Quotes from Jon Kabat-Zinn

The whole point of this book, and of MBSR, is that there is a lot that you can do to gently, lovingly, and firmly—through non-striving and non-doing, coupled with doing when taking action with awareness is called for—influence how things unfold across the life span, tilting them in the direction of greater well-being, self-compassion, and wisdom to whatever degree possible, always unknown. HOW

So before we convince ourselves that our bodies are too this or too that, shouldn't we get more in touch with how wonderful it is to have a body in the first place, no matter what it looks or feels like?

Can we simply address what it means to be human? What is available to us in this brief moment when the universe lifts up in the form of a human sentient body and being and we live out our seventy, eighty, or ninety years (if that) and then dissolve back into the undifferentiated ocean of potential?

Thought doesn't wrap around awareness. Awareness wraps around thought.

Maybe we are overdeveloped outwardly and underdeveloped inwardly. Perhaps it is we who, for all our wealth, are living in poverty.

Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time Ã¢â'¬Â¦ You

My religion is kindness. THE DALAI LAMA

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.

It does provide a greater basket for tenderly holding and intimately knowing our suffering in any and all circumstances, and that, it turns out, is transformative, and can make all the difference between endless imprisonment in pain and suffering and freedom from suffering

This is the case because, as we noted earlier, it is not the breath that is most important here, but the awareness itself. And the awareness can be of any aspect of your experience, not just your breathing—because it is always the same awareness, whatever the chosen object or objects of attention.

Mindfulness is now more relevant than ever as an effective and dependable counterbalance to strengthen our health and well-being, and perhaps our very sanity.

The possibility of attaining harmony in communication applies to large collections of people, such as nations, governments, and even to political parties, as well as to individuals, once they realize the price of treating the other as the enemy, and therefore less than human.

from our point of view, as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong. Over the next eight weeks, we are going to pour energy in the form of attention into what is right with you—much of which we never notice or take for granted, or don't fully develop in ourselves—and let the rest of the medical center and your health care team take care of what is "wrong," and just see what happens.

We can learn to work with them, understand them, find meaning in them, make critical choices, and use their energies to grow in strength, wisdom, and compassion.

The discipline I am referring to is really the willingness to bring the spaciousness and clarity of awareness back over and over again to whatever is going on — even as we feel we are being pulled in a thousand different directions.

L]ive life as if each moment was important, as if each moment counted and could be worked with, even if it was a moment of pain, sadness, despair, or fear. This work involves above all the regular, disciplined practice of moment-to-moment awareness or mindfulness, the complete owning of each moment of your experience, good, bad, or ugly. This is the essence of full catastrophe living.

Each moment is an opportunity to see that we do not have to succumb to old habits that function below the level of our awareness. With great intentionality and resolve, we can experiment with non-distraction. We can experiment with non-diversion. We can experiment with non-fixing. We can experiment with non-doing.

La nueva felicidad: lecciones de una nueva ciencia.

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.

It is a bit like television sports commentary. There is what is actually going on in the game, and then there is the endless commentary. When you begin a formal meditation practice, it is almost inevitable that you will now be subject to meditation commentary to one degree or another. It can fill the space of the mind. Yet it is not the meditation any more than the play-by-play is the game itself.

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

Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine." In other words, no attachments—especially to fixed ideas of yourself and who you are.

Attention leads to connection, connection to regulation, regulation to order, and order to ease (as opposed to dis-ease), or, more colloquially, to health.

when you inhabit the domain of alert and affectionate attention, the domain of non-judgmental spaciousness, and simply rest in awareness with no agenda other than to be awake. We adopt this perspective of open presence and acceptance throughout the meditation practice.