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Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Book by Jon Kabat-Zinn · 17 quotes · Meditation, Mindfulness, Life

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Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life Quotes

“YOU HAVE TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO BE WEAK Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, riding the waves of “up” and “down,” “good” and “bad,” “weak” and “strong,” until you see that they are all inadequate to fully describe your experience. Be with the experience itself. Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful.”

StrongMeditationStrengthTrustMindfulnessWeakExperienceVulnerableLabelsFeelingPresentCryingGood And BadUp And DownWeak And StrongRiding The WavesWakefulMoment To Moment Awareness
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“There are always waves on the water. Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small, and sometimes they are almost imperceptible. The water’s waves are churned up by the winds, which come and go and vary in direction and intensity, just as do the winds of stress and change in our lives, which stir up the waves in our minds.”

MindWaterMeditationWindMindfulnessStressWavesChange Of LiveChurned Up
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“There is really no natural limit to the practice of loving kindness in meditation or in one’s life. It is an ongoing, ever-expanding realization of interconnectedness. It is also its embodiment. When you can love one tree or one flower or one dog or one place, or one person or yourself for one moment, you can find all people, all places, all suffering, all harmony in that one moment. Practicing in this way is not trying to change anything or get anywhere, although it might look like it on the surface. What it is really doing is uncovering what is always present. Love and kindness are here all the time, somewhere, in fact, everywhere. Usually our ability to touch them and be touched by them lies buried below our own fears and hurts, below our greed and our hatreds, below our desperate clinging to the illusion that we are truly separate and alone. (…). Make sure that you are not trying to help anybody else or the planet. Rather, you are simply holding them in awareness, honoring them, wishing them well, opening to their pain with kindness and compassion and acceptance.”

LoveLifeCompassionKindnessMeditationAwarenessAcceptanceMindfulnessIllusionHarmonyTouchedLovingUnlimitedPresenceExpandingRealisationInterconnectednessLoving KindnessUncoveringEverywhereWell WishingAll PeopleAll PlacesHonouringOpening To Pain
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“We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for. Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us.”

PsychologyMindfulness
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“Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself. The watching is the holding. By watching your thoughts without being drawn into them, you can learn something profoundly liberating about thinking itself, which may help you to be less of a prisoner of those thought patterns (….)”

ThinkingChangeMeditationMindfulnessThought PatternsLiberation About ThinkingHolding ThoughtNot Drawn Into ThoughtWatching Thought
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“We resonate with one another’s sorrows because we are interconnected. Being whole and simultaneously part of a larger whole, we can change the world simply by changing ourselves. If I become a center of love and kindness in this moment, then in a perhaps small but hardly insignificant way, the world now has a nucleus of love and kindness it lacked the moment before. This benefits me and it benefits others.”

LoveKindnessMeditationSorrowMindfulnessChange The WorldInterconnectednessCenterResonateChange OurselvesBeing WholeBeing Part OfBenefits AllBenefits Me
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“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.”

IfsKnowsWayTryingMayMomentsHappensAbleHopeEffortStepsPracticeKnowingMeditationLetting GoMindfulnessExpectationsStandingProfoundCirclesBest WayEncountersCultivationMeditation Practice
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“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

InspirationalChangeAttitudeLearningGraceAcceptancePositivePositive ThinkingMindfulnessWavePositivityCreatorLife ChangingPositive AttitudeProfessorsEncouragingStoppingSurfingChanging Your LifeMaking ChangesSurfThink PositiveWords Of EncouragementLive And LearnPositive Thinking And AttitudeSurferLife LearningKeep A Positive AttitudeLife AttitudeYou Live And You LearnChange Your AttitudeHaving A Positive AttitudeKnobsThink Positive Be PositivePositive Attitude In LifeHaving A Bad DayPositive Thinking In LifeCool StatusOcean WavePositive Attitude ImagesCan't Stop MeWave Of LifeAttitude Of LoveRiding The WaveWaves Breaking
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“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.”

LifeMightWould BeCoursesStrongDevelopmentMindfulnessDelusionAttachmentStillnessTranquilityTemptedCircuitsCultivationPeacefulnessDaily LivingMessinessShort Circuit
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“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.”

LifeMeanMomentsPracticeMeditationAwarenessRight NowMindfulnessIntentionCommitCalmnessOrientationInvitingEquanimityInterfacesMeditation Mindfulness
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“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.”

MindAblePracticeMindfulnessCapacityMirrorsCalmSurfaceConcentrationStableCalmnessAccuracyRobustCornerstonesCalming
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