Kornfield is one of four boys born to Jewish parents. He is a fraternal twin. His father was a scientist, which brought him to an interest in healing, medicine and science. He took a course in Asian philosophy with an old man named Dr. Wing-tsit Chan, born in the 1890s in China. Kornfield ended up majoring in Buddhist Asian studies. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1967, Kornfield joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Thailand where he worked on tropical medicine teams in the Mekong River valley. There he met and became a monk under the renowned forest master Ajahn Chah, and later practiced with Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma and Dipa Ma. Kornfield returned to the United States in 1972 and in the summer of 1974, participated in the founding session of Naropa University. From the associations of this period came the Insight Meditation Society co-founded in 1975 with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein in Barre, Massachusetts. In 1987 he co-founded Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Kornfield has trained many of the Vipassana teachers in America, and hosted and led gatherings for Buddhist teachers together with the Dalai Lama and worldwide. Trained with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Saybrook Institute, Kornfield has written extensively on the bridge between Eastern and Western psychology. His daughter Caroline is a graduate of Berkeley Law and practices Asylum Law. His ex-wife Liana is an artist and therapist. His wife Trudy Goodman is also a renowned meditation teacher and the founding teacher of InsightLA, which combines training in Vipassana and non-sectarian mindfulness and compassion practices, including Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindful Self-Compassion.
Teachings
Kornfield has worked to make Buddhism accessible for Westerners. 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 sells online meditation courses from his web site.
