It’s rare on this program that we get to listen to a conversation between two prominent spiritual teachers.
Earlier this year, in Northern California, producer Kate Olson sat in on just such an event.
Jack Kornfield is a prominent Buddhist leader.
David Steindl-Rast is a well-known Christian, a Benedictine monk. Their topic was living gratefully.
Brother David Steindl-Rast: Gratefulness is there from the very beginning, because it is always a loving listening to whatever comes your way, and if you lovingly listen to it, you are grateful for it.
It has these three steps that we have talked about many times: the stopping, the looking — opening your heart in every respect — and then the doing, the responding.
And all three must come together.
Jack Kornfield: A couple of years ago, the Washington Post hired the world-famous violinist Joshua Bell to take his Stradivarius and play in the Washington subway, in the metro, play these amazing Bach pieces during rush hour.
He was playing Lincoln Center that night for two hundred dollars a ticket or something.
Put out his hat, and after an hour he got fourteen dollars, and no one stopped except for children.
Everybody else was on their way and the only people who stopped to hear this extraordinary music, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to get somewhere,” were the children who tugged on their parents’ arms and said, “Wait, there’s something going on here worth paying attention to.”
It’s not an easy thing, actually, to listen.
Because also there are the barriers.
We have the unfinished business of the heart, and when people start to get quiet and listen, sometimes what happens is the tears come, because they have to grieve something that they’ve been too busy to feel, or some longing, or something that’s in there.
My friend Anne Lamott says, “The mind is like a bad neighborhood; I try not to go there alone.” Continue reading
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