Quote

The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.

Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: July 16
Author
Psychologist
Writer
the United States of America
Qualities
Level
Courage
Levels
Quality
Practice
Firsts
Illuminated
First
Renunciation

More quotes by Jack Kornfield

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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
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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
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The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.
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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
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We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much.
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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Whenever we forgive, in small ways at home, or in great ways between nations, we free ourselves from the past.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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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
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The trouble is that you think you have time.
Jack Kornfield
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How did we get into this funny-looking body that has a hole at one end in which we regularly stuff dead plants and animals? It's bizarre that we got here, incarnated into this world with these bodies.
Jack Kornfield
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Those who are Awake live in a state of constant amazement.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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Whatever you believe cosmologically, we all know the tears of the world. We each carry a certain measure of those tears in our hearts.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.
Jack Kornfield
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Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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Through practice, gently and gradually we can collect ourselves and learn how to be more fully with what we do.
Jack Kornfield
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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