Jack Kornfield Quotes

I'm just dealing with what's happening, with what is. Joy, happiness, good, bad, all those terms are meaningless to me.

We can't control what thoughts and emotions arise within us, nor can we control the universal truth that everything changes. But we can learn to step back and rest in the awareness of what's happening. That awareness can be our refuge.

Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.

Buddhist mindfulness is about the present, but I also think it's about being real. Being awake to everything. Feeling like nothing can hurt you if you can look it straight on.

To remember non-attachment is to remember what freedom is all about. If we get attached, even to a beautiful state of being, we are caught, and ultimately we will suffer. We work to observe anything that comes our way, experience it while it is here, and be able to let go of it.

Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains.

Everything is changing all the time, and I'm not going to stress out and spend my entire time chasing something that ultimately doesn't exist.

I'm trying to just accept things, accept the beauty of things and the joy and positivity of things as they are in the moment and accept when it's not that way as well. Because, of course, none of it lasts forever. It's all going to change very rapidly. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It doesn't have to be panic-inducing. It can be just the way life is.

It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.

The secret of zen is just two words: not... always... so.

In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.

Feelings come and feelings go. There is no need to fear them and no need to crave them. Be open to your feelings and experience them while they are here. Then be open to the feelings that will come next. Your feelings are a part of your experience. Yet no mere feeling, however intense it may seem, is your permanent reality.

If it is, it is, If it's not, it's not.

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

I'm a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, 'Everything changes, don't take it personally.'

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

Once you accept, truly accept, that stuff will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about it, stress miraculously leaves your life.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

Let come what comes, and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens.

My motto is never to hold on to anything. I accept and then let go: not just the negatives, but the praise, too. Or it'll get to my head.

Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.

Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time-that is the basic message.

Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don't cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life.

Nothing belongs to me. Everything comes and goes. Serenity is an open door.

If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?