List Of Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes On Mindfulness & Letting Go:
#1 “You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.”
#2 “The word discipline comes from disciple, someone who is in a position to learn.”
#3 “Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself.”
#4 “Meditation is not so concerned with how much thinking is going on as it is with how much room you are making for it to take place within the field of your awareness from one moment to the next.”
#5 “The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded.”
#6 “From the perspective of the consciousness disciplines, our ordinary state of waking consciousness is severely suboptimal.”
#7 “Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing things clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.”
#8 “Knowing what you are doing while you are doing it is the essence of mindfulness practice.”
#9 “Symptoms of illness and distress, plus your feelings about them, can be viewed as messengers coming to tell you something important about your body or about your mind.”
#10 “We all come into and go out of this world as passing gatherings of structured energy.”
#11 “Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.”
#12 “Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.”
#13 ”If you did die, all your responsibilities and obligations would immediately evaporate. Their residue would somehow get worked out without you.”
#14 “There is a price we pay for being attached to a narrow view of being “right.”
#15 “Spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous.”
#16 “By repeatedly bringing your attention back to the breath each time it wanders off, concentration builds and deepens, much as muscles develop by repetitively lifting weights.”
#17 “We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.”
#18 ”The healing power of mindfulness lies in living each of those moments as fully as we can, accepting it as it is as we open to what comes next—in the next moment of now.”
#19 “There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else.”
#20 “When it comes right down to it, the challenge of mindfulness is to realize that “this is it” Right now is my life.”
#21 “The only way you can do anything of value is to have the effort come out of non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of use or not.”
#22 “Awareness is not the same as thinking. It is a complementary form of intelligence, a way of knowing that is at least as wonderful and as powerful, if not more so, than thinking.”
#23 “One very important domain of our lives and experience that we tend to miss, ignore, abuse, or lose control of as a result of being in the automatic pilot mode is our own body.”
#24 “See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn’t bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.”
#25 ”In meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.”
#26 ”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?”
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#27 “Discipline provides a constancy which is independent of what kind of day you had yesterday and what kind of day you anticipate today.”
#28 “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.”
#29 “If you stop trying to make yourself more than you are, out of fear that you are less than you are, whoever you really are will be a lot lighter and happier and easier to live with, too.”
#30 “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
#31 “At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient… only the universe rearranging itself.”
#32 “From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.”
#33 “For men and women alike, this journey is a trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.”
#34 “Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.”
#35 “Give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is, and allow yourself to be exactly as you are.”
#36 “Make a list of what is really important to you. Embody it.”
#37 “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.”
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#38 “He who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.”
#39 “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.”
#40 “Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else’s. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else’s journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way?”
#41 “Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.”
#42 “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.”
#43 “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?”
#44 “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.”
#45 “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…”
#46 “Wherever you go, there you are.”
#47 “Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at the bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.”
#48 “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.”
#49 “The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”
#50 “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
Images credit – Getty Images
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References https://www.mindfulnesscds.com/ https://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/about-us/people/2-meet-our-faculty/kabat-zinn-profile/
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As a founder and chief author at InsightState.com, Bulgarea Candin helps readers on their spiritual journeys. His writings are designed to inspire creativity and personal growth, guiding readers on their journey to a more fulfilled and enlightened life.