Jack Kornfield Bud Quotations

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.

We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover that which is sacred.

We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life.

In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.

We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?

We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything.

We each need to make our lion's roar - to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears - to declare our right to awaken.

It's much better to become a Buddha than a Buddhist.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.

Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists.

Beneath the sophistication of Buddhist psychology lies the simplicity of compassion. We can touch into this compassion whenever the mind is quiet, whenever we allow the heart to open.

We can always begin again.

Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts.

According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the "quivering of the pure heart" when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.

One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendants asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth." "Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of the truth, O evil one?" his attendants asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this they usually make a belief out of it."

We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing.

Buddhism talks about the possibility of transforming greed, hatred, and delusion. But sometimes need turns into greed.

Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind.

Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.

In opening we can see how many times we have mistaken small identities and fearful beliefs for our true nature and how limiting this is. We can touch with great compassion the pain from the contracted identities that we and others have created in the world.

If grief or anger arises,Let there be grief or anger.This is the Buddha in all forms,Sun Buddha, Moon Buddha, Happy Buddha, Sad Buddha.It is the universe offering all thingsto awaken and open our heart.