Jack Kornfield Quotes

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

Virtue and integrity are necessary for genuine happiness. Guard your integrity with care.

Every individual in the world has a unique contribution.

What we seek is what we are.

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

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.

True love is not for the faint-hearted.

You have to accept the way things are before you can move on.

Each moment of every day is new and then it vanishes. Where is that day? Where is that moment?

Whenever we forgive, in small ways at home, or in great ways between nations, we free ourselves from the past.

With mindfulness, we are learning to observe in a new way, with balance and a powerful disidentification.

Of course, you play the game of life because you got to be incarnated.

We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy—material or spiritual.

We can easily become loyal to our suffering … but it's not the end of the path.

When we take time to quiet ourselves, we can all sense that our life could be lived with greater compassion and greater weakness.

When repeated difficulties do arise, our first spiritual approach is to acknowledge what is present, naming, softly saying 'sadness, sadness', or 'remembering, remembering', or whatever.

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.

We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover that which is sacred.

Where we tended to be judgmental, we became more judgmental of ourselves in our spiritual practice.

How well we have learned to let go

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

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart.

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

The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.

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

The way I treat my body is not disconnected from the way I treat my family or the commitment I have to peace on our earth.

Yet I knew that spiritual practice is impossible without great dedication, energy, and commitment.

We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life.

Know that the freedom you seek can be found right here where you are.

Whatever you believe cosmologically, we all know the tears of the world. We each carry a certain measure of those tears in our hearts.

No one knows how this world came into being. It is a creation of consciousness itself. It's extraordinary, a mystery.

When you rest in presence and pure awareness, sometimes everything is experienced as love because you're connected with all that is, and love is simply the nature of being.

In the endthese things matter most:How well did you love?How fully did you live?How deeply did you let go?

In the end, just three things matter:How well we have livedHow well we have lovedHow well we have learned to let go

The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is simply to release any images and emotions.

The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.

Acceptance is not passivity. It is a courageous step in the process of transformation.