Quotes from Jon Kabat-Zinn

The present is the only time that we have to know anything.

So when we make contact with the domain of being in the meditation practice, we are already, in a profound sense, beyond the scarring, beyond the isolation and fragmentation and suffering we may be experiencing.

We tend to see more through our thoughts and opinions than through our eyes.

One small shift in the way we each conduct ourselves, and the crystal lattice structure of the world is already different. In this way, we are the world, and when we take responsibility for our small but not insignificant part of it, the whole is already different—the flowering we manifest emotionally and in every other way of some importance, potentially enormous.

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.

Rarely are we in touch with who is doing the doing—or, put otherwise, with the world of being. To

It's not that God, the environment, and other people cannot help us to be happy or find satisfaction. It's just that our happiness, satisfaction, and our understanding, even of God, will be no deeper than our capacity to know ourselves inwardly, to encounter the world from the deep comfort that comes from being at home in one's own skin, from an intimate familiarity with the ways of one's own mind and body.

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

Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.

research is showing that we can change our attitude, and thereby our relationship to our circumstances, in ways that can make a difference in our health and well-being, and possibly to our longevity.

Experiment with giving away this energy--in little ways at first--directing it toward yourself and toward others with no thought of gain or return. Give more than you think you can, trusting that you are richer than you think. Celebrate this richness. Give as if you had inexhaustible wealth. This is called kingly giving.

If I wanted to predict your happiness, and I could know only one thing about you, I wouldn't want to know your gender, religion, health, or income. I'd want to know about your social network—about your friends and family, and the strength of your bonds with them.

any change that comes about in your life will be primarily because of your own efforts

When you see and feel the sensations you are experiencing as sensations, pure and simple, you may see that these thoughts about the sensation are useless to you at that moment and that they can actually make things worse than they need be.

Meditation is a way of being, not a technique. Meditation is not about trying to get anywhere else. It is about allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and as you are, and the world to be exactly as it is in this moment, as well.

It is healing simply to be heard, to be met, to be seen, to be known.

The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded. This includes a lack of awareness and understanding of our own mind and how it influences our perceptions and our actions. It severely limits our perspective on what it means to be a person and how we are connected to each other and the world around us.

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. R. D. LAING

A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation—to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.

Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.

Maybe we have an exaggerated belief that we have to stay in bed just to get through the day or that we can't go out of the house and do things. Views like these lead readily to what is sometimes referred to as "illness behavior." We begin to build our psychological life around our preoccupations with our illness, injury, or disability, while the rest of our life is on hold and unfortunately atrophying along with the body.

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

Socrates was famous in Athens for saying, "Know thyself." It is said that one of his students said to him: "Socrates, you go around saying 'Know thyself,' but do you know yourself?" Socrates was said to have replied, "No, but I understand something about this not knowing.

If you let restlessness move you, you lose touch with who you are.