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I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both.

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
Fighting
York
Learn
Tough
Kids
Streets
School
Along
Much
Fight
Share
Fairs
Went
Fair
Everybody
Street

More quotes by Jon Kabat-Zinn

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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
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Just stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love.
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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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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When experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the soul.
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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
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Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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.
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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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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Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes no use of thinking, honoring it's value and it's power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thought as thought rather than getting caught up in them as reality.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Make a list of what is really important to you. Embody it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
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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Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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The Zen people from Ancient China, When you're walking, just walk. It turns out to be the hardest thing.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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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