Jack Kornfield - Spiritual Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

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To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart.

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

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

Jack Kornfield
The purpose of spiritual life is not to create some special state of mind. A state of mind is always temporary. The purpose is to work directly with the most primary elements of our body and our mind, to see the ways we get trapped by our fears, desires, and anger, to learn directly our capacity for freedom.

Jack Kornfield
When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.

Jack Kornfield
We don't know all the reasons that propel us on a spiritual journey, but somehow our life compels us to go.

Jack Kornfield
To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.

Jack Kornfield
To live in this precious animal body on this earth is as great a part of spiritual life as anything else.

Jack Kornfield
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.

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

Jack Kornfield
The longing for initiation is universal and for modern youth, it is a desperate need. When nothing is offered in the way of spiritual initiation to prove one's entry into the world of men and women, initiation happens instead in the road or the street, in cars at high speed, with drugs, with dangerous sex, with weapons. However troubling, this behavior is rooted in a fundamental truth; a need to grow.

Jack Kornfield
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 an gradual training.

Jack Kornfield
What is truly a part of our spiritual path is that which brings us alive. If gardening brings us alive, that is part of our path, if it is music, if it is conversation...we must follow what brings us alive.

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

Jack Kornfield