Interview with Jack Kornfield

In a captivating conversation on The Knowledge Project Podcast, renowned author and Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield shared profound insights gleaned from a lifetime dedicated to understanding the human mind and heart. From the rigorous discipline of a forest monastery in Southeast Asia to confronting personal demons, Kornfield illuminates a practical path to inner peace, revealing how our relationship with suffering, emotions, and our inner voice shapes our reality and our capacity for freedom.

The Monastic Path: Embracing Suffering as a Gateway

Jack Kornfield’s journey to inner wisdom began unconventionally. Fresh out of Dartmouth College during the Vietnam War, he sought refuge from military conscription, finding himself in Thailand with the Peace Corps. It was there he met a revered teacher and chose to become a Buddhist monk in a wild forest monastery on the border of Thailand and Laos. His initial greeting from the teacher was startling: "I hope you're not afraid to suffer." When Kornfield expressed his confusion, the teacher laughed and offered a transformative distinction: "There's two kinds of suffering: the kind you run away from that follows you everywhere, and the kind that you face, and that's the gateway to Freedom. If you're interested, come in."

Life in the ascetic monastery was intensely disciplined. Days began before dawn, with monks tapping paths to alert snakes, followed by meditation, alms rounds through villages, and community work. At least once a week, they would sit in meditation all night. This rigorous training, so unlike anything he had known, began to fill the crucial gaps left by his Ivy League education.

Key Learnings:

• Suffering is an unavoidable part of life, but how we engage with it determines its power over us.
• Facing discomfort and challenge head-on can unlock unexpected pathways to freedom.
• Rigorous, disciplined practice, whether physical or mental, can lead to profound inner shifts.

Bridging Worlds: Ivy League vs. Inner Wisdom

Kornfield reflected on his Dartmouth education, describing it as only "half the curriculum" for a wise life. While he learned philosophy, history, mathematics, and science, it completely omitted crucial life skills. "Nobody taught me what to do with my anger and rage at my violent father who was all stored inside," he admitted, "nobody taught me how to have a kind relationship or to listen with some compassion, no one taught me what to do with the kind of fears and anxieties that come up for all of us as human beings or even how to be with myself in a deep way in my own body and heart and mind."

Even in the monastery, challenges arose. Contracting malaria in his tiny hut, he felt wretched and yearned for home. His teacher visited, acknowledging his suffering, and offering quiet encouragement: "you know how to do this... this is part of your training and... you can do it." This transmission of resilience from someone who had faced jungles, malaria, and tigers, underscored the profound practical education he was receiving—a training in forgiveness, compassion, steadiness, and unshakable awareness.

Key Insights:

• Traditional education often overlooks the vital importance of emotional intelligence and inner cultivation.
• Unprocessed emotions from the past can linger and influence our present state.
• Adversity, when met with internal resolve and wise guidance, can become a powerful teacher.

Befriending Our Emotions: From Rage to Self-Compassion

Despite considering himself peaceful, Kornfield found anger surfacing during his monastic training—an anger disproportionate to present events, rooted in his childhood with a brilliant but "paranoid and periodically rageful and violent" father. When he approached his teacher, expecting advice to suppress the anger, the response was surprising: "Good." His teacher instructed him, "Go back to your hut... if you're gonna be angry, do it right. And just sit there until you know anger, until you can hear the story it tells... until you can feel the energy of it... until you can find a way to actually be with it and not run away from it."

This marked the beginning of learning to trust his capacity to be present for emotions. The practice involves recognizing, naming (anger, fear, joy), feeling them in the body, and making space for them. This mindful awareness expands our "window of tolerance," allowing us to observe emotions "like visitors" rather than being consumed by them. Crucially, it helps us realize emotions are not just personal, but part of a shared human experience. This process allows us to approach our inner voice—which often tries to protect us through self-criticism—with kindness: "thank you for trying to protect me or thank you for trying to keep me safe. I'm okay, you can relax."

Key Practices:

• Mindful observation involves naming emotions, locating their sensation in the body, and understanding the stories they tell.
• Expanding the "window of tolerance" allows emotions to be experienced without being overwhelming.
• Cultivating self-compassion transforms internal criticism into a gentle acknowledgment of our shared humanity.
• Consciously "watering" seeds of joy, love, and connection to foster positive growth within.

The Power of Pause, Ritual, and Intention

Kornfield highlighted how our days often spiral from small triggers—a slight in a meeting, road rage. As he aptly noted, "it seems like almost all of our problems come from our inner state and if we get out of balance putting that Back in Balance really quickly is key because if our inner state is calm and fulfilled we don't sort of pick fights or create drama or keep score." A simple "mindful pause," even just a few breaths, can transform our reaction. As a therapist, he would have clients sit quietly for five minutes before their session, allowing them to shift from reactivity to presence.

He also spoke of ritual as our "oldest human language," a powerful way to shift collective and individual energy. He recalled lighting a candle during a meeting with cynical young men from street gangs, allowing them to honor their lost friends, transforming the atmosphere. He used a similar simple gesture with Google VPs. Rituals, like those of elite athletes, serve to mark transitions, bringing us back to the present.

Finally, Kornfield stressed the immense power of intention, explaining that in Buddhist teachings, "intention is incredibly powerful for us and it's said in the Buddhist teachings that intention is also the basis of karma or cause and effect." The example of crashing a car—once from rage, once due to a stuck accelerator—illustrates how identical external actions yield vastly different internal consequences based on underlying intention. By deliberately setting positive intentions, we consciously shape our inner landscape and the impact we have on the world.

Key Changes:

• Integrating "mindful pauses" to create space between stimulus and response, allowing for conscious choice.
• Utilizing simple rituals to ground oneself and shift the emotional tone of interactions.
• Consciously setting intentions, recognizing their profound impact on personal experience and external outcomes.

Forgiveness: Liberating the Heart

A vital practice in navigating the human experience, Kornfield emphasized, is forgiveness. He clarified that forgiveness "doesn't mean forgive and forget and it doesn't condone what happened." Instead, it requires seeing the harm clearly, feeling the suffering, and resolving to prevent its continuation. But ultimately, forgiveness is about what we carry. He shared the poignant story of a woman in a bitter divorce who, despite her ex-husband's cruel actions, declared, "I will not bequeath a legacy of bitterness to my children about their father."

Kornfield recalled another story of two ex-prisoners of war, years after their torture. One asked the other if he had forgiven their captors. When the second replied, "No, never," the first wisely said, "Well, then they still have you in prison, don't they?" This powerful anecdote underscores that hatred and bitterness imprison the bearer more than the object of their ire. Forgiveness, therefore, is not a gift to another, but a liberation of one's own heart, allowing us to live with dignity and an open spirit, regardless of past injustices.

Key Learnings:

• Forgiveness is a deeply personal process of releasing resentment for one's own well-being.
• It does not mean condoning harmful actions or forgetting the past, but rather choosing not to be defined by it.
• By forgiving, we break cycles of pain and prevent the legacy of bitterness from continuing.

"It starts with these inner capacities... that we as human beings also have to change our relationship to our emotions and our fears... and to shift from living a life of fear and more living a life of connection and compassion." - Jack Kornfield