We need to learn how to honor and use a practice for as long as it serves usโwhich in most cases is a very long timeโbut to look at it as just that, a vehicle, a raft to help us cross through the waters of doubt, confusion, desire, and fear.
Jack KornfieldMost 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.
Jack KornfieldWe can step out of our small sense of self and awaken to this reality. One of the reasons people get confused about freedom, enlightenment, and liberation is because this awakened consciousness has different facets or different dimensions, a bit like a crystal. If you hold this luminous crystal up to the light and turn it, it will take a beam of white light and refract it into the many colors of the spectrum.
Jack KornfieldWhatever you believe cosmologically, we all know the tears of the world. We each carry a certain measure of those tears in our hearts.
Jack KornfieldIn any moment we can learn to let go of hatred and fear. We can rest in peace, love, and forgiveness. It is never too late. Yet to sustain love we need to develop practices that cultivate and strengthen the natural compassion within us.
Jack KornfieldForgiveness does not mean that we have to continue to relate to those who have done us harm. In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurts or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm.
Jack Kornfield