Home / Authors / Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield Quotes

Author

Jack Kornfield is an American author and meditation teacher, born in 1945. His works mainly focus on Buddhist meditation and spiritual growth, which have won him a wide audience.

Filter quotes by topic

All Heart Spiritual Way Practice Compassion Suffering World Ifs Letting Go Mind Moments Our Lives Meditation Pain Understanding Needs Doe Buddhism Matter Past

Famous Jack Kornfield Quotes

“As long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind wears itself out. But if you say, 'This is what I am, it is a fact that I am going to investigate and understand,' then you can go beyond.”

Ifs Inspirational Trying Mind Long Facts

Book:The Wise Heart: Buddhist Psychology for the West

Source: The Wise Heart: Buddhist Psychology for the West

“When I sit with students, I do not just want to help them solve their problems. I want to find a moment with each person where their mind stops and their eyes open. I want us to be together as if we were lying in a field on the underside of the earth on a clear summer night, held only by the magnet of gravity, looking down into a bottomless sea of stars. I want us to remember together the beauty all around us.”

Ifs Want Mind Persons Moments Helping Problem Eye Earth Together Remember Lying Night Stars Clear Sea Fields Students Summer Solve Gravity Want U Magnet Looking Down Summer Nights

Author:Jack Kornfield

“If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation; it is impossible for the heart to open.”

Ifs Mind Heart Action Pain Causes Meditation Impossible Conflict Focused Engaged

Book:Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

Source: Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind.”

Mind Goal Practice Beginners

Book:The Buddha Is Still Teaching: Contemporary Buddhist Wisdom

Source: The Buddha Is Still Teaching: Contemporary Buddhist Wisdom

“The awakened heart and mind can be experienced as clarity itself, pure knowing.”

Mind Heart Knowing Pure Clarity Heart And Mind Awakened

Author:Jack Kornfield

“The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War’s roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life’s fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying.”

“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.”

Way Mind Heart Mean Helping Faces Spiritual Used Suffering Our Lives Buddhism Tradition Developing Stillness New Ways Face To Face Great Spiritual

Author:Jack Kornfield

“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.”

Way Needs Mind Suffering Order Seeing Buddhism Habit Discipline Letting Go Training Genuine New Ways Habits Of Mind Old Habits

Author:Jack Kornfield

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

Mind Body Meditation Quiet Breathing Concentration Great Power

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Though outer events may be difficult, the key to our happiness is how our mind responds to them.”

Mind May Difficult Events Keys

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.”

Mind Meditation Type Skills Bases Concentrating

Book:Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

Source: Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“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.”

Mind Heart Body Form Practice Meditation Awareness Mindfulness Heart And Mind Meditation Practice

Book:Meditation for Beginners: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition

Source: Meditation for Beginners: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition

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

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind.”

Mind Teaching Buddhist Science Of Mind

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.”

Mind Two Effort Quality Meditation Objects Development Roots Aim

Book:Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

Source: Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“In the West, there's a myth that freedom means free expression-that to follow all desires wherever they take one is true freedom. In fact, as one serves the mind, one sees that following desires, attractions, and repulsions is not at all freedom, but is a kind of bondage. A mind filled with desires and grasping inevitably entails great suffering. Freedom is not to be gained through the ability to perform certain external actions. True freedom is an inward state of being. Once it is attained, no situation in the world can bind one or limit one's freedom.”

“Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.”

World Mind Responsibility Program Assuming Department Facets

Author: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.”

Way Mind States Body Spiritual Life Is Desire Purpose Special Elements Capacity Primaries Temporary State Of Mind Spiritual Life Trapped

Author:Jack Kornfield

“The quieting of our mind is a political act.”

Author:Jack Kornfield

“One of the essential tasks for living a wise life is letting go. Letting go is the path to freedom. It is only by letting go of the hopes, the fears, the pain, the past, the stories that have a hold on us that we can quiet our mind and open our heart.”

Mind Heart Stories Pain Past Life Is Path Wise Quiet Letting Go Essentials Tasks Wise Life

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Train your mind the same way you’d train a puppy: Be patient, be consistent, and have some fun along the way.”

Way Mind Fun Train Patient Consistent Be Patient Puppy

Author:Jack Kornfield

“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.”

Mind Heart Lying Compassion Psychology Quiet Simplicity Buddhist Sophistication

Book:The Wise Heart: Buddhist Psychology for the West

Source: The Wise Heart: Buddhist Psychology for the West

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

Mind Philosophy Body Waiting Attention Psychology Demand Medicine Illness Senses Soma

Author:Jack Kornfield