Jack Kornfield Buddhism Quotations

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.