Ep. 263 – Wise Understanding and the Wisdom of Insecurity

Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield

12-11-2024 • 52 mins

Intersecting the Buddha’s ‘Wise Understanding’ with Alan Watt’s ‘Wisdom of Insecurity,’ Jack illuminates the path of discovering lasting happiness.

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“Spiritual life is not about possessing or finding security, but rather it’s discovering what Alan Watts called, ‘the wisdom of insecurity,’ the capacity for freedom and compassion of heart, no matter what the circumstances. Right Understanding is a willingness to dedicate ourself to awakening, no matter how conditions change.” – Jack Kornfield

Exploring the first step of the Eightfold Path, Jack mindfully shares on:

  • The Buddha, Enlightenment, the Eightfold Path, and Four Noble Truths
  • How to live a wise, mindful, happy, and loving life
  • The Middle Path as the pathway to freedom
  • Wise Understanding, the first step on the Eightfold Path
  • Suffering, it’s causes, and how to alleviate it
  • Where happiness actually comes from
  • Working with clinging, grasping, aging, aversion, fear
  • Impermanence, change, and the wisdom of insecurity
  • Spiritual Direction and the journey of the soul
  • The seed of awakening your Buddha Nature
  • Understanding the Law of Karma
  • Finding nirvana through our current circumstances
  • Having compassion for what puts us to sleep
  • Tending your heart to tend the whole world


“Buddha saw that the cause of happiness and the cause of suffering is not so much in life itself, but in the way that we relate to life.” – Jack Kornfield

“Right understanding tells us that we can dedicate our life to something beautiful.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk recorded in 1992 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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