Paperback 429 Pages: Publisher Bantam: Published: May 2009
$19.99 USD
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ISBN-10: 0553382330
ISBN-13: 9780553382334
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A leading spiritual teacher offers this illuminating guide to Buddhism’s transformational psychology. Filled with stories from Kornfield’s Buddhist psychotherapy practice, it also includes a moving account of his own recovery from a violence-filled childhood.
Experience the Transformational Power of Buddhism’s Psychology of the Heart with Bestselling Author Jack Kornfield You have within you unlimited capacities for extraordinary love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom–and here is how to awaken them.
In The Wise Heart, celebrated author and psychologist Jack Kornfield offers the most accessible, comprehensive, and illuminating guide to Buddhist psychology ever published in the West. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, a journey to the highest expression of human possibility, and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives.
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Customer Reviews
Timeless wisdom made accessible by Robert Feraru (Gualala, CA USA)
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This wonderful book makes the timeless teachings of Buddhist psychology explicable and accessible to all. With explanations and exercises that are not culture specific and with a healthy helping of Jack’s great stories that further illuminate the psychological wisdom of the Buddha, this book opens the deep understandings of Buddhist thought for all to use for their own benefit and for the benefit of all beings.
As the Dalai Lama says, “Buddhism isn’t a religion. It is a science of mind” and IMHO, a science of mind that can help bring healing to our own lives and to our wounded world.
Count on Jack Kornfield for Balanced Wisdom by Marshall Glickman (Vermont, USA)
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There’s an irony that at times Buddhists can become stuck in ideology, clinging to their ideas of what they believe the Buddha intended as THE right way. Jack Kornfield avoids this. He has the soft touch, open heart and discerning wisdom that comes from his own struggles and decades of meditation, practicing therapy, and teaching. He knows there is no such thing as a formula for happiness. Kornfield generously quotes from a wide range of thinkers, mystics and disciplines, knowing Buddhists don’t have a lock on insight.
Still, Kornfield is steeped in and dedicated to Buddhist practices; his goal is to transmit what may at times be difficult to discern insights from Buddhist psychology to a wide audience. As he writes: “At this moment, a winter rainstorm is drenching my simple writer’s cabin in the woods above Spirit Rock.On my desk are classic texts from many of the major historic schools of Buddhism: the Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma, the eight-thousand-verse “large version” of the Heart Sutra, with its teachings on form and emptiness, and a Tibetan text on consciousness by Longchenpa.
Over time, I have learned to treasure these texts and know that they are filled with jewels of wisdom. Yet the Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma in Sanskrit), considered the masterwork of the early Theravada tradition and the ultimate compendium of Buddhist psychology, is also one of the most impenetrable books ever written. What are we to make of passages such as, “The inseparable material phenomena constitute the pure octad; leading to the dodecad of bodily intimation and the lightness triad; all as material groups originating from consciousness”? And the Heart Sutra, revered as a sacred text of Mahayana Buddhism in India, China, and Japan, can sound like a mixture of fantastical mythology and nearly indecipherable Zen puzzles. In the same way, for most readers, analyzing the biochemistry of a lifesaving drug might be as easy as deciphering some of Longchenpa’s teachings on self-existent empty primal cognition.”
Happily, Kornfield succeeds at making the translation from traditional Buddhist texts accessible to everyone–from clinicians to those new to Buddhism. For those who are familiar with his previous books, they won’t find this surprising.
26 Gems of Psychotherapeutic Wisdom by Bohdan Sirant
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Jack Kornfield richly expounds on 26 principles of Buddhist psychology. The first of these is: “See the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings” and the 26th being: “A peaceful heart gives birth to love. When love meets suffering it turns to compassion. When love meets suffering it turns to joy.
Jack Kornfield provides the reader with a philosophical discussion of each principle and the basis of it in the Buddha’s teachings. These principle are demonstrated with numerous cases from Jack Kornfield’s many years of practice. Several of these are followed by practices and practical exercises, such as loving-kindness meditations.
Buddhist teachings, which as the Dalai Lama describes as “a science of mind”, have had a profound influence on modern cognitive behavioral psychotherapy. Neuroscience and evidence-based research increasingly validates the efficacy of Buddhist practices, such as mindfulness and forgiveness for mental health, happiness and well-being. This accessible guidebook will be of interest to any one who is interested not only in self-help, or clinical psychotherapy, but in better understanding the rich Buddhist traditions and ideas behind them.
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