I’m grateful that Hyperion came out with a 10th anniversary edition of this book, for a couple of reasons. One, I may very well never have found it in a bookstore in 2011 if not for this “new” edition. And, two, Kabat-Zinn’s afterword for the anniversary edition nicely ties up the book’s main concepts.

In the afterword, Kabat-Zinn bricks back our attention to the “clarity, sanity, and well-being that are always and already right beneath our noses, and within all of us.” A lot of us were probably wondering where we had left our clarity, sanity and well-being.

With this book, Kabat-Zinn doesn’t provide a “how-to” on meditation as much as he describes the context and benefits of meditation. (If you’re looking for guided meditation, he sells CDs.)

I was especially impressed that he included two chapters on parenting. Too often, books based on Eastern philosophy seem divorced from the messiness of reality.

The title is more than a catchy restatement of the “here and now” principle. Kabat-Zinn puts the emphasis on “you”. It doesn’t matter where “here” is. Wherever it is, you’re going to be there. So it would behoove you to get your act together, although Kabat-Zinn would never phrase it so indelicately.