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
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.
Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling flight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings in our cars and shops and out among the trees without crashing, conflict, or harm.
Westerners, more than most Asians, are prone to feelings of fear, self-hatred, and unworthiness.