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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.

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Karma Is Often Wrongly

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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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.

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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.

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.

Mindfulness Is About Being Fully Awake In Our Lives. It Is About Perceiving The Exquisite Vividness Of Each Moment. We Also Gain Immediate Access To Our Own Powerful Inner Resources For Insight, Transformation, And Healing.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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Paying Attention And Awareness Are Universal Capacities Of Human Beings.

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.

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.

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

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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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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Mind That Has Not Been Developed Or Trained Is Very Scattered. That's The Normal State Of Affairs, But It Leaves Us Out Of Touch With A Great Deal In Life, Including Our Bodies.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

Generosity Is Another Quality Which, Like Patience, Letting Go, Non-judging, And Trust, Provides A Solid Foundation For Mindfulness Practice. You Might Experiment With Using The Cultivation Of Generosity As A Vehicle For Deep Self-observation And Inquiry As Well As An Exercise In Giving. A Good Place To Start Is With Yourself. See If You Can Give Yourself Gifts That May Be True Blessings, Such As Self-acceptance, Or Some Time Each Day With No Purpose. Practice Feeling Deserving Enough To Accept These Gifts Without Obligation-to Simply Receive From Yourself, And From The Universe.

No One Can Listen To Your Body For You... To Grow And Heal, You Have To Take Responsibility For Listening To It Yourself.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Acknowledging That Sometimes, Often At Very Crucial Times, You Really Have No Idea Where You Are Going Or Even Where The Path Lies. A The Same Time, You Can Very Well Know Something About Where You Are Now (even If It Is Knowing That You Are Lost, Confused, Enraged Or Without Hope).

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.

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

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.

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

When Awareness Embraces The Senses, It Enlivens Them.

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

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.

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

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

Meditation Practice

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.

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

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

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.

You Could Think Of Mindfulness As Wise And Affectionate Attention.

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.

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

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

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.

The Real Meditation Is How You Live Your Life.

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

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.

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.

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.

My Father Was A World-class Scientist And My Mother Was A Prolific Painter. I Could See That My Parents Had Completely Different Ways Of Knowing And Understanding The World, And Relating To It. My Father Approached Things Through Scientific Inquiry And Exploration, While My Mother Experienced Things Through Her Emotions And Senses.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Or Other Historical Traditions, Are All Different Streams In The Same River, Different Currents In The Same Ocean. With The Long View, We Can Trust That The Seeds That We're Planting Are Transforming The World.

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

Make A List Of What Is Really Important To You. Embody It.

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.

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

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.

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