The collection / 44 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

44 results · Page 1 of 2Play this collection ▷

01Undated

In the endthese things matter most:How well did you love?How fully did you live?How deeply did you let go?

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

02Undated

In the end, just three things matter:How well we have livedHow well we have lovedHow well we have learned to let go

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

03Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

04Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

05Undated

There is no higher happiness than peace.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

06Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

07Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

08Undated

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!

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

09Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

10Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

11Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

12Undated

If you put a spoonful of saltin a cup of waterit tastes very salty.If you put a spoonful of saltin a lake of fresh waterthe taste is still pure and clear.Peace comes when our hearts areopen like the sky,vast as the ocean.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

13Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

14Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

15Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

16Undated

Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

17Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

18Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

19Undated

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.

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

20Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

21Undated

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 / quote

↗

22Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

23Undated

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

Jack Kornfield / quote

↗

24Undated

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 / quote

↗