Top 280 Jack Kornfield Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 6

101. “There is no higher happiness than peace.”

— Jack Kornfield

102. “Since death will take us anyway, why live our life in fear? Why not die in our old ways and be free to live?”

— Jack Kornfield

103. “Do not be afraid to face your difficulty. Turn toward it. Lean into the wind. Hold your ground.”

— Jack Kornfield

104. “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.”

— Jack Kornfield

105. “To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.”

— Jack Kornfield

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

— Jack Kornfield

107. “We can struggle with what is. We can judge and blame others or ourselves. Or we can accept what cannot be changed. Peace comes from an honorable and open heart accepting what is true. Do we want to remain stuck? Or to release the fearful sense of self and rest kindly where we are?”

— Jack Kornfield

108. “As we willingly enter each place of fear, each place of deficiency and insecurity in ourselves, we will discover that its walls are made of untruths, of old images of ourselves, of ancient fears, of false ideas of what is pure and what is not.”

— Jack Kornfield

109. “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

110. “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.”

— Jack Kornfield

111. “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.”

— Jack Kornfield

112. “We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart.”

— Jack Kornfield

113. “The questions asked at the end of lie are very simple ones: Did I love well? Did I love the people around me, my community, the earth, in a deep way? And perhaps, Did I live fully? Did I offer myself to life?”

— Jack Kornfield

114. “As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts it, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who among us is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?”

— Jack Kornfield

115. “The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.”

— Jack Kornfield

116. “We note feelings and find that they last for only a few seconds. We pay attention to thoughts and find that they are ephemeral, that they come and go, uninvited, like clouds.”

— Jack Kornfield

117. “What we seek is what we are.”

— Jack Kornfield

118. “The present moment is really all that we have. The only place you can really love another person is in the present. Love in the past is a memory. Love in the future is a fantasy. To be really alive, love – or any other experience – must take place in the present.”

— Jack Kornfield

119. “To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”

— Jack Kornfield

120. “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.”

— Jack Kornfield

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

— Jack Kornfield

122. “There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops.”

— Jack Kornfield

123. “The Sufis have a saying: “Praise Allah, and tie your camel to a post.” This brings together both parts of practice: pray, yes, but also make sure that you do what is necessary in the world.”

— Jack Kornfield

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

— Jack Kornfield

125. “In deep self acceptance, grows a compassionate understanding.”

— Jack Kornfield

126. “But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.”

— Jack Kornfield

127. “Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.”

— Jack Kornfield

128. “The adult brain and nervous system grow and change throughout our lives. Until the very end, we are neurologically transformed by whatever we practice. We are not limited by the past.”

— Jack Kornfield

129. “Indifference is a misguided way of defending ourselves.”

— Jack Kornfield

130. “Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring for them in a flexible and wise way. In meditation, we pay attention to our body with care and respect.”

— Jack Kornfield

131. “The problem with desire is that you do not desire deeply enough! Why not desire it all? You don’t like what you have and want what you don’t have. Simply reverse this. Want what you have and don’t want what you don’t have. Here you will find true fulfillment.”

— Jack Kornfield

132. “Because love, compassion, and joy can lead to excessive attachment, their warmth needs to be balanced with equanimity. Because equanimity can lead to excessive detachment, its coolness needs to be balanced with love, compassion, and joy. Established together, these radiant qualities express mental harmony.”

— Jack Kornfield

133. “In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.”

— Jack Kornfield

134. “When we let ourselves feel the fear, the discontent, the difficulties we have always avoided, our heart softens. Just as it is a courageous act to face all the difficulties from which we have always run, it is also an act of compassion.”

— Jack Kornfield

135. “When we have for so long been judged by everyone we meet, just to look into the eyes of another who does not judge us can be extraordinarily healing.”

— Jack Kornfield

136. “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.”

— Jack Kornfield

137. “It’s not about you. It’s about us. Life is difficult for everyone.”

— Jack Kornfield

138. “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.”

— Jack Kornfield

139. “Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.”

— Jack Kornfield

140. “Love says, ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says, ‘I am nothing.’ Between these two my life flows.”

— Jack Kornfield

141. “Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely.”

— Jack Kornfield

142. “In this world there are two great sources of strength. One rests with those who are not afraid to kill. The other rests with those who are not afraid to love.”

— Jack Kornfield

143. “To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.”

— Jack Kornfield

144. “When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds.”

— Jack Kornfield

145. “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.”

— Jack Kornfield

146. “For instance, the near enemy of love is attachment. It masquerades as love, it feels like love, but it is essentially different.”

— Jack Kornfield

147. “There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.”

— Jack Kornfield

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

— Jack Kornfield

149. “The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. You do not have to keep it in anymore. You can let go into the heart of compassion; you can weep.”

— Jack Kornfield

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

— Jack Kornfield