Quote

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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Jack Kornfield
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: July 16
Author
Psychologist
Writer
the United States of America
Moments
Appreciate
True
Begin
Strategies
Past
Protect
Preoccupation
Present
Yearning
Beauty
Nowhere
Future
Connect
Moment
Simplicity
Left
Strategy

More quotes by Jack Kornfield

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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
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Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.
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.
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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The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.
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
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Wherever you are is the perfect place to awaken. This moment is the exact place to practice compassion and loving awareness. You have all the ingredients to breathe and find freedom just where you are.
Jack Kornfield
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You are the mystery incarnating itself, and it's beautiful when you remember. It's also painful and awesome and it contains unbearable beauty and unfathomable pain - the ocean of tears and galaxy of bliss. I don't say that lightly, but it's what we have.
Jack Kornfield
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In this there is no judgment and no blame, for we seek not to perfect the world but to perfect our love for what is on this earth.
Jack Kornfield
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The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.
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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As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions of our life.
Jack Kornfield
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When we take time to quiet ourselves, we can all sense that our life could be lived with greater compassion and greater weakness.
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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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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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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In this world there are two great sources of strength. One rests with those who are not afraid to kill. The other rests with those who are not afraid to love.
Jack Kornfield
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There is no higher happiness than peace.
Jack Kornfield
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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
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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