Summary of Jack Kornfield's The Wise Heart

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The first principle of Buddhist psychology is to see the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings. We have to believe in our dignity, because without it, we are afraid we wouldn’t know how to be.
#2 The word nobility refers to human excellence, which is defined as that which is illustrious, admirable, lofty, and distinguished in values, conduct, and bearing. We can find this quality in others by shifting the frame of time and seeing them as small children still young and innocent.
#3 The Western psychology that has been dominant for the past century is based on the medical model, which focuses on pathology. While this may be appropriate in some cases, it often ignores who we really are.
#4 The Buddhist approach to dealing with problems is to focus on training and practice, as well as understanding. Instead of going into therapy to discuss your problems and be listened to once a week, there is a regimen of daily and ongoing trainings and disciplines to help you learn and practice healthy ways of being.

Sujets

• Général
• Psychotherapy

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 25 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669364061
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Jack Kornfield's The Wise Heart
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The first principle of Buddhist psychology is to see the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings. We have to believe in our dignity, because without it, we are afraid we wouldn’t know how to be.

#2

The word nobility refers to human excellence, which is defined as that which is illustrious, admirable, lofty, and distinguished in values, conduct, and bearing. We can find this quality in others by shifting the frame of time and seeing them as small children still young and innocent.

#3

The Western psychology that has been dominant for the past century is based on the medical model, which focuses on pathology. While this may be appropriate in some cases, it often ignores who we really are.

#4

The Buddhist approach to dealing with problems is to focus on training and practice, as well as understanding. Instead of going into therapy to discuss your problems and be listened to once a week, there is a regimen of daily and ongoing trainings and disciplines to help you learn and practice healthy ways of being.

#5

When we meet another person and recognize their dignity, we help those around us. When we learn to rest in our own goodness, we can see the goodness in others more clearly.

#6

When we bring respect and honor to those around us, we open a channel to their own goodness. When we see what is holy in another, whether we meet them in our family or community, at a business meeting or in a therapy session, we transform their hearts.

#7

To see with sacred perception does not mean we ignore the need for development and change in an individual. It is one half of a paradox. We must recognize the innate nobility and freedom of heart that is available to us wherever we are.

#8

To practice seeing the secret goodness, first wake up in a good mood. Then, throughout the day, look for the inner nobility of three people. Carry that intention in your heart as you speak or work with them. After looking at three people a day for five days, set the clear intention to see the secret goodness for a whole day with as many people as you can.

#9

Compassion is the natural response to our blindness. It arises when we see our human situation clearly, and it helps us be tender with our difficulties and not close off to them in fear.

#10

The simplicity of compassion is underneath the sophistication of Buddhist psychology. We can touch into this compassion whenever the mind is quiet, and we allow the heart to open. Unfortunately, like the clay covering the golden Buddha, thick layers of ignorance and trauma can obscure our compassion.

#11

Compassion is the natural result of our interdependence. We are interconnected with the earth and one another, and this fact is the basis for compassion.

#12

Compassion is not a struggle or a sacrifice. It is natural and intuitive, and we don’t have to think about it. We can feel it when we are hurt, and we can respond instinctively.

#13

We all have our own measure of pain. Sometimes the pain we suffer is great and obvious, while sometimes it is subtle. Our pain can reflect the coldness of our families, the trauma of our parents, the stultifying influence of much modern education and media, and the difficulties of being a man or a woman.

#14

We lose the belief that we are worthy of love. We can’t stand to have anyone’s eyes on us, because we believe we are not worthy of love. But compassion reminds us that we do belong, as surely as we have been lost.

#15

When we are compassionate with our own fear and shame, we can be compassionate with others. When we are open to others, we can feel their pain as our own, and it helps us overcome our own pain.

#16

The courageous heart is the one that is unafraid to open to the world. With compassion, we come to trust our capacity to open to life without armoring.

#17

Compassion is not co-dependence. It is not blind following of the demands of others. It is a powerful no that leaves a destructive family, an agonizing no that allows an addict to experience the consequences of his actions.

#18

To cultivate compassion, you must first sit in a centered and quiet way. Then, breathe softly and feel your body, your heartbeat, and the life within you. Feel how you treasure your own life and how you guard yourself against your sorrows.

#19

Compassion is the act of holding the world in your heart. It is the act of holding another person in your heart, and then extending that same compassion to the entire world. It is a way of being tenderhearted with all life and its creatures.

#20

When we shift our attention from experience to the spacious consciousness that knows, wisdom arises. The capacity to be mindful, to observe without being caught in our experience, is both remarkable and liberating.

#21

Western science believes that consciousness is a product of the brain. But if you try to focus on your own consciousness, it is difficult to pinpoint or describe. It is unfixed and yet alive, like air around us. It knows experience but is not limited by it.

#22

Consciousness is like a mirror that reflects all things, but remains bright and shining regardless of the images that appear within it. It is impossible to stop being aware of sights, sounds, sensations, and thoughts.

#23

Through Buddhist analysis, it is found that consciousness has two dimensions. It is sky-like in its unbound nature, and particle-like in its momentary nature. It arises together with each moment of experience, and is flavored by that experience.

#24

Resting in consciousness is not the same as detachment. We must learn to feel everything in order to trust the openness of our own consciousness. When we rest in consciousness, we become unafraid of the changing conditions of life.

#25

The two dimensions to our life are the ever-changing flow of experiences, and that which knows the experiences. The knowing or pure consciousness is called by many names, all of which point to our timeless essence.

#26

When we turn to investigate who is being aware, we may feel confused at first. We discover that there is nothing solid or permanent, no one who is perceiving. This is a wonderful discovery. Awareness has no shape or color. It is beyond presence or absence, coming or going.

#27

When we learn to rest in awareness, we not only care for others, but also silence ourselves. We listen for what’s the next thing to do, and we are aware of all that’s happening. We have a big space and a connected feeling of love.

#28

Listen to the sounds around you. Notice how they arise and vanish on their own, leaving no trace. As you listen, let your mind expand beyond the most distant sounds. Then, imagine there are no boundaries to your mind, and that it extends in every direction like the open sky.

#29

The fourth principle of Buddhist psychology is to recognize the states of mind that fill consciousness. When consciousness is colored or conditioned, it acts like particles, arising and passing, taking on whatever qualities arise with it.

#30

The Buddha was a list maker. There are the Two Truths, the Three Characteristics, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Five Hindrances, the Six Perfections, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Eightfold Path.

#31

The six senses and their individual consciousnesses construct our reality. We can notice these six sense impressions and the six consciousnesses, rapidly arising and passing like frames of a movie, one after another.

#32

The third aspect of human experience is mental states, which color our consciousness. The presence of healthy mental states creates a healthy mind, while the presence of unhealthy states creates mental distress, unhappiness, and mental illness.

#33

The thirteen mental factors that are common and universal are stability, life force, memory, feeling tone, will, and recognition. The three unhealthy roots of grasping, aversion, and delusion are the basis of the states of envy, rigidity, anxiety, dullness, shamelessness, self-centeredness, doubt, agitation, and misperception.

#34

When we look at our own mind, we can notice the mental states that predominate, as if we were noticing the weather. We can observe the clusters of unhealthy states that appear on our bad days, and the healthy states in our most free and openhearted periods.

#35

When we learn to be mindful of our mental states, we begin to see how they are habitual and how they are conditioned. We begin to see the ways that our past reactions are engraved onto the synapses that send messages from one neuron to another, making them more likely to send the same message in the future.

#36

Select a day when you are having difficulties to mindfully observe your mental states. Start by noting which states are present, their level of intensity, how long they last, and how much you are caught up in them. Do this again on two more days.

#37

The first meditation instruction given to a new monk is to ask who he is, and the answer to that question can lead to entanglement or freedom. Our ideas of self are created by identification, and the less we cling to ideas of self, the happier we will be.

#38