Book Excerpts

Recommended Courses

Discovering your Buddha Nature with Jack Kornfield

The ten paramitas, or "perfections," are central to Buddhist teaching and practice. These perfections represent qualities to cultivate in order to progress along the path

The Year of Awakening: A Monthly Journey with Jack Kornfield

Beginning Jan 2025, the Year of Awakening is a year-long online monthly journey, and a rare opportunity to learn directly with Jack!

The Awakened Heart: Discovering Great Joy and Love

In this transformative 3-week course, renowned meditation teacher Jack Kornfield guides you through powerful practices to awaken the qualities of the heart that bring deep

Enacting Mindfully

Another means for working with difficulties is called Enacting It Mindfully. Let’s face it, we act out most of our desires anyway. In this way,…

Envision Liberation and Justice

If we are able to quiet the mind and face what is true it’s easier to envision liberation from suffering for ourselves, our community and…

Learning from the Precepts

Pick and refine one or more of the five basic training precepts as a way to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. Work with a precept meticulously…

Undertaking the Five Precepts: Nonharming as a Gift to the World

Every great spiritual system offers guidelines for ethical conduct as a statement that spiritual life cannot be separated from our words and actions. A conscious…

Establish Clear Ethical Guidelines

Enacting Mindfully

The fifth skillful means for working with difficulties is called Enacting It Mindfully. Let’s face it, we act out most of our desires anyway. In…

Know That Power is Not Wisdom

To further sort out the gold from the dross in spiritual life we must distinguish between wisdom and power. Powers can include psychic ability, special…

Recognize the Halo Effect

In order to take what’s good, we need to recognize a second principle of wise relationship and disentangle ourselves from the halo effect. The halo…

Take What’s Good

When dealing with the humanness and the complexity of teachers, it is helpful to keep a few other principles in mind. One is called take…

Grasping and Wanting

Grasping and wanting are two names for the most painful aspects of desire. Because our language uses the word desire in so many ways, it…

How to Begin Naming

Begin by sitting comfortably, focusing awareness on your breathing. As you feel each breath, carefully acknowledge it with a simple name: “in-breath, out-breath,” saying the…

Purification: The Gateway to Higher States

Learning to concentrate, though initially difficult, works. Gradually, through repeated focus on our subject over hours and days, the mind’s wandering diminishes. It settles down…

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