Jack Kornfield Quotes

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.

The suffering and happiness in our world, both individual and collective, depend on our consciousness.

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

As we become more skillful we also discover that concentration has its own seasons. Sometimes we sit and settle easily. At other times the conditions of mind and body are turbulent or tense. We can learn to navigate all these waters. When conditions show the mind is tight, we learn to soften and relax, to open the attention. When the mind is sleepy or flabby, we learn to sit up and focus with more energy. The Buddha compared this with the tuning of a lute, sensing when we are out of tune and gently strengthening or loosening our energy to come into balance. In

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.

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.

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

When we have for so long been judged by everyone we meet, just to look into the eyes of another who does not judge us can be extraordinarily healing.

The stream of primary feelings is always with us, but we often have the mistaken notion that life is not supposed to be this way. We secretly believe that if we can act just right, then our stream of feelings will be pleasant and there will be no pain, no loss. So when a painful experience arises we try to get rid of it, and when a pleasant experience arises we try to grasp it. When a neutral experience arises we tend to ignore it. We're always wanting the right (pleasant) feelings and trying to avoid the wrong (painful) ones. And when they are unpleasant we react endlessly, struggling to get it right. As we become wiser we realize that fixing the flow of feelings doesn't work. Primary feelings are simply feelings, and every day consists of thousands of pleasant, painful and neutral moments... These feelings are not wrong or bad. They are the stream of feelings of life...Our painful experience does not represent failure.

Grant that I have enough suffering that my heart really opens to the great compassion of this world, that I be given enough so that I don't wall myself off from the world, that it breaks down the heart and the separation and the ego and the fear, and it lets me touch the nectar, the milk of kindness itself, of something greater.

Equanimity embraces the loved and the unloved, the agreeable and the disagreeable, the pleasure and pain. It eliminates clinging and aversion.

We each have been betrayed. Let yourself picture and remember the many ways this is true. Feel the sorrow you have carried from this past. Now sense that you can release this burden of pain by gradually extending forgiveness as your heart is ready.

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.

Thich Nhat Hanh has the ability to express some of the most profound teachings of interdependence and emptiness I've ever heard. With the eloquence of a poet, he holds up a sheet of paper and teaches us that the rain cloud and the tree and the logger who cut the tree down are all there in the paper. He's been one of the most significant carriers of the lamp of the dharma to the West that we have had.

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.

Be mindful of intention. Intention is the seed that creates our future.

Our life is shaped and determined by our thoughts. Usually we are only half conscious of the way thoughts direct our life; we are lost in thoughts as if they are reality. We take our own mental creations quite seriously, endorsing them without reservation.

One famous Zen master actually described spiritual practice as "one mistake after another," which is to say, one opportunity after another to learn. It is from "difficulties, mistakes, and errors" that we actually learn. To live life is to make a succession of errors. Understanding this can bring us great ease and forgiveness for ourselves and others - we are at ease with the difficulties of life.

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.

Right before anger arises, there is often a sense of hurt or fear or loss. When you can feel that, you can notice how little compassion or kindness you have for yourself and others. When we feel fear or when we feel pain or when we feel hurt, our response is often anger, but what is most healing is to acknowledge the anger and to notice what causes it, and to hold that in our attention.

Forgiveness is primarily for our own sake, so that we no longer carry the burden of resentment. But to forgive does not mean we will allow injustice again.

The quieting of our mind is a political act.

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.

What we find as we listen to the songs of our rage or fear, loneliness or longing, is that they do not stay forever. Rage turns into sorrow; sorrow turns into tears; tears may fall for a long time, but then the sun comes out.

Finding a way to extend forgiveness to ourselves is one of our most essential tasks. Just as others have been caught in suffering, so have we. If we look honestly at our life, we can see the sorrows and pain that have led to our own wrongdoing. In this we can finally extend forgiveness to ourselves; we can hold the pain we have caused in compassion. Without such mercy, we will live our own life in exile.

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.

Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every individual in the world has a unique contribution.

Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.

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.

Your world is reborn each day... And you are allowed to start over, at least in spirit, choosing your way with a beginners mind. Open wide the doors and windows, or close them and sit by the fire. But wherever you are, make room for the new, the uncertain, the mystery.. and love...

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

The task is not to perfect yourself, it's to perfect your love.

Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. When letting go is called for, if we have not learned to do so, we suffer greatly, and when we get to the end of our life, we may have what is called a crash course. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping. I

If this day in the lifetime of a hundred years is lost, will you ever touch it with your hands again? The

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.

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

Whenever we forgive, in small ways at home, or in great ways between nations, we free ourselves from the past.

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

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

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.

You will begin to see desire's impermanent nature, and you will also realize that you do not have to act on every thought or desire. You will learn that you can choose from the many possibilities of how to respond to desire when it arises, and you can discover a new kind of freedom, where you do not have to follow your desires, but can choose to behave in new ways in response to your desires.

According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the "quivering of the pure heart" when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.

To protect the separate self, we push certain things away, while to bolster it we hold on to other things and identify with them. A

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.

Where we tended to be judgmental, we became more judgmental of ourselves in our spiritual practice.

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?

The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

Though outer events may be difficult, the key to our happiness is how our mind responds to them.

Weigh the true advantages of forgiveness and resentment to the heart. Then choose.

Everybody needs to take some time, in some way, to quiet themselves and really listen to their heart.

As desire abates, generosity is born. When we are connected and present, what else is there to do but give?

The path of awakening begins with a step the Buddha called right understanding.

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.

Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.

This life is a test-it is only a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do. Remember, this life is only a test.

Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists.

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

The world is full of pain, uncertainty, and injustice. But in this vulnerable human life, every loss is an opportunity either to shut out the world or to stand up with dignity and let the heart respond.

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.

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

As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not.

Letting go is not the same as aversion, struggling to get rid of something. We cannot genuinely let go of what we resist. What we resist and fear secretly follows us even as we push it away. To let go of fear or trauma, we need to acknowledge just how it is. We need to feel it fully and accept that it is so. It is as it is. Letting go begins with letting be.

We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy - material or spiritual.

Meet this transient world with neither grasping nor fear, trust the unfolding of life, and you will attain true serenity.

Sophisticated meditative disciplines, healing practices, cognitive and emotional trainings, conflict resolution techniques - he used them all to awaken his visitors to their own qualities of integrity, equanimity, gratitude, and forgiveness.

Train your mind the same way you'd train a puppy: Be patient, be consistent, and have some fun along the way.

A second quality of mature sirituality is kindness. It is based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance ...

My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes - most of which never happened. Mark Twain

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.

Part of spiritual and emotional maturity is recognizing that it's not like you're going to try to fix yourself and become a different person. You remain the same person, but you become awakened.

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

An old Hasidic rabbi asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and day begun, for daybreak is the time for certain holy prayers. "Is it," proposed one student, "when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?" "No," answered the rabbi. "Is it when you can clearly see the lines on your own palm?" "Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell if it is a fig or a pear tree?" "No," answered the rabbi each time. "Then what is it?" the pupils demanded. "It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that they are your sister or brother. Until then it is still night.

you must be present to win.

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.

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

The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.

The questions asked at the end of lie are very simple ones: Did I love well? Did I love the people around me, my community, the earth, in a deep way? And perhaps, Did I live fully? Did I offer myself to life?

The work of your heart, the work of taking time, to listen, to help, is also your gift to the whole of the world

We don't know all the reasons that propel us on a spiritual journey, but somehow our life compels us to go.

The dharma is a universal medicine.

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.

Great spiritual traditions are used as a means to ripen us, to bring us face to face with our life, and to help us to see in a new way by developing a stillness of mind and a strength of heart.

The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to
release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the
clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our
spirit.

In all practices and traditions of freedom, we find the heart's task to be quite simple. Life offers us just what it offers, and our task is to bow to it, to meet it with understanding and compassion.

As Albert Camus wrote, "We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and others.

We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life.

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

In the end, forgiveness simply means never putting another person out of our heart.

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

Free your heart. Travel like the moon among the stars. - BUDDHA

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