San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Meditation and mindfulness via Zoom.
Meditation teacher draws thousands to monthly Zoom class
One of the most popular virtual events in the Bay Area during shelterinplace is the one that’s least likely to draw attention to itself.
One Monday evening a month, Jack Kornfield leads a guided meditation and gives teachings from Spirit Rock, the meditation center in Marin County. His thin, highcheekboned face with its saltandpepper mustache fills the screen as he walks listeners through a breathing exercise, his own eyes closed. Those who peek may notice that the counter showing how many people have tuned in over Zoom typically climbs over 1,000 — with up to an additional 19,000 participating on Facebook. Prepandemic, only several hundred people could fit in the Spirit Rock auditorium for these dharma talks.
With all the difficulties we are facing as a region and country, Kornfield’s calm, kind presence Zoomed to a bed or coffee table can be an extreme comfort. His teachings are based on Buddhist principles, but they are approachable to almost any spiritual leaning, sprinkled with references to the latest news, Netflix shows and discussions about social justice. And knowing how many people are in the audience provides an extra feeling of solace that we aren’t in this alone.
“I talk about how we human beings have been through difficult times before, earthquakes and pandemics and tornadoes and floods. We know how to do this. Usually what it does is bring us together: to trust that we have this in our DNA,” said Kornfield in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where he was visiting family.
Kornfield, 75, has been teaching mindfulness since long before it became a balm for everything the 21st century has thrown at us, now a practice recommended by mental health experts to calm middle school students and help battle anxiety and addiction. Kornfield studied as a Buddhist monk in Thailand and Burma after going to Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late ’ 60s. He began teaching meditation in 1974 and later cofounded Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, which the Dalai Lama visited in 2000. Kornfield also holds a Ph. D. in clinical psychology and is a bestselling author with books published in 20 languages.
Yet despite Kornfield’s international acclaim, he’s not a meditation rock star like Deepak Chopra. Few would recognize him as the slight man wearing a fedora and a face mask who protests alone daily for Black Lives Matter on a busy street coming off Highway 101 in central San Rafael. While many people honk in support, others jeer and yell at him.
“I’m there as a reminder that this is something,” said Kornfield, who continued his protests during his trip to Los Angeles. “What I don’t want to happen is that the moment and the process that we’re in — a national awakening about suffering from racism and suffering from economic injustice — that this passes without change. It’s really got to be a change of heart, that’s what matters.”
With deep divisions over race and politics in the country, fear that wildfires have become an existential threat to life in the Bay Area, and the isolation and loss of the pandemic, we have reached a moment of acute stress and anxiety. But in his talks, Kornfield tells listeners that they have the strength to handle these various crises.
“As human beings, we’ve developed all of these capacities to be able to reflect and know what’s wise,” he said, adding that modern neuroscience has proven meditation is effective in managing fear, confusion and anger. “You can shift your inner landscape to steadiness and love and how you relate to the world.”
During the pandemic, Kornfield has been asked by organizations that support first responders, schools and even national political campaigns to talk to employees about how to ground themselves and find calm in the middle of difficult emotions. One basic practice he recommends, especially to those who have dealt with trauma, is to sit still and imagine they’re a tree, with roots stretching below ground.
“I might have them pay attention to what their body’s carrying with a mindful, loving awareness,” he said. “To pay attention, because the attention itself is healing.”
In his guided meditations, which are also available on his website and in audio books, he teaches the fundamentals in a soft, soothing voice that can encourage beginners to overcome the mental challenge of sitting still and focusing on the breath, for example, or of thinking of the mind as a vast ocean where thoughts and emotions come and go on the surface like waves. A regular daily practice of even a few minutes can help regulate anxiety and other feelings that come up throughout the day.
And yet the people who come to his Monday night talks seem to be looking not just for calm but for a deeper connection. While virtual gatherings mean missing out on what Kornfield calls a “very deep cellular way in which we get nourished in the community of others,” he points out that they also have the advantage of making you feel very close to the person who is speaking from a laptop just inches from your face. There’s also a certain power in knowing that there are 20,000 people simultaneously closing their eyes and breathing peacefully together at once. “Here there’s something that’s intimate. You can actually be close in this virtual way, and that invites another kind of connection to open.”
Kornfield said he feels that most during the question and answer period at the end of his dharma talks. During one in September, a middleaged man asked how to deal with racism as a person of color, and how to find the balance between being open to listening to others and fighting for change.
“You carry a dignity and a nobility that no one can diminish,” Kornfield said. “Part of your caring, and it’s a deep compassion, is because you’ve suffered and you see other people around you suffering. That’s what your heart is carrying, and you need to honor it.”
“You can shift your inner landscape to steadiness and love and how you relate to the world.” Jack Kornfield, Spirit Rock Meditation Center cofounder