Quotes from Jack Kornfield

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 life out.

Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, you are sharing in the totality of this pain and are called upon to meet it in compassion and joy instead of self-pity.

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

It is through virtuous conduct, through loving-kindness and compassion, and through understanding of truth that one becomes noble.

Do not ignore the effect of each wise action saying, "This will come to nothing." Just as by the gradual fall of raindrops the water jar is filled, so in time the wise become replete with good. Dhammapada

The word "buddha" means one who is awake.

Every color shines in the awakened heart.

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.

The attitude or spirit with which we do our meditation helps us perhaps more than any other aspect. What is called for is a sense of perseverance and dedication combined with a basic friendliness.

Every experience that arises passes away.

you must be present to win.

The dharma is a universal medicine.

the reality of experience is an ever-changing river. Direct perception drops beneath the names of things to show us their ephemeral, mysterious nature. When we bring our attention to the direct perception of experience, we become more alive and free.

The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding and gradual training. Ongoing spiritual practice can help us cultivate a new way of relating to life in which we let go of our battles. When

James Joyce described this relationship in the line, "Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.

but it's also possible that the wrong kind of attention will lead you into unhealthy fears and attachments about how your body should look.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time." No one has lived your life before. It is an adventure worth taking.

Spiritual life may initially be focused on self-transformation, but as mindfulness and compassion grow we naturally become attentive to the values of the society around us. When we do so, we can see how the popular promise of happiness through greed and excess consumerism is increasingly shallow and false.

The whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, almost all of them imaginary

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.

When we live in our thoughts of the past and future, everything seems distant, hurried, or unfulfilled.

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.

When a bell rings, is it the bell we hear, the air, the sound at our ears, or is it our brain that rings? It is all of these things. As the Taoists say, "The between is ringing." The sound of the bell is here to be heard everywhere—in the eyes of every person we meet, in every tree and insect, in every breath we take.

As you acknowledge desire or wanting, you can begin to see that your mind acts a little like a child at Disneyland: "I want that candy and I want to go on that ride and I want that stuffed toy.