Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

by 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 rather than to tyrannize and imprison us.

How can I set right a tangle that is entirely below the level of my consciousness? Nisargadatta: By being with yourself… by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity that at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get somewhere else but simply to be fully who you are in this moment, as you are.

When we let go of wanting something else to happen in this moment, we are taking a profound step toward being able to encounter what is here now. 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—a not-merely-conceptual knowing that comes directly from the cultivation of mindfulness—we may only go in circles, for all our efforts and expectations. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.

You Can’t Stop the Waves but You Can Learn to Surf

People who come to the MBSR program at the hospital quickly learn that stress is an inevitable part of life. Although it is true that we can learn, by making intelligent choices, not to make things worse for ourselves in certain ways, there are many things in life over which we have little or no control. Stress is part of life, part of being human, intrinsic to the human condition itself. But that does not mean that we have to be victims in the face of forces large and small in our lives, difficult and rending as they may sometimes be. Believe it or not, it is possible to learn to turn toward them intentionally, to befriend them, work with them, understand them, find meaning in them, make critical choices, and use their energies to grow in strength, wisdom, and compassion. A willingness to embrace and work with what is lies at the core of all meditation practice.

But meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel and knowing it in awareness in that moment.

TRY: Investigating impatience and anger with kindness and genuine interest when they arise. See whether you can adopt a different perspective, one that sees things as unfolding in their own time. This is especially useful when you are feeling under pressure and blocked or stymied in something you want or need to do. Hard as it may seem, try not to push the river in that moment but listen carefully to it instead. What does it tell you? What is it telling you to do? If nothing, then just breathe, let things be as they are, let go into patience, continue listening, resting in awareness. If the river tells you something, then do it, but do it mindfully. Then pause, wait patiently, listen again.

When you drop in to a period of formal meditation practice and attempt, even for a relatively brief time, to dwell in stillness, the judging mind can come through like a relentless foghorn. I can’t take this pain in my knee.… This is boring.… I like this feeling of stillness.… I had a good meditation yesterday, but today I’m having a bad meditation.… It’s not working for me. I’m no good at this. I’m no good, period. This type of thinking dominates the mind and weighs it down. It’s like carrying around a suitcase full of rocks on your head. It feels good to put it down. Imagine how it might feel to suspend all your habitual judging and instead let each moment be just as it is, without attempting to evaluate it as “good” or “bad” from such a self-preoccupied and exclusively self-centered perspective. This gesture alone might afford a momentary taste of stillness, of liberation. You would be immediately at home in your own being, at least for that fleeting timeless moment.