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A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life Paperback – June 1, 1993

by Jack Kornfield (Author)

4.7 1,199 ratings

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“This important guidebook shows in detail and with great humor and insight the way to practice the Buddha’s universal teachings here in the West. Jack Kornfield is a wonderful storyteller and a great teacher.”—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Jack is helping to pave the path for American Buddhism, bringing essential basics into our crazy modern lives. And the language he uses is as simple and as lovely as our breath.”—Natalie Goldberg

Perhaps the most important book yet written on meditation, the process of inner transformation, and the integration of spiritual practice into our American way of life, A Path with Heart brings alive one by one the challenges of spiritual living in the modern world. Written by a teacher, psychologist, and meditation master of international renown, this warm, inspiring, and expert book touches on a wide range of essential issues including many rarely addressed in spiritual books. From compassion, addiction, and psychological and emotional healing, to dealing with problems involving relationships and sexuality, to the creation of a Zen-like simplicity and balance in all facets of life, it speaks to the concerns of many modern spiritual seekers, both those beginning on the path and those with years of experience.

A Path with Heart is filled with practical techniques, guided meditations, stories, koans, and other gems of wisdom that can help ease your journey through the world. The author’s own profound—and sometimes humorous—experiences and gentle assistance will skillfully guide you through the obstacles and trials of spiritual and contemporary life to bring a clarity of perception and a sense of the sacred into your everyday experience. Reading this book will touch your heart and remind you of the promises inherent in meditation and in a life of the spirit: the blossoming of inner peace, wholeness, and understanding, and the achievement of a happiness that is not dependent on external conditions.

Sure to be a classic, A Path with Heart shows us how we can bring our spirituality to flower every day of our lives. It is a wise and gentle guidebook for an odyssey into the soul that enables us to achieve a deeper, more satisfying life in the world.

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Editorial Reviews

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In undertaking a spiritual life, we must make certain that our path is connected with our heart, according to author and Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield. Since 1974 (long before it gained popularity in the 1990s), Kornfield has been teaching westerners how to integrate Eastern teaching into their daily lives. Through generous storytelling and unmitigated warmth, Kornfield offers this excellent guidebook on living with attentiveness, meditation, and full-tilt compassion.

Part of what makes this book so accessible is Kornfield's use of everyday metaphors to describe the elusive lessons of spiritual transformation. For example, he opens with "the one seat" lesson taught to him by his esteemed teacher. Literally it means sitting in the center of a room and not being swayed or moved by all the people and dramas happening around you. On a spiritual level it means sticking "with one practice and teacher among all of the possibilities," writes Kornfield; "inwardly it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding." The same could be said for this "one book." Among all the spiritual self-help books, this is a classic worth sticking with and returning to--a highly approachable teacher that can only lead to greater clarity and understanding. --Gail Hudson

About the Author

Jack Kornfield is an internationally renowned Buddhist teacher and meditation master, and a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society and of Spirit Rock Center in Northern California. A former Buddhist monk, he holds a PhD in clinical psychology. His books include A Path with Heart, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, and After the Ecstasy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

DID I LOVE WELL?

Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts.

In undertaking a spiritual life, what matters is simple: We must make certain that our path is connected with our heart. Many other visions are offered to us in the modern spiritual marketplace. Great spiritual traditions offer stories of enlightenment, bliss, knowledge, divine ecstasy, and the highest possibilities of the human spirit. Out of the broad range of teachings available to us in the West, often we are first attracted to these glamorous and most extraordinary aspects. While the promise of attaining such states can come true, and while these states do represent the teachings, in one sense, they are also one of the advertising techniques of the spiritual trade. They are not the goal of spiritual life. In the end, spiritual life is not a process of seeking or gaining some extraordinary condition or special powers. In fact, such seeking can take us away from ourselves. If we are not careful, we can easily find the great failures of our modern society—its ambition, materialism, and individual isolation—repeated in our spiritual life.

In beginning a genuine spiritual journey, we have to stay much closer to home, to focus directly on what is right here in front of us, to make sure that our path is connected with our deepest love. Don Juan, in his teachings to Carlos Castaneda, put it this way:

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.

The teachings in this book are about finding such a path with heart, about undertaking a path that transforms and touches us in the center of our being. To do so is to find a way of practice that allows us to live in the world wholly and fully from our heart.

When we ask, “Am I following a path with heart?” we discover that no one can define for us exactly what our path should be. Instead, we must allow the mystery and beauty of this question to resonate within our being. Then somewhere within us an answer will come and understanding will arise. If we are still and listen deeply, even for a moment, we will know if we are following a path with heart.

It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and thoughts that we have forgotten this essential art of taking time to converse with our heart. When we ask it about our current path, we must look at the values we have chosen to live by. Where do we put our time, our strength, our creativity, our love? We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration, or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?

Buddhist tradition teaches its followers to regard all life as precious. The astronauts who leave the earth have also rediscovered this truth. One set of Russian cosmonauts described it in this way: “We brought up small fish to the space station for certain investigations. We were to be there three months. After about three weeks the fish began to die. How sorry we felt for them! What we didn’t do to try to save them! On earth we take great pleasure in fishing, but when you are alone and far away from anything terrestrial, any appearance of life is especially welcome. You see just how precious life is.” In this same spirit, one astronaut, when his capsule landed, opened the hatch to smell the moist air of earth. “I actually got down and put it to my cheek. I got down and kissed the earth.”

To see the preciousness of all things, we must bring our full attention to life. Spiritual practice can bring us to this awareness without the aid of a trip into space. As the qualities of presence and simplicity begin to permeate more and more of our life, our inner love for the earth and all beings begins to express itself and brings our path alive.

To understand more deeply what evokes this sense of preciousness and how it gives meaning to a path with heart, let us work with the following meditation. In Buddhist practice, one is urged to consider how to live well by reflecting on one’s death. The traditional meditation for this purpose is to sit quietly and sense the tentativeness of life. After reading this paragraph, close your eyes and feel the mortality of this human body that you have been given. Death is certain for us—only the time of death is yet to be discovered. Imagine yourself to be at the end of your life—next week or next year or next decade, some time in the future. Now cast your memory back across your whole life and bring to mind two good deeds that you have done, two things that you did that were good. They need not be grandiose; let whatever wants to arise show itself. In picturing and remembering these good deeds, also become aware of how these memories affect your consciousness, how they transform the feelings and state of the heart and mind, as you see them.

When you have completed this reflection, look very carefully at the quality of these situations, at what is comprised in a moment of goodness picked out of a lifetime of words and actions. Almost everyone who is able to remember such deeds in this meditation discovers them to be remarkably simple. They are rarely the deeds one would put on a résumé. For some people a moment of good ness was simply the one when they told their father before he died that they loved him, or when they flew across country in the midst of their busy life to care for their sister’s children as she was healing from a car accident. One elementary school teacher had the simple vision of those mornings when she held the children who were crying and having a hard day. In response to this meditation someone once raised her hand, smiled, and said, “On crowded streets when we get to parking spaces at the same time, I always give the parking space to the other person.” That was the good deed in her life.

Another woman, a nurse in her sixties who had raised children and grandchildren and had lived a very full life, came up with this memory: She was six years old when a car broke down in front of her house, steam spouting from under the hood. Two elderly people got out and looked at it, and one went off to the corner pay phone to call a garage. They returned to sit in the car and wait for much of the morning for a tow. As a curious six-year-old, she went out to speak to them, and after seeing them wait for a long time in a hot car, she went inside. Without even asking them, she prepared a tray of iced tea and sandwiches and carried the tray out to them on the curb.

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another, when we are there in the most attentive or caring way. This simple and profound intimacy is the love that we all long for. These moments of touching and being touched can become a foundation for a path with heart, and they take place in the most immediate and direct way. Mother Teresa put it like this: “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”

Some people find this exercise very difficult. No good deeds will come to their mind, or a few may arise only to be rejected immediately because they are judged superficial or small or impure or imperfect. Does this mean that there are not even two good moments in a lifetime of one hundred thousand deeds? Hardly! We all have had many. It has another more profound meaning. It is a reflection of how hard we are on ourselves. We judge ourselves so harshly, only an Idi Amin or a Stalin would hire us to preside over their courts. Many of us discover we have little mercy for ourselves. We can hardly acknowledge that genuine love and goodness can shine freely from our hearts. Yet it does.

To live a path with heart means to live in the way shown us in this meditation, to allow the flavor of goodness to permeate our life. When we bring full attention to our acts, when we express our love and see the preciousness of life, the quality of goodness in us grows. A simple caring presence can begin to permeate more moments of our life. And so we should continually ask our own heart, What would it mean to live like this? Is the path, the way we have chosen to live our life, leading to this?

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0553372114
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bantam; First Edition (June 1, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780553372113
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553372113
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.01 x 8.99 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #34,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19 in Chakras (Books)
- #81 in Spiritualism
- #198 in Meditation (Books)

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Jack Kornfield

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Jack Kornfield, PhD, is a psychologist and founder of two of the largest Buddhist centres in America. His books are classics, selling well over a million copies, and have been translated into twenty-one languages. In addition he teaches to large crowds all over the world.

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Rasmus Nilsson

A good expression of the Buddhist spirit of compassion

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2021

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This book revolves around advice written for the student of Buddhism who has an active practice of meditation, and is most useful for beginners to Buddhism who have already heard or read the basics and either already have or are interested in getting into meditation. It would however be deceptive to say that the book is a meditation manual; rather, it is a book of general Buddhist wisdom, useful to anyone interested in living a life of wholeness, compassion and peace - whether atheist or spiritual practicioner. It explains some of the basic Buddhist views on how life is to be lived, why, and how all of this connects to transforming oneself into a happier, more functioning individual, and connects to meditation mostly in that it assumes meditation to be part of that practice of transformation.

The book is however not a book of clear explication of basic Buddhist doctrine, which is why I recommend it mainly either for people who already have a basic idea of the rudiments of Buddhism, or for people who are interested in absorbing some wisdom of life without really caring so much about the specifics of what Buddhism says. It works well as a source of wisdom without prior knowledge, but since the way it presents Buddhist theory isn't systematic and often ends up dancing around the point through stories - and since it gets a bit fuzzy or inexact when explicating specific doctrine - my feeling is that it works best as an inspiring and poetic explication of a sort of activist Buddhist attitude to life. This, however, is only part of what I understand the Buddhist spirit to be: He mentions letting go of the world and of desire, but you don't get any deep understanding of what exactly this means or how it might help you. What you do get very forcefully are the parts of Buddhism that revolve around caring for others and the world.

Another note of criticism for the skeptical reader could be that Kornfield frequently makes claims that appear to be paranormal. He credulously mentions things like developing the power of telekinesis or the remembrance of past lives. It is important to note however that he considers such abilities trifling when compared to the point of spiritual life: Healing and transforming the human heart. To be clear, I consider this a great book. If its sometimes inexact, and its spirit only captures part of Buddhism, the spirit of love that it does capture is captured in a way seldom seen in this world. It contains ideas that are interesting, valuable, useful, inspirational and beautiful. Everyone should read this book and benefit from it, and the fact that it is accessible to most readers makes it an even greater contribution to world literature. Kornfield has given a real gift to humanity.

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sudofo

This book has helped me when I needed it

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2012

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Perhaps I should begin this review by stating that for several years after purchasing A Path With Heart, it remained unread beyond the first two chapters. I was simply not ready for it. But when the time was appropriate, it became an indispensable guide. Jack Kornfield is one of the gentlest, wisest teachers alive today, and I feel lucky to have come across this profound book. A word more on the gentleness of Jack Kornfield. After spending a number of years at Theravadan buddhist monasteries in Southeast Asia with renowned Buddhist teachers, Kornfield returned stateside and even edited a fairly technical compilation of meditation techniques by Theravadan teachers. In the four decades since that time, Kornfield's focus has generally been on healing and compassion, matters of the heart. I believe this was a deliberate decision to salve the rawness of hurt wrought by contemporary American culture. While all cultures have problematic aspects that create tension against an individual's spiritual needs, Kornfield is keenly sensitive to the wounds caused by perfectionism and isolation (not helped by nuclear families and divorces) endemic in ours.

A wealth of insight on various components of the spiritual journey are found here. Particularly helpful for me was Kornfield's insistence that the Path must lead to an ever greater opening of the heart. When there was temptation to be captivated by extraordinary experiences, Kornfield led me back to the sorrows and the tranquil joys of the heart. After all, some of the most extraordinary and nurturing moments in our lives, such as suckling for milk from our mothers as infants, are also utterly ordinary and devoid of fireworks. Kornfield skillfully urges us to let go of whatever it is that we are clinging to. In some of my darkest moments, there was a gentle reminder to remain grounded. And perhaps due to the particulars of my upbringing, it was a gentle guidance that I most needed to negotiate the troughs of the spiritual path. Most important of all, Kornfield encourages us to trust our innate inner wisdom. While the book is replete with vivid technical descriptions of the stages one can encounter along the path, it is Kornfield's emphasis on maturing as a compassionate individual that has sustained me.

One more thing: many talks by Jack Kornfield's can be downloaded for free at the dharma seed website. I wish you the very best in your own path, and may it be with heart.

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BJBLUNTZZ

Cost

Reviewed in Canada on July 16, 2023

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Book was what I wanted worth money

Susan Chardin

Easy, quick, and reliable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2024

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I ordered my book, received it quickly, and the copy was clean. What more can you ask? I would order from World of Books in a heartbeat.

Kamal Roohani

How to lead a happy and joyful life with the blessings of our God

Reviewed in India on March 7, 2021

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The book is very interesting and inspiring. It opens a path with loving kindness, love and compassion by opening our hearts to include one and all in our love and compassion. A wonderful book to read. Thanks Jack a lot.

PM Ruiz A

Muy buen libro-guía para quienes comienzan, retoman, o buscan un camino espiritual.

Reviewed in Mexico on October 29, 2016

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Kornfield entiende y explica muy bien el concepto de la vida espiritual, y lo presenta de manera holística. Comparte con sabiduría y claridad una parte de su propio camino y de sus enseñanzas.

Lo más importante: aterriza con ejercicios y ejemplos muy claros el estado actual de la mente de la persona occidental promedio, y muestra una buena puerta de entrada a la meditación vipassana.

En definitiva lo recomiendo para aquellos quienes quieran tomar o retomar un camino espiritual a través de la meditación. Inclusive compré una copia física para compartir con mis amigos.

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Carla Secchi

E' un libro semplice e bello, adatto per tutti ...

Reviewed in Italy on November 24, 2014

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E' un libro semplice e bello, adatto per tutti coloro che hanno già intrapreso o vogliono intraprendere un cammino spirituale.

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