Cultivating Mindfulness

Beginning or Deepening a Personal Meditation Practice

Jon Kabat-Zinn

1. The real meditation is how you live your life.

2. In order to live life fully, you have to be present for it.

3. To be present, it helps to purposefully bring awareness to your moments – otherwise you may miss many of them.

4. You do that by paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to whatever is arising inwardly and outwardly.

5. This requires a great deal of kindness toward yourself, which you deserve.

6. It helps to keep in mind that good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, the present moment is the only time any of us are alive. Therefore, it’s the only time to learn, grow, see what is really going on, find some degree of balance, feel and express emotions such as love and appreciation, and do what we need to do to take care of ourselves – in other words, embody our intrinsic strength and beauty and wisdom – even in the face of pain and suffering.

7. So a gentle love affair with the present moment is important.

8. We do that through learning to rest in awareness of what is happening inwardly and outwardly moment by moment by moment – it is more a “being” than a “doing.”

9. Formal and informal meditation practices are specific ways in which you can ground, deepen, and accelerate this process, so it is useful to carve out some time for formal practice on a regular daily basis – maybe waking up fifteen or twenty minutes earlier than you ordinarily would to catch some time for ourselves.

10. We bring awareness to our moments only as best we can.

11. We are not trying to create a special feeling or experience – simply to realize that this moment is already very special – because you are alive and awake in it.

12. This is hard, but well worth it.

13. It takes a lot of practice.

14. Lots of practice

15. But you have a lot of moments – and we can treat each one as a new beginning.

16. So there are always new moments to open up to if we miss some.

17. We do all this with a huge amount of self-compassion.

18. And remember, you are not your thoughts or opinions, your likes or dislikes. They are more like weather patterns in your mind that you can be aware of – like clouds moving across the sky, – and so don’t have to be imprisoned by.

19. Befriending yourself in this way is the adventure of a lifetime, and hugely empowering.

20. Try it for a few weeks – it grows on you.

From Cultivating Mindfulness (PDF) by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a helpful guide offered at the site Mindfulness CDs, with links to CDs for purchase based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction clinic series and other books from Kabat-Zinn, links to talks for free download, recent articles, etc.

Yes. Thank you, sharanam.

Holding up mypurring cat to the moonI sighed. —Jack Kerouac, American Haiku, 1959When he wasn’t “on the road,” famous writer Jack Kerouac was a self-avowed, cat-loving homebody. The photo above of Jack, taken by John Sampas, is from our Berg Collection of English and American Literature and is proof that he loved kitties. So happy Caturday! Thanks to our own Jeremy Megraw for finding this gem! Meanwhile, need inspiration? Wander through the Jack Kerouac Papers at NYPL and discover troves of unpublished fiction (“The Brooklyn Cat”) and non-fiction (“Untitled,” which involves observations on cat and human behavior). Thank you, nypl

Holding up my
purring cat to the moon
I sighed.

—Jack Kerouac, American Haiku, 1959

When he wasn’t “on the road,” famous writer Jack Kerouac was a self-avowed, cat-loving homebody. The photo above of Jack, taken by John Sampas, is from our Berg Collection of English and American Literature and is proof that he loved kitties. So happy Caturday! Thanks to our own Jeremy Megraw for finding this gem! Meanwhile, need inspiration? Wander through the Jack Kerouac Papers at NYPL and discover troves of unpublished fiction (“The Brooklyn Cat”) and non-fiction (“Untitled,” which involves observations on cat and human behavior).

Thank you, nypl

Haiku is an open-eyed engagement with the word and with the world. It is not so much what paints itself on the retina as what resonates – through one or more of the senses – with the human spirit. Haiku moments, in all their purity, surprise us when – and only when – we have achieved passive, non-striving awareness.
Gabriel Rosenstock, “Haiku Enlightenment.” With thanks to The Awakened Eye.
Fred McDarrah: Jack Kerouac (Thank you, i12bent & fuckyeahbeatgeneration) “I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.” —Jack Kerouac, “On the Road,” Part 1, Ch. 3

Fred McDarrah: Jack Kerouac (Thank you, i12bent & fuckyeahbeatgeneration)

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.”

—Jack Kerouac, “On the Road,” Part 1, Ch. 3

track You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
artist Bob Dylan
album Blood On The Tracks

Bob Dylan | “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” (Blood On The Tracks, 1975). Thank you, eternelle-ritournelle.

(Source: tambourine-man)

William Gordon Shields: Manhattan Street in the Rain [New York] c.1910. Thank you, lushlight & turnofthecentury:

William Gordon Shields: Manhattan Street in the Rain [New York] c.1910. Thank you, lushlight & turnofthecentury:

Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you’d go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that’s gone.
Tom Waits (Thank you, buffleheadcabin & nedhepburn)
Photo by Hengki Koentjoro. Thank you, firsttimeuser.

Photo by Hengki Koentjoro. Thank you, firsttimeuser.

Learn to be internally alone. Don’t allow people and things to invade your being.
Edward Salim Michael, “The Law of Attention”
track Chant from a Holy Book
artist The Gurdjieff Folk Instrument Ensemble & Levon Eskenia
album Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff

The Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble & Levon Eskenian | “Chant from a Holy Book, Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff, ECM Records. More information about this release at NPR and here is a review of it by my good friend and colleague, Lee van Laer.