"Anger shows us precisely where we are stuck, where our limits are, where we cling to beliefs and fears." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"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 & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"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 & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, I will love this person because I need them. Or, I'll love you if you'll love me back. I'll love you, but only if you will be the way I want. This isn't love at all - it is attachment - and attachment is rigid, it is very different from love." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"The path of awakening begins with a step the Buddha called right understanding." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free." (Jack Kornfield & Joseph Goldstein, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object." (Jack Kornfield, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"We need a warrior's heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities." (Jack Kornfield, "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation", 1987)
"Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration." (Jack Kornfield, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"For most of us, generosity is a quality that must be developed. We have to respect that it will grow gradually; otherwise our spirituality can become idealistic and imitative, acting out the image of generosity before it has become genuine." (Jack Kornfield, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and thoughts that we have lost this essential art of taking time to converse with our heart." (Jack Kornfield, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love." (Jack Kornfield, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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." (Jack Kornfield, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything." (Jack Kornfield, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"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, "A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life", 1993)
"There are many good forms of meditation practice. A good meditation practice is any one that develops awareness or mindfulness of our body and our sense, of our mind and heart." (Jack Kornfield, "Meditation for Beginners", 1998)
"To meditate is to discover new possibilities, to awaken the capacities of us has to live more wisely, more lovingly, more compassionately, and more fully." (Jack Kornfield, "Meditation for Beginners", 1998)
"When we take time to quiet ourselves, we can all sense that our life could be lived with greater compassion and greater weakness." (Jack Kornfield, "Meditation for Beginners", 1998)
"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, "After the Ecstasy, The Laundry", 2000)
"In all practices and traditions of freedom, we find the heart's task to be quite simple. Life offers us just what it offers, and our task is to bow to it, to meet it with understanding and compassion." (Jack Kornfield, "After the Ecstasy, The Laundry", 2000)
"When our identity expands to include everything, we find a peace with the dance of the world. The ocean of life rises and falls within us - birth and death, joy and pain, it is all ours, and our heart is full and empty, large enough to embrace it all." (Jack Kornfield, "After the Ecstasy, The Laundry", 2000)
"Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful." (Jack Kornfield, "The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace", 2002)
"Indifference pretends to create peace, but it is based on not caring, a silent resignation. It is a movement away, a separation fed by a subtle fear of the heart. We pull back, believing that what happens to others is not our concern. Our courage leaves us. Indifference is a misguided way of defending ourselves." (Jack Kornfield, "The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace", 2002)
"Letting go is not the same as aversion, struggling to get rid of something. We cannot genuinely let go of what we resist. What we resist and fear secretly follows us even as we push it away. To let go of fear or trauma, we need to acknowledge just how it is. We need to feel it fully and accept that it is so. It is as it is. Letting go begins with letting be." (Jack Kornfield, "The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace", 2002)
"Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us. Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action. It makes beauty out of all we touch. In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole." (Jack Kornfield, "The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace", 2002)
"Love is based on our capacity to trust in a reality beyond fear, to trust a timeless truth bigger than all our difficulties." (Jack Kornfield, "The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace", 2002)
"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." (Jack Kornfield, "The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace", 2002)
"Most people discover that when hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain." (Jack Kornfield, "The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology", 2008)
"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, "The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology", 2008)
"Forgiveness does not mean that we have to continue to relate to those who have done us harm. In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurts or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm." (Jack Kornfield, "Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are", 2011)
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