Jack Kornfield Quotes

The path of awakening begins with a step the Buddha called right understanding.
Jack Kornfield
Built on the foundation of concentration is the third aspect of the Buddha’s path of awakening: clarity of vision and the development of wisdom.
Jack Kornfield
The words of the Buddha offer this truth: ∼ Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed.
Jack Kornfield
Acceptance is not passivity. It is a courageous step in the process of transformation.
Jack Kornfield
When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.
Jack Kornfield
When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds.
Jack Kornfield
The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.
Jack Kornfield
The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is simply to release any images and emotions.
Jack Kornfield
The Third Precept, to refrain from sexual misconduct, reminds us not to act out of sexual desire in such a way as to cause harm to another... The spirit of this precept asks us to look at the motivation behind our actions. To pay attention in this way allows us, as laypeople, to discover how sexuality can be connected to the heart and how it can be an expression of love, caring, and genuine intimacy. We have almost all been fools at some time in our sexual lives, and we have also used sex to try to touch what is beautiful, to touch another person deeply. Conscious sexuality is an essential part of living a mindful life (86).
Jack Kornfield
As we encounter new experiences with a mindful and wise attention, we discover that one of three things will happen to our new experience: it will go away, it will stay the same, or it will get more intense. whatever happens does not really matter.
Jack Kornfield
I would like to ofer some exercises that can help us use the Five Precepts to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. It is best to choose one of these exercises and work with it meticulously for a week. Then examine the results and choose another for a subsequent week. These practices can help us understand and find ways to work with each precept. 1. Refrain from killing: reverence for life. Undertake for one week to purposefully bring no harm in thought, word, or deed to any living creature. Particularly, become aware of any living beings in your world (people, animals, even plants) whom you ignore, and cultivate a sense of care and reverence for them too.2. Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart.3. Refraining from sexual misconduct: conscious sexuality. Undertake for one week to observe meticulously how often sexual feelings arise in your consciousness. Each time, note what particular mind states you find associated with them such as love, tension, compulsion, caring, loneliness, desire for communication, greed, pleasure, agression, and so forth.4. Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party).5. Refraining from intoxicants to the point of heedlessness. Undertake for one week or one month to refrain from all intoxicants and addictive substances (such as wine, marijuana, even cigarettes and/or caffeine if you wish). Observe the impulses to use these, and become aware of what is going on in the heart and mind at the time of those impulses (88-89).
Jack Kornfield
The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.
Jack Kornfield
Taking the one seat describes two related aspects of spiritual work. Outwardly, it means selecting one practice and teacher among all the possibilities, and inwardly, it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding.
Jack Kornfield
True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.
Jack Kornfield
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
Jack Kornfield
But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.
Jack Kornfield
There are many ways that I have hurt and harmed others, have betrayed or abandoned them, caused them suffering, knowingly or unknowingly, out of my pain, fear, anger, and confusion. Let yourself remember and visualize the ways you have hurt others. See the pain you have caused out of your own fear and confusion. Feel your own sorrow and regret. Sense that finally you can release this burden and ask for forgiveness. Take as much time as you need to picture each memory that still burdens your heart. And then as each person comes to mind, gently say:I ask for your forgiveness, I ask for your forgiveness.
Jack Kornfield
In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.
Jack Kornfield
Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.
Jack Kornfield
Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.
Jack Kornfield
There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops.
Jack Kornfield
Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.
Jack Kornfield
If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation; it is impossible for the heart to open.
Jack Kornfield
To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.
Jack Kornfield
Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.
Jack Kornfield
Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.
Jack Kornfield
The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.
Jack Kornfield
To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.
Jack Kornfield
In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.
Jack Kornfield
No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.
Jack Kornfield
Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.
Jack Kornfield
Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us.Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action. It makes beauty out of all we touch. In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole.
Jack Kornfield
If you put a spoonful of saltin a cup of waterit tastes very salty.If you put a spoonful of saltin a lake of fresh waterthe taste is still pure and clear.Peace comes when our hearts areopen like the sky,vast as the ocean.
Jack Kornfield
Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.
Jack Kornfield
As surely as there is a voyage away, there is a journey home.
Jack Kornfield
When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.
Jack Kornfield
In our charade with ourselves we pretend that our war is not really war. We have changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department and call a whole class of nuclear missiles Peace Keepers!
Jack Kornfield
Attachment is conditional, offers love only to certain people in certain ways; it is exclusive. Love, in the sense of metta, used by Buddha, is a universal, nondiscriminating feeling of caring and connectedness.
Jack Kornfield
When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.
Jack Kornfield
There is no higher happiness than peace.
Jack Kornfield
Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.
Jack Kornfield
Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.
Jack Kornfield
In the end, just three things matter:How well we have livedHow well we have lovedHow well we have learned to let go
Jack Kornfield
In the endthese things matter most:How well did you love?How fully did you live?How deeply did you let go?
Jack Kornfield