Jack Kornfield Quotes - 15 quotes

 No matter how difficult the past, you can always begin again today.

- Jack Kornfield

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 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.

- Jack Kornfield

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 To live life is to make a succession of errors. Understanding this can bring us great ease and forgiveness for ourselves and others.

- Jack Kornfield

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 Let yourself sit quietly and at ease. Allow your body to be relaxed and open, your breath natural, your heart easy. Begin the practice of gratitude by feeling how year after year you have cared for your own life. Now let yourself begin to acknowledge all that has supported you in this care: With gratitude I remember the people, animals, plants, insects, creatures of the sky and sea, air and water, fire and earth, all whose joyful exertion blesses my life every day.With gratitude I remember the care and labor of a thousand generations of elders and ancestors who came before me.I offer my gratitude for the blessing of this earth I have been given.I offer my gratitude for the measure of health I have been given.I offer my gratitude for the family and friends I have been given.I offer my gratitude for the community I have been given.I offer my gratitude for the teachings and lessons I have been given.I offer my gratitude for the life I have been given.Now shift your practice to the cultivation of joy. Continue to breathe gently. Bring to mind someone you care about, someone it is easy to rejoice for. Picture them and feel the natural joy you have for their well-being, happiness, and success. With each breath, offer them your grateful, heartfelt wishes: May you be joyful.May your happiness increase.May you not be separated from great happiness.May your good fortune and the causes for your joy and happiness increase. Sense the sympathetic joy and caring in each phrase. When you feel some degree of natural gratitude for the happiness of this loved one, extend this practice to another person you care about. Recite the same simple phrases that express your heart’s intention. Then gradually open the meditation to other loved ones and benefactors. After the joy for them grows strong, turn back to include yourself. Let the feelings of joy more fully fill your body and mind. Continue repeating the intentions of joy over and over, through whatever resistances and difficulties arise, until you feel stabilized in joy. Next begin to systematically include the categories of neutral people, then difficult people and even enemies until you extend sympathetic joy to all beings everywhere, young and old, near and far. Practice dwelling in joy until the deliberate effort of practice drops away and the intentions of joy blend into the natural joy of your own wise heart. Excerpt: The Wise Heart

- Jack Kornfield

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 If we cannot be happy in spite of our difficulties, what good is our spiritual practice? Gratitude is a gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us, a bow to our blessings, great and small. Buddhist monks begin each day with chants of gratitude for the gifts of food and shelter, of friendship and for the teachings that benefit all. In the same way, Native American elders begin each ceremony with grateful prayers to Mother Earth and Father Sky, to the four directions, to the animal, plant, and mineral brothers and sisters who share our earth and support our life. Gratitude is the confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life. In Tibet, the monks and nuns even offer prayers of gratitude for the suffering they have been given: “Grant that I might have enough suffering to awaken in me the deepest possible compassion and wisdom.” Gratitude does not envy or compare. Gratitude is not dependent on what you have. It depends on your heart. You can even find gratitude for your measure of sorrows, the hand you’ve been dealt. There is mystery surrounding even your difficulties and suffering. Sometimes it’s through the hardest things that your heart learns its most important lessons. As gratitude grows it gives rise to joy. We experience the courage to rejoice in our own blessings and in the good fortune of others. In joy, we are not afraid of pleasure. We do not mistakenly believe it is disloyal to the suffering of the world to honor the measure of happiness we have been given. Joy gladdens the heart. 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. Encounter every new moment with wonder and gratitude, and you’ll experience that it’s never too late to open your mind and your heart. As Bob Dylan sings, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” Give birth to a grateful spirit and you will discover how to live fully and freely.

- Jack Kornfield

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 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

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 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

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 We must understand the power of the stories we tell ourselves, and differentiate them from the direct experience of life. In this way, we can use thoughts without becoming trapped by them.

- Jack Kornfield

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 When you notice destructive, unhealthy thoughts, pause & feel their pain. Take a breath; hold your pain with kindness. Then inwardly recite loving-kindness phrases, imagining each one is a seed of compassion you are planting into your mind. MAY I LOVE MYSELF JUST AS IAM. MAY I SENSE MY WORTHINESS. MAY I LIVE WITH DIGNITY. MAY I HOLD MYSELF IN COMPASSION.

- Jack Kornfield

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 Let your body rest and be relaxed. Let your heart be soft. Begin to let go of any plans or preoccupations. May you be at ease. May you be well. May you be healed. May you be happy. As you offer this lovingkindness to yourself, imagine you can fill yourself with the light of your loving awareness.

- Jack Kornfield

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 The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.

- Jack Kornfield

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 When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds.

- Jack Kornfield

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 When our identity expands to include everything, we find a peace with the dance of the world. The ocean of life rises and falls within us – birth and death, joy and pain, it is all ours, and our heart is full and empty, large enough to embrace it all.

- Jack Kornfield

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 Your world is reborn each morning. 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..

- Jack Kornfield

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 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

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