Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.
JON KABAT-ZINNMindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.
More Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes
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If 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.
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Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.
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Mindful parenting is the hardest job on the planet, but it’s also one that has the potential for the deepest kinds of satisfactions over the life span, and the greatest feelings of interconnectedness and community and belonging.
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If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear.
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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?
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Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else.
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The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.
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Meditation is simply about being yourself and know about who that is.
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See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn’t bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.
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When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.
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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.
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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.
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Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?
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Make a list of what is really important to you. Embody it.
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Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.
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One 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.
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There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.
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Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.
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We 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.
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When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.
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Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.
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You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.
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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.
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When you’re walking, just walk. When you’re eating, just eat. Not in front of the TV, not with the newspaper. It turns out, that’s huge.
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Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.
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Voluntary 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.
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