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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

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Jack Kornfield
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: July 16
Author
Psychologist
Writer
the United States of America
Life
Spiritual
Exceptional
Given
Accomplishment
Another
Basic
Cannot
Touch
States
Hearts
Even
Ordinary
Accomplishments
Heart
Ways
Unimportant
Way
Happy
Exalted

More quotes by Jack Kornfield

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We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?
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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.
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An honorable spiritual practice recognizes the losses we have suffered, tells our story, and sheds our tears to free us from the past.
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We can bring a heart of understanding and compassion to a world that needs it so much.
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Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Weigh the true advantages of forgiveness and resentment to the heart. Then choose.
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There are no holy places and no holy people, only holy moments, only moments of wisdom.
Jack Kornfield
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To live in this precious animal body on this earth is as great a part of spiritual life as anything else.
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Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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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.
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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
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We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.
Jack Kornfield
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Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?
Jack Kornfield
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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
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We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.
Jack Kornfield
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Yes, there are troubles in the world. There's war and hatred, there's sickness and difficulty. And there is also an undying spirit, an inviolable consciousness that is born in each of us. It is who we are, and it's everything and it's nothing.
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