Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jon Kabat-Zinn
Jon Kabat-Zinn

Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes

Professor

Filter quotes by topic

AllMindfulnessMeditationMomentsWayLifeIfsAwarenessMindAttentionPracticeFeelsMayMeanThinkingKnowsPeoplePay AttentionPresent MomentAcceptanceBody

Famous Jon Kabat-Zinn 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
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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.”

ArtistInterestingTeacherMeditationScientistPhysicsInsightfulLaboratory
Author:Jon Kabat-Zinn
Create image

“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.”

PeopleImportantDifferentEnoughTodaySufferingRealizingEmotionAttentionBrainMeditationInfluenceStressAddictionPay Attention
Author:Jon Kabat-Zinn
Create image

“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
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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.”

MayMomentsHelpingHappensNextRealizingKnowingPathOur LivesMeditationInfluenceBeing YourselfUnfoldingYou Like ItKnowing Something
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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.”

IfsFeelsKindMayMeanLongMatterPainMovingCertainSufferingEnergyGrowthLevelsEffortHealingMeditationConsciousCapacityStressIllInner PeaceBreathingHopeless
Author:Jon Kabat-Zinn
Create image

“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.”

NeedsDoneFacesPurposeEnergyEasyCourageOur LivesMeditationSpecialActivityContraryStillnessPassiveSpecial Times
Book:Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingWayLooksStillsMightWaterViewsBehindsMeditationRocksMindfulnessLook At MeCavesAnother WayCultivatingWaterfallsVantage Point
Author:Jon Kabat-Zinn
Create image

“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.”

IfsGivingFirstsMayBodySeemsWalksAttentionSilenceCasesWiseMeditationJourneyMovementWalkingPureActivityOneselfWanderManifestationStillnessArtificialGesturesHikingInwardStoppingUnfoldingTrekkingStrollingParkingEmbodimentSaunteringPure LoveLife Unfolding
Book:Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness
Create image