Quote

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

Jack Kornfield

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Jack Kornfield

Image
...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
Image
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
Jack Kornfield
Image
In the crystal of the awakened consciousness, one facet is love.
Jack Kornfield
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.
Jack Kornfield
Image
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
Image
The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love.
Jack Kornfield
Image
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
Image
As we step out of the way new things are born.
Jack Kornfield
Image
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
Image
As long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind wears itself out. But if you say, 'This is what I am, it is a fact that I am going to investigate and understand,' then you can go beyond.
Jack Kornfield
Image
Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.
Jack Kornfield
Image
We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open.
Jack Kornfield
Image
If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation it is impossible for the heart to open.
Jack Kornfield
Image
In the end, forgiveness simply means never putting another person out of our heart.
Jack Kornfield
Image
Equanimity arises when we accept the way things are.
Jack Kornfield
Image
The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?
Jack Kornfield