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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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Jon Kabat-Zinn
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: June 5
Molecular Biologist
Physician
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Jon Kabat
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More quotes by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Patience 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-Zinn
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
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
Societal transformation isn't going to happen in one month, one year, or even one lifetime. But we see it happen person by person in front of us, and we don't have to worry about the future if we're taking care of the present. In some sense, that's the best insurance policy we can have.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Awareness Is Not The Same As ThoughtMore Like A Vessel Which Can Hold And Contain Our Thinking
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
The only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets. You're only here now you're only alive in this moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense. Doing science is spiritual. So is washing the dishes.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
The funny thing about stopping is that as soon as you do it, here you are.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Zen people from Ancient China, When you're walking, just walk. It turns out to be the hardest thing.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature... But is is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Just stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
In any given moment we are either practicing mindfulness, or defacto, we are practicing mindlessness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Meditation is simply about being yourself and know about who that is.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
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
Most people think that to meditate, I should feel a particular special something, and if I don't, then I must be doing something wrong.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
