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

Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: July 16
Author
Psychologist
Writer
the United States of America
Kindness
Anything
Hard
Kind
Life

More quotes by Jack Kornfield

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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
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Everybody needs to take some time, in some way, to quiet themselves and really listen to their heart.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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We don't know all the reasons that propel us on a spiritual journey, but somehow our life compels us to go.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love.
Jack Kornfield
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Those who are Awake live in a state of constant amazement.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy—material or spiritual.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate.
Jack Kornfield
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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.
Jack Kornfield
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The way I treat my body is not disconnected from the way I treat my family or the commitment I have to peace on our earth.
Jack Kornfield
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...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
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Each moment of every day is new and then it vanishes. Where is that day? Where is that moment?
Jack Kornfield
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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
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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
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Train your mind the same way you’d train a puppy: Be patient, be consistent, and have some fun along the way.
Jack Kornfield
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We have so many ideas and beliefs about ourselves. We told ourselves story about what we want and who we are, smart or kind. Often these are the unexamined and limited ideas of others that we have internalized and then gone on to life out.
Jack Kornfield
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We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much.
Jack Kornfield