When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.
JON KABAT-ZINNWhen awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.
JON KABAT-ZINNVoluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.
JON KABAT-ZINNIntelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.
JON KABAT-ZINNYou could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.
JON KABAT-ZINNWe must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.
JON KABAT-ZINNIf you look at people out on the street, if you look at people at restaurants, nobody’s having conversations anymore. They’re sitting at dinner looking at their phone, because their brain is so addicted to it.
JON KABAT-ZINNJust stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love.
JON KABAT-ZINNPatience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.
JON KABAT-ZINNHealing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.
JON KABAT-ZINNThe awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.
JON KABAT-ZINNOne way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that’s been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.
JON KABAT-ZINNYou can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
JON KABAT-ZINNMeditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.
JON KABAT-ZINNLiving in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives.
JON KABAT-ZINNDying without actually fully living, without waking up to our lives while we have the chance, is an ongoing and significant risk.
JON KABAT-ZINNWhen experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the soul.
JON KABAT-ZINN