Elizabeth Gilbert and Jack Kornfield

In this anniversary compilation marking 10 years and over a billion downloads, Tim Ferriss pairs two of his favorite past guests. Elizabeth Gilbert speaks about Rayya Elias, the love of her life, and what caring for Rayya through terminal cancer taught her about death, humor, and surrender, plus her practice of running an 'integrity check' and giving a simple, reason-free 'no.' Jack Kornfield recounts his abusive childhood, his years as a Buddhist monk under Ajahn Chah in Thailand and through 500 days of silence in Burma, and his early work bridging psychedelics, psychology, and meditation. The second half centers on Kornfield's teaching of loving-kindness and self-compassion, including practical guidance for getting busy, self-critical people started. Ferriss shares his own breakthrough with loving-kindness meditation after a lifetime of harsh self-talk.

• Gilbert describes Rayya Elias as 'quite simply the love of my life,' a friend of 17 years she slowly fell in love with while married, leaving her marriage to be with Rayya after a terminal cancer diagnosis.
  00:07:52
• Gilbert says her plans for an 'enlightened' hospice death were abandoned because Rayya 'died the way she lived, like the badass fierce unrelenting warrior that she was.'
  00:11:31
• Gilbert explains her 'integrity check' and treating her inbox like her home: deleting uninvited requests with no obligation to even respond politely.
  00:25:39
• Gilbert relays Byron Katie's 'simple no' technique: always begin with thank you, never use 'but,' and just keep adding 'and no' so a manipulator has no weapon to grab.
  00:29:16
• Kornfield reveals his father was 'a mixture of a tyrant and a really abusive person and a brilliant guy,' a biophysicist who designed early artificial hearts; the family never knew if they'd get 'Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.'
  00:41:18
• Kornfield's teacher Ajahn Chah greeted him at the monastery gate with 'I hope you're not afraid to suffer. Welcome.'
  01:06:36
• Kornfield spent about 500 days in silence at a Burmese monastery, sitting and walking 18 hours a day, where he had his first out-of-body experience.
  01:13:51
• Kornfield recounts Cambodian monk Maha Ghosananda, who lost all 19 family members to the Khmer Rouge, opening a temple in a refugee camp and leading 25,000 people in chanting 'hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed.'
  01:25:17

• Gilbert says great art must be both 'surprising and inevitable,' citing the ending of Breaking Bad as an example that made her stand up and applaud.
  00:15:44
• Gilbert credits T.S. Eliot's poem 'East Coker' with getting her through the darkest times in her life and gives it to people who are grieving or stuck.
  00:17:18
• Gilbert shares Martha Beck's 'bonfire' metaphor: when you jump in you either find it wasn't as scary as feared, or you're incinerated and reborn as a Phoenix, so either way you win.
  00:22:31
• Kornfield's favorite activity is tandem paragliding off peaks like Grindelwald in Switzerland, taking a ski lift up to 9,000 feet and floating silently among the clouds.
  00:39:13
• Kornfield describes visiting Ram Dass on Maui where Roland Griffith laid out Johns Hopkins psilocybin research showing success treating terminal cancer patients' fears and severe depression.
  00:53:04
• Kornfield argues a parent's young child can be a more demanding zen master than any Kyoto temple: 'your kid can be like ayahuasca on steroids.'
  01:34:11
• Kornfield cites a Time magazine piece reporting neuroscientists searched the brain for decades and concluded the self does not exist as a located thing, only a sense of self built from identification.
  01:39:54
• Kornfield distinguishes compassion from empathy: empathy is feeling another's pain, while compassion is 'the quivering of the heart' that moves you to act and help.
  01:42:32
• Kornfield recalls the Dalai Lama could not understand the concept of self-hatred when Western teachers raised it, asking 'why would anyone do this?'
  01:49:19
• Ferriss recounts a woman in Chade-Meng Tan's class who wished one visible person well for 60 seconds each hour and called it her best day of work in seven years.
  02:01:26

Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.

Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.