Kornfield Quotes & Sayings

The person who betrayed you is sunning themselves on a beach in Hawaii and you're knotted up in hatred. Who is suffering? — Jack Kornfield

What is truly a part of our spiritual path is that which brings us alive. If gardening brings us alive, that is part of our path, if it is music, if it is conversation ... we must follow what brings us alive. — Jack Kornfield

Almost always the roots of anger are in one of two difficult states, which arise just before the anger appears. We become angry either when we are hurt and in pain or when we are afraid. Pay attention to your own life and see if this is true. The next time anger and irritation spring up, see if just before they arose you felt fear or hurt. If you pay attention to the fear or pain first, does the anger even appear? Anger — Jack Kornfield

Acceptance does not mean inaction. We may need to respond, strongly at times ... From a peaceful center we can respond instead of react. Unconscious reactions create problems. Considered responses bring peace. With a peaceful heart whatever happens can be met with wisdom ... Peace is not weak; it is unshakable. — Jack Kornfield

Things are wrong and people misbehave, causing our hatred and suffering to arise. But however painful our experiences may be, they are just painful experiences until we add the response of aversion or hatred. Only then does suffering arise. If we react with hatred and aversion, these qualities become habitual. Like a distorted autoimmune response, our misguided reaction of hatred does not protect us; rather, it becomes the cause of our continued unhappiness. — Jack Kornfield

you must be present to win. — Jack Kornfield

We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much. — Jack Kornfield

To see the preciousness of all things, we must bring our full attention to life — Jack Kornfield

As long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind wears itself out. But if you say, 'This is what I am, it is a fact that I am going to investigate and understand,' then you can go beyond. — Jack Kornfield

We were young and the focus on human suffering gave our retreats gravitas. But suffering is not the goal, it is the beginning of the path. Now in the retreat I teach, I also encourage participants to awaken to their innate joy. From the very beginning I encourage them to allow the moments of joy and well-being to deepen, to spread throughout their body and mind. Many of us are conditioned to fear joy and happiness, yet joy is necessary for awakening. As the Persian mystic Rumi instructs us, 'When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine. — Jack Kornfield

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, I love to go and see all the things I am happy without. — Jack Kornfield

A bulging portfolio of spiritual experiences matters little if it does not have the power to sustain us through the inevitable moments of grief, loss, and change. Knowledge and achievements matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of another and be touched. Wisdom is alive only as long as it is lived, understanding is liberating only as long as it is applied. — Jack Kornfield

The Buddhist approach to this collective suffering is to turn toward it. We understand that genuine happiness and meaning will come through tending to suffering. We overcome out own despair bby helping other to overcome theirs. — Jack Kornfield

A factor that greatly supports the opening of energy in practice is exercise and care of the physical body. — Jack Kornfield

Religion and philosophy have their value, but in the end all we can do is open to mystery and live a path with heart — 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

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). — Jack Kornfield

Having written extensively about the practice of mindfulness in A Gradual Awakening I suggest that you refine your practice with this book as well as Jack Kornfield's excellent A Path with Heart. We — Stephen Levine

It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart. — Jack Kornfield

Forgiveness sees wisely. It willingly acknowledges what is unjust, harmful, and wrong. It bravely recognizes sufferings of the past, and understands the conditions that brought them about.Forgiveness honors the heart's greatest dignity. Whenever we are lost, it brings us back to the ground of love.Without forgiveness our lives are chained, forced to carry the sufferings of the past and repeat them with no release. — 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

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

What would we have to hold in compassion to be at peace right now? What would we have to let go of to be at peace right now? — 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

In the end, just three things matter:
How well we have lived
How well we have loved
How well we have learned to let go — Jack Kornfield

When we let go of yearning for the future, preoccupation with the past, and strategies to protect the present, there is nowhere left to go but where we are. To connect with the present moment is to begin to appreciate the beauty of true simplicity. — Jack Kornfield

Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists. — Jack Kornfield

We as human beings have the amazing capacity to be reborn at breakfast everyday and say, "This is a new day." — Jack Kornfield

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war. — Jack Kornfield

Embodied courage chooses not to wait until illness or notice of death demands attention. — Jack Kornfield

Nirvana manifests as ease, as love, as connectedness, as generosity, as clarity, as unshakable freedom. This isn't watering down nirvana. This is the reality of liberation that we can experience, sometimes in a moment and sometimes in transformative ways that change our entire life — Jack Kornfield

Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you. — Jack Kornfield

It is our commitment to wholeness that matters, the willingness to unfold in every deep aspect of our being. — Jack Kornfield

psychology - that life is an array of constantly changing sensations, some of them pleasant, some of them unpleasant, and some of them neutral. Our unconscious response is to grasp after the pleasant and to try to resist the unpleasant, so that we are always at war with the basic transience of our experience. We cannot really come to rest with things as they arise and depart. — Jack Kornfield

We need a warrior's heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities. — Jack Kornfield

Accumulated knots in the fabric of our body, previously undetected, begin to reveal themselves as we open. — Jack Kornfield

If you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water it tastes very salty. If you put a spoonful of salt in a lake of fresh water the taste is still pure and clear. Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean. — 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

Compassion arises naturally as the quivering of the heart in the face of pain, ours and another's. True compassion is not limited by the separateness of pity, nor by the fear of being overwhelmed. When we come to rest in the great heart of compassion, we discover a capacity to bear witness to, suffer with, and hold dear with our own vulnerable heart the sorrows and beauties of the world. — 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

The longing for initiation is universal and for modern youth, it is a desperate need. When nothing is offered in the way of spiritual initiation to prove one's entry into the world of men and women, initiation happens instead in the road or the street, in cars at high speed, with drugs, with dangerous sex, with weapons. However troubling, this behavior is rooted in a fundamental truth; a need to grow. — 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

We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing. — Jack Kornfield

Everyone and everything is in some degree or other our teacher. — Jack Kornfield

True love is not for the faint-hearted. — Jack Kornfield

identify with everything so easily - with your body, your thoughts, your opinions, your roles - and so you suffer. I have released all identification. — 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

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves. — Jack Kornfield

The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything. — Jack Kornfield

We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open. — Jack Kornfield

Whatever your difficulties - a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness - you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do - despite your circumstances - are to be present and to be willing to love. — Jack Kornfield

Samadhi doesn't just come of itself; it takes practice. — Jack Kornfield

Then one day you will be sitting and fear will arise, and you will feel it and recognize it and think, "Oh, this is fear, I recognize you. Welcome back." Then it is as if the fear becomes one of your friends. — 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

The ends do not justify the means. If our actions will bring harm to others, even in the service of some 'good,' they are almost certainly deluded. If our actions do not come from a kind heart, from loving courage and compassion, they are deluded. If they are based on a distinction between 'us' and 'them,' they stem from delusion. Only to the extent that we act from the wisdom of no separation, understanding how we are woven together, will our intention bring benefit. — Jack Kornfield

Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you. — Jack Kornfield

In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you — Jack Kornfield

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well? — Jack Kornfield

It is true that the heart has its seasons, just as a flower opens to the sunlight and closes to the night. We need to be respectful of those rhythms. But we can't close down for long. It is our true nature to have an open heart. — Jack Kornfield

In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us. — Jack Kornfield

The society that denies its poverty and injustice has lost a part of its freedom as well. If we deny our dissatisfaction, our anger, our pain, our ambition, we will suffer. If we deny our values, our beliefs, our longings, or our goodness, we will suffer. — Jack Kornfield

Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts. — Jack Kornfield

The poet Hafiz writes, Don't surrender your loneliness So quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can. — 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

We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart. — Jack Kornfield

Our belief in a limited and impoverished identity is such a strong habit that without it we are afraid we wouldn't know how to be. — 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

Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling flight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings in our cars and shops and out among the trees without crashing, conflict, or harm. — Jack Kornfield

We need to learn how to honor and use a practice for as long as it serves us. — Jack Kornfield

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. — 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

True love and prayer are learned in the hour when love becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone. — Jack Kornfield

Strength of the Heart comes from knowing that the pain that we each must bear is part of the greater pain shared by all that lives. It is not just 'our' pain, but 'the' pain and realizing this awakens our universal compassion — Jack Kornfield

Virtue and integrity are necessary for genuine happiness. Guard your integrity with care. — 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

In opening we can see how many times we have mistaken small identities and fearful beliefs for our true nature and how limiting this is. We can touch with great compassion the pain from the contracted identities that we and others have created in the world. — Jack Kornfield

When I sit with students, I do not just want to help them solve their problems. I want to find a moment with each person where their mind stops and their eyes open. I want us to be together as if we were lying in a field on the underside of the earth on a clear summer night, held only by the magnet of gravity, looking down into a bottomless sea of stars. I want us to remember together the beauty all around us. — Jack Kornfield

The independence and rebelliousness of our adolescence offer us yet another quality essential to our practice; the insistence that we find out the truth for ourselves, accepting no one's word above our own experience. — Jack Kornfield

Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be. — Jack Kornfield

Through practice, gently and gradually we can collect ourselves and learn how to be more fully with what we do. — Jack Kornfield

If you expect your life to be up and down, your mind will be much more peaceful. — Jack Kornfield

When we feel anger toward someone, we can consider that he or she is a being just like us, who has faced much suffering in life. — Jack Kornfield

O Nobly Born, now there is born in you exceeding compassion for all those living creatures who have forgotten their true nature. - Mahamudra text of Tibetan yogi Longchenpa — Jack Kornfield

wisdom? As the Zen texts explain, "To live in trusting — Jack Kornfield

Every individual in the world has a unique contribution. — Jack Kornfield

How well we have learned to let go — Jack Kornfield

Mindfulness and fearless presence bring true protection. When we meet the world with recognition, acceptance, investigation, and non-identification, we discover that wherever we are, freedom is possible, just as the rain falls on and nurtures all things equally. — Jack Kornfield

As we step out of the way new things are born. — Jack Kornfield

If we are still suffering, how can we teach other to be free? Ajahn Chah replied, 'First of all, be very honest. Don't pretend that you are wise in ways you are not. Tell people how you are yourself. And then take the measure of things. In weightlifting, if you're strong, you know that through practice you can lift a really big weight. Maybe you've seen someone lift a weight bigger than you can. You can tell your students, 'If you practice, you can lift that big weight, but don't try it yet. I can't even do it, but I've seen people do it.' Be willing to express what is possible without trying to fool someone that you've done it. — Jack Kornfield

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love. — Jack Kornfield

There is a palpable relief when I teach the perspective of nobility, of training in compassion, of non-religious ways to transform suffering and nurture our sacred connection to life. — Jack Kornfield

For most of us, generosity is a quality that must be developed. We have to respect that it will grow gradually; otherwise our spirituality can become idealistic and imitative, acting out the image of generosity before it has become genuine. — Jack Kornfield

All of spiritual practice is a matter of relationship: to ourselves, to others, to life's situations. — Jack Kornfield

Whatever we cultivate in times of ease, we gather as strength for times of change. — 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

The dharma is a universal medicine. — Jack Kornfield

You have to accept the way things are before you can move on. — Jack Kornfield

Feel your own precious body and life. Let yourself see the way you have hurt or harmed yourself. Picture them, remember them. Feel the sorrow you have carried from this and sense that you can release these burdens. Extend forgiveness for each of them, one by one. — Jack Kornfield

sorrow or a wound can heal, allowing us to grow into our fullest, most compassionate identity, our greatness of heart. When we truly come to terms with sorrow, a great and unshakable joy is born in our heart. HEALING — Jack Kornfield