The real experience of going stir-crazy

Keeping Our Heads While So Many Are Losing Their’s

Part II—Interview With Jack Kornfiel

Jack Kornfield is one of America’s true mindfulness pioneers. He is also an American Buddhist monk. In part two of this interview he continues to tell us how to cope with COVID from his Buddhist wisdom as interviewed by David Marchese of the New York Times.

Marchese: The feeling that we have so little control over how death could touch us (in this pandemic) that’s what a lot of our current anxieties come down to, right?

Kornfield: You’re asking the question that goes to the hearts of the people who will be reading this. Death is the great mystery. What I know from 50 years of meditation and hospice work is that we are not just this body. We are made of spirit. And the spirit makes it so that even if people have died, we’re still profoundly connected to them in love.

And knowing this does not take the grief away, even though we are profoundly connected to them with love, but it lets us know something bigger than all of that. Who I am is not just this body. We are all part of the consciousness of spirit.

M: How do we strike a balance over how little control we have as individuals in this situation and not let that acceptance turn into resignation?

K: Either we accept things the way we are and don’t try to change anything or we realize it’s our job to change the whole world, which is a terribly heavy burden. The reality is the middle path I go back to the serenity prayer. Then, when my heart steadies, I say, “alright, I’m going to see how I can contribute.” It’s never about passivity.

In Zen they say there are only two things: You sit, and you sweep the garden. So you quiet the mind, and once you’re done with that you get up and tend the garden with the gifts you’ve been given.

I don’t know how long this will last or what the future holds, but let me do the most magnificent work I can do, day by day. Let me live this life fully.

M: What about the real experience of going stir-crazy?

K: People will find that that they might feel stir crazy, but if they look more closely there will be moments that get more still. Moments of presence or contentment that come unbidden because we have been quiet. Take a breath and hold your restlessness. Hold it with love and compassion and it will start to settle down. You will realize, “I can tolerate this.” This kind of attention is what neuroscientists call, “widening the window of tolerance.”