Jack Kornfield Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Jack Kornfield quote about:
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“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?”
-- 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 -
“To bow to the fact of our life's sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“One of the essential tasks for living a wise life is letting go. Letting go is the path to freedom. It is only by letting go of the hopes, the fears, the pain, the past, the stories that have a hold on us that we can quiet our mind and open our heart.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“We each need to make our lion's roar - to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears - to declare our right to awaken.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“No amount of outer technology, no amount of computers and biotechnology and nanotechnology is going to stop the continuation of warfare and racism and environmental destruction. What's called for on the Earth at this time is really a change of heart ... the question is really not the future of humanity, but the presence of eternity.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“I used to think that to become free you had to practice like a samurai warrior, but now I understand that you have to practice like a devoted mother of a newborn child. It takes the same energy but has a completely different quality. It's compassion and presence rather than having to defeat the enemy in battle.”
-- 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 -
“If you can sit quietly after difficult news, if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm, if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy, if you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate, and fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill,…  if you can always find contentment just where you are, you are probably a dog.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.”
-- 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 -
“The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“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.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“...Spiritual opening is not a withdrawal to some imagined realm or safe cave. It is not a pulling away, but a touching of all the experience of life with wisdom and with a heart of kindness, without any separation.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“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?”
-- 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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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.”
-- 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 -
“Every individual has a unique contribution.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War’s roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life’s fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying.”
-- Jack Kornfield -
“When we feel anger toward someone, we can consider that they are a being just like us, who has faced much suffering in life.”
-- 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 -
“Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?”
-- Jack Kornfield
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More Jack Kornfield quote about:
- Earth,
- Energy,
- Eyes,
- Feelings,
- Fighting,
- Forgiveness,
- Generosity,
- Gratitude,
- Grief,
- Hate,
- Hatred,
- Heart,
- Identity,
- Insecurity,
- Inspirational,
- Joy,
- Kindness,
- Letting Go,
- Loss,
- Meditation,
- Memories,
- Mindfulness,
- Pain,
- Past,
- Philosophy,
- Prayer,
- Quality,
- Reality,
- Running,
- Simplicity,
- Spirituality,
- Struggle,
- Suffering,
- Understanding,
- War,
- Warrior,
- Yoga,