(Illustration of Jack Kornfield. Image source: Commune Meditation Experience)

Over dinner at a Mediterranean bistro with a friend this year, I described how comic actor Groucho Marx hosted a quiz show called You Bet Your Life, and how he once asked a contestant why she’d birthed 14 children. “The woman replied that she loved her husband,” I told my friend.

I paused to sip my Cabernet, setting up the punchline. “Then, Groucho said, ‘I love my cigar, too, but I take it out once in a while.’”

I bent over my moussaka, hooting with laughter. My friend rolled her eyes. “You’re listening to that old spiritual lecture series again, aren’t you?” she said.

She meant The Roots of Buddhist Psychology, recorded 30 years ago by internationally-renown teacher, author, and clinical psychologist Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock—the meditation center he helped to found outside San Francisco.

At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, The New York Times Magazine ran a profile of Kornfield titled “Things Keep Getting Scarier. He Can Help You Cope.” The writer, David Marchese, described him as “one of America’s true mindfulness pioneers, a man who helped popularize the once-exotic practices he learned more than 50 years ago when he began training as a Buddhist monk.”

His Roots lecture, divided into twelve parts, blends philosophy and psychology with poignant anecdotes, classic and contemporary poetry, and insights from writers, artists, philosophers, activists, politicians, and several Buddhist teachers in the U.S. and overseas. Each part explores how to navigate the challenges of one’s personal life and the social injustices plaguing the U.S. and the world.

“I wanted to offer a straightforward course in Buddhist psychology because it uplifts the heart and strengthens the best qualities of our humanity and wisdom,” Kornfield wrote to me in an email. “When I first taught it at Spirit Rock, there were three hundred people in the room. Many thousands have taken it online since that time.”

Kornfield celebrates his 80^th birthday this July. He’s the author of 16 books, including A Path with Heart; After the Ecstasy, the Laundry; and No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are. He’s spent a lifetime conveying the wisdom of his early teachers in Thailand, Burma, and India to Western students. While many of his students are white and middle- or upper-class, Kornfield himself is part of a diverse international community of Vipassana mindfulness meditation teachers who’ve long debated how best to combat racism, violence, and poverty with engaged and compassionate nonviolent resistance. Roots represents a merging of insights from his studies in Buddhism with his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology.

Kornfield’s 30-year-old lecture series seems as relevant today as it ever did. 2025 strikes me as a particularly dark time; our current political administration is curtailing basic human rights for multiple marginalized demographics, and we seem to be in danger of capitulating to a true dictatorship. Kornfield teaches us how to play the long game from birth to death, with equanimity. This grounding—a reminder that nothing and no one is permanent—feels indispensable and even comforting in the midst of a season that many of us, myself included, find completely chaotic.

Meeting Mayhem with Compassion

Kornfield grew up amid chaos, in a household dominated by a father who terrorized the family with what he describes in Roots as “bouts of rage, regularly.” Seeking solace, he read adventure stories about Tibetan monks. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1967 with a degree in Asian Studies and enrolled in the Peace Corps, heading to the Mekong River Valley to work on a tropical medicine team.

Kornfield, who grew up Jewish, trained as a monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma. In Roots, he describes the mindfulness instruction he gained from renowned Buddhist teachers Dipa Ma Barua and Ajahn Chah. “I don’t understand you people,” he says in one lecture, quoting Chah about Americans in the States. “You want what you don’t have, and you don’t want what you have.”

With the timing of a veteran standup comedian, Kornfield waits a beat in this section of Roots, then finishes with his teacher’s quote—effectively, a punchline aimed at Western capitalism. “Why don’t you want what you have, and don’t want what you don’t have? It’s so simple!” The crowd—a live audience of Spirit Rock meditators—goes wild.

Looking at photos of him as a student of Buddhism in those early days, and you’ll see an alarmingly-thin twenty-something in saffron-colored robes, ears protruding like teacup handles on either side of his shaved head. He talks, in Roots, about walking across the rice paddies at dawn on alms rounds, holding out his bowl for a bit of fish or fruit from villagers who gave what they could out of appreciation for the monks’ dedication to spiritual life. He spent nights beside burning bodies in the charnel grounds, grappling with his own mortality. He describes the experience in a blog post: “Every few weeks a body was brought for cremation. After the lighting of the funeral pyre and the chanting, most people would leave, with only monks remaining to tend the fire in the dark forest. Finally, one monk would be left alone to sit there until dawn, contemplating death.”

Two years after his arrival in Asia, Kornfield was ordained as a monk in a Thai temple and returned to the U.S. to teach what he’d learned about mindfulness and compassion.

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Like Kornfield, I grew up with an abusive father—a man who battered three of his four wives and terrorized all seven of his children. It’s been easy to demonize him my entire life. Kornfield offers another possibility in addressing his own father’s violence: “When I look now, what I see is how much pain there was, that underneath all that was an enormous amount of pain and an enormous amount of fear.”

Kornfield isn’t forgiving those who commit violence and oppression, but he reminds us gently that holding on to our anger can be counterproductive, caging us in an unskillful state. “Rest in that place that sees birth and death and joy and sorrow and where there’s a deep knowing that we all participate in the pain and the beauty of life. That’s the source of compassion whether it’s for my father or the people in Sarajevo, for the killers and the killed alike.”

I struggle with these lines. Too easily, I replace Kornfield’s reference to the Bosnian War with the horrific wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Anger seems the only logical reaction. Roots reminds me of another way—a way that leaves me energized to protest instead of taking to my bed and doing nothing but feel hopeless.

Mindful America 

When he returned to the States in 1972, Kornfield met Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche who hired him to teach Buddhism at Naropa University. There, he got to know fellow Jewish Buddhist teachers Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jacqueline Mandell (then Schwartz). The four young practitioners founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.

Religious studies professor Jeff Wilson, professor at Renison University College and author of the 2014 book Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture, writes of the quartet, “they are the most important single cluster in terms of bringing mindfulness to the West. Were someone to go back in time and remove them from history, the whole mindfulness industry, the psychologization of Buddhism, and the Buddhist nature of psychology these days, all of this would disappear.”

There’s a 1979 photo of the four at a ceremony authorizing them to teach meditation practice; they’re seated in front of five ordaining Buddhist monks in full lotus position. Kornfield looks slightly stunned, while the rest beam radiant smiles across pale faces. They had long been controversial—these white Buddhist teachers presiding over classes made up largely of white students.

(Image source: IMS Archives/Lion’s Roar)

Critics often talked about “Convert Buddhism” versus “Ethnic Buddhism,” the latter practiced by Asian American immigrants and their descendants and—many say—patently ignored by the growing white convert community. In 1991, Helen Tworkov—daughter of secular Jewish parents and the founding editor of the New York City-based magazine Tricycle: The Buddhist Review—wrote an editorial stating, “The spokespeople for Buddhism in America have been, almost exclusively, educated members of the white middle class. Meanwhile, even with varying statistics, Asian-American Buddhists number at least one million, but so far they have not figured prominently in the development of something called American Buddhism.”

This statement infuriated—and continues to enrage—Asian Americans with ancestors who immigrated to the United States in the mid 1800s and brought Buddhism with them. The Reverend Ryo Imamura, born in a concentration camp during World War II and hailing from a long line of Japanese and U.S. Buddhist ministers, fired off a rebuttal which Tworkov didn’t publish, but which ended up in Buddhist Studies Review. In it, he wrote, “I would like to point out that it was my grandparents and other immigrants from Asia who brought and implanted Buddhism in American soil over 100 years ago despite white American intolerance and bigotry. It was my American-born parents and their generation who courageously and diligently fostered the growth of American Buddhism despite having to practice discreetly in hidden ethnic temples and in concentration camps because of the same white intolerance and bigotry. It was us Asian Buddhists who welcomed countless white Americans into our temples, introduced them to the Dharma, and often assisted them to initiate their own Sanghas when they felt uncomfortable practicing with us…”

Imamura founded The Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a worldwide nonviolent social activist group, in 1978. Kornfield was an early member and supporter; he’s gone on to partner throughout his professional life with Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx teachers in workshops, classes, and retreats. He said to Spirit Rock meditators in Roots, recorded four years after Tworkov’s problematic comment, “It’s important in approaching spiritual life that it not be seen as an imitation, that it’s not something that you do—kind of put on a new costume or become a Buddhist or something like that. God spare your friends and family from that. You come here not to become a Buddhist, I hope, but to remember to awaken to the fact that you can be a Buddha.”

Despite the occasional accusation of cultural appropriation over the decades, I’ve found through my research that Kornfield has remained steadfast in his goal of helping practitioners worldwide not to become Buddhists, but to achieve, through Buddhist-inspired meditation, wisdom and compassion and the sort of “freedom of the heart,” which is also the goal of clinical psychology.

“Beyond the understandings and healings we are taught in Western psychology, these practices and teachings offer us powerful ways to establish dignity, well-being and compassion that transform our lives,” Kornfield told me. “It is beautiful medicine to help us navigate complex times.”

Storytelling to Mitigate Grief

I grew up with no religion, unless you count the occasional Sunday school class during my mother’s biannual visits to the local Unitarian church—a class in which I learned to weave baskets from pine needles while the B-52s looked on from a canary-yellow poster taped to the wall.

By the time I turned 29, I knew next to nothing about Buddhism. But my beloved grandmother had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. When I saw an ad for The Roots of Buddhist Psychology, I shelled out a hundred dollars for the set. I hoped the lectures might help me cope with my grief and terror.

Early in the series, Kornfield describes Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, the first of which translates into “all life is suffering.” He explains that humans suffer because of hatred, delusion, and greed. I recognized myself in his lecture on the danger of becoming too attached to someone. I was holding onto my grandmother—the merry daughter of vaudevillian comics—with desperation.

One day, after taking care of my ailing grandmother, as I got on my bike and pedaled up a hot, dry mountain road past oaks and sycamores, I listened to Kornfield recount the story of a woman who’d lost her husband, and then her son. The Buddha agreed to bring her son back to life if she could find a mustard seed from a home in which no one had suffered loss…an impossible task. At the mountain’s peak, I saw a cyclist in a black t-shirt that read “Spoiler Alert: We all die at the end.” I burst into tears at the truth of the human condition, and I resolved to let go of my grandmother with grace.

Returning Love for Hatred

For the next 25 years, I listened to The Roots of Buddhist Psychology at least twice a year. The series helped me to navigate divorce from an addict, marriage to a joyful new husband, and the adoption of our daughter from the foster care system. Critics worry that white Buddhist teachers tout the practice as a one-stop-shop for dealing with everything from childhood abuse to suicidal ideation and addiction. But as Kornfield notes in Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are, many people seek counseling in partnership with their meditating. “Even the best meditators have old wounds to heal,” he writes. “Meditation practice doesn’t do it all.”

I took Kornield’s recommendation and paired Buddhist practice with psychotherapy. Then, in the bewildering days after the 2016 election, I listened over and over to Kornfield’s lecture on non-hatred. “It says in the Bhagavad-Gita,” he says, “if you want to see the brave, look for those who can return love for hatred.”

Then, as now, I could not find love in my heart for Donald Trump. But I could love the people most disenfranchised by his policies and help to work toward their freedom.

In the midst of my work as a child literacy volunteer and a journalist focusing on marginalized communities, doctors diagnosed my mother—who’d long been one of my best friends—with Stage IV ovarian cancer. She passed away right before the pandemic, just before George Floyd’s murder. My husband and I and our Black biracial daughter huddled in our house, immobilized.

I loathed everything and everyone. I couldn’t run, couldn’t bicycle. I attempted to listen to the lecture series that had served me so well, to feel the familiar thrill at the woodwind prelude before each section and smile at the audience’s infectious laughter. But all I felt was despair at the same old stories, the same old jokes. What a waste of time, I thought, to listen to something so old and simplistic.  

Beautiful Medicine to Navigate Complex Times

In 2011, Buddhist psychotherapist Miles Neal posted an essay on his blog titled “On McMindfulness & Frozen Yoga: Rediscovering the Essential Teachings of Ethics and Wisdom.” In it, he questioned the popularity of yoga and mindfulness meditation in the United States, which are small, easily-accessible parts of the more complicated tradition of ashtanga yoga and the more elaborate trainings which include ethics, meditation, and wisdom. “Americans are notorious for extrapolating what they idealize, plucking the desirable from foreign cultures and simply disregarding the rest,” Neal writes. “We are also prone to seeking quick fixes and inciting temporary trends, lacking the patience and long-term commitment needed for lasting change. It would be an enormous loss for us to water down or, worse, jettison the essential transformative ingredients that constitute the Indic liberation traditions, turning them into colorfully packaged bitesize morsels for our mass consumption.”

Guilty as charged, I guess, though Kornfield’s Roots seems to me an extensive discussion of ethics, meditation, and wisdom. I have never called myself a Buddhist—or a Christian or an atheist, for that matter. Rather, I’ve long gravitated toward the Dalai Lama’s assertion that “my religion is kindness” and I’ve done my best to practice it. Miles Neal would surely question my reliance on Kornfield’s lecture series without an accompanying meditation practice. However, plenty of people center themselves by reading the Bible or the Torah, the Koran or the Vedas without attending formal services. My sister-in-law reads Jane Eyre once a year for new insights. By virtue of reading and re-reading (or in my case, listening and re-listening), I’d say people demonstrate the “patience and long-term commitment needed for lasting change.”

Last year, I felt something shift within me. The grief over my mother’s passing lifted, and I could run and cycle once more. In February, I set out on a long bike ride and downloaded Roots on my smartphone. As I pedaled uphill past forests of firs, I found myself smiling at the punchlines I knew well. I greeted Kornfield’s anecdotes like old friends. His lectures reminded me of the type of person I want to be in the face of chaos.

Kornfield recently helped teach a Spirit Rock workshop on compassionate activism and wrote a supplemental essay on the topic. Post-election, he offered a free online lecture through Banyan—the global mindfulness organization he co-founded—titled “Resilience, a Steady Heart, and Joy.” In the talk delivered to people worldwide, he said, “We can see more and more clearly and collectively that unbridled capitalism, economic rivalry, that kind of global economy of exploitation—or ‘me first,’ whether it’s countries or companies—is just not going to work for the well-being of humanity and the planet moving forward. In some way, we’re being called to envision and enact a new way of being with one another.”

He recounts a story by Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh about boats crowded with Vietnamese refugees and how, when challenged by storms or pirates, if one person on the boat remained steady and calm, they showed the way for everyone to survive.

“You know who that person is,” Kornfield said in his talk. “I hate to kind of put it in your lap, but it’s you. It’s us. What’s really important in wild times is to remind ourselves of another possibility.”

This new lecture, as well as The Roots of Buddhist Psychology, offers the possibility of navigating wild times with a clear head, an open heart, and a gentle wit.

I’ve resolved to keep listening.

Melissa Hart is the author, most recently, of Down Syndrome Out Loud: 20+ Stories about Disability and Determination (Sourcebooks, 2025). Find her @WildMelissaHart.