This is a curated selection of Jon Kabat-Zinn quotes (primarily sourced from publicly available videos, and personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Jon Kabat-Zinn’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Mind & Thinking Quotes
- Personal Self Quotes
- Present Moment Quotes
- Attention & Mindfulness Quotes
- Wholeness & Interconnectedness Quotes
25 Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes on Presence, Wholeness, Mindfulness, & More
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes on Mind & Thinking
“We get tremendous training in thinking, but there’s another element of our being that we get no education in, that’s obviously more powerful than thinking because it can take any thought and hold it … We never get any training in awareness at school.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“If you check on what your mind is up to, it’s up to memory. It’s up to thinking about things that are already over, to a large degree. The other favorite preoccupation of the mind is in the opposite direction: the future.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“When we’re always rushing to get someplace else, the byproduct of that is that we’re never where we actually are … Certain things can’t be hurried, but things do unfold in their own time.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“We’re continually scanning the world for something more interesting than this.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“There are intelligences at work that are deeper than the thought function.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes on the Personal Self
“We are continually constructing narratives about ourselves. I mean, after all, it’s the favorite topic, right? Me. What could be more interesting than me? The story of me, starring me.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Don’t take things personally when they’re not personal. Then you might ask, ‘When are they not personal?’ That’s a good question to keep asking yourself. It may be they’re never personal. It may be the ‘you’ that you think you are is not the real you.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“The problem is with the personal pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’. They are very problematic because who we think we are and who we actually are, are very different and there’s a huge separation. Who we think we are is very small compared to who we actually are.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“The thought about ‘how you are’ and ‘who you are’ is just that. It’s an event in the field of awareness.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“You’re already enlightened, but the personal pronoun that wants to grab it and say, ‘I’m enlightened’ is the problem.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes on the Present Moment
“The real meditation practice is life itself … The real meditation practice never stops … The real meditation is how you live your life moment to moment.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Can you feel how radical a shift it would be in your life to just take one moment and allow everything to be as it is, instead of wishing it was one way or another?” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“You don’t even have to shift your posture to be awake or to be aware … The posture is secondary. What’s important is the inner orientation. The willingness to open to the present moment.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Beginner’s mind is a lovely orientation to bring to the present moment. This moment is always fresh, always new. We’ve never been in this one before.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“We’re only alive when we’re alive.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes on Attention & Mindfulness
“There’s nothing Buddhist about attention. There’s nothing particularly Eastern. There’s nothing particularly magic or mysterious about it.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Mindfulness is not a philosophy. It’s not a good idea. It’s not a concept. It’s not a technique. It’s not a special state. It’s a way of being … It’s the art of living our lives as if they really mattered.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Mindfulness is the awareness that arises by paying attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally, in the present moment.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“One of the core principles of mindfulness is that whatever it is, it’s workable as long as you’re breathing … As long as you’re breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what’s wrong with you.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“When we focus on the breath, it’s never about the breath. It’s about the awareness.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes on Wholeness & Interconnectedness
“The most profound thing you can see is the interconnectedness of all things … Life is one completely integrated whole.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Nothing to do, no place to go, nothing to attain because you’re already whole.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Awareness, and silence, and stillness are all different ways of saying the same thing, of pointing to something that’s already yours that you don’t have to get.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“It’s my absolute pleasure to do whatever it is that I can to ignite an enduring passion for the emergence of a sense of deep recognition of interconnectedness.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Seeing what hasn’t been seen before. Everything’s exactly the same, only you’re not. That’s liberation.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
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