, um, a proper space of understanding and compassion, not only can they tell their stories, which they've never told, but they can listen to one another and say, "Oh yeah, I've been there," and all of a sudden they're not so alone anymore. And, and that release of the weight on their heart, um, uh, so there's a social dimension to trauma where we need to tell the story, um, helps them release also what's carried in their nervous system and in their body, and there's some, some correlation between, between those two together that becomes very powerful. Um, and we need that. We need... I, I do a lot of teaching of forgiveness practice and self-forgiveness. Those are also on those, those guided meditations that I teach. And for a lot of us, self-forgiveness, like self-compassion, becomes a very, very important way to liberate ourselves from what we had to do to survive in the past so that we're actually free in our life.

    3. TFTim Ferriss2:31:51

       How do you set the stage, for instance, with those, with those vets? What do you say to them or what, what exercise might you do that opens the door for them to share these stories?

    4. JKJack Kornfield2:32:03

       So a couple of images, one with gang kids and then one with vets. Um, for, for gang kids who come in or these kids who are trying to get out of gangs and might come with a mentor or something like that to some events we've had, you get these guys and they're, you know, their, their hoods are up and their hats are on backward and they're leaned back and saying like, "Come on, man, you're gonna teach us meditation. You're gonna teach us, give us some poem, stories or bit. Listen, man, we're out on the street. People got nine millimeters. You know, you gotta give us something better than that." So we try to make a, a- a setting that honors who they are from the very beginning. We say, well, we can't talk yet about the real things that we came here to do because there are too many people in this room who have not been acknowledged and not been respected. So would you go out in the parking lot and pick up a stone for every young person you know who's been killed? And we light one candle and put it in the center of a table. Say, bring it back in and say their name and put their stone by this candle. The simplest possible ritual. And these guys and sometimes gals will come in and their hands are full of stones. No young people should know that many dead people. And they'll say, this is for Tito and this is for RJ and this is for homegirl. And pretty soon there's a mound of stones and the names of people they've lost were put into the fabric of the air of that room. And their hoods are no longer over their heads. They're sitting up like, okay, this is a place where we can talk about what's really going on. So there's something about making, whether it's through the simplest ritual or making a container in which people realize that this is a safe place to talk about what we've never done before. With the vets, one of the things that Michael Mead, Luis Rodriguez, these guys from Mosaic Multicultural Foundation that I've worked with for years and are really wonderful. Michael, who's a great drummer and a storyteller and mythologist who's also been working in prisons and with vets and gang kids for years, he'll say, let me tell you an ancient story of returning warriors. And he has a handful of stories from Africa or Tibet or the Mayan tradition about warriors coming back with their hands covered with blood and their eyes filled with the Mars, with the martial energy that they can't stop the violence because it's taken them over. And here's a myth or a story that tells about how ancient warriors were brought back into their community. I'll tell you the myth if you want to hear one of them.

    5. TFTim Ferriss2:35:07

       Oh, yes, please.

    6. JKJack Kornfield2:35:09

       So here we are, you know, and there's these vets and already stories have started to pour out about, I can't tell you what I saw, I can't tell you what I had to do. And Michael stood up and he said, let me tell you an old Irish story of an Irish warrior named Cuchulainn, or I'm not sure how his name is pronounced, something like that. And he was the most fierce and famous of all Irish warriors. And the Irish warriors were madmen because they would go out, they'd paint their bodies and they'd go out naked. And sometimes you just see them coming and you'd run the other way. But anyway, there was some marauding king and army that had come to threaten their area. And so Cuchulainn went out and almost single-handedly chased them and defeated them. But then he was coming back to his own town in a chariot covered with blood and his eyes blazing, bearing down on his own town, still possessed with the violence of war, with the god Mars. And they were all terrified he would come and do violence there too. And so they ran, what can we do? What can we do? And they went to ask the old wise woman in the village and she said three things. And so the first thing, they lined up all the women in the village who bared their breasts. And this slowed him down as if it reminded him of his mother's milk or something. And because he was slowed down, then the second thing they did was take a rope and tie it around him and put him in a huge cauldron of cold water, which hissed off his body. And then they filled it three times with cold water and finally his body cooled down. And then the third thing they did is they took him, still bound, and they lay him on a carpet in the court of the local king. And they sang to him the stories and myths and songs of warriors who had protected the kingdom and then come back and released the violence and the fears that they carried and planted their crops again and loved their families and resumed living in harmony with the community from which they came. And they told the ancient stories and sang the songs for three days and nights. And when it was over, Cuchulainn's eyes opened, they untied him, and he was back as a normal human being again. And after Michael told this story to vets who'd been telling terrible accounts of things that happened, in this room, 100 men stood up and we'd been working with a simple African chant, a song that was really an African chant of a prayer, you know, earth hold me for this living is hard. We all sang to the vets together for a long time as if we could sing them back into their bodies from this, as if they were lying there in the court of the king. So this is, and you asked the question, how do you make a setting that allows people to truly feel that they can tell their stories and be held in compassion, whether it's the grief of these gang kids that no one's really given them the place to give voice to. You know, or the vet who says, "I can't tell you what I had to do."

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:39:00

       That's very powerful, and it makes me also think back to conversations I've had with, uh, Sebastian Junger, who is, uh, a wartime journalist. Has, has, has, uh, co-produced and shot a number of really harrowing, uh, documentary films, including Restrepo, uh, and most recently wr- wrote a book called Tribe, uh,

15. 2:39:31 – 3:01:03

    Initiation, recommended starting points, and the closing billboard question

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:39:31

       that touches on some similar topic area, and leads me to ask you, are, are there any rites of passages or rituals that you feel would be useful for every man or woman to experience? Be- be... And for... And this is something that I've felt a, a longing for and a lack of, uh, since my teenage years. Because I, I, I'm not Jewish, did not have a bat mitzvah, bar mitzvah. I don't know if that serves that purpose in the, in the Jewish tradition necessarily, but are there any, any rituals or rites of passage that you think we could use in, let's just say, the United States, uh, that would be helpful to, whether it's a specific population, specific group, or, uh, anyone?

    2. JKJack Kornfield2:40:26

       You know, so, um, what you're talking about is a really big subject. It's a subject of initiation, and unfortunately, bar mitzvahs, at least when I was in it, was, was a relatively lightweight and meaningless thing. You get up there, and you recite your, you know, Hebrew portion of the Bible, and now you're a man, and they give you a bunch of presents, and there wasn't a lot of meaning in it. But the pr- the problem that you raise is that of the lack of initiation.

    3. TFTim Ferriss2:40:52

       Right.

    4. JKJack Kornfield2:40:53

       And what's true is that it's been forgotten in our culture. Um, one of the few places you get initiation, uh, is going into the military.

    5. TFTim Ferriss2:41:01

       Right.

    6. JKJack Kornfield2:41:01

       That's an initiation. Um, but a lot of these gang kids, for example, they're trying to initiate themselves, which can't really happen. You need elders, and you need it in a ritualized way. But they'll go on the... You know, if you're a, i- in the Maasai, uh, tradition in East Africa, the Maasai people, um, as everybody's heard, you know, a young man at a certain age, of 14 or something, will go out and kill a lion, um, to prove that they're now a tr- an adult member of the society and that they're brave, and that's part of their initiation. Um, there were initiations for young women as well. Um, and it's not just in Africa. The Mayans had initiations. And in Thailand, when I lived there back, starting in the 1960s, at that point, almost every young man and many young women, when they reached the age of 19, 20, they became a monk for three months or for a year and lived in an austere way, and it was part of their initiation to learn both the inner life of themselves and also a kind of discipline. We don't have it, and because of it, you know, kids are trying to initiate themselves on the streets by, you know, shooting somebody or doing something, you know, that shows that they're brave, but it's not a lion, it's another person. Or it's, you know, um, trying to get the attention of the others and say, sh- prove how, how s- powerful or strong they are. So we desperately need these, and we need them built into our education and to our psychology. Um, and I can't give you a simple answer, but one of the people who's, has the most intelligence about this is a man, a colleague of mine named Michael Meade. Um, and if you look up Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, his writings on initiation and what's possible here and the things he's led are very, very, um, inspiring. Um, so that's a place that I would look.

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:43:01

       That's a good starting point. Wonderful.

    8. JKJack Kornfield2:43:03

       So-

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:43:03

       I will definitely find that. Well, Jack, I think we could go for hours and hours and hours, and I always love chatting with you, and I'd love to perhaps even consider doing a part two sometime. But, uh, given that we've already gone for two-plus hours, uh, I wanna ask just a f- a few more questions. And, uh, I'll actually start with just reading something very short, which is from your 2017 year-end message. And, uh, so, so I think this is just to inject some more, uh, optimism into our conversation, which we've already had plenty of, but, uh, this is, this is just a small portion of your year-end message. Uh, "Martin Luther King Jr. describes our collective journey with hope. Quote, 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.' End quote. And Pablo Neruda explains further, 'You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.' Renewal is happening." This is back to your voice. "Take quiet time to listen to your heart, to meditate, and to rest amidst the great turnings. Feel the renewal of spring that can be born in you. Align yourself with goodness. Let yourself blossom like a lotus or whatever unique flower you are, shining in the world, offering tiny seeds of love amidst it all. Blessings to you in 2018, Jack." And I, I, I want this, this note to then l- lead into, uh, and certainly you're welcome to comment on that, but which book you would recommend of yours people start with, or where they start with all of the many materials, recordings, readings that you've produced? Because y- y- you're a, a fantastic writer and a prolific writer. Uh, you have some of my favorite book titles I've ever heard, by the way, including After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, which maybe we could touch on. [chuckles] But where would you suggest people start, uh, of the many things that you've, that you've written and shared with the world? Uh, and, and, and if you have any comments on that year-end message, you're welcome to share that as well.

    10. JKJack Kornfield2:45:05

        So for books, if you want something simple, I have books like, um, you know, An Introduction to Meditation that Sounds True publishes, or I have, um, um, a little book called The Art of Forgiveness: Lovingkindness and Peace, which is very simple stories and practices. Um, if you want something that's richer and fuller, then you could look at one of my bigger books like A Path with Heart or The Wise Heart: A Guide to the, m- to Principles of Buddhist Psychology. Um, and again, I think lots of stuff online, and Sounds True's particularly a good place to go, along with my website. Um, then ... And that 40-Day Mindfulness, Mindfulness Daily, which is, I think it's, like, 30 bucks or something, and you, you know, um, is a really wonderful way to start. Um, in terms of what I had written, uh, about the trusting heart, one of the greatest Zen texts from a thousand years ago says, "To be awakened or enlightened, um, is one with the trusting heart and mind." And it doesn't mean that, that we won't go through hard times. We always have, and we will again, and we are now in many ways, but that we also have born within us the capacity, um, to meet these difficulties with, uh, understanding, um, with courage, with compassion, and to transform them. And in that way, one of my favorite recent books is, um, called The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, um, and he's a remarkable, you know, professor at Harvard, anthropologist, historian, talking about, um, the growing consciousness of humanity in spite of the kind of wars and conflict and environmental things. There are so many good things that have happened that he charts over the last few centuries of the development of, um, you know, uh, certain, certain abilities for peacemaking. There's actually less war than there'd been, um, the, you know, respect for, for women, um, the reduction in, uh, you know, child labor, all kinds of things. And, and in that same regard, um, there's a wonderful book called Bury the Chains, which is about the ending of slavery in the British Empire, starting with this handful of men, um, who met in a British tea shop or printing shop and spent 30 years, um, riding around the country, bringing ex-slaves who were well-spoken to talk about the Middle Passage and the, you know, the horrors of slavery and so forth. And even though the British Empire's economic engine was built around slavery and sugar, by the end of their work, um, of 30 years, uh, the, the British Parliament, um, outlawed slavery in the British Empire s- you know, decades before it happened in the US. Uh, and the Quakers were a big part of this, and the Quakers famously wouldn't take their hats off for the king.

    11. TFTim Ferriss2:48:07

        [laughs]

    12. JKJack Kornfield2:48:09

        Um, but when, um, what is his name? Thomas Clarkson, who was the center of this group trying to end slavery and going everywhere to do it, when Thomas Clarkson died, the, all the Quakers of the England, England took their hats off because he'd, he'd freed so many spirits and so many lives. So the possi- we have these amazing possibilities as human beings, and we're just growing into them now culturally, um, and it's about time. Um, but it's, it, but they're, the, they are possible, and we, um, each have a, have a contribution to make in it.

    13. TFTim Ferriss2:48:50

        Jack, I'm gonna ask you one more, uh, question before we wrap up with, uh, just, uh, letting people know where they can find you on social media and elsewhere, the website and so on. But last question is one I like to ask, and this is, this is a metaphor, but if you could have a short message on a billboard, uh, in other words, get a, get a message out to millions or billions of people, could be a few words, one word, uh, a phrase, a quote of yours, a quote of someone else's, uh, what might you put on that billboard?

    14. JKJack Kornfield2:49:23

        Um, well, two things come to mind. Uh, one is a question that when I sit with, sat with people many times at the end of l- their life, that they, that they then ask of themselves, silently or out loud, is, "Did I love well?" Because in the end, what matters really? Um, w- the billboard would have a question rather than a statement, um, and it would have a question something like, um, uh, "How could I love myself better?" Or what w- you know? So that it actually, it's not that I'm gonna tell them something. Th- they already know this, but I'm gonna remind those who read that there is something that's asking f- to be awakened in them. How could I love myself and this world better? And then, you know, or what gets... And, you know, then you go, "Well, what gets in the way of that, and how could I love that too?" How could I love myself and this world better?

    15. TFTim Ferriss2:50:26

        Hmm. Well, Jack, I want to, of course, thank you for your time today, but, uh, beyond that, I want to thank you, and this is, this is very, um, very much from deep in my heart, thank you for helping me to learn to love myself better, and quite frankly, to see something in the first place that is worth loving. That's not, uh, where I've spent most of my life. So it's, it's turned into, uh, if not my... I hesitate to say my top priority because I'm, [laughs] I worry about sounding self-indulgent, but it's become one of the most important and fruitful- ... uh, tasks in my life is asking that question, how could I love myself better, or how could I learn to love myself better? So thank you very, very sincerely, uh, for that. And the, the words don't do it justice, but, uh, I'll, uh, uh, I'll, I'll ... That's all. That's the best I can do right now remotely, is to, is to put it into words. So thank you for that.

    16. JKJack Kornfield2:51:30

        Thank you, Tim. This was, this was a pleasure to do. And what I feel and I know is that as you tend your own heart, um, in a wise way, then it makes you available to bring the gifts, the many gifts you have to the world, you personally and others. Um, but to do it in a way that's on the carrier wave of connection and love, and it transforms everything. So thank you, too.

    17. TFTim Ferriss2:51:54

        Well, Jack, I, uh, you know, I'm looking at a text thread of ours, and I'm feeling the necklace around my neck, which is really a thread, a red thread-

    18. JKJack Kornfield2:52:01

        Mm

    19. TFTim Ferriss2:52:01

        ... that was used to close the, one of the elements of the closing of the 10-day silent retreat. And I shot you a text not too long ago asking what the three knots meant because I'd forgotten.

    20. JKJack Kornfield2:52:15

        Mm-hmm.

    21. TFTim Ferriss2:52:16

        And this is what you wrote back. "First knot equals refuge in whatever you hold as most inspiring and sacred. Second, commitment to compassion for self and others. Third, following your highest intention." And the intention that I set at the end of that 10-day retreat was to learn to love myself so I could love others more fully. Uh, but I've realized that maybe what it is is learning to love myself so I can help others learn to do the same. And you've been an integral piece of that. And, uh, I, I just love that I have the opportunity to introduce you and your work and these traditions to more people. And, uh, I will certainly be linking to, uh, where everyone can find you online, but are there any particular best places, just to, to reiterate where people can find you? And I'll link to these in the show notes.

    22. JKJack Kornfield2:53:10

        Uh, jackkornfield.com, and also look up Jack Kornfield on soundstrue.com for those programs that I talked about. And then spiritrock.org, which is our great meditation center in, um, m- the Bay, San Francisco Bay Area.

    23. TFTim Ferriss2:53:26

        Absolutely stunning, stunning, beautiful location, worth visiting just to bathe in the scenery, but, uh, many more reasons to, to visit as well. Uh, well, Jack, thank you again and-

    24. JKJack Kornfield2:53:40

        Thank you. Thank you, Tim. It's a pleasure

    25. TFTim Ferriss2:53:42

        ... and to everybody listening, uh, you can find show notes, links to all the resources, books, and everything that we discussed at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you so much for listening. [upbeat music] Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is 5-Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And 5-Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up [laughs] in the, uh, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email, and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Man, oh, man, do a lot of listeners of this podcast and readers of mine love FreshBooks, to the extent that I ended up meeting with the CEO not very long ago. Why are they so popular? Well, they are the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals, so that's many of you, and used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time, and get paid very, very quickly, which suits the needs of a lot of freelancers, a lot of entrepreneurs and beyond. You can take pictures of receipts. You can link your credit card and debit card, so all the things you buy automatically appear in your FreshBooks in the right category. So on and so forth. Makes taxes easy, makes invoices easy, makes your life easier. And also, in fact, I would recommend a PDF. Uh, they didn't ask me to read this part, by the way. They put together a PDF a while back, uh, called Breaking the Time Barrier, subtitle How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential. So you can search for Breaking the Time Barrier. A lot of people ask me, "How can I get a 4-hour work week with a service business?" And the story in that e-book, it's a PDF, is the short answer. It's really, really good. So I think you should also check that out. So Breaking the Time Barrier, check it out. But also, why not test out FreshBooks? Claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com/tim and enter Tim Ferriss, two Rs and two Ss, in the how did you hear about us section. That sounds [laughs] like we're gonna get very little tracking. That's a lot of work. But just go to freshbooks.com/tim and try it out because it is a very good product, and I think you will find it simplifies your life. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. You might remember Four Sigmatic for their mushroom coffee, which was created by those clever Finnish founders. And when I first mentioned that coffee on this podcast, the product sold out in less than a week. It lights you up like a Christmas tree, which can be really useful. However, recently I've been testing the opposite side of the spectrum, a new product, and that is their reishi mushroom elixir to help me end my day, to get to sleep. As you guys may know, longtime listeners at least, I struggled with insomnia for decades. I've largely fixed that, but still shutting off my monkey brain has never been easy. It still isn't easy very often. And I've found reishi, which I've been fascinated by for a few years now, has been very, very effective and calming. Their old formula, however, Four Sigmatic's old formula included stevia, and I like to avoid sweeteners, all sweeteners, for a host of reasons. And I then just pinged them and asked, "Hey, guys, I would love to experiment with this and maybe actually suggest it, but I'd like a version without sweeteners if you'd be open to it. If too much of a headache, don't worry." And they are always game for experimentation, and so they created a special custom version without the stevia, without sweeteners. Now it is part of my nightly routine. Their reishi elixir comes in single-serving packets, which are perfect for travel. And in fact, I'm about to leave the country right now, and I have a packet in front of me that's just gonna sit in the end of my carry-on bag. You only need hot water, and it mixes very, very easily. Here's some recommended copy that they put [laughs] in the read. So I'm gonna read it, and then I'll give you my take. Quote, "A warning for those in the experimental mindset. Reishi is strong and bitter," in parentheses, "like any great medicine. So if the bitterness is too much, I recommend trying it with honey and/or nut milk, such as almond milk." End quote. So I'm gonna say, no, you should suck it up, and you should drink the tea because it's not that bitter. And maybe you should take the advice of old Chinese people when they're criticizing youngins when they say, " 不 能 吃 苦 ," which means you're not able to eat bitterness. Bitter is, in many cases, an indication of things that help liver detoxification and so on. I'm not saying that's the case here. But I've tested this reishi elixir on family members, on friends. Everybody has liked it. It's a little bit earthy. It's not that hard. So I would just say suck it up, and no, don't put in honey or nut milk or any of that shit. Just drink the goddamn tea. It's delicious, I think, right? If you like pu-erh, that kind of stuff, that type of tea, you're gonna dig it. So just try it. Okay, back to then my read. If you'd like to naturally improve your sleep, both onset and quality, I think naturally, you might just enjoy this reishi elixir without any sweeteners. It has organic reishi extract, organic field mint extract, organic rose hips extract, organic tulsi extract. And that's it. No fancy stuff. No artificial whatchama call it anything. So check it out. Go to foursigmatic.com/ferriss and get 20% off this special batch. I don't know if they're gonna be making much more of this, uh, since it was made specifically for you guys. So do me a favor and try it out so that they continue to be open to experimenting with me to create products for you guys specifically. Check it out, Four Sigmatic. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/ferriss, F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Get 20% off this special batch. And, uh, you must use the code FERRISS to receive your discount. F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to foursigmatic.com/ferriss and then use code FERRISS for 20% off of this rare, exclusive, limited run of reishi mushroom elixir for nighttime routines without any sweeteners. Enjoy. [outro music]

Episode duration: 3:02:03