Quotes by Jon Kabat-Zinn

“You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it...”

“Thought doesn't wrap around awareness. Awareness wraps around thought.”

“There are always waves on the water. Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small, and sometimes they are almost imperceptible. The waters waves are churned up by the winds, which come and go a...”

“We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leav...”

“YOU HAVE TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO BE WEAKAllow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are fe...”

“Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself. The watching is the holding. By watching your thoughts without being drawn int...”

“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 furt...”

“The future that we want - this is it. This is the future of all the previous thoughts you've ever had about the future. You're in it. You're already in it. What is the purpose of all this living if...”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 orie...”

“Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes use of thinking, honoring its value and its power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our th...”

“Meditation is a way of being, not a technique. Meditation is not about trying to get anywhere else. It is about allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and as you are, and the world to be exa...”

“Another way to look at meditation is to view the process of thinking itself as a waterfall, a continual cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness we are going beyond or behind our thinking, ...”

“We resonate with one anothers sorrows because we are interconnected. Being whole and simultaneously part of a larger whole, we can change the world simply by changing ourselves. If I become a cente...”

“There is really no natural limit to the practice of loving kindness in meditation or in ones life. It is an ongoing, ever-expanding realization of interconnectedness. It is also its embodiment. Whe...”

“Non-doing simply means letting things be and allowing them to unfold in their own way.”

“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.”

“Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.”

“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.”