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
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.
Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.
Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.
Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.
To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.
In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.
The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.
There are many good forms of meditation practice. A good meditation practice is any one that develops awareness or mindfulness of our body and our sense, of our mind and heart.
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.
Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.
Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.
If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation; it is impossible for the heart to open.
There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops.
Buddhism talks about the possibility of transforming greed, hatred, and delusion. But sometimes need turns into greed.