Jack Kornfield Quotes - Page 10

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

Through practice, gently and gradually we can collect ourselves and learn how to be more fully with what we do.

The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are.

The light around someone who speaks truth, who consistently acts with compassion for all, even in great difficulty, is visible to all around them.

It's much better to become a Buddha than a Buddhist.

When attachment arises in the place of love, it sees the other as separate; it grasps and needs. Attachment is conditional; it seeks control and it fear loss. Ask your heart if attachment has replaced love. If we speak to our heart, it will always tell us the truth.

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

There are many ways up the mountain and each of us must choose a practice that feels true to our heart.

In the crystal of the awakened consciousness, one facet is love.

Embodied courage chooses not to wait until illness or notice of death demands attention.

As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

We can step out of our small sense of self and awaken to this reality. One of the reasons people get confused about freedom, enlightenment, and liberation is because this awakened consciousness has different facets or different dimensions, a bit like a crystal. If you hold this luminous crystal up to the light and turn it, it will take a beam of white light and refract it into the many colors of the spectrum.

Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists.

Beneath the sophistication of Buddhist psychology lies the simplicity of compassion. We can touch into this compassion whenever the mind is quiet, whenever we allow the heart to open.

Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.

Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate.

There is a web of life into which we are born, from which we can never fall.

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).

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

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

The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.

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

Taking the one seat describes two related aspects of spiritual work. Outwardly, it means selecting one practice and teacher among all the possibilities, and inwardly, it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding.

In any moment we can learn to let go of hatred and fear. We can rest in peace, love, and forgiveness. It is never too late. Yet to sustain love we need to develop practices that cultivate and strengthen the natural compassion within us.

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