“Spiritual practice is not about self-improvement, but letting go into our true nature. As we learn to let go, there comes a sense of grace, compassion, ease, and love.” – Jack Kornfield

Meditation halls, temples, and ashrams are, at their essence, places of peace—reminders of the harmony possible in a human life. When we enter such a place with sincerity, we taste a quiet spaciousness: a felt sense that there is room for everything. This spaciousness is not an escape from life, but a widening of identity. It invites us to rest back from our tight grip on “me” and “mine,” and to discover a vaster, kinder awareness in which body, breath, and thought rise and pass like clouds in an open sky.

From this wider view, the old teachings come alive. The Buddha points to a freedom found in selflessness: when we stop clinging to any fixed identity, the fear of loss softens and the heart relaxes. Practice is not another project of self-improvement; it is a letting go—a quiet trust in the natural ease already here. Like a cup whose usefulness lies in its emptiness, the value of practice is the space it opens: space to breathe, to feel, to grieve and rejoice, to simply be.

“In its true state, mind is open like the sky, vast, without limits, containing all things, yet not limited by them.” — Jack Kornfield

You can sense this directly. Sit, listen, and let awareness expand beyond the borders of the body. Hear sounds appear and fade in a vast field of knowing. Notice sensations—warmth, pressure, tingling—floating in the same field. Thoughts and images bloom and dissolve. Moods shift like weather. If you give them space, even strong emotions crest, turn to mist, and pass. Again and again you discover that what you are is not the passing content, but the open, clear capacity that holds it all.

Spaciousness does not make us indifferent; it ripens compassion. When we are not crowded by fear, a natural responsiveness appears. We recognize our kinship with all beings who long for happiness and stumble into suffering. From the center of space, action arises appropriately—sometimes firm, sometimes tender—called forth by the circumstances of the moment. Like the image of the Buddha with a thousand arms, wisdom and care move together: one wing of clarity, one wing of love.

“When we touch spaciousness, we discover that in letting go there arises a natural compassion, the great heart of the Buddha. In this, we find that the true place of peace is one of trust—an open, spacious heart in the very midst of our life.” — Jack Kornfield

So let practice be simple. Take the one seat in the middle of your life. Feel the breath move like a gentle breeze. Let the doors and windows of the heart be open. In this openness there is coolness, balance, and a confidence not dependent on things going our way. Here we meet the ten thousand joys and sorrows with equanimity. Here we remember what is “nearer than near”: a spacious, loving awareness that holds this changing world—and invites us to serve it with steady hands and a clear, tender heart.

With metta,
Jack