Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield is one of the founding figures of the mindfulness movement in the West — a teacher whose warmth, storytelling, and deep training have guided generations of practitioners for over fifty years. Born in 1945, he graduated from Dartmouth College in Asian Studies and then travelled to Southeast Asia, where he ordained as a Buddhist monk, training in the forest monasteries of Thailand, Burma, and India under masters including the revered Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw. Returning to America, he did something quietly radical for the time: he brought those ancient practices home in a language his own culture could hear, while earning a PhD in clinical psychology to bridge the worlds of dharma and Western science. In 1975 he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts — alongside Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein — and in 1987, Spirit Rock Meditation Center in the hills of Marin County, California, where he still lives and teaches. Between those two centres flows much of the lineage of American mindfulness. His sixteen books, translated into twenty languages with more than two million copies sold, include beloved classics like A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry — titles that capture his signature gift: making profound Buddhist psychology feel human, humorous, and utterly practical. His teaching returns again and again to a few essentials: that awareness is freeing, that the heart can be trusted, and that, as he often reminds students, we are all "loving awareness" beneath the stories we tell. Beyond the meditation hall, Kornfield has been a peacemaker and activist, organised international gatherings of Buddhist teachers including the Dalai Lama, and — with Tara Brach — co-founded the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program, serving participants from more than 74 countries. Now in his ninth decade and teaching with undiminished joy through Monday-night talks, retreats, online courses, and his podcast, he offers a seasoned, open-hearted reminder that the spiritual path doesn't take us away from ordinary life — it teaches us to live it with freedom, love, and presence.