Wherever You Go, There You Are

by Jon Kabat-Zinn

The breath is the current connecting body and mind, connecting us with our parents and our children, connecting our body with the outer world’s body. It is the current of life.

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 large forces in our lives.

Don’t go outside your house to see the flowers. My friend, don’t bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it, before gardens and after gardens. KABIR

The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. LI PO

Lying down is a wonderful way to meditate if you can manage not to fall asleep. And if you do fall asleep, your sleep may be more restful if you enter it through meditation. You can wake up from sleeping in the same way, bringing full awareness to those first moments of wakefulness returning.

Each region of the physical body has its counterpart in an emotional body or map which carries a deeper meaning for us, often completely below our level of awareness. In order to continue growing, we need to continuously activate, listen to, and learn from our emotional body.

My religion is kindness. THE DALAI LAMA

Fire was a comfort to us, our source of heat, light, and protection—dangerous but, with great care, controllable. Sitting by it gave us relaxation at the end of the day. In its warm, flickering light, we could tell stories and talk about the day past, or just sit silently, seeing the reflection of our minds in the ever-changing flames and the glowing landscapes of a magical world. Fire made the darkness bearable, and helped us feel secure and safe. It was calming, reliable, restoring, meditative, and absolutely necessary for survival.

Have you ever noticed that there is no running away from anything? That, sooner or later, the things that you don’t want to deal with and try to escape from, or paper over and pretend aren’t there, catch up with you—especially if they have to do with old patterns and fears?

Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all the affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value. MAHATMA GANDHI

Meditation is not about trying to become a nobody, or a contemplative zombie, incapable of living in the real world and facing real problems. It’s about seeing things as they are, without the distortions of our own thought processes.

To my mind, what we need, now more than ever, within all the turmoil, is an inner wisdom, a rotation in consciousness, to accompany and shape the trajectory of our various engagements in the world, as well as to guide us individually and collectively in the full development of our potential as human beings.