Video: Living a Full Life

Jack Kornfield and Frank Ostaseski discuss what it means to live a full life during a Monday night dharma talk at Spirit Rock.

“In any moment, we can be truly present, loving and free. This is our birthright—no one can imprison our spirit.

“When you practice insight meditation you’ll discover as you quiet the mind and open the heart you experience the unbearable beauty of life—and the ocean of tears. War, racism, climate change—when you open your heart, you get it all. And that’s what it means to be a genuine, loving human being.

“Our game is not to try to perfect the world or ourselves or other people. It’s to perfect our love. It’s to be able to show up in some way that’s genuine for this mystery.”—Jack Kornfield

“All these words we use—awakening, realization, enlightenment—they all feel very far off. I don’t even use the word mindfulness so much anymore. I say my practice is intimacy—learning to be intimate with myself and the world. Life and death are intimate—they are a package deal… you can’t pull them apart. A life that doesn’t include death is only half a life. We’re always trying to pull them apart and compartmentalize them. But I wonder what it would be like if instead we invited death in to see what it had to offer us. Death is in the marrow of every passing moment. It’s the secret teacher that’s hiding in plain sight, showing us what matters most. We have this idea that we’ll do the work at the time of death. To imagine we will have the strength of body, the emotional stability, the mental clarity at that time of our life to do the work of a lifetime is a ridiculous gamble. I’ve seen many people coming to this moment with so much fear, distress and regret. I want to encourage people to enter a relationship with death much earlier on.”—Frank Ostaseski

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