Best 241 quotes of Jack Kornfield on MyQuotes

Jack Kornfield

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    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.

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    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    An honorable spiritual practice recognizes the losses we have suffered, tells our story, and sheds our tears to free us from the past.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    As surely as there is a voyage away, there is a journey home.

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    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions of our life.

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    Jack Kornfield

    As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Attention to the human body brings healing and regeneration. Through awareness of the body we remember who we really are.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    Beneath the sophistication of Buddhist psychology lies the simplicity of compassion. We can touch into this compassion whenever the mind is quiet, whenever we allow the heart to open.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    Compassion is our deepest nature. It arises from our interconnection with all things.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    Equanimity arises when we accept the way things are.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Even time is a concept. In reality we are always in the eternal present. The past is just a memory, the future just an image or thought. All our stories about past and future are only ideas, arising in the moment. Our modern culture is so tyrannized by goals, plans, and improvement schemes that we constantly live for the future. But as Aldous Huxley reminded us in his writings, "An idolatrous religion is one in which time is substituted for eternity...the idea of endless progress is the devil's work, even today demanding human sacrifice on an enormous scale.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Every individual has a unique contribution.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Everything has a beginning and an ending. Make peace with that and all will be well...In life we cannot avoid change, we cannot avoid loss. Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Expressing gratitude to our benefactors is a natural form of love. In fact, some people find loving kindness for themselves so hard, they begin their practice with a benefactor. This too is fine. The rule in loving kindness practice is to follow the way that most easily opens your heart.

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    Jack Kornfield

    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Forgiveness does not mean that we have to continue to relate to those who have done us harm. In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurts or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm.

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    Jack Kornfield

    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Gratitude is confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Gratitude is the confidence in life itself... As gratitude grows it gives rise to joy. We experience the courage to rejoice in our own good fortune and in the good fortune of others... We can be joyful for people we love, for moments of goodness, for sunlight and trees, and for the very breath within our lungs. Like an innocent child, we can rejoice in life itself, in being alive.

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    Jack Kornfield

    Great pain, when it is honored from the heart, opens into great understanding.

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    Jack Kornfield

    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.

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    Jack Kornfield

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

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    Jack Kornfield

    If grief or anger arises, Let there be grief or anger. This is the Buddha in all forms,Sun Buddha, Moon Buddha, Happy Buddha, Sad Buddha. It is the universe offering all things to awaken and open our heart.

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    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.