110+ Jack Kornfield Quotes On Gratitude, Spiritual And Insightful

Jack Kornfield is an American author and teacher in the vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist Mindfulness practice to the West. He is the author of several books, including A Path With Heart, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, and Buddha's Little Instruction Book. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jack Kornfield on gratitude, love, spiritual.

Top 10 Jack Kornfield Quotes

1. The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?
2. If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
3. In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived How well we have loved How well we have learned to let go
4. Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.
5. To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.
6. Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.
7. We as human beings have the amazing capacity to be reborn at breakfast everyday and say, “This is a new day.”
8. Equanimity arises when we accept the way things are.
9. We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.
10. Live in joy, luminosity, and peace even among the troubles of the world. Remember who you are.

Jack Kornfield Short Quotes

• May you know the beauty of your own true nature.
• We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much.
• Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.
• The trouble is that you think you have time.
• There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.
• Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.
• Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.
• We can always begin again.
• The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind.
• No matter how difficult the past, you can always begin again today.

Jack Kornfield Quotes About Gratitude

Those who are Awake live in a state of constant amazement. — Jack Kornfield

Expressing gratitude to our benefactors is a natural form of love. In fact, some people find loving kindness for themselves so hard, they begin their practice with a benefactor. This too is fine. The rule in loving kindness practice is to follow the way that most easily opens your heart. — Jack Kornfield

Gratitude is confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life. — Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield Quotes About Love

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

You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible. — Jack Kornfield

The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love. — Jack Kornfield

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

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, "I love to go and see all the things I am happy without. — Jack Kornfield

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

Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows. — Jack Kornfield

Nirvana manifests as ease, as love, as connectedness, as generosity, as clarity, as unshakable freedom. This isn’t watering down nirvana. This is the reality of liberation that we can experience, sometimes in a moment and sometimes in transformative ways that change our entire life — Jack Kornfield

When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present -- our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes our love -- everything that moves us most deeply. — Jack Kornfield

The words of the Buddha offer this truth: ∼ Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed. — Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield Quotes About Spiritual

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. — Jack Kornfield

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

Within each of us there is a silence as vast as the universe. We long for it. We can return to it. — 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. — Jack Kornfield

...Spiritual opening is not a withdrawal to some imagined realm or safe cave. It is not a pulling away, but a touching of all the experience of life with wisdom and with a heart of kindness, without any separation. — Jack Kornfield

We don't know all the reasons that propel us on a spiritual journey, but somehow our life compels us to go. — Jack Kornfield

The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything. — Jack Kornfield

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love. — Jack Kornfield

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

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

Jack Kornfield Quotes About Compassionate

When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness. — Jack Kornfield

You awaken your True spirit by way of the broken heart: ragged, vulnerable, fierce and finally compassionate. Chris trod this rough way and shows honestly how it can be done. — Jack Kornfield

In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.' — Jack Kornfield

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

Jack Kornfield Quotes About Life

Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind? — Jack Kornfield

There is beauty to be found in the changing of the earth’s seasons, and an inner grace in honouring the cycles of life. — 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. — Jack Kornfield

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

It does not matter whether you have religion or are an agnostic believe in nothing, You can only appreciate (without knowing or understanding) the mysteries of life. — Jack Kornfield

Everything has a beginning and an ending. Make peace with that and all will be well...In life we cannot avoid change, we cannot avoid loss. Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change. — Jack Kornfield

According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the "quivering of the pure heart" when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life. — Jack Kornfield

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one. — Jack Kornfield

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

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

Jack Kornfield Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — 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. — Jack Kornfield

Acceptance does not mean inaction. We may need to respond, strongly at times...From a peaceful center we can respond instead of react. Unconscious reactions create problems. Considered responses bring peace. With a peaceful heart whatever happens can be met with wisdom...Peace is not weak; it is unshakable. — 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. — Jack Kornfield

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

It is true that the heart has its seasons, just as a flower opens to the sunlight and closes to the night. We need to be respectful of those rhythms. But we can't close down for long. It is our true nature to have an open heart. — Jack Kornfield

I used to think that to become free you had to practice like a samurai warrior, but now I understand that you have to practice like a devoted mother of a newborn child. It takes the same energy but has a completely different quality. It's compassion and presence rather than having to defeat the enemy in battle. — Jack Kornfield

It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine human vulnerability, with helplessness and hopelessness. These are the storm clouds of the heart. — Jack Kornfield

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

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. — Jack Kornfield

Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way. — Jack Kornfield

The emotional wisdom of the heart is simple. When we accept our human feelings, a remarkable transformation occurs. Tenderness and wisdom arise naturally and spontaneously. Where we once sought strength over others, now our strength becomes our own; where we once sought to defend ourselves, we laugh. — Jack Kornfield

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves. — Jack Kornfield

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

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

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

Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts. — Jack Kornfield

Attention to the human body brings healing and regeneration. Through awareness of the body we remember who we really are. — Jack Kornfield

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. — Jack Kornfield

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

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

Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there. — Jack Kornfield

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. — Jack Kornfield

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

Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party). — Jack Kornfield

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

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. — Jack Kornfield

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

Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind. — Jack Kornfield

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

As we encounter new experiences with a mindful and wise attention, we discover that one of three things will happen to our new experience: it will go away, it will stay the same, or it will get more intense. whatever happens does not really matter. — Jack Kornfield

In a society that almost demands life at double time, speed and addictions numb us to our own experience. In such a society, it is almost impossible to settle into our bodies or stay connected with our hearts, let alone connect with one another or the earth where we live. — Jack Kornfield

Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels. — Jack Kornfield

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

In our charade with ourselves we pretend that our war is not really war. We have changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department and call a whole class of nuclear missiles Peace Keepers! — Jack Kornfield

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

We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything. — 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. — Jack Kornfield

As surely as there is a voyage away, there is a journey home. — Jack Kornfield

When we let go of yearning for the future, preoccupation with the past, and strategies to protect the present, there is nowhere left to go but where we are. To connect with the present moment is to begin to appreciate the beauty of true simplicity. — 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. — Jack Kornfield

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed. — Jack Kornfield

There is a web of life into which we are born, from which we can never fall. — Jack Kornfield

Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists. — Jack Kornfield

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

A second quality of mature sirituality is kindness. It is based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance. — Jack Kornfield

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

The light around someone who speaks truth, who consistently acts with compassion for all, even in great difficulty, is visible to all around them. — Jack Kornfield

Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training. — Jack Kornfield

Only a deep attention to the whole of our life can bring us the capacity to love well and live freely. — Jack Kornfield

To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own. — Jack Kornfield

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

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. — Jack Kornfield

It is our commitment to wholeness that matters, the willingness to unfold in every deep aspect of our being. — Jack Kornfield

To let go in the deepest recesses of the heart, to release all struggle and wanting, leads us to that knowing which is timeless. — 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. — Jack Kornfield

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

The wholeness and freedom we seek is our true nature, who we really are. — Jack Kornfield

Life Lessons by Jack Kornfield

1. Jack Kornfield teaches that life is a journey of learning and growing, and that by embracing our unique experiences, we can find joy and peace in the present moment.
2. He encourages us to stay open to the possibilities of life and to cultivate a sense of self-compassion and acceptance.
3. He also emphasizes the importance of connecting with others and recognizing our shared humanity, and encourages us to practice mindfulness and kindness in all aspects of our lives.