Jack Kornfield: Within Your Heart Peace Is Possible

The Heart Is Like a Garden and Other 

Wisdom Quotes by Jack Kornfield

 

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there? 

 

When we ask it about our current path, we must look at the values we have chosen to live by. Where do we put our time, our strength, our creativity, our love? We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration, or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?

 

We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart.

We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

 

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.   

 

As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions of our life.

 

The world is full of pain, uncertainty, and injustice. But in this vulnerable human life, every loss is an opportunity either to shut out the world or to stand up with dignity and let the heart respond. 

 

True love is not for the faint-hearted. 

 

*****

 

Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.

 

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

 

True love and prayer are learned in the hour when love becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.

 

The way I treat my body is not disconnected from the way I treat my family or the commitment I have to peace on our earth.

 

When we are lost in delusion, it's hard to see even the most obvious truths.

 

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts it, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who among us is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart? 

 

We are rarely lazy—we are simply afraid. 

 

No matter how difficult the past, you can always begin again today.

 

Every individual has a unique contribution.

 

***** 

  

Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness. But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.

 

Many people who come to spiritual practice are frightened by their feelings. They hope meditation will help them to transcend the messiness of the world and leave them invulnerable to difficult feelings. But this is a false transcendence, a denial of life. It is fear masquerading as wisdom.

 

Anger shows us precisely where we are stuck, where our limits are, where we cling to beliefs and fears.

 

When we feel anger toward someone, we can consider that he or she is a being just like us, who has faced much suffering in life.

 

It is not about you. It is about us. Life is difficult for everyone.

 

Do not be afraid of your difficulty. Turn toward it. Learn to lean into the wind. Hold your ground.

 

We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy—material or spiritual.

 

*****

 

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.

 

Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us.

Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action. It makes beauty out of all we touch. In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole.

 

Attachment is conditional, offers love only to certain people in certain ways; it is exclusive. Love, in the sense of metta, used by Buddha, is a universal, nondiscriminating feeling of caring and connectedness.

 

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another – and ourselves.

 

Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.

 

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.

 

The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love. 

 

Since death will take us anyway, why live our life in fear? Why not die in our old ways and be free to live?

 

The waves do keep coming, so learn to surf.

 

*****

 

In our charade with ourselves we pretend that our war is not really war. We have changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department and call a whole class of nuclear missiles Peace Keepers!

 

The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War’s roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life’s fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying. 

 

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.

 

When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.

 

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

 

The present moment is really all that we have. The only place you can really love another person is in the present. 

To begin to meditate is to look into our lives with interest in kindness and discover how to be wakeful and free.

 

Part of the art of quieting yourself is to honor the tears that you carry. 

 

When we take time to quiet ourselves, we can all sense that our life could be lived with greater compassion.

 

*****

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes.

 

Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.

 

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

 

When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

 

Equanimity arises when we accept the way things are.

 

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

 

Acceptance is not passivity. It is a courageous step in the process of transformation.

 

Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?

 

***** 

 

It is not enough to know that love and forgiveness are possible. We have to find ways to bring them to life.

 

There are many ways that I have hurt and harmed others, have betrayed or abandoned them, caused them suffering, knowingly or unknowingly, out of my pain, fear, anger, and confusion.

Let yourself remember and visualize the ways you have hurt others. See the pain you have caused out of your own fear and confusion. Feel your own sorrow and regret. Sense that finally you can release this burden and ask for forgiveness. Take as much time as you need to picture each memory that still burdens your heart. And then as each person comes to mind, gently say:
I ask for your forgiveness, I ask for your forgiveness.

*****

 

If you put a spoonful of salt
in a cup of water
it tastes very salty.
If you put a spoonful of salt
in a lake of fresh water
the taste is still pure and clear.

Peace comes when our hearts are
open like the sky,
vast as the ocean.

 

***** 

 

Within the mystery of life there is the infinite darkness of the night sky lit by distant orbs of fire, the cobbled skin of an orange that releases its fragrance to our touch, the unfathomable depths of the eyes of our lover. No creation story, no religious system can fully describe or explain this richness and depth. Mystery is so every-present that no one can know for certain what will happen one hour from now. “

It does not matter whether you have religion or are an agnostic believe in nothing, You can only appreciate (without knowing or understanding) the mysteries of life.

 

***** 

 

You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.

 

As surely as there is a voyage away, there is a journey home.

 

To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

 

We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, and what it means to allow our hearts to open.

The trouble is, you think you have time.

 

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.

 

In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived. How well we have loved. How well we have learned to let go.

— Jack Kornfield

Most quotes are from A Path with Heart: A Guide Through 

the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life 

and The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal 

Teachings of Buddhist Psychology