Wherever You Go, There You Are

by Jon Kabat-Zinn

A full life is painted with broad brush strokes.

the most important point is to be yourself and not try to become anything that you are not already.

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 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.

take each moment as it comes—pleasant or unpleasant, good, bad, or ugly—and then work with that because it is what is present now.

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

Make the moment vital and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”

Work at allowing more things to unfold in your life without forcing them to happen and without rejecting the ones that don’t fit your idea of what “should” be happening.

Through it all, we attempt to bring balance to the present moment, understanding that in patience lies wisdom, knowing that what will come next will be determined in large measure by how we are now.

If you are truly strong, there is little need to emphasize it to yourself or to others. Best to take another tack entirely and direct your attention where you fear most to look. You can do this by allowing yourself to feel, even to cry, to not have to have opinions about everything, to not appear invincible or unfeeling to others, but instead to be in touch with and appropriately open about your feelings.

There is a blindness that comes from self-furthering agendas that leaves us thinking we know when actually we don’t know as much as we think.

Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself.

When we can be centered in ourselves, even for brief periods of time in the face of the pull of the outer world, not having to look elsewhere for something to fill us up or make us happy, we can be at home wherever we find ourselves, at peace with things as they are, moment by moment.

If you let yourself be blown to and fro, you lose touch with your root. If you let restlessness move you, you lose touch with who you are.

How frequently do we linger in such basic questions as “Who am I?”, “Where am I going?”, “What path am I on?”, “Is this the right direction for me?”, “If I could choose a path now, in which direction would I head?”, “What is my yearning, my path?”, “What do I truly love?”