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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.

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

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In Asian Languages, The

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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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.

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In Asian Languages, The Word For Mind And The Word For Heart Are The Same Word.

Non-doing Has Nothing To Do With Being Indolent Or Passive. Quite The Contrary. It Takes Great Courage And Energy To Cultivate Non-doing, Both In Stillness And In Activity. Nor Is It Easy To Make A Special Time For Non-doing And To Keep At It In The Face Of Everything In Our Lives Which Needs To Be Done.

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

The Little Things? The Little Moments? They Aren't Little.

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Too Much Of The Education System Orients Students Toward Becoming Better Thinkers, But There Is Almost No Focus On Our Capacity To Pay Attention And Cultivate Awareness.

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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.

You Might Be Tempted To Avoid The Messiness Of Daily Living For The Tranquility Of Stillness And Peacefulness. This Of Course Would Be An Attachment To Stillness, And Like Any Strong Attachment, It Leads To Delusion. It Arrests Development And Short-circuits The Cultivation Of Wisdom.

You Could Think Of Mindfulness As Wise And Affectionate Attention.

Writing Can Be An Incredible Mindfulness Practice.

Meditation Is Not About Feeling A Certain Way. It's About Feeling The Way You Feel.

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

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.

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.

Paying Attention And Awareness Are Universal Capacities Of Human Beings.

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.

There Are Certain Ways In Which I Cultivate Awareness, Both Through Mindful Yoga And Taking Care Of My Body And Taking Time To Actually Drop As Deeply As Possible Into Stillness, Into Whatever Is Unfolding In The Present Moment.

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.

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

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.

How We See And Hold The Full Range Of Our Experiences In Our Minds And In Our Hearts Makes An Enormous Difference In The Quality Of This Journey We Are On And What It Means To Us. It Can Influence Where We Go, What Happens, What We Learn, And How We Feel Along The Way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Mindful Parenting Is The Hardest Job On The Planet, But It's Also One That Has The Potential For The Deepest Kinds Of Satisfactions Over The Life Span, And The Greatest Feelings Of Interconnectedness And Community And Belonging.

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

From The Perspective Of Meditation, Every State Is A Special State, Every Moment A Special Moment.

Mindfulness Is Not About Getting Anywhere Else.

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

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.

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.

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

Meditation Practice

Mindfulness Meditation Is The Embrace Of Any And All Mind States In Awareness, Without Preferring One To Another.

If You Look At People Out On The Street, If You Look At People At Restaurants, Nobody's Having Conversations Anymore. They're Sitting At Dinner Looking At Their Phone, Because Their Brain Is So Addicted To It.

The Real Meditation Is How You Live Your Life.

Buckminster Fuller Himself Was Fond Of Stating That What Seems To Be Happening At The Moment Is Never The Full Story Of What Is Really Going On. He Liked To Point Out That For 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.

When Awareness Embraces The Senses, It Enlivens Them.

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.

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

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

Just Stopping, Is A Radical Act Of Sanity And Love.

The Awareness Is Not Part Of The Darkness Or The Pain; It Holds The Pain, And Knows It, So It Has To Be More Fundamental, And Closer To What Is Healthy And Strong And Golden Within You.

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.

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

When Your Alarm Goes Off And You Jump Out Of Bed, What Is The Nature Of The Mind In That Moment? Are You Already Like, "oh My God," Your Calendar Pops Into Your Mind And You're Driven Already, Or Can You Take A Moment And Just Lie In Bed And Just Feel Your Body Breathing. And Remember, "oh Yeah, Brand New Day And I'm Still Alive." So, I Get Out Of Bed With Awareness, Brush My Teeth With Awareness. When You're In The Shower Next Time Check And See If You're In The Shower.

One Way To Look At Meditation Is As A Kind Of Intrapsychic Technology That's Been Developed Over Thousands Of Years By Traditions That Know A Lot About The Mind/body Connection.

Patience Is A Form Of Wisdom. It Demonstrates That We Understand And Accept The Fact That Sometimes Things Must Unfold In Their Own Time.

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.

Once You Have Established Yourself As A Center Of Love And Kindness Radiating Throughout Your Being, Which Amounts To A Cradling Of Yourself In Loving Kindness And Acceptance, You Can Dwell Here Indefinitely, Drinking At This Fount, Bathing It In, Renewing Yourself, Nourishing Yourself, Enlivening Yourself. This Can Be A Profoundly Healing Practice For Body And Soul.

There Are A Lot Of Different Ways To Talk About Mindfulness, But What It Really Means Is Awareness.

In Letting Go Of Wanting Something Special To Occur, Maybe We Can Realize That Something Special Is Already Occurring.

When You Pay Attention To Boredom It Gets Unbelievably Interesting.

Life On Earth Is A Whole, Yet It Expresses Itself In Unique Time-bound Bodies, Microscopic Or Visible, Plant Or Animal, Extinct Or Living. So There Can Be No One Place To Be. There Can Be No One Way To Be, No One Way To Practice, No One Way To Learn, No One Way To Love, No One Way To Grow Or To Heal, No One Way To Live, No One Way To Feel, No One Thing To Know Or Be Known. The Particulars Count.

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.

Just Watch This Moment, Without Trying To Change It At All. What Is Happening? What Do You Feel? What Do You See? What Do You Hear?

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.

"resting In Awareness" Is One Of Those Phrases Used A Lot By People Who Practice Mindfulness. But When I Tried To Do It, It Wasn't Restful And I Worried I Wasn't Doing It Right. I Kept Thinking About Work.

The Only Time You Ever Have In Which To Learn Anything Or See Anything Or Feel Anything, Or Express Any Feeling Or Emotion, Or Respond To An Event, Or Grow, Or Heal, Is This Moment, Because This Is The Only Moment Any Of Us Ever Gets. You're Only Here Now; You're Only Alive In This Moment.

Karma Is Often Wrongly Confused With The Notion Of A Fixed Destiny. It Is More Like An Accumulation Of Tendencies That Can Lock Us Into Particular Behavior Patterns, Which Themselves Result In Further Accumulations Of Tendencies Of A Similar Nature... But Is Is Not Necessary To Be A Prisoner Of Old Karma.

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

Allow Your Attention To Gently Alight On Your Belly, As If You Were Coming Upon A Shy Animal Sunning Itself On A Tree Stump In A Clearing In The Forest. Feel Your Belly Rise Or Expand Gently On The Inbreath, And Fall Or Recede On The Outbreath.

When We Let Go Of Wanting Something Else To Happen In This Moment, We Are Taking A Profound Step Toward Being Able To Encounter What Is Here Now. 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—a Knowing That Comes Directly From The Cultivation Of Mindfulness—we May Only Go In Circles, For All Our Efforts And Expectations. So, In Meditation Practice, The Best Way To Get Somewhere Is To Let Go Of Trying To Get Anywhere At All.

But You Cannot Have Harmony Without A Commitment To Ethical Behavior. It's The Fence That Keeps Out The Goats That Will Eat All The Young Shoots In Your Garden.

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.

For Men And Women Alike, This Journey Is A The Trajectory Between Birth And Death, A Human Life Lived. No One Escapes The Adventure. We Only Work With It Differently.

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

Live In The Moment

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.

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

Generosity Is Another Quality Which, Like Patience, Letting Go, Non-judging, And Trust, Provides A Solid Foundation For Mindfulness Practice.

Practice Moment To Moment Non-judgemental Awareness.

Dying Without Actually Fully Living, Without Waking Up To Our Lives While We Have The Chance, Is An Ongoing And Significant Risk.

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.

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.

All The Suffering, Stress, And Addiction Comes From Not Realizing You Already Are What You Are Looking For.

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.

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.

Peace Is Something That We Can Bring About If We Can Actually Learn To Wake Up A Bit More As Individuals And A Lot More As A Species; If We Can Learn To Be Fully What We Actually Already Are; To Reside In The Inherent Potential Of What Is Possible For Us, Being Human.

If We Are Honest With Ourselves, Most Of Us Will Have To Admit That We Live Out Our Lives In An Ocean Of Fear.

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.

The Only Time That Any Of Us Have To Grow Or Change Or Feel Or Learn Anything Is In The Present Moment. But We're Continually Missing Our Present Moments, Almost Willfully, By Not Paying Attention.

Discipline Provides A Constancy Which Is Independent Of What Kind Of Day You Had Yesterday And What Kind Of Day You Anticipate Today.

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.

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

A Lot Of Harm Has Come In All Eras From People Attached To One View Of Spiritual “truth.”

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.

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.

Concentration Is A Cornerstone Of Mindfulness Practice. Your Mindfulness Will Only Be As Robust As The Capacity Of Your Mind To Be Calm And Stable. Without Calmness, The Mirror Of Mindfulness Will Have An Agitated And Choppy Surface And Will Not Be Able To Reflect Things With Any Accuracy.

The Zen People From Ancient China, "when You're Walking, Just Walk." It Turns Out To Be The Hardest Thing.

Most Of The Time, If You're Not Really Paying Attention, You're Someplace Else. So Your Child Might Say, "daddy, I Want This," And You Might Say, "just A Minute, I'm Busy." Now That's No Big Deal-we All Get Busy, And Kids Frequently Ask For Attention. But Over Your Child's Entire Youth, You May Have An Enormous Number Of Such Moments To Be Really, Fully Present, But Because You Thought You Were Busy, You Didn't See The Opportunities These Moments Presented. . . . People Carry Around An Enormous Amount Of Grief Because They Missed The Little Things.

When You're Walking, Just Walk. When You're Eating, Just Eat. Not In Front Of The Tv, Not With The Newspaper. It Turns Out, That's Huge.

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.

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

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