How to Thrive in Love
Buddhist Secrets to Transform Your Relationships
Love is not a problem to be solved, but a path to be walked. A journey into intimacy, mindfulness, and compassion as the ground of every thriving relationship.
with Jack Kornfield & Trudy Goodman
What if your relationships are the practice?
Not the thing that interrupts your spiritual life — but the very place it deepens. The irritation, the longing, the tenderness and the friction: each one an invitation to wake up, together.
The hardest teacher is the one you love
After years training as a Buddhist monk — all that loving-kindness, all that mindfulness — Jack returned home thinking he was pretty chill. Then he got into an intimate relationship. And every old habit of insecurity and need was waiting like clothes in the closet, comfortable, ready to put back on.
Why does the person closest to us touch our deepest patterns?
Why do small moments turn tender and raw at the same time?
Why is it so much easier to be wise on the cushion than at the kitchen table?
This course begins with a relieving shift:
Difficulty in love is not a failure of love.
It is the ground of the practice. Two hearts, two histories, two evolving lives — of course there is friction. The question is not how to erase it, but how to meet it with mindfulness and a spacious heart.
Mindfulness and love are trustworthy.
A Buddhist lens on intimacy
This is not a communication technique or a compatibility test. Drawing on decades of teaching and their own life as partners, Jack and Trudy offer love as a contemplative practice — widening the circle of compassion from yourself, to those you love, to the whole living world.
✦Take yourself, your partner, and each moment as it is, without the war against reality
✦Transform self-judgment into self-compassion and steady self-love
✦Forgive in three directions, freeing your heart from old weight
✦Set compassionate boundaries with family, your karma and your teachers
✦Use loving-kindness (metta) as a protector from fear and anxiety
✦Meet conflict with real listening — dropping self-righteousness and blame
✦Hold trauma and old defenses with mindful loving awareness
✦Rest in loving awareness as your true nature — the field that holds it all
Three questions to sit with
Jack opens the course with a simple journaling practice. Choose one, and write a line or two — it’s saved privately on your device, waiting for you when you return.
One conscious breath
A taste of the embodied metta practice from the course. Press begin, and let the circle lead your breath.
Take one conscious breath with us.
The path widens in circles
Thirty-two chapters across three movements — beginning with your own heart, opening to those you love, and finally to the whole world and your timeless true nature.
Loving Yourself, Just As You Are
The great spiritual practice begins at home, inside your own skin. Here you learn to take your body, heart, and mind as they are; to free your heart with metta; and to forgive in three directions — releasing the weight you’ve been carrying so love has room to move.
“The first thing is to love yourself. You cannot progress by self doubt and self hatred. You can only progress by self love.”
— Dipa Ma, shared by Jack Kornfield
The Dharma of Partnership
Now the circle widens to the ones closest to us. Jack and Trudy share the story of how they fell in love, and the living wisdom of long partnership: diffusing conflict through real listening, healing codependence, dropping our ideas of how it should be, and learning — at last — to receive love the way it’s actually given.
“It all really starts with your relationship to yourself.”
— Trudy Goodman
The World & Your True Nature
The widest circle of all. Bearing our shared humanity with loving awareness, meeting loneliness with connection, and discovering that the heart is built out of attentiveness. The journey closes by opening to your true nature — the loving awareness that has been here, holding everything, all along.
“You are the loving awareness witnessing this life, peaceful, spacious. This is your true nature, consciousness itself.”
— Jack Kornfield
Love is like the light of the sun and the stars — it’s freely given every single day, delivered to your whole life inbox. It’s a well that never runs dry.
Four ways the teachings live
Guided Meditations
“Loving Yourself Just As You Are,” “Seeing With the Eyes of Love,” “The Three Directions of Forgiveness,” and more — practices to deepen self-awareness and compassion.
Wisdom Teachings
Jack and Trudy weave ancient Buddhist teaching with personal reflection — on impermanence, intimacy, metta, and the spiritual path of love.
Practical Exercises
Journal prompts like “What are you learning from your relationships?” — reflections that carry the teachings off the cushion and into daily life.
Relationship Tools
Concrete ways to sustain connection, navigate difference, and build healthy, balanced relationships — romantic, familial, and communal.
Thirty-two chapters, three movements
Each chapter pairs a teaching or guided practice with a piece of wisdom from Jack, Trudy, and the lineage. Open any section to walk through it.
The Great Spiritual Practice
Widening the circle of love from the self outward — mindfulness, metta, self-acceptance, forgiveness, family, community, and the Bodhisattva’s heart.
Impermanence and living in a field of love · the trustworthiness of love and mindfulness · Ram Dass and loving awareness · widening our circle · enlightenment as intimacy with all things.
“This is about intimacy with life itself, with everything. And letting everything wake us up to remembering, ‘We’re here together!’”— Trudy Goodman
Approaches to mindfulness · dropping the goal and “getting real” · Alan Watts and meditation as music · wedding-ceremony wisdom · taking yourself and your partner as is.
“This is really the introduction to mindfulness: do you take your body, heart, mind, and experience as it is?”— Jack Kornfield
Guided meditations on loving yourself just as you are and embodied metta “dharma play” · metta as a protector from fear and anxiety · stretching the heart to be more inclusive.
“Feelings come and go like weather. They can be honored, but they’re not who you are. You are awareness itself — the loving awareness that holds it all.”— Jack Kornfield
Self-acceptance and moving past the judging mind · dropping defenses and learning to listen · meeting intensity with heartfelt curiosity · seeing each other as already whole.
“Trauma doesn’t define you… The Dharma invites us to see each other as already whole, already free.”— Jack Kornfield
Reflections on close relationships as long retreats · “kissing the toad” and loving what’s difficult · the guided “Seeing With the Eyes of Love” · happiness as inseparable from you.
“If you are in conflict, take a breath, a mindful pause, and ask: ‘What’s my highest intention?’ It’s an elixir which dissolves self-righteousness.”— Jack Kornfield
Karma, boundaries, and love with family · the three directions of forgiveness · friendships of the heart · shining your great heart of compassion · planting beautiful seeds in the Great Turning of the world.
“Your family is your karma, and the only answer to it is to love it, weird though they are.”— Jack Kornfield
The Spiritual Path of Love
The dharma of relationship — intimacy, conflict, codependence, and the generosity of receiving love.
How Jack and Trudy fell in love · healing from past relationships · moving past neediness · cultivating the ability to love and be loved.
“It’s never too late to start again.”— Jack Kornfield
Real listening and understanding · moving past instinctual patterns · staying connected when apart · dropping resentment and healing codependence.
“There’s a listening to make your case, or the listening to really understand the other person. That makes an enormous difference.”— Jack Kornfield
Thich Nhat Hanh’s transformative metta · love on the Eightfold Path · loving-kindness, wise attention, and letting go · dropping expectations to fully receive love.
“Opening to love and receiving is a form of generosity and surrender — letting love be given the way that person wants to give it.”— Trudy Goodman
Our Relationship to the World & Ourselves
Bearing our humanity and tending the garden of the heart — technology, loneliness, attentiveness, and awakening to true nature.
Matching outer technology with the inner technology of the heart · being an activist without burnout · working with loneliness through connection and rest.
“What’s the opposite of loneliness? Connection.”— Trudy Goodman
Cultivating beginner’s mind · inter-breathing with all of life · finding joy and pleasure · full-hearted attention as a form of love.
“The heart is built out of attentiveness. How can we be loving to somebody if we are not attentive to them?”— Trudy Goodman
Mindfulness as the gateway to liberation · the playful eternal dance of body and spirit · calming the hamster wheel of the mind · holding difficult emotions in mindful loving awareness.
“You are the loving attention, the loving awareness witnessing all these emotions. You are the field of love.”— Jack Kornfield
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Underneath it all, almost all of our human activity is an expression of, and a longing for, love.
Guided by wisdom & partnership
Married partners and two of the most beloved meditation teachers of our time, Jack and Trudy teach from both deep expertise and lived experience — with warmth, humor, and humanity.
Jack Kornfield, PhD
Jack trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, and has taught meditation internationally since 1974. One of the key teachers to bring mindfulness practice to the West, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Center, holds a PhD in clinical psychology, and is the author of more than a dozen books read by millions.
Trudy Goodman, PhD
Trudy is the founding teacher of InsightLA and a pioneer in integrating Insight (Vipassana) meditation with mindfulness and compassion practices. The fourth-ever teacher of MBSR, she studied Buddhist meditation for 40 years, co-founded the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and has devoted her career to families, children, and the meeting of dharma and psychology.
What participants discover
One of the best he’s ever done.
Wisdom and practice to live well in our troubled world.
Jack Kornfield is an important and great teacher.
This course is for you if…
You long to love more freely
You want to deepen your capacity for intimacy and meet relational challenges with grace, whether you’re partnered, single, or somewhere in between.
You’re walking a spiritual path
You have a practice and want to bring mindfulness off the cushion and into the beautiful messiness of real relationship.
You’re tending a relationship
Romantic, family, or community — you want practical wisdom to sustain connection, navigate difference, and keep love alive.
Dates & Details
3 weeks of teachings, meditations, and community practice
Both sessions are recorded if you can’t attend live.
Pre-recorded teachings + guided meditations released weekly, with 2 live Q&A sessions and a private community space.
All teachings, meditations, and live replays are yours to keep and return to whenever you need them.
What’s included
Watch anytime, anywhere
From any time zone
32 chapters
3 sections
Lifetime access
Revisit anytime
Guided meditations
Online learning community
Begin your journey into love
Two ways to join — lifetime access to all 8.5 hours of teachings and guided practice.
Pay in Full
✦8.5 hrs of on-demand course video
✦8 guided meditations & reflections
✦Full downloadable syllabus & prompts
✦Online learning community
Early-bird $299 — first 100 students only.
Payment Plan
$29 / week
✦8.5 hrs of on-demand course video
✦8 guided meditations & reflections
✦Full downloadable syllabus & prompts
✦Online learning community
$29/mo for 11 weeks — early-bird rate, first 100 students.
FAQ
Yes. If for any reason you are not satisfied with the program, please contact us within the first 7 days for a full refund.
Of course. The course is fully on-demand, and we have students from all over the world. Watch whenever and wherever suits you.
You’ll have lifetime access to all course content, so you can return to the teachings and guided meditations as often as you like.
No experience is needed. Jack and Trudy’s teaching is warm and accessible, meeting you wherever you are — whether you’re new to practice or have sat for years.
Yes! Please reach out through the contact form on staging.jackkornfield.com with any questions and the team will be happy to help.
