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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.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Jon Kabat-Zinn
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: June 5
Molecular Biologist
Physician
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Jon Kabat
Rather
Less
Acquiring
Means
Voluntary
Mean
Fewer
Going
Simplicity
Places
Seeing
Simple

More quotes by Jon Kabat-Zinn

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The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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See If You Can Give Yourself Gifts That May Be True Blessings, Such As Self-Acceptance
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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It's okay that the mind drifts away but you just bring it back.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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No one can listen to your body for you... To grow and heal, you have to take responsibility for listening to it yourself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Can you question who you are? And are you comfortable with not knowing?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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A lot of harm has come in all eras from people attached to one view of spiritual “truth.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Resting in awareness is one of those phrases used a lot by people who practice mindfulness. But when I tried to do it, it wasn't restful and I worried I wasn't doing it right. I kept thinking about work.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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When experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the soul.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Meditation 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-Zinn
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In any given moment we are either practicing mindfulness, or defacto, we are practicing mindlessness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Zen has an expression, nothing special. When you understand nothing special, you realize that everything is special. Everything's special and nothing's special. Everything's spiritual and nothing's spiritual. It's how you see, it's what eyes you're looking through, that matters.
Jon Kabat-Zinn