The Wise Heart; A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology

New York: Bantam Books, 2008. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Tito Wong (Jacket photo) and Christine Alicino (Au. x, [4], 429, [5] pages. Related Readings. Index. DJ has minor edge wear. Inscribed by the author. Inscription reads To Lynne Many blessings! Jack. Jack Kornfield (born 1945) is an American author and teacher in the Vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. He has taught mindfulness meditation worldwide since 1974. In 1975, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, and subsequently in 1987, Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Kornfield has worked as a peacemaker and activist, organized teacher trainings, and led international gatherings of Buddhist teachers including the Dalai Lama. Kornfield has worked to make Buddhism accessible for Westerners.[10] He has focused on combining loving kindness and self compassion with the practice of mindfulness, and incorporating together the wisdom of Eastern and Western psychology. In Jack Kornfield's book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, he writes about the honest development of the wise heart within the cycles of day-to-day life; for instance "amid all the Western masters and teachers I know, some idealistic perfection is not apparent. Times of great wisdom, deep compassion, and a real knowing of freedom alternate with periods of fear, confusion, neurosis, and struggle. Most teachers will readily admit this." Kornfield lectures were featured by Joe Frank on his radio series "The Other Side. You have within you unlimited capacities for love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom, and here is how to awaken them. In The Wise Heart, one of the leading spiritual teachers of our time offers the most accessible and illuminating guide to Buddhism's transformational psychology ever published in the West. Trained as a monk in Thailand, Burma, and India, Jack Kornfield experienced at first hand the life-changing power of Buddhist teachings: the emphasis on the nobility and sacredness of the human spirit, the fine-grained analysis of emotion and thought, the precise techniques for healing, training, and transforming the mind and heart. In contrast to the medical orientation of most Western psychology and psychiatry, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives. The Wise Heart is the fruit of a life's work that includes such classics as A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Filled with stories from Kornfield's Buddhist psychotherapy practice and portraits of remarkable teachers, it also includes a moving account of his own recovery from a violence-filled childhood. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, The Wise Heart offers an extraordinary journey from the roots of consciousness to the highest expression of human possibility.