Wherever You Go, There You Are

by Jon Kabat-Zinn

It also offers a view of the world which is complementary to the predominantly reductionist and materialistic one currently dominating Western thought and institutions.

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.

This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality. It wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation.

When we commit ourselves to paying attention in an open way, without falling prey to our own likes and dislikes, opinions and prejudices, projections and expectations, new possibilities open up and we have a chance to free ourselves from the straitjacket of unconsciousness.

Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert

attention is the mother of intelligence. NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ, I Am That

Think of yourself as an eternal witness, as timeless.

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, This is the best season of your life. WU-MEN

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath. KABIR

All of Walden Pond is within your breath. The miracle of the changing seasons is within the breath; your parents and your children are within the breath; your body and your mind are within the breath. 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. There are nothing but golden fish in this stream. All we need to see them clearly is the lens of awareness.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides

away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. THOREAU, Walden

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. THOREAU, Walden

One practical way to do this is to look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.

My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the Teacher, is near, wake up, wake up! Run to his feet— he is standing close to your head right now. You have slept for millions and millions of years. Why not wake up this morning?

Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing things clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.

A willingness to embrace and work with what is lies at the core of all meditation practice.

It is possible through meditation to find shelter from much of the wind that agitates the mind. Over time, a good deal of the turbulence may die down from lack of continuous

feeding.

Remember when you see the stars that you are looking back in time millions of years. The past is present now and here.

Non-doing is a cornerstone of mastery in any realm of activity.

a new capacity to let execution unfold beyond technique,

We can apprentice ourselves to this work, knowing full well that non-doing is truly the work of a lifetime; and conscious all the while that the doing mode is usually so strong in us that the cultivating of non-doing ironically takes considerable effort.

These inner qualities which support meditation practice cannot be imposed, legislated, or decreed. They can only be cultivated, and this only when you

have reached the point where your inner motivation is strong enough to want to cease contributing to your own suffering and confusion and perhaps to that of others.

It amounts to behaving ethically—a sorely maligned concep...

I heard someone define ethics as “obedience to th...

Patience is an ever present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it.

Peace, and a willingness to be patient in the face of such enormous provocation and suffering, can only come about through the inner cultivation of compassion, a compassion that is not limited to friends, but is felt equally for those who, out of ignorance and often seen as evil, may cause you and those you love to suffer. That degree of selfless compassion is based on what Buddhists call “right mindfulness” and “right understanding.” It doesn’t just spring up spontaneously.

We know that things unfold according to their own nature. We can remember to let our lives unfold in the same way.

If the river tells you something, then do it, but do it mindfully. Then pause, wait patiently, listen again.

Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.

Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may. Without it, you are not practicing meditation.

The mind states of liking and disliking can take up permanent residency in us, unconsciously feeding addictive behaviors in all domains of life.

Generosity is another quality which, like patience, letting go, non-judging, and trust,

You may find that, rather than exhausting yourself or your resources, you will replenish them. Such is the power of mindful, selfless generosity. At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient…only the universe rearranging itself.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen…. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and the thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at

all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, Simplify. THOREAU, Walden

Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable.

You can think of concentration as the capacity of the mind to sustain an unwavering attention on one object of observation.

You can only look deeply into something if you can sustain your looking without being constantly thrown off by distractions or by the agitation of your own mind. The deeper your concentration, the deeper the potential for mindfulness.

All events, whether we see them on the surface as good or bad, are fundamentally in harmony with the Tao. It is our job to learn to perceive this underlying harmony, and to live and make decisions in accord with it.

Yet, frequently, it is not exactly clear what the right way is, which leaves plenty of room for free will and principled action, and also for tension and controversy, to say nothing of getting lost entirely.

The thinking mind can at times be severely fragmented. In fact, it almost always is.

Another way to look at meditation is to view the process of thinking itself as a waterfall, a continual cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness, we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantagepoint in a cave or depression in the rock behind a waterfall. We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent.

Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them and be Expert in home-cosmography.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

If we slump, it reflects low energy, passivity, a lack of clarity.