Seeking the Heart of Wisdom Quotes

“The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“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.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Spiritual practice is not a mindless repetition of ritual or prayer. It works through consciously realizing the law of cause and effect. Perhaps we can sense the potential of awakening in ourselves, but we must also see that it doesn’t happen by itself. How we act, how we relate to ourselves, to our bodies, to the people around us, to our work, creates the kind of world we live in, creates our very freedom.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“With mindfulness, we are learning to observe in a new way, with balance and a powerful disidentification.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Through practice, gently and gradually we can collect ourselves and learn how to be more fully with what we do.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“True love and prayer are learned in the hour when love becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“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.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“The path of awakening begins with a step the Buddha called right understanding.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“True spirituality is not a removal or escape from life. It is an opening, a seeing of the world with a deeper vision that is less self-centered, a vision that sees through dualistic views to the underlying interconnectedness of all life.”
― Joseph Goldstein, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“For spiritual practice to develop, it is absolutely essential that we establish a basis of moral conduct in our lives.”
― Joseph Goldstein, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Fear is the membrane between what we know and something new. It tells us we are about to open to something bigger than the world we usually experience.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“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.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Becoming a more loving person in our everyday relationships may be one of the most compassionate actions we can do - simply becoming a little kinder”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“A factor that greatly supports the opening of energy in practice is exercise and care of the physical body.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Built on the foundation of concentration is the third aspect of the Buddha’s path of awakening: clarity of vision and the development of wisdom.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation

“Samadhi doesn’t just come of itself; it takes practice.”
― Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation