Top 100 Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes
#1. Even the tiniest manifestation of mindfulness in any moment might give rise to an intuition or insight that could be hugely transforming.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#3. 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
#4. A willingness to embrace and work with what is lies at the core of all meditation practice.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#5. 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
#6. It is what makes us human, what distinguishes us from other animals. We can be aware of being aware.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#7. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#8. Rather, it is bearing in mind what is most important to you so that it is not lost or betrayed in the heat and reactivity of a particular moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#9. Rarely are we in touch with who is doing the doing - or, put otherwise, with the world of being. To
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#10. Anybody who is imitating somebody else, no matter who it us, is heading in the wrong direction. It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#11. To be patient is simply to be completely open to each moment, accepting it in its fullness, knowing that, like the butterfly, things can only unfold in their own time.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#12. Discipline provides a constancy which is independent of what kind of day you had yesterday and what kind of day you anticipate today.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#13. Carl Jung put it this way: "The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises." With
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#14. All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#16. Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#17. Meditation had never been tried before in a medical center, so we had no idea whether mainstream Americans would accept a clinic whose foundation was intensive training in meditative discipline.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#18. You are whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness you many not even know about. You are never alone. And you already belong. You belong to humanity. You belong to life. You belong to this moment, this breath.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#20. Paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#21. Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#22. The present is the only time that we have to know anything.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#23. Because of this inner busyness, which is going on almost all the time, we are liable either to miss a lot of the texture of our life experience or to discount its value and meaning.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#24. Writing can be an incredible mindfulness practice.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#25. When asked about his apparent lack of anger toward the Chinese by an incredulous reporter at the time he won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama replied something to the effect that: They have taken everything from us; should I let them take my mind as well?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#26. See If You Can Give Yourself Gifts That May Be True Blessings, Such As Self-Acceptance
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#27. If we are to grasp the reality of our life while we have it, we will need to wake up to our moments. Otherwise, whole days, even a whole life, could slip past unnoticed.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#28. If we are not careful, it is all too easy to fall into becoming more of a human doing than a human being, and forget who is doing all the doing, and why.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#29. 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
#30. Most people don't realize that the mind constantly chatters. And yet, that chatter winds up being the force that drives us much of the day in terms of what we do, what we react to, and how we feel.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#31. The more you practice, the more skill you can develop in reducing pain or at least becoming more transparent to it, so that it is less eroding of your quality of life.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#32. Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#33. There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#34. After all, if you really aren't trying to get anywhere else in this moment, patience takes care of itself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#35. Any change that comes about in your life will be primarily because of your own efforts
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#36. And remind you that you are here now, and that when you get there, you will be there. If you miss the here, you are likely also to miss the there. If your mind is not centered here, it is likely not to be centered just because you arrive somewhere else.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#37. We are not meditating to make anything go away, any more than we are meditating to attain some special state or feeling. Whether we are basically healthy at the moment or have a terminal illness, none of us knows how long we have to live.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#38. Comes up with. This is the flavor of true intentionality and inner discipline. You do it simply
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#39. Make a list of what is really important to you. Embody it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#40. Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#41. Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#42. Living in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#43. There is more right with you than wrong with you" - those
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#44. Just stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#45. The challenge for mindfulness is to be present for your experience as it is rather than immediately jumping in to change it or try to force it to be different.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#46. Mindfulness is often spoken of as the heart of Buddhist meditation. It's not about Buddhism, but about paying attention. That's what all meditation is, no matter what tradition or particular technique is used.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#47. I started the Stress Reduction Clinic in 1979. The idea of bringing Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism into the mainstream of medicine was tantamount to the Visigoths being at the gates about to tear down the citadel of Western civilization.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#48. Just because you decide to still your body and observe your breath from moment to moment doesn't mean that your thinking mind is going to cooperate.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#49. We can learn to work with them, understand them, find meaning in them, make critical choices, and use their energies to grow in strength, wisdom, and compassion.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#50. The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we're continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#51. 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
#52. 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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#53. immersed in a seemingly never-ending stream of thoughts, coming willy-nilly one after another in rapid succession.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#54. Can you question who you are? And are you comfortable with not knowing?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#55. So it can be particularly helpful to keep in mind from moment to moment that it is not so much the stressors in our lives but how we see them and what we do with them, how we are in relationship to them, that determines how much we are at their mercy.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#56. There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#57. Sometimes shutting off the sound on the television can allow you to actually watch the game and take it in in an entirely different and more direct way - a first-order, first-person experience - rather than filtered through the mind of another.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#58. 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
#59. There are many different aspects to a formal meditation practice. But the real meditation practice is how you interface with life from moment-to-moment, no matter what's happening. Especially when you are awake, which is pretty much most of the time except for deep sleep.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#60. 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
#61. Nourishing the soul is the process of drinking at the life stream, coming back to one's true self, embracing the whole of one's experience - good, bad, or ugly; painful or exalted; dull or boring.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#62. Cannot be imposed, legislated, or decreed. They can only be cultivated, and
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#63. When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#64. See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn't bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#65. Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#66. The awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#67. If you can't entirely trust what you think, what about trusting awareness? What about trusting your heart? What about trusting your motivation to at least do no harm? What about trusting your experience until it's proven to be inaccurate - and then trusting that discovery?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#68. Dwell in stillness and to observe without reacting and without judging.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#69. 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
#70. By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#71. It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#72. As long as you are breathing there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#73. I loved science, and when I discovered Buddhist meditative practices and martial arts, I was able to bridge those ways of knowing the world into my own unique way. From that grew the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which became my karmic assignment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#74. 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
#75. 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
#77. 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
#78. Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? LAO-TZU, Tao-te-Ching
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#79. In letting go of wanting something special to occur, maybe we can realize that something special is already occurring.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#80. Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It's about feeling the way you feel.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#81. The mind that has not been developed or trained is very scattered. That's the normal state of affairs, but it leaves us out of touch with a great deal in life, including our bodies.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#82. One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait. WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#83. When we spend some time each day in non-doing, resting in awareness, observing the flow of the breath and the activity of our mind and body without getting caught up in that activity, we are cultivating calmness and mindfulness hand in hand.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#84. There can be no resolution leading to growth until the present situation has been faced completely and you have opened to it with mindfulness, allowing the roughness of the situation itself to sand down your own rough edges. In other words, you must be willing to let life itself become your teacher.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#85. The little things? The little moments? They aren't little.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#86. By repeatedly bringing your attention back to the breath each time it wanders off, concentration builds and deepens, much as muscles develop by repetitively lifting weights.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#87. The word discipline comes from disciple, someone who is in a position to learn.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#88. I don't want people following Jon Kabat-Zinn. I want them following themselves.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#89. Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#90. The funny thing about stopping is that as soon as you do it, here you are.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#91. Personal motivations to live are known to sometimes influence survival.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#92. 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
#93. You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#94. We are continuously bombarded with information, appeals, deadlines, communications ... We are continually being squeezed or projected into the future as our present moments are assaulted and consumed in the fires of endless urgency.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#95. 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
#96. Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#97. 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.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#98. Peace is something that we can bring about if we can actually learn to wake up a bit more as individuals and a lot more as a species; if we can learn to be fully what we actually already are; to reside in the inherent potential of what is possible for us, being human.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#99. When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#100. Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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