Ep. 220 – Awareness of Feelings, Mindfulness of Food

Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield

In this New Years episode exploring how we can revolutionize our lives by becoming aware of our feelings, Jack talks clear seeing and gives instructions for an eating meditation.

"If you become aware of your feelings, they don't last very long. We feel like we're angry for a day, or sad for a week, or happy for a month, or grieving for a while—as if those feelings lasted that long. But if you look closely and you let yourself feel what's here and pay attention, feelings rarely last more than thirty seconds, maybe a minute, and then then turn into something else. Guaranteed. If you have some feeling that feels like it's lasted much longer than that, you haven't paid attention to it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully illuminates:

• The practice of awareness, mindfulness, and paying attention
• Working with the inevitability of change, impermanence, and death
• Clear seeing, clear comprehension, and integrity
• Mindfulness of the process of eating, food, diet, and hunger
• Instructions for an 'eating meditation'
• Discerning the voices in our head and choosing the most skillful one to follow
• Using 'noting' and 'tracking' to become aware of our feelings and diffuse their grip on us

"When we remember that things change, when we can see it in front of us from moment to moment, it effects deeply the way that we live. If we know that things are really fleeting, it brings a quality or a care to our attention to know where we are. Because we realize that this may be the only time—in fact it is the only time—that we'll be in this day, in this moment, in this circumstance. So one tends to live less automatically if we remember the fact of change, of impermanence and death." – Jack Kornfield

This talk from New Years Day 1/1/1988 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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