Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

279 Pages·2010·0.73 MB·English

by  Matt Blaylock

Mindfulness Meditation
for everyday life
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Published by
Piatkus Books - London
28 June 2001
ISBN-10: 074991422X
ISBN-13: 978-0749914226
CONTENTS
Dedication
About the Author
Acknowledgement
Introduction
Part 1 - The Bloom of the Present Moment
What Is Mindfulness?
Simple But Not Easy
Stopping
This Is It
Capturing Your Moments
Keeping the Breath in Mind
Practice Practice
Practice Does Not Mean Rehearsal
You Don't Have to Go Out of Your Way to Practice
Waking Up
Keeping It Simple
You Can't Stop the Waves But You Can Learn to
Surf
Can Anybody Meditate?
In Praise of Non-Doing
The Non-Doing Paradox
Non-Doing in Action
Doing Non-Doing
Patience
Letting Go
Non-Judging
Trust
Generosity
You Have to Be Strong Enough to Be Weak
Voluntary Simplicity
Concentration
Vision
Meditation Develops Full Human Beings
Practice as a Path
Meditation - Not to Be Confused with Positive
Thinking
Going Inside
Part 2- The Heart of Practice
Sitting Meditation
Taking Your Seat
Dignity
Posture
What to Do with Your Hands
Coming Out of Meditation
How Long to Practice?
No Right Way
A What-Is-My-Way? Meditation
The Mountain Meditation
The Lake Meditation
Walking Meditation
Standing Meditation
Lying-Down Meditation
Getting Your Body Down on the Floor at Least
Once a Day
Not Practicing Is Practicing
Loving Kindness Meditation
Part 3- In the Spirit of Mindfulness
Sitting by Fire
Harmony
Early Morning
Direct Contact
Is There Anything Else You Would Like to Tell Me?
Your Own Authority
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Going Upstairs
Cleaning the Stove While Listening to Bobby
McFerrin
What is my job on the planet with a capital J?
Mount Analogue
Interconnectedness
Non-Harming - Ahimsa
Karma
Wholeness and Oneness
Eachness and Suchness
What Is This?
Selfing
Anger
Cat-Food Lessons
Parenting As Practice
Parenting Two
Some Pitfalls Along the Path
Is Mindfulness Spiritual?
Dedication
For Myla, Will, Naushon, and Serena,
Wherever you go.
About the Author
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is the founder and director of
the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of
Massachusetts Medical Center and Associate
Professor of Medicine in the Division of Preventive
and Behavioral Medicine. His clinic was featured in
1993 in the Public Broadcasting Series Healing and
the Mind, with Bill Meyers. He is currently a Fellow of
the Fetzer Institute. His major research interests
include mind/body interactions for healing, clinical
applications of mindfulness meditation for people with
chronic pain and stress-related disorders, and the
societal applications of mindfulness. In 1992, he and
his colleagues established a mindfulness-based
stress reduction clinic in the inner city in Worcester,
Massachusetts, serving predominantly low-income
and minority residents. He also directs a joint
program between the University of Massachusetts
Medical Center, the Massachusetts Committee on
Criminal Justice, and the Massachusetts Department
of Corrections to deliver mindfulness training to
prison inmates in an attempt to reduce addictive and
self-destructive behaviors, violence, and recidivism.
In the past, he has trained groups of judges, Catholic
priests, Olympic athletes (the 1984 Olympic Men's
Rowing Team), and health professionals in
mindfulness. He is the author of Full Catastrophe
Living: using the wisdom of your body and mind to
face stress, pain and illness (Delta, 1991).
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Myla Kabat-Zinn, Sarah Doering,
Larry Rosenberg, John Miller, Danielle Levi Alvares,
Randy Paulsen, Martin Diskin, Dennis Humphrey,
and Ferris Urbanowski for reading early drafts of the
manuscript and giving me their valuable insights and
encouragement. My deep appreciation to Trudy and
Barry Silverstein for the use of Rocky Horse Ranch
during an intensive period of early writing, and to
Jason and Wendy Cook for Western adventures
during those wonderful days. Profound gratitude to
my editors, Bob Miller and Mary Ann Naples, for their
deep commitment to excellence and the pleasure of
working with them. I thank them, the Hyperion family,
literary agent, Patricia Van der Leun, Dorothy
Schmiderer Baker, book designer, and Beth
Maynard, artist, for the care and attention they gave
to the birthing of this book.
Introduction
Guess what? When it comes right down to it,
wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind
up doing, that's what you've wound up doing.
Whatever you are thinking right now, that's what's on
your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has
already happened. The important question is, how
are you going to handle it? In other words, "Now
what?"
Like it or not, this moment is all we really have to
work with. Yet we all too easily conduct our lives as if
forgetting momentarily that we are here, where we
already are, and that we are in what we are already
in. In every moment, we find ourselves at the
crossroad of here and now. But when the cloud of
forgetfulness over where we are now sets in, in that
very moment we get lost, "Now what?" becomes a
real problem.
By lost, I mean that we momentarily lose touch with
ourselves and with the full extent of our possibilities.
Instead, we fall into a robotlike way of seeing and
thinking and doing. In those moments, we break
contact with what is deepest in ourselves and affords
us perhaps our greatest opportunities for creativity,