Jack Kornfield

There is no higher happiness than peace.

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

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.

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

But forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.

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.

Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.

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 is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.

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.

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.

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.

The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.

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.

Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim__rousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.

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.