Quotes from Jack Kornfield

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

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.

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

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 can make our minds so like still water that beings gather around us, that they may see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer perhaps even a fiercer life because of our quiet. William Butler Yeats

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

Being an artist means ripening like a tree which . . . stands confidently in the storm of winter not afraid that summer may not come. It always comes.

All other spiritual teachings are in vain if we cannot love. 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, with our hearts, we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given.

consciously suffer the impact, to become the ground where the sorrows can be held and reworked. These things can be carried with grace. But it can't be faked. If you go to someone with 99 percent of goodwill and are still caught in 1 percent anger, all they feel is the anger, and it pushes them from reconciliation. The heart has to willingly hold the whole of suffering for it to be transformed.

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

Notice when you are open, how others relax their own defensiveness. Let yourself be curious, loving, and concerned. Learn to see in new ways. It's never too late to open your heart and mind.

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

Even Napoleon Bonaparte understood this when, at the end of his life, he stated, "Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the spirit.

Hold yourself as a mother holds her beloved child. The Buddha

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.

No matter what the world around you wants, there is only one person you can be true to, and that is yourself.

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

Gandhi, who exemplified inherent virtue for modern times, stated, "Let then our first act every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: 'I shall not fear anyone on earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.

Be rigorously mindful of the awareness of touch. We should be rigorously, ardently, intensively mindful. Do not rest when tired, scratch when itched, nor shift when cramped. We should keep our bodies and minds absolutely still and strive till the end. The uncomfortable truly is the norm; the comfortable will set us adrift on the current of illusion.

If only there were evil people out there insidiously committing evil deeds and it was only necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who among us is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?

We've done this as human beings before. We're survivors. We have generations of ancestors behind us cheering us on, and saying, 'Yep, we've lived through some tough stuff too.

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

You can't change it all, but your freedom empowers you to contribute to the world, and your love gives you the way to do so.

Do not scratch when itched, nor shift when cramped, nor pause when tired.