Jack Kornfield Quotes
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There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops.
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The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.
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The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.
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Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.
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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.
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Use whatever has come to awaken patience, understanding, and love.
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We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing.
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But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.
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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.
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A factor that greatly supports the opening of energy in practice is exercise and care of the physical body.
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It is our commitment to wholeness that matters, the willingness to unfold in every deep aspect of our being.
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When we take time to quiet ourselves, we can all sense that our life could be lived with greater compassion and greater weakness.
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The words of the Buddha offer this truth: ∼ Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed.
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We can struggle with what is. We can judge and blame others or ourselves. Or we can accept what cannot be changed. Peace comes from an honorable and open heart accepting what is true. Do we want to remain stuck? Or to release the fearful sense of self and rest kindly where we are?
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You need a community. They remind you when you forget, and you remind them when they forget.
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In a society that almost demands life at double time, speed and addictions numb us to our own experience. In such a society, it is almost impossible to settle into our bodies or stay connected with our hearts, let alone connect with one another or the earth where we live.
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If you want to love, take the time to listen to your heart. In most ancient and wise cultures it is a regular practice for people to talk to their heart. There are rituals, stories, and meditative skills in every spiritual tradition that awaken the voice of the heart. To live wisely, this practice is essential, because our heart is the source of our connection to and intimacy with all of life. And life is love. This mysterious quality of love is all around us, as real as gravity... Yet how often we forget about love.
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We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything.
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The emotional wisdom of the heart is simple. When we accept our human feelings, a remarkable transformation occurs. Tenderness and wisdom arise naturally and spontaneously. Where we once sought strength over others, now our strength becomes our own; where we once sought to defend ourselves, we laugh.
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Part of spiritual and emotional maturity is recognizing that it's not like you're going to try to fix yourself and become a different person. You remain the same person, but you become awakened.
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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.
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Most people discover that when hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.
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We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.
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Acceptance does not mean inaction. We may need to respond, strongly at times...From a peaceful center we can respond instead of react. Unconscious reactions create problems. Considered responses bring peace. With a peaceful heart whatever happens can be met with wisdom...Peace is not weak; it is unshakable.
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The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are.
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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.
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Tending to ourselves, we tend the world. Tending the world, we tend ourselves.
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Each moment of every day is new and then it vanishes. Where is that day? Where is that moment?
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The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love.
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Grant that I have enough suffering that my heart really opens to the great compassion of this world, that I be given enough so that I don't wall myself off from the world, that it breaks down the heart and the separation and the ego and the fear, and it lets me touch the nectar, the milk of kindness itself, of something greater.
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