Quotes from Jon Kabat-Zinn

cannot be imposed, legislated, or decreed. They can only be cultivated, and

attention and the awareness that arises from it are the doorway to true education and learning — life-long gifts that keep deepening with use.

But meditation is not just about sitting, either. It is about stopping and being present, that is all.

Our capacity for thought is one of humanity's most amazing qualities.

meditation is about befriending your thinking, about holding it gently in awareness, no matter what is on your mind in a particular moment. It is not about shutting off your thoughts or changing them in any way.

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

The tourists who come to visit may be disappointed if they can't see the mountain clearly, but it's all the same to the mountain--seen or unseen, in sun or clouds, broiling or frigid, it just sits, being itself.

Since many of us use food for emotional comfort, especially when we feel anxious or depressed or even just bored, this little exercise in slowing things down and paying careful attention to what we are doing illustrates how powerful, uncontrolled, and unhelpful many of our impulses are when it comes to food, and how simple and satisfying it can be and how much more in control we can feel when we bring awareness to what we are actually doing while we are doing it.

When Thoreau says, "it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished," this is waving a red flag in front of a bull for go-getting, progress-oriented people. 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?

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

There can be no resolution leading to growth until the present situation has been faced completely and you have opened to it with mindfulness, allowing the roughness of the situation itself to sand down your own rough edges. In other words, you must be willing to let itself to become your teacher.

The challenge of mindfulness is to work with the very circumstances that you find yourself in - no matter how unpleasant, how discouraging, how limited, how unending and stuck they may appear to be - and to make sure that you have done everything in your power to use their energies to transform yourself before you decide to cut your losses and move on.

Nothing is to be clung to as 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine.

It means that how we relate to all our moments, all our experiences, is a choice.

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

ultimately, mindfulness is intimacy—with ourselves and the world—underneath any apparent separation between the two.

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.

W]hat seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story is really going on. [...] [F]or the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others. Things are constantly unfolding on different levels.

Si realmente muriésemos, todas nuestras responsabilidades y obligaciones desaparecerían de inmediato. Lo que quedara de ellas se resolvería de algún modo sin nosotros.

Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that's what you've wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that's what's on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, Now what?

No matter what people are doing, they are much less happy when their minds are wandering than when their minds are focused

By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves.

But waking up is ultimately something that each one of us can only do for ourselves. When it comes down to it, wherever you go, there you are

The main things are to commit to some simple behaviors—meditating, exercising, getting enough sleep—and to practice altruism.… And nurture your social connections." If