Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfieldis a bestselling American author and teacher in the vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. He has taught meditation worldwide since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist Mindfulness practice to the West. In 1975, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Sharon Salzberg and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth16 July 1945
CountryUnited States of America
Know that the freedom you seek can be found right here where you are.
How did we get into this funny-looking body that has a hole at one end in which we regularly stuff dead plants and animals? It's bizarre that we got here, incarnated into this world with these bodies.
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.
In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.
Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training.
No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.
A bulging portfolio of spiritual experiences matters little if it does not have the power to sustain us through the inevitable moments of grief, loss, and change. Knowledge and achievements matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of another and be touched. Wisdom is alive only as long as it is lived, understanding is liberating only as long as it is applied.
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.
What we seek is what we are.
With mindfulness, we are learning to observe in a new way, with balance and a powerful disidentification.
Great spiritual traditions are used as a means to ripen us, to bring us face to face with our life, and to help us to see in a new way by developing a stillness of mind and a strength of heart.
The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.
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.
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.