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The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind.

Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: July 16
Author
Psychologist
Writer
the United States of America
Beginner
Beginners
Practice
Goal
Keep
Mind
Always

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The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?
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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.
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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.
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If you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water it tastes very salty. If you put a spoonful of salt in a lake of fresh water the taste is still pure and clear. Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean.
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Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.
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The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.
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In the crystal of the awakened consciousness, one facet is love.
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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.
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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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The path of awakening begins with a step the Buddha called right understanding.
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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.
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Most people discover that when hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.
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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.
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Yet I knew that spiritual practice is impossible without great dedication, energy, and commitment.
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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?
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Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.
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What would we have to hold in compassion to be at peace right now? What would we have to let go of to be at peace right now?
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To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart.
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Taking the one seat describes two related aspects of spiritual work. Outwardly, it means selecting one practice and teacher among all the possibilities, and inwardly, it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding.
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The best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.
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