Jack Kornfield - A path with heart (1993)

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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
We need a warrior's heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

Jack Kornfield
Religion and philosophy have their value, but in the end all we can do is open to mystery and live a path with heart

Jack Kornfield
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.

Jack Kornfield
Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.

Jack Kornfield
In opening we can see how many times we have mistaken small identities and fearful beliefs for our true nature and how limiting this is. We can touch with great compassion the pain from the contracted identities that we and others have created in the world.

Jack Kornfield
We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open.

Jack Kornfield
In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'

Jack Kornfield
When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

Jack Kornfield
Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

Jack Kornfield
The independence and rebelliousness of our adolescence offer us yet another quality essential to our practice; the insistence that we find out the truth for ourselves, accepting no one's word above our own experience.

Jack Kornfield
We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything.

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
Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was Young. And my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Jack Kornfield
This life is a test-it is only a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do. Remember, this life is only a test.

Jack Kornfield
Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.

Jack Kornfield
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
Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.

Jack Kornfield
When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.

Jack Kornfield
We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much.

Jack Kornfield
To see the preciousness of all things, we must bring our full attention to life

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
Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party).

Jack Kornfield
There is beauty to be found in the changing of the earth's seasons, and an inner grace in honouring the cycles of life.

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
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
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.

Jack Kornfield
No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.

Jack Kornfield
The best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.

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