jack-kornfield Quotes About suffering

“Forgiveness sees wisely. It willingly acknowledges what is unjust, harmful, and wrong. It bravely recognizes sufferings of the past, and understands the conditions that brought them about.Forgiveness honors the heart's greatest dignity. Whenever we are lost, it brings us back to the ground of love.Without forgiveness our lives are chained, forced to carry the sufferings of the past and repeat them with no release.”

Heart Past Suffering Lost Our Lives Conditions Honor Dignity Release Acknowledge Repeats Unjust Chained

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Compassion arises naturally as the quivering of the heart in the face of pain, ours and another's. True compassion is not limited by the separateness of pity, nor by the fear of being overwhelmed. When we come to rest in the great heart of compassion, we discover a capacity to bear witness to, suffer with, and hold dear with our own vulnerable heart the sorrows and beauties of the world.”

World Heart Pain Faces Suffering Compassion Bears Sorrow Capacity Dear Arise Pity Vulnerable Witness Overwhelmed Separateness Beauty Of The World Great Hearts Being Overwhelmed

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Finding a way to extend forgiveness to ourselves is one of our most essential tasks. Just as others have been caught in suffering, so have we. If we look honestly at our life, we can see the sorrows and pain that have led to our own wrongdoing. In this we can finally extend forgiveness to ourselves; we can hold the pain we have caused in compassion. Without such mercy, we will live our own life in exile.”

Ifs Way Looks Has Beens Pain Suffering Compassion Our Lives Sorrow Essentials Findings Tasks Mercy Caught Honestly Exile Wrongdoing

Book:Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

Source: Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

“The person who betrayed you is sunning themselves on a beach in Hawaii and you're knotted up in hatred. Who is suffering?”

Persons Suffering Hatred Beach Hawaii Betrayed

Author:Jack Kornfield

“With growing awareness, you can see where you're caught or where you suffer or where you create suffering. You can then turn toward the difficulties that arise in your life with compassion, bow, and say, these too are part of human incarnation.”

Humans Suffering Turns Compassion Growing Awareness Difficulty Caught Arise Bows Incarnation

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes.”

Wells Children Ends Care Action Suffering Wish Depends Praying Lovers Illusion Our Children Surrender Thoughts And Actions Love And Care Illusion Of Control

Author:Jack Kornfield

“We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.”

Moments Night Suffering Buddhism Eternal Mindfulness Opening Day And Night Unfolding Meditation Mindfulness

Author: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.”

Spiritual Suffering Community Practice Streets Buddhism Sacred Realms Temples Our Community Spiritual Practice

Author:Jack Kornfield

“We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?”

Looks Doe Suffering Values Our Lives Buddhism Idealism Exaggeration Sentimentality

Author:Jack Kornfield

“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 are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything.”

Suffering Path Buddhism Letting Go Mindfulness Profound Realization Liberation Awakened Meditation Mindfulness

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

“We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life.”

Art Suffering Our Lives Buddhism Mindfulness Areas

Author:Jack Kornfield

“We can always begin again.”

Suffering Buddhism Begin Again

Book:Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

Source: Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

“When repeated difficulties do arise, our first spiritual approach is to acknowledge what is present, naming, softly saying 'sadness, sadness', or 'remembering, remembering', or whatever.”

Firsts Remember Spiritual Suffering Sadness Buddhism Approach Difficulty Arise Acknowledge

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts.”

Body Suffering Belief Race Identity Buddhism Your Body

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.”

Source: A Path With Heart: The Classic Guide Through The Perils And Promises Of Spiritual Life

“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.”

World Pain Suffering Belief Compassion Identity Buddhism Opening Fearful Mistaken True Nature

Author:Jack Kornfield

“When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.”

Heart Ends Moments Spiritual Suffering Practice Buddhism Battle Letting Go Present Moment Spiritual Practice

Author:Jack Kornfield

“We each need to make our lion's roar - to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears - to declare our right to awaken.”

Needs Suffering Doubt Buddhism Sorrow Lions Persevere Unshakable

Author:Jack Kornfield

“Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.”

Ifs Way Mean Doe Suffering Realizing Wise Huge Amount Letting Go Caring Staying Wiser Flexible Way To Live Impermanence Sameness Not Caring

Author:Jack Kornfield

“As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions of our life.”

May Problem Seems Suffering Left Practice Fantasy Path Our Lives Habit Increase Genuine Contradiction Old Habits

Author:Jack Kornfield

“It is hard to imagine a world without forgiveness. Without forgiveness life would be unbearable. Without forgiveness our lives are chained, forced to carry the sufferings of the past and repeat them with no release.”

World Hard Would Be Past Suffering Our Lives Imagine Release Repeats Unbearable Chained

Book:Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

Source: Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

“When we feel anger toward someone, we can consider that they are a being just like us, who has faced much suffering in life.”

Feels Suffering Sufferings In Life

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

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

“Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.”

Action Suffering Wish Depends My Wish My Wish For You

Book:A Lamp in the Darkness: Illuminating the Path Through Difficult Times

Source: A Lamp in the Darkness: Illuminating the Path Through Difficult Times

“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.”

“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.”

World Heart Enough Suffering Given Compassion Break Kindness Greater This World Wall My Heart Ego Let Me Separation Grants Milk Breaking Down Nectar

Author:Jack Kornfield

“We can easily become loyal to our suffering … but it's not the end of the path.”

Ends Suffering Path Loyal

Author:Jack Kornfield

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