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Mindfulness is a way of paying attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally, to what goes on in the present moment in your body, mind and the world around you.
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
Body
Paying
Mind
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Way
Present
World
Attention
Purpose
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Moments
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Mindfulness
More quotes by 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
Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Healing 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-Zinn
You can bring together the body's various systems to fine tune the body and mind in order to navigate life's ups and downs in a way that minimizes stress and maximizes well-being and satisfaction.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing... We may only go in circles.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
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
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
Breathing is central to every aspect of meditation training. It's a wonderful place to focus in training the mind to be calm and concentrated.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
Perhaps the most spiritual thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
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
Allow your attention to gently alight on your belly, as if you were coming upon a shy animal sunning itself on a tree stump in a clearing in the forest. Feel your belly rise or expand gently on the inbreath, and fall or recede on the outbreath.
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
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
So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
The little things? The little moments? They aren't little.
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
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
