Ep. 294 – The Secret of Love and Attachment: Wise Relationships, Vulnerability, and the Joy of Nirvana

Sharing deep spiritual secrets of love and attachment, Jack transforms our unhealthy attachments into Wise Relationships through vulnerability, inner joy, and shared humanity.

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“The secret is, the opposite of attachment is not detachment, but love. Because true love does not seek to possess or control, it doesn’t separate or fear what is there. True love is the ability to be present without grasping. From this place, love offers its blessings.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

• Transforming unhealthy clingings into Wise Attachment
• Not getting stuck in our ideas and views 
• The global price of collective addiction and attachment
• Moving past our attachment to our sense of separateness
• The big spiritual question—who are we really?
• His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and keeping a healthy curiosity around death
• Lowering our defenses and helping others lower their defenses around us
• Parenting with trust and connection rather than clinging and control
• The good side of attachment—connection, well-being, mirroring
• Transforming low-self-esteem and the body of fear into self-confidence and openness
• Using spiritual practice to open to a love that includes our full humanity
• Finding the true possibilities that the spiritual path offers
• Resting in our being—how not to seek and chase, and how not to run away and hide
• Touching our incompleteness, our brokenness, with compassion
• Expanding our heart and connecting with our shared humanity
• Uncovering within us our inner knowing, The One Who Knows
• How to be true to yourself, and make a light of yourself
• Meditation as an invitation into vulnerability
• Moving from unhealthy attachment into Wise Relationship
• How Being Here Now, our capacity to be present, transforms our life
• Nirvana as the absence of struggle with the world as it as

Please help support Jack's daughter Caroline's Oasis Legal Services in their mission to help persecuted LGBTQ+ Asylum Seekers gain citizenship and safety in the U.S.

“We want to be loved, we want to be held, and it’s so hard to be vulnerable. Meditation is an invitation to that vulnerability, the rawness and openness of the heart. Not because it’s good for us, but because it moves us back to the truth that we are held. If we can sit and open, we’ll discover that this universe that has given birth to us really does hold us.” – Jack Kornfield

This episode recorded on 03/08/1993 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed. 

“Nirvana, which is the absence of suffering, doesn’t mean that the world goes away. Nirvana is the absence of struggle with the world as it is.” – Jack Kornfield

About Jack Kornfield:

Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, studying as a monk under the Buddhist master Ven. Ajahn Chah, as well as the Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies.

Jack is currently offering a wonderful array of transformational online courses diving into crucial topics like .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}