Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfieldis a bestselling American author and teacher in the vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. He has taught meditation worldwide since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist Mindfulness practice to the West. In 1975, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Sharon Salzberg and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth16 July 1945
CountryUnited States of America
Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.
The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.
Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.
This life is a test-it is only a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do. Remember, this life is only a test.
What brings the karmic result from the patterns of our actions is not our action alone. As we intend and then act, we create [our] karma: so another key to understanding the creation of karma is becoming aware of intention. The heart is our garden, and along with each action there is an intention that is planted like a seed. The result of the patterns of our karma is the fruit of these seeds.
Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.
If you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water it tastes very salty. If you put a spoonful of salt in a lake of fresh water the taste is still pure and clear. Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean.
A second quality of mature sirituality is kindness. It is based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance....
To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart.
Forgiveness is primarily for our own sake, so that we no longer carry the burden of resentment. But to forgive does not mean we will allow injustice again.
The independence and rebelliousness of our adolescence offer us yet another quality essential to our practice; the insistence that we find out the truth for ourselves, accepting no one's word above our own experience.
Tending to ourselves, we tend the world. Tending the world, we tend ourselves.
We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy-mate rial or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.
No amount of outer technology, no amount of computers and biotechnology and nanotechnology is going to stop the continuation of warfare and racism and environmental destruction. What's called for on the Earth at this time is really a change of heart ... the question is really not the future of humanity, but the presence of eternity.