Quotes from Jon Kabat-Zinn

Imagine forty-five years of profound teaching distilled into one sentence: "Nothing is to be clung to as 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine.

We imagine that one or two big things will have a profound effect [on our happiness]. But it looks like happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things….The small stuff matters.

But, meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It's about feeling the way you feel. It's not about making the mind empty or still

The mountain image held in the mind's eye and in the body can freshen our memory of why we are sitting in the first place, and of what it truly means, each time we take our seat, to dwell in the realm of non-doing. Mountains are quintessentially emblematic of abiding presence and stillness.

Above all, meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment.

Thinking seems to constitute our "default setting" rather than awareness.

paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally.

seen or unseen, in sun or clouds, broiling or frigid, it just sits, being itself. At times visited by violent storms, buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude, through it all the mountain sits.

Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may.

Here is Eliot, again from "Burnt Norton": Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time Ã¢â'¬Â¦

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

Inner peace exists outside of time.

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.

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.

Focusing on the breath does not mean you should think about your breathing!

Instead, we are living inside our own little narrative bubble of the moment, frequently misattributing cause and effect and therefore completely imprisoned in thoughts and emotions that are both inaccurate and misguided.

Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. —NADINE STAIR, EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

but we're not being educated in how to be, only in how to accomplish. So it's all about acquisition, about getting stuff we don't have...As soon as you realize it's a thought pattern, you can write yourself a restraining order.

There are an infinite number of ways in which people suffer. Therefore, there must be an infinite number of ways in which the Dharma is made available to people." What he meant by Dharma was the universal teachings of the Buddha on suffering and the possibility of liberation from suffering.

All professionals who make special use of their breathing as part of their work, such as opera singers, wind instrument players, dancers, actors, and martial artists, know the value of breathing from the belly and of "grounding" or anchoring their awareness in this region.

interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.

Too often our unexamined and deluded story-lines become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can always marshal any evidence we want in support of a particular view, and then believe it even if it is patently not true. This is delusion.

The funny thing about stopping is that as soon as you do it, here you are.

Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.