Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes

Even before smart phones and the Internet, we had many ways to distract our selves. Now that's compounded by a factor of trillions.

Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.

Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness.

My father was a world-class scientist and my mother was a prolific painter. I could see that my parents had completely different ways of knowing and understanding the world, and relating to it. My father approached things through scientific inquiry and exploration, while my mother experienced things through her emotions and senses.

Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.

Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else's. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else's journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way?

You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.

So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.

We are continuously bombarded with information, appeals, deadlines, communications... We are continually being squeezed or projected into the future as our present moments are assaulted and consumed in the fires of endless urgency.

Initiate giving. Don't wait for someone to ask. See what happens - especially to you. You may find that you gain a greater clarity about yourself and about your relationships, as well as more energy rather than less. You may find that, rather than exhausting yourself or your resources, you will replenish them. Such is the power of mindful, selfless generosity. At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient . . . only the universe rearranging itself.

Another way to look at meditation is to view thinking itself as a waterfall, a cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness, we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantage point in a cave or depression in the rock behind a waterfall. We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent.

When we let go of wanting something else to happen in this moment, we are taking a profound step toward being able to encounter what is here now. If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing—a knowing that comes directly from the cultivation of mindfulness—we may only go in circles, for all our efforts and expectations. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.

He who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.

Awareness Is Not The Same As ThoughtMore Like A Vessel Which Can Hold And Contain Our Thinking

See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn't bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.

It is a form of violence, to not see a being for who he or she really is. You think, "Oh, that's my son." But the lens, "my son," completely obliterates the multi- dimensions of that being. Maybe you only see your disappointments in that child, or you aspirations for that child, but that's not the child.

The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.

If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing... We may only go in circles.

You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.

Science is now documenting that it's not the objects of meditation that are important, it's the process of paying attention to them - the attending - that actually influences the organism in a whole range of different ways. The brain changes significantly enough to impact thought, emotion, and other biological functions. Today, people recognize that they're not going to find well-being from the outside, or from a pill; they're going to find it by looking inside. All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for.

Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy.

But you cannot have harmony without a commitment to ethical behavior. It's the fence that keeps out the goats that will eat all the young shoots in your garden.

See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance , or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation - to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.

Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.

When you have children, you realize how easy it is to not see them fully, and perhaps miss all those early years. If you are not careful, you can be too absorbed in work, and they will be only too happy to tell you about it later. Being a parent is one of greatest mindfulness practices of all.

To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.

From the point of view of the meditative traditions the entire society is suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

In Asian languages, the word for mind and the word for heart are same. So if you’re not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you’re not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.

Peace is something that we can bring about if we can actually learn to wake up a bit more as individuals and a lot more as a species; if we can learn to be fully what we actually already are; to reside in the inherent potential of what is possible for us, being human.

Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us.

Once you have established yourself as a center of love and kindness radiating throughout your being, which amounts to a cradling of yourself in loving kindness and acceptance, you can dwell here indefinitely, drinking at this fount, bathing it in, renewing yourself, nourishing yourself, enlivening yourself. This can be a profoundly healing practice for body and soul.

Sometimes shutting off the sound on the television can allow you to actually watch the game and take it in in an entirely different and more direct way - a first-order, first-person experience - rather than filtered through the mind of another.

You can bring together the body's various systems to fine tune the body and mind in order to navigate life's ups and downs in a way that minimizes stress and maximizes well-being and satisfaction.

Writing can be an incredible mindfulness practice.

We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.

Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally, to what goes on in the present moment in your body, mind and the world around you.

Breathing is central to every aspect of meditation training. It's a wonderful place to focus in training the mind to be calm and concentrated.

Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.

When people say "Let it go," what they really mean is "Get over it," and that's not a helpful thing to say. It's not a matter of letting go - you would if you could. Instead of "Let it go," we should probably say "Let it be"; this recognizes that the mind won't let go and the problem may not go away, and it allows you to form a healthier relationship with what's bothering you.

This is something called "walking meditation." The goal is to learn to be aware of each and every movement and feeling. I know it seems ridiculous, but it does change the way you experience walking.

Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding.

The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

Maybe the fear is that we are less than we think we are, when the actuality of it is that we are much much more.

Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.

See If You Can Give Yourself Gifts That May Be True Blessings, Such As Self-Acceptance