Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life

by Jon Kabat-Zinn

We will need to become more aware of and take precautions against the incredible pull of the Scylla and Charybdis of past and future, and the dreamworld they offer us in place of our lives.

Meditation is the process by which we go about deepening our attention and awareness, refining them, and putting them to greater practical use in our lives.

Mindfulness is an ancient Buddhist practice which has profound relevance for our present-day lives. This relevance has nothing to do with Buddhism per se or with becoming a Buddhist, but it has everything to do with waking up and living in harmony with oneself and with the world. It has to do with examining who we are, with questioning our view of the world and our place in it, and with cultivating some appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive. Most of all, it has to do with being in touch.

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.

The key to this path, which lies at the root of Buddhism, Taoism, and yoga, and which we also find in the works of people like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, and in Native American wisdom, is an appreciation for the present moment and the cultivation of an intimate relationship with it through a continual attending to it with care and discernment. It is the direct opposite of taking life for granted.

I like to think of mindfulness simply as the art of conscious living.

Buddhism is fundamentally about being in touch with your own deepest nature and letting it flow out of you unimpeded. It has to do with waking up and seeing things as they are. In fact, the word “Buddha” simply means one who has awakened to his or her own true nature.

The overall tenor of mindfulness practice is gentle, appreciative, and nurturing. Another way to think of it would be “heartfulness”.

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. Perhaps its value lies precisely in this. Maybe we all need to do one thing in our lives simply for its own sake.

When we understand that “This is it,” it allows us to let go of the past and the future and wake up to what we are now, in this moment.

But meditation is different. From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment. 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.

So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.

You can easily observe the mind’s habit of escaping from the present moment for yourself. Just try to keep your attention focused on any object for even a short period of time. You will find that to cultivate mindfulness you may have to remember over and over again to be awake and aware.

The spirit of mindfulness is to practice for its own sake, and just to 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. With this attitude, life itself becomes practice. Then, rather than doing practice, it might better be said that the practice is doing you, or that life itself becomes your meditation teacher and your guide.

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. Sometimes our thoughts act like dream glasses. When we have them on, we see dream children, dream husband, dream wife, dream job, dream colleagues, dream partners, dream friends. We can live in a dream present for a dream future. Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all. While things in the dream may change and give the illusion of being vivid and real, it is still a dream we are caught in. But if we take off the glasses, maybe, just maybe, we might see a little more accurately what is actually here.

If you do decide to start meditating, there’s no need to tell other people about it, or talk about why you are doing it or what it’s doing for you. In fact, there is no better way to waste your nascent energy and enthusiasm for practice and thwart your efforts so they will be unable to gather momentum. Best to meditate without advertising it. Every time you get a strong impulse to talk about meditation and how wonderful it is, or how hard it is, or what it’s doing for you these days, or what it’s not, or you want to convince someone else how wonderful it would be for them, just look at it as more thinking and go meditate some more. The impulse will pass and everybody will be better off—especially you.

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

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. But ultimately the winds of life and of the mind will blow, do what we may. Meditation is about knowing something about this and how to work with it.

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

But, meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.

On the surface, it seems as if there might be two kinds of non-doing, one involving not doing any outward work, the other involving what we might call effortless activity. Ultimately we come to see that they are the same. It is the inward experience that counts here. What we frequently call formal meditation involves purposefully making a time for stopping all outward activity and cultivating stillness, with no agenda other than being fully present in each moment. Not doing anything. Perhaps such moments of non-doing are the greatest gift one can give oneself.

TRY: Recognizing the bloom of the present moment in your daily meditation practice if you have one. If you are up early in the morning, try going outside and looking (a sustained, mindful, attentive looking) at the stars, at the moon, at the dawning light when it comes. Feel the air, the cold, the warmth (a sustained, mindful, attentive feeling). Realize that the world around you is sleeping. Remember when you see the stars that you are looking back in time millions of years. The past is present now and here. Then go and sit or meditate lying down. Let this or any time you practice be your time for letting go of all doing, for getting into the being mode, in which you simply dwell in stillness and mindfulness attending to the moment-to-moment unfolding of the present, adding nothing, subtracting nothing, affirming that “This is it.”

The joy of non-doing is that nothing else needs to happen for this moment to be complete.

But who is to say that his realizations of one morning spent in his doorway are less memorable or have less merit than a lifetime of busyness, lived with scant appreciation for stillness and the bloom of the present moment?

Non-doing can arise within action as well as in stillness. The inward stillness of the doer merges with the outward activity to such an extent that the action does itself. Effortless activity. Nothing is forced. There is no exertion of the will,

Non-doing simply means letting things be and allowing them to unfold in their own way. Enormous effort can be involved, but it is a graceful, knowledgeable, effortless effort, a “doerless doing,” cultivated over a lifetime. Effortless activity happens at moments in dance and in sports at the highest levels of performance; when it does, it takes everybody’s breath away. But it also happens in every area of human activity, from painting to car repair to parenting. Years of practice and experience combine on some occasions, giving rise to a new capacity to let execution unfold beyond technique, beyond exertion, beyond thinking.

the doing mode is usually so strong in us that the cultivating of non-doing ironically takes considerable effort. Meditation is synonymous with the practice of non-doing. We aren’t practicing, to make things perfect or to do things perfectly. Rather, we practice to grasp and realize (make real for ourselves) the fact that things already are perfect, perfectly what they are. This has everything to do with holding the present moment in its fullness without imposing anything extra on it, perceiving its purity and the freshness of its potential to give rise to the next moment. Then, knowing what is what, seeing as clearly as possible, and conscious of not knowing more than we actually do, we act, make a move, take a stand, take a chance. Some people speak of this as flow, one moment flowing seamlessly, effortlessly into the next, cradled in the streambed of mindfulness.

You are marching to the beat of your own drummer.

It’s not that feelings of anger don’t arise. It’s that the anger can be used, worked with, harnessed so that its energies can nourish patience, compassion, harmony, and wisdom in ourselves and perhaps in others as well.

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. This is helpful to keep in mind when we get impatient in our meditation practice, or when we get frustrated, impatient, and angry in our lives.

As you attend the gentle flow of your own breathing during times of formal meditation practice, notice the occasional pull of the mind to get on to something else, to want to fill up your time or change what is happening. Instead of losing yourself at these times, try to sit patiently with the breath and with a keen awareness of what is unfolding in each moment, allowing it to unfold as it will, without imposing anything on it … just watching, just breathing … embodying stillness, becoming patience.

Giving sands down such rough edges and helps us become more mindful of our inner wealth. By practicing mindfulness of generosity, by giving, and by observing its effects on ourselves and others, we are transforming ourselves, purifying ourselves, discovering expanded versions of ourselves.

Or you may feel that all you do is give, give, give, and that it is just taken for granted by others, not appreciated or even seen, or that you use it as a way of hiding from pain and fear, as a way of making sure others like you or feel dependent on you. Such difficult patterns and relationships themselves call out for attention and careful scrutiny. Mindless giving is never healthy or generous. It is important to understand your motives for giving, and to know when some kinds of giving are not a display of generosity but rather of fear and lack of confidence.

Perhaps you need to give less, or to trust your intuition about exploitation or unhealthy motives or impulses. Perhaps you do need to give, but in a different way, or to different people. Perhaps most of all, you need to give to yourself first for a while. Then you might try giving others a tiny bit more than you think you can, consciously noting and letting go of any ideas of getting anything in return. Initiate giving. Don’t wait for someone to ask. See what happens—especially to you.

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.

So, when you notice yourself building up an image of invincibility, or strength, or special knowledge, or wisdom based on your meditative experiences, thinking perhaps that you’re getting somewhere in your practice, and you start talking a lot about meditation in a way that is self-promotional and inflationary, it’s a good idea to bring mindfulness to that mind-set and to ask yourself whether you are running from your vulnerability, or perhaps from grief you may be carrying, or from fear of some sort. If you are truly strong, there is little need to emphasize it to yourself or to others.

Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface, and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy.

You can think of concentration as the capacity of the mind to sustain an unwavering attention on one object of observation. It is cultivated by attending to one thing, such as the breath, and just limiting one’s focus to that. In Sanskrit, concentration is called samadhi, or “onepointedness.” Samadhi is developed and deepened by continually bringing the attention back to the breath every time it wanders.

A calmness develops with intensive concentration practice that has a remarkably stable quality to it. It is steadfast, profound, hard to disturb, no matter what comes up. It is a great gift to oneself to be able periodically to cultivate samadhi over an extended period of time.

The stability and calmness which come with onepointed concentration practice form the foundation for the cultivation of mindfulness. Without some degree of samadhi, your mindfulness will not be very strong. 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.

The experience of deep samadhi is very pleasant. In attending to the breath with onepointed concentration, everything else falls away—including thoughts, feelings, the outside world. Samadhi is characterized by absorption in stillness and undisturbed peacefulness. A taste of this stillness can be attractive, even intoxicating. One naturally finds oneself seeking this peacefulness and the simplicity of a state characterized by absorption and bliss.

What is missing is the energy of curiosity, inquiry, investigation, openness, availability, engagement with the full range of phenomena experienced by human beings. This is the domain of mindfulness practice, in which onepointedness and the ability to bring calmness and stability of mind to the present moment are put in the service of looking deeply into and understanding the interconnectedness of a wide range of life experiences. Concentration can be of great value, but it can also be seriously limiting if you become seduced by the pleasant quality of this inner experience and come to see it as a refuge from life in an unpleasant and unsatisfactory world.

It is virtually impossible, and senseless anyway, to commit yourself to a daily meditation practice without some view of why you are doing it, what its value might be in your life, a sense of why this might be your way and not just another tilting at imaginary windmills.

What is more, any superficial or romantic notions we might harbor of becoming a better person—more calm or more clear or more compassionate—don’t endure for long when we face the turbulence of our lives, our minds and bodies, or even the prospect of getting up early in the morning when it is cold and dark to sit by yourself and be in the present moment. It’s too easily put off or seen as trivial or of secondary importance, so it can always wait while you catch a little more sleep or at least stay warm in bed.

you will need a vision that is truly your own—one that is deep and tenacious and that lies close to the core of who you believe yourself to be, what you value in your life, and where you see yourself going. Only the strength of such a dynamic vision and the motivation from which it springs can possibly keep you on this path year in and year out, with a willingness to practice every day

It doesn’t mean trying to change or be different from how you are, calm when you’re not feeling calm, or kind when you really feel angry.

For example, suppose angry feelings come up at some point in your day. If you find yourself feeling angry and expressing it, you will also find yourself monitoring that expression and its effects moment by moment. You may be in touch with its validity as a feeling state, with the antecedent causes of your strong feeling, and the way it is coming out in your body gestures and stances, in your tone of voice, in your choice of words and arguments, as well as the impression it is making on others. There is much to be said for the conscious expression of anger, and it is well known medically and psychologically that suppressing anger in the sense of internalizing it is unhealthy, particularly if it becomes habitual. But it is also unhealthy to vent anger uncontrollably as a matter of habit and reaction, however “justifiable.”

If its energy can be transmuted to forcefulness and wisdom, without the smoke and fire of self-absorption or self-righteousness, then its power multiplies, and so does its capacity to transform both the object of the anger and the source.

Awareness sees the anger; it knows the depth of the anger; and it is larger than the anger. It can therefore hold the anger the way a pot contains food. The pot of awareness helps us cradle the anger and see that it may be producing more harmful effects than beneficial ones, even if that is not our aim. In this way, it helps us cook the anger, digest the anger, so that we can use it effectively, and, in changing from an automatic reacting to a conscious responding, perhaps move beyond it altogether. This and other options stem from a careful listening to the dictates of the whole situation.

Our vision has to do with our values, and with our personal blueprint for what is most important in life. It has to do with first principles, If you believe in love, do you manifest it or just talk a lot? If you believe in compassion, in non-harming, in kindness, in wisdom, in generosity, in calmness, in solitude, in non-doing, in being even-handed and clear, do you manifest these qualities in your daily life? This is the level of intentionality which is required to keep your meditation practice vital, so that it doesn’t succumb to becoming purely a mechanical exercise, driven only by the forces of habit or belief.