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Any Really Good Scientist Is As Much An Artist As A Scientist. All The Interesting Stuff Is Found On The Edge Between Knowing And Not Knowing. I Know That Sounds Like A Meditation Teacher Speaking, But When You're In The Laboratory, Or You're Theorizing About Physics, You Need To Know What You Know, But If You Can't Get Out From Under That, You Won't Be Able To Make That Insightful, First-time Connection That Nobody Else Has Seen Before.

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Any Really Good Scientist

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Any Really Good Scientist Is As Much An Artist As A Scientist. All The Interesting Stuff Is Found On The Edge Between Knowing And Not Knowing. I Know That Sounds Like A Meditation Teacher Speaking, But When You're In The Laboratory, Or You're Theorizing About Physics, You Need To Know What You Know, But If You Can't Get Out From Under That, You Won't Be Able To Make That Insightful, First-time Connection That Nobody Else Has Seen Before.

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Mindfulness Is About Love And Loving Life. When You Cultivate This Love, It Gives You Clarity And Compassion For Life, And Your Actions Happen In Accordance With That. All Ethics And Morality, And A Sense Of Interconnectedness, Come Out Of The Act Of Paying Attention.

Science Is Now Documenting That It's Not The Objects Of Meditation That Are Important, It's The Process Of Paying Attention To Them - The Attending - That Actually Influences The Organism In A Whole Range Of Different Ways. The Brain Changes Significantly Enough To Impact Thought, Emotion, And Other Biological Functions. Today, People Recognize That They're Not Going To Find Well-being From The Outside, Or From A Pill; They're Going To Find It By Looking Inside. All The Suffering, Stress, And Addiction Comes From Not Realizing You Already Are What You Are Looking For.

Zen Has An Expression, "nothing Special." When You Understand "nothing Special," You Realize That Everything Is Special. Everything's Special And Nothing's Special. Everything's Spiritual And Nothing's Spiritual. It's How You See, It's What Eyes You're Looking Through, That Matters.

There Is Just This Moment. We Are Not Trying To Improve Or To Get Anywhere Else.

In Any Given Moment We Are Either Practicing Mindfulness, Or Defacto, We Are Practicing Mindlessness.

Look At Other People And Ask Yourself If You Are Really Seeing Them Or Just Your Thoughts About Them.... Without Knowing It, We Are Coloring Everything, Putting Our Spin On It All.

Societal Transformation Isn't Going To Happen In One Month, One Year, Or Even One Lifetime. But We See It Happen Person By Person In Front Of Us, And We Don't Have To Worry About The Future If We're Taking Care Of The Present. In Some Sense, That's The Best Insurance Policy We Can Have.

Breathing Is Central To Every Aspect Of Meditation Training. It's A Wonderful Place To Focus In Training The Mind To Be Calm And Concentrated.

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Perhaps The Most "spiritual" Thing Any Of Us Can Do Is Simply To Look Through Our Own Eyes, See With Eyes Of Wholeness, And Act With Integrity And Kindness.

We Are Continuously Bombarded With Information, Appeals, Deadlines, Communications... We Are Continually Being Squeezed Or Projected Into The Future As Our Present Moments Are Assaulted And Consumed In The Fires Of Endless Urgency.

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Arriving Someplace More Desirable At Some Future Time Is An Illusion. This Is It.

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When Experience Is Viewed In A Certain Way, It Presents Nothing But Doorways Into The Soul.

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He Who Dies Before He Dies Does Not Die When He Dies.

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Mindfulness Is About Love And Loving Life. When You Cultivate This Love, It Gives You Clarity And Compassion For Life, And Your Actions Happen In Accordance With That.

Sometimes Shutting Off The Sound On The Television Can Allow You To Actually Watch The Game And Take It In In An Entirely Different And More Direct Way - A First-order, First-person Experience - Rather Than Filtered Through The Mind Of Another.

Simply Put, Mindfulness Is Moment-to-moment Non-judgmental Awareness.

Meditation Is Simply About Being Yourself And Know About Who That Is.

Mindfulness Means Paying Attention In A Particular Way: On Purpose, In The Present Moment, And Non-judgmentally.

Meditation Is Like Farming... The Right Soil Is Required To Grow Anything, Nothing Will Grow If The Soil Is Polluted By Striving Or Pushing Too Hard.

The Importance Of The Development Of The Emotional Body Is Hardly Recognized Today. We Are Pretty Much Left To Our Own Devices To Come To Full Adulthood, Whether Man Or Woman. Our Elders May Have Become So Denatured Themselves From A Lack Of Such Nurturance That There Is No Longer A Collective Knowledge Of How To Guide The Awakening Emotional Vitality And Authenticity Of Our Young People, Our Children. Mindfulness May Contribute To A Reawakening Of This Ancient Wisdom In Ourselves And In Others.

To Drop Into Being Means To Recognize Your Interconnectedness With All Life, And With Being Itself. Your Very Nature Is Being Part Of Larger And Larger Spheres Of Wholeness.

As Long As You Are Breathing, There Is More Right With You Than There Is Wrong, No Matter How Ill Or How Hopeless You May Feel. But If You Hope To Mobilize Your Inner Capacities For Growth And For Healing And To Take Charge In Your Life On A New Level, A Certain Kind Of Effort And Energy On Your Part Will Be Required.... It Will Take Conscious Effort On Your Part To Move In A Direction Of Healing And Inner Peace. This Means Learning To Work With The Very Stress And Pain That Is Causing You To Suffer.

The Real Meditative Practice Is To Open Up To The Full Range Of What Happens In Life. And Parenting Is A Fantastic Arena For Doing That Kind Of Spiritual Training. It's As Much A Potential Door Into Enlightenment As Anything Else.

Perhaps We Just Need Little Reminders From Time To Time That We Are Already Dignified, Deserving, Worthy.

You Are Whole And Also Part Of Larger And Larger Circles Of Wholeness You Many Not Even Know About. You Are Never Alone. And You Already Belong. You Belong To Humanity. You Belong To Life. You Belong To This Moment, This Breath.

Practice Sharing The Fullness Of Your Being, Your Best Self, Your Enthusiasm, Your Vitality, Your Spirit, Your Trust, Your Openness, Above All, Your Presence. Share It With Yourself, With Your Family, With The World.

I Was Very Much A Tough New York Street Kid. I Went To A School Where You Had To Learn How To Get Along With Everybody Or Fight With Everybody, And I Did My Fair Share Of Both.

Can You Question Who You Are? And Are You Comfortable With Not Knowing?

Practice Moment To Moment Non-judgemental Awareness.

So, In Meditation Practice, The Best Way To Get Somewhere Is To Let Go Of Trying To Get Anywhere At All.

Meditation Practice

Most People Think That To Meditate, I Should Feel A Particular Special Something, And If I Don't, Then I Must Be Doing Something Wrong.

It’s Interesting To Look At Your Children As Line-in Zen Masters Who Can Put Their Finger On Places Where You’re Resistant, Or Thinking Narrowly, In Ways Noone Else Can. You Can Either Lose Your Mind And Your Authenticity In The Process Of Reacting To All That Stuff, Or You Can Use It As The Perfect Opportunity To Grow And Nourish Your Children By Attending To What Is Deepest And Best In Them And In Yourself.

Healing Is A Coming To Terms With Things As They Are, Rather Than Struggling To Force Them To Be As They Once Were, Or As We Would Like Them To Be, To Feel Secure Or To Have What We Sometimes Think Of As Our Own Way.

Nourishing The Soul Is The Process Of Drinking At The Life Stream, Coming Back To One's True Self, Embracing The Whole Of One's Experience - Good, Bad, Or Ugly; Painful Or Exalted; Dull Or Boring.

Once In Awhile Throughout The Day...let Go Into Full Acceptance Of The Present Moment, Including How You Are Feeling And What You Perceive To Be Happening... Give Yourself Permission To Allow This Moment To Be Exactly As It Is, And Allow Yourself To Be Exactly As You Are. Then, When You're Ready, Move In The Direction Your Heart Tells You To Go, Mindfully And With Resolution.

It's The Nature Of The Mind To Drift Away. The Mind Is Like The Pacific Ocean, It Waves. And Mindfulness Has Been Shown To Drop Underneath The Waves. If You Drop Underneath The Agitation In The Mind, Into Your Breath Deep Enough Calmness, Gentle Undulations.

It Is Indeed A Radical Act Of Love Just To Sit Down And Be Quiet For A Time By Yourself.

See If You Can Give Yourself Gifts That May Be True Blessings, Such As Self-acceptance

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.

Even Though In Principle We May "know Better", We Routinely Succumb All The Same To The Incessant, Often Frantic And Unexamined Busyness Of Thinking We Have To Get Somewhere Else First Before We Can Rest; Thinking We Need To Get Certain Things Done To Feel We Have Accomplished Something Before We Can Be Happy.

"what Is My Job On The Planet?" Is One Question We Might Do Well To Ask Ourselves Over And Over Again. Otherwise, We May Wind Up Doing Somebody Else's Job And Not Even Know It. And What's More, That Somebody Else Might Be A Figment Of Our Own Imagination, And Maybe A Prisoner Of It As Well.

From The Point Of View Of The Meditative Traditions The Entire Society Is Suffering From Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

If We Hope To Go Anywhere Or Develop Ourselves In Any Way, We Can Only Step From Where We Are Standing. If We Don't Really Know Where We Are Standing... We May Only Go In Circles.

The Best Way To Capture Moments Is To Pay Attention. This Is How We Cultivate Mindfulness. Mindfulness Means Being Awake. It Means Knowing What You Are Doing.

People Say Things That Get You Ramped Up. I Find Myself, As My Body Clenches Up When Somebody Says Something That I Know Is Wrong Or I Wanna Catch Them In A Lie Or Whatever, That Just, "calm Down. When It's Your Turn, You Make Your Point."

Initiate Giving. Don't Wait For Someone To Ask. See What Happens - Especially To You. You May Find That You Gain A Greater Clarity About Yourself And About Your Relationships, As Well As More Energy Rather Than Less. You May Find That, Rather Than Exhausting Yourself Or Your Resources, You Will Replenish Them. 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.

Even Before Smart Phones And The Internet, We Had Many Ways To Distract Our Selves. Now That's Compounded By A Factor Of Trillions.

Stillness, Insight, And Wisdom Arise Only When We Can Settle Into Being Complete In This Moment, Without Having To Seek Or Hold On To Or Reject Anything.

Any Really Good Scientist Is As Much An Artist As A Scientist. All The Interesting Stuff Is Found On The Edge Between Knowing And Not Knowing. I Know That Sounds Like A Meditation Teacher Speaking, But When You're In The Laboratory, Or You're Theorizing About Physics, You Need To Know What You Know, But If You Can't Get Out From Under That, You Won't Be Able To Make That Insightful, First-time Connection That Nobody Else Has Seen Before.

When You Have Children, You Realize How Easy It Is To Not See Them Fully, And Perhaps Miss All Those Early Years. If You Are Not Careful, You Can Be Too Absorbed In Work, And They Will Be Only Too Happy To Tell You About It Later. Being A Parent Is One Of Greatest Mindfulness Practices Of All.

Mindfulness Is So Powerful That The Fact That It Comes Out Of Buddhism Is Irrelevant.

In Its Outward Manifestation, Meditation Appears To Involve Either Stopping, By Parking The Body In A Stillness That Suspends Activity, Or Giving Oneself Over To Flowing Movement. In Either Case, It Is An Embodiment Of Wise Attention, An Inward Gesture Undertaken For The Most Part In Silence, A Shift From Doing To Simply Being. It Is An Act That May At First Seem Artificial But That We Soon Discover, If We Keep At It, Is Ultimately One Of Pure Love For The Life Unfolding Within Us And Around Us.

Mindfulness Is A Way Of Paying Attention, On Purpose And Non-judgmentally, To What Goes On In The Present Moment In Your Body, Mind And The World Around You.

In Asian Languages, The Word For Mind And The Word For Heart Are Same. So If You’re Not Hearing Mindfulness In Some Deep Way As Heartfulness, You’re Not Really Understanding It. Compassion And Kindness Towards Oneself Are Intrinsically Woven Into It. You Could Think Of Mindfulness As Wise And Affectionate Attention.

But When We Start To Focus In On What Our Own Mind Is Up To, For Instance, It Is Not Unusual To Quickly Go Unconscious Again, To Fall Back Into An Automatic-pilot Mode Of Unawareness. These Lapses In Awareness Are Frequently Caused By An Eddy Of Dissatisfaction With What We Are Seeing Or Feeling In That Moment, Out Of Which Springs A Desire For Something To Be Different, For Things To Change.

Intelligence Is The Door To Freedom And Alert Attention Is The Mother Of Intelligence.

We Call The Effort To Cultivate Our Ability To Be In The Present Moment ‘practice’ Or ‘meditation Practice.’

Meditation Practice

Mindfulness Practice Means That We Commit Fully In Each Moment To Be Present; Inviting Ourselves To 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.

When You Pay Attention To Boredom It Gets Unbelievably Interesting.

Meditation Is Really A Non-doing. It Is The Only Human Endeavor I Know Of Being Where You Already Are.

To Let Go Means To Give Up Coercing, Resisting, Or Struggling, In Exchange For Something More Powerful And Wholesome Which Comes Out Of Allowing Things To Be As They Are Without Getting Caught Up In Your Attraction To Or Rejection Of Them, In The Intrinsic Stickiness Of Wanting, Of Liking And Disliking.

When People Say "let It Go," What They Really Mean Is "get Over It," And That's Not A Helpful Thing To Say. It's Not A Matter Of Letting Go - You Would If You Could. Instead Of "let It Go," We Should Probably Say "let It Be"; This Recognizes That The Mind Won't Let Go And The Problem May Not Go Away, And It Allows You To Form A Healthier Relationship With What's Bothering You.

Perhaps We Just Need Little Reminders From Time To Time That We Are Already Dignified, Deserving, Worthy. Sometimes We Don't Feel That Way Because Of The Wounds And The Scars We Carry From The Past Or Because Of The Uncertainty Of The Future. It Is Doubtful That We Came To Feel Undeserving On Our Own. We Were Helped To Feel Unworthy. We Were Taught It In A Thousand Ways When We Were Little, And We Learned Our Lessons Well.

Living In A Chronic State Of Unawareness Can Cause Us To Miss Much Of What Is Most Beautiful And Meaningful In Our Lives.

It Is A Form Of Violence, To Not See A Being For Who He Or She Really Is. You Think, "oh, That's My Son." But The Lens, "my Son," Completely Obliterates The Multi- Dimensions Of That Being. Maybe You Only See Your Disappointments In That Child, Or You Aspirations For That Child, But That's Not The Child.

Perhaps Ultimately, Spiritual Simply Means Experiencing Wholeness And Interconnectedness Directly, A Seeing That Individuality And The Totality Are Interwoven, That Nothing Is Separate Or Extraneous. If You See In This Way, Then Everything Becomes Spiritual In Its Deepest Sense. Doing Science Is Spiritual. So Is Washing The Dishes.

Awareness Is Not The Same As Thoughtmore Like A Vessel Which Can Hold And Contain Our Thinking

Mindfulness Means Being Awake. It Means Knowing What You Are Doing.

The Funny Thing About Stopping Is That As Soon As You Do It, Here You Are.

I Thought It Was A Stroke Of Genius That Hans Selye Used The Word Stress, Because It's True That If You Don't Know How To Be In Wise Relationship To Life, Certain Health Consequences Are Bound To Happen. If You Stand Up 12 Hours A Day On An Assembly Line, Or Constantly Tell Yourself Life Is Not Worth Living, The Body Will Respond In Certain Somewhat Predictable Ways.

You Are Only Here Now; You're Only Alive In This Moment.

Live In The Moment

This Is Something Called "walking Meditation." The Goal Is To Learn To Be Aware Of Each And Every Movement And Feeling. I Know It Seems Ridiculous, But It Does Change The Way You Experience Walking.

See For Yourself Whether Letting Go When A Part Of You Really Wants To Hold On Doesn't Bring A Deeper Satisfaction Than Clinging.

Another Way To Look At Meditation Is To View Thinking Itself As A Waterfall, A Cascading Of Thought. In Cultivating Mindfulness, We Are Going Beyond Or Behind Our Thinking, Much The Way You Might Find A Vantage Point In A Cave Or Depression In The Rock Behind A Waterfall. We Still See And Hear The Water, But We Are Out Of The Torrent.

We Must Be Willing To Encounter Darkness And Despair When They Come Up And Face Them, Over And Over Again If Need Be, Without Running Away Or Numbing Ourselves In The Thousands Of Ways We Conjure Up To Avoid The Unavoidable.

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?" .... Like It Or Not, This Moment Is All We Really Have To Work With.

You Can Bring Together The Body's Various Systems To Fine Tune The Body And Mind In Order To Navigate Life's Ups And Downs In A Way That Minimizes Stress And Maximizes Well-being And Satisfaction.

You Could Think Of Mindfulness As Wise And Affectionate Attention.

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