Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.”

“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.”

“Mindfulness is often spoken of as the heart of Buddhist meditation. It's not about Buddhism, but about paying attention. That's what all meditation is, no matter what tradition or particular technique is used.”

“The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.”

“Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.”

“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.”

“Even before smart phones and the Internet, we had many ways to distract our selves. Now that's compounded by a factor of trillions.”

“Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.”