Kornfield Meditation Quotes & Sayings

The best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own. — Jack Kornfield

We have so many ideas and beliefs about ourselves. We told ourselves story about what we want and who we are, smart or kind. Often these are the unexamined and limited ideas of others that we have internalized and then gone on to live out — Jack Kornfield

Meditation is not a process of getting rid of something, but one of opening and understanding. When — Jack Kornfield

The way to work with desire in meditation is the same way we worked with body sensations. It is not very useful to suppress it, because when you do it comes out in some other way. On the other hand, you do not want to act on it either. If you are like me and you acted on all of your desires, they would lock you up. So you do not want to suppress your desires, and you also do not want to act all of them out. — Jack Kornfield

Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training. — 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

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

Working with these distractions, steadying the canoe, letting the waves pass by, and coming back again and again in a quiet and collected way, is at the heart of meditation. After — Jack Kornfield

There are many good forms of meditation practice. A good meditation practice is any one that develops awareness or mindfulness of our body and our sense, of our mind and heart. — Jack Kornfield

A modern story of Mullah Nasrudin, the Sufi teacher and holy fool, tells of him entering a bank and trying to cash a check. The teller asks him to please identify himself. Nasrudin reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small mirror. Looking into it, he says, "Yep, that's me all right." Meditation — Jack Kornfield

When we take time to quiet ourselves, we can all sense that our life could be lived with greater compassion and greater weakness. — Jack Kornfield

Meditation is a practice that can teach us to enter each moment with wisdom, lightness, and a sense of humor. It is an art of opening and letting go, rather than accumulation or struggle. Then, even within our frustrations and difficulties, a remarkable inner sense of support and perspective can grow. — Jack Kornfield

When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness. — 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

It only take a few minutes of meditation to directly realize we are a river of sensations, feelings, thoughts, perceptions. How can we navigate this evanescent river of life wisely? With mindful awareness and love it becomes clear. You can fight against the river of change, or use its wisdom to teach you how to graciously move and create and flow with the full measure of joy and sorrow, gain and loss, praise and blame that make up every human incarnation. — Jack Kornfield

Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration. — Jack Kornfield

To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free. — Jack Kornfield

One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendants asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth." "Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of the truth, O evil one?" his attendants asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this they usually make a belief out of it." — Jack Kornfield

This is like beginning to read a book. When we start, we will often be interrupted by many distractions around us. But if it is a good book, perhaps a mystery novel, by the last chapter we will be so absorbed in the plot that people can walk right by us and we will not notice them. In meditation at first, thoughts carry us away and we think them for a long time. Then, as concentration grows we remember our breath in the middle of a thought. Later we can notice thoughts just as they arise or allow them to pass in the background, so focused on the breath that we are undisturbed by their movement. As — Jack Kornfield

Our difficulties require our most compassionate attention. Just as lead can be transformed into gold in alchemy, when we place our leaden difficulties, whether of body, heart, or mind, into the center of our practice, they can become lightened for us, illuminated. This task is usually not what we want, but what we have to do. 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. The — Jack Kornfield

When sleepy, meditate with your eyes open wide. Stand in place for a few minutes or do walking meditation. If it's really bad, walk briskly or walk backward, splash some water on your face. Sleepiness is something we can respond to creatively. When — Jack Kornfield

To start, meditation is very much like training a puppy. You put the puppy down and say, "Stay." Does the puppy listen? It gets up and runs away. You sit the puppy back down again. "Stay." And the puppy runs away over and over again. Sometimes the puppy jumps up, runs over, and pees in the corner or makes some other mess. — Jack Kornfield

To begin to meditate is to look into our lives with interest in kindness and discover how to be wakeful and free. — Jack Kornfield

Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation. — Jack Kornfield

True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds. As Achaan Chah put it, "If you haven't cried a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun." A — Jack Kornfield

Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels. — 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

In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion. — Jack Kornfield

Many people who come to spiritual practice are frightened by their feelings. They hope meditation will help them to transcend the messiness of the world and leave them invulnerable to difficult feelings. But this is a false transcendence, a denial of life. It is fear masquerading as wisdom. — 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

To meditate is to discover new possibilities, to awaken the capacities of us has to live more wisely, more lovingly, more compassionately, and more fully. — Jack Kornfield

Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring for them in a flexible and wise way. In meditation, we pay attention to our body with care and respect. — 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

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

In my experience, psychotherapy at its best is like dual meditation - it's like a container in which you can be compassionate and mindful toward yourself. — 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