Jack Kornfield

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

In opening we can see how many times we have mistaken small identities and fearful beliefs for our true nature and how limiting this is. We can touch with great compassion the pain from the contracted identities that we and others have created in the world.

Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.

Within each of us there is a silence as vast as the universe. We long for it. We can return to it.

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed.