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The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology | 
 enlarge | Author: Jack Kornfield
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
Buy New: $16.23
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Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 1113
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0553803476
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3422
EAN: 9780553803471
ASIN: 0553803476
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 A good book for a WISE HEART but not as much for BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY November 22, 2008
The Abhidhamma Pitaka, the third, newest and longest of the three divisions of the Pali Canon, is the original source of the theory of Buddhism as a school of psychology; the Canon is universally acknowledged as the oldest and most reliable source of Buddhist Sacred texts. This makes timing one of the problems in the development of Buddhist psychology. On one hand, Buddhism precedes psychology by over two millennia; on the other, the Abhidhamma Pitaka is dated around two hundred years after the death of Siddhattha Gotama. So the Teachings of the Buddha were not proposed to be a school of psychology and obviously such evolution was not intended by the Buddha. (Last, least and just for fun, the first root of the word "psychology" comes for the Greek "psykhe," which means "soul", an entity that Buddhism considers non existing). So Buddhist psychology is an inconclusive puzzle, which must be completed with pieces from other schools and made up by each scholar within his/her own specialization and frame of mind.
Jack Kornfield's approach to the subject is described in THE WISE HEART. Here he explains in detail what he calls the twenty six principles of Buddhist psychology. I am not very happy with the result. Most items are indeed principles --comprehensive and fundamental rules-- though some, as you could expect, are no more than basic Siddhattha Gotama's Teachings. Examples: Don't cling to self (#5), be mindful of your body (#8), your thoughts (#10) and your intention (#17), release grasping/be free from suffering (#16). and follow the middle way (#24). A few other, such as see inner nobility of human beings (#1) and recognize and transform unhealthy patterns of our personality (#12), are just nice recommendations that you find in almost any personal growth writing. A couple of principles, shift attention from experience to spacious consciousness (#3) and mindful attention to any experience is liberating (#7), seems to contradict each other.
Buddhist psychotherapy further complicates the whole subject from the strict doctrinal point of view. Whoever agrees to work with a therapist is after some kind of change, namely wanting to be somebody different from what he/she currently is. I see problems here. The desire to change is the THIRST, the second noble truth, the root of suffering, "the craving that makes for further becoming" (Thanissaro Bhikkhu), "the craving that produces renewal" (Nanamoli Thera), or "the craving which leads to renewed existence" (Peter Harvey). Most therapy cases, as described extensively and illustratively by Jack Kornfield, portray situations that obviously aim at modifying mental health conditions. There the Buddha's Teachings and the Buddhist meditation techniques have proved to be excellent tools to help patients. But they were just some of the tools that are to be used in connection with other techniques of, so to speak, conventional western therapies. You can hardly talk of such a thing as a purely / exclusively Buddhist approach to psychotherapy.
The supporting material of each principle is excellent thanks to the long experience of the author both as a psychologist and a therapist, on one hand, and as the Buddhist practitioner and scholar of many years, on the other. Most quotations prove very helpful to the author purpose, particularly those by Ajanh Chah. The Buddha's quotations are also most appropriate still, as the meticulous picky reader who often checks alternative translations, I would love to see the suttas or discourses where they are taken from. This is particularly important to take into account when excerpts from the Mahayana texts are quoted since they are farther away from what might actually have been the Buddha's words.
Jack Kornfield makes THE WISE HEART a very entertaining good-title-to-read book. But it does not match the expectancy created by the subtitle.
 Very interesting November 8, 2008
I have read several Buddhist books, and listened to countless Dharma talks, and yet I have learned things in this book that I had never heard of. For example, Buddhist texts on Lucid dreaming, past life visions, Buddhist personality types, and thoughts on the unconscious. While not all of this is relevant to me at this point, it was interesting. The book has great wisdom throughout. Maybe a little too much on the stories, that's why I didn't give 5 stars.
 Wonderfully Inspiring book November 6, 2008
The best buddhist book I read until now! Jack Kornfield writes very nicely, if you have heard him teach you see that is comes from a profound integrity. The book has some proposals for meditations, not even what you would expect, but sometimes more for making you understand what he's trying to tell you: When teaching you shouldn't cling to a "self", he tells you to write down every half hour how strong the feeling of self was related to how well/bad/neutral your feelings were. What accompanied these and so on.
Jack kornfield combines buddhism with Western psychology which adds in understanding these "old" traditions.
The book was so persuading that I decided to go to a meditation retreat lead by him. A retreat teaches you much more intensely than a book ever can for shure. If you reread the book after that it's as interesting as before, because many detail reveal more this time and deepen your understanding.
I love this book! November 5, 2008
I first borrowed this book from the library, but now I have to have it! Not only have I personally benefited from the practices recommended, but I have brought them into my psychotherapy sessions to use with clients. As a result, my sessions have quickly gone to a new depth of healing. I am so grateful!
Wonderful book ! October 21, 2008
I just hope many have enough conditions to read and experience this book. It is the best present I have ever received.
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