WiP #48 An Ode to Jack Kornfield

The Bard Who Birthed the West’s Mindfulness Meditation Movement

🗂 This Week in Work in Progress

• Status Update:  Jack Kornfield: My love letter to a spiritual friend.

• Inspiration:  The power of story.

• Lighter Note:  Meditation’s serious. Let’s laugh about it.

🔔 Status Update

This week, I veered off from my psychedelics-focused writing to manifest a love letter I’ve always meant to send to a dear spiritual friend.

Jack Kornfield has been my meditation teacher for 30 years and I’m a graduate of his teacher certification program. He’s a famed founding father of Western mindfulness meditation. But more than that, he’s the consummate mindfulness-meets–the-mundane bard. He’s simultaneously practical and poetic. His tales unfold like revelations and they parented me through PTSD in my early years.

So, this week,  I wrote an ode to Jack and shared a few of my favorite yarns. An excerpt follows…

Jack Kornfield: The Bard Who Birthed the West’s Mindfulness Meditation Movement

My first meditation sit was with Jack Kornfield at his Spirit Rock Meditation Center in 1993. I’d stumbled on his book, A Path with Heart, in a Palo Alto bookstore and was taken with his vision of bringing spirituality to everyday life. I’d been diagnosed with PTSD, was riddled with flashbacks and fear, and was living in the thick of a trauma I’d recently experienced. I hoped that Jack and his approach to meditation could restore me. I needed a fix but I didn’t get one. Instead, I found a spiritual friend and the power of a well-told tale. 

Jack is a revered patriarch of modern Western meditation and a guide toward a kinder, gentler inner voice. As his 30-year student and a graduate of his teacher certification program, I respect all his accomplishments. But I contend that his greatest achievement is actually his storytelling prowess. He is the consummate bard. 

In the early 1970s, with a few friends and colleagues, Jack returned from study in Asia as an ordained monk. In short order, he disrobed and co-founded both the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock. He’s best known for translating the Eastern practice of Buddhism and Vipassana (Insight) meditation into a digestible, practical, and accessible form. These messages could be dry or trite were they not wrapped up in countless, compelling yarns. 

There’s some irony to my adoration of Jack the raconteur. 

In meditation, therapy, and self-help we’re endlessly instructed to let go of our stories – the perpetual noise in our heads, often self-critical and anxiety-provoking. Stories are considered the enemy – the villain we must annihilate to achieve happiness, freedom, and enlightenment. 

I’m not contesting the truth in this. Thoughts aren’t real. Full stop. If we digest them whole cloth, as if they are real, they lead us down illusory paths and generate a good deal of suffering.

But there’s a flip side to “story” in which “story” is the protagonist – the most effective delivery route of valuable life lessons. In the same way that “a picture paints a thousand words,” a good story delivers a visceral transformation in a way that mere prose never could. 

In the 1990s, I attended gatherings at Spirit Rock, hid in the back, and rarely spoke. I cried in lieu of meditating. But I stayed for the stories. I couldn’t focus. But I could listen to Jack’s voice, carrying his personal tales of ecstasy and annoyance, pain and perfection.  

Today, I’ll share a few of my favorite yarns – the ones that most impacted me at each stage of my development as a student, teacher, and human. 

Continue Reading Here

Do you have a favorite meditation teacher? A favorite bard? Please share. I’d love to know!!!

💡 Inspiration

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”

― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

One of my colleagues told me recently that he stopped writing long-form essays. He’d switched to short-form because few people were willing to read his longer pieces and he craved social media likes and comments, even if writing shorter pieces sacrificed impact. No judgment, of course. We all have our priorities. But I thought, “I’d rather have one reader whose life I change than 100,000 whose eyeballs hit my page.” 

Every week, I’m gifted with an email from a reader who’s somehow come alive through my stories.

“I made my husband read this essay as soon as I finished. We spent the weekend figuring out how to let our electron fields merge more often.” (We’re 99.99% Empty Space)

“My journey’s been long and hard, too. I wish I’d read this before I started.” (Psychedelics Don't Work the Way You’ve Been Told)

“I never had a way to describe my grief until you explained it to me and gave it a name.” (Ambiguous Loss: Navigating Relationship Change Without Closure)

Stories really do change lives – whether they’re pithy or lengthy. And I learned the art of the bard at the knee of the best. I’ll always be grateful to Jack for the many gifts he gave me. And his teachings live on through the hearts and minds of all who carry them forward.

How about you? What tales are hidden within? This is wisdom that’s unique to you, that only you can share. 

You (YES, YOU!!!) contain multitudes. 

Neil Gaiman said, 

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”

I want to encourage all of you to share your stories. With your permission, I’d love to enter into your world!

That’s what this quote triggers in me. What does it say to you?

🤡 On a Lighter Note

Meditation is deep. Let’s laugh about it for a bit …

• If you’d rather laugh than meditate, and you don’t mind colorful language, boy have I got a “meditation” for you. An excerpt: “If your thoughts drift to the three-ring shit show of your life,...feel your body saying, ‘fuck that.’” 🤣 🤭 🤣

• On the flip side, if you’d like to watch adorable cartoon characters animate while Dan Harris (of 10% Happier) explains why mindfulness is a superpower, look no further. 🧠 🧘🏻‍♀️ 🦸🏽‍♂️

• Comedian Joe List re-visits that age-old question (addressed in every meditation teacher’s FAQ): Why Meditate When You Can Just Nap? 🧘🏻‍♀️ 🚫 😴

Want to learn more about meditation or mindfulness? Here’s your next read. 

🎀 It’s a Wrap

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