Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes

61 Sourced Quotes

But when we start to focus in on what our own mind is up to, for instance, it is not unusual to quickly go unconscious again, to fall back into an automatic-pilot mode of unawareness. These lapses in awareness are frequently caused by an eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing or feeling in that moment, out of which springs a desire for something to be different, for things to change.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear.

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
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
Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.

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
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
Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

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
Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding.

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
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
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
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
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
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
So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.... Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
In letting go of wanting something special to occur, maybe we can realize that something special is already occurring.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that's what you've wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that's what's on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, "how are you going to handle it?"
.... Like it or not, this moment is all we really have to work with.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
In any given moment we are either practicing mindfulness, or defacto, we are practicing mindlessness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Even though in principle we may "know better", we routinely succumb all the same to the incessant, often frantic and unexamined busyness of thinking we have to get somewhere else first before we can rest; thinking we need to get certain things done to feel we have accomplished something before we can be happy.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
How we see and hold the full range of our experiences in our minds and in our hearts makes an enormous difference in the quality of this journey we are on and what it means to us. It can influence where we go, what happens, what we learn, and how we feel along the way.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
A lot of harm has come in all eras from people attached to one view of 'spiritual' truth.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
The funny thing about stopping is that as soon as you do it, here you are.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Dying without actually fully living, without waking up to our lives while we have the chance, is an ongoing and significant risk.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
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