Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American physician, professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and a pioneer in mindfulness meditation. Who practiced mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) as a way to heal the mind and body. In 1971, he started working with patients at the Stress Reduction Clinic in Cambridge; this led to a gradual expansion of this practice to include other fields such as medicine, education, business, and social work.
Kabat-Zinn is best known for his work on stress reduction, healthcare, and the compassionate mind. In addition, he has made significant contributions to education and promoting health among people with chronic diseases.
To this day, he is still an active activist in promoting peace through mindfulness meditation.
Here are his most inspiring quotes that will motivate you never to give and go forward to achieve a better tomorrow.
25 Inspirational Jon Kabat Zinn Quotes
1. “You are only here now; you’re only alive in this moment.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
2. “We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
3. “When experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the soul.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
4. “Sometimes shutting off the sound on the television can allow you to actually watch the game and take it in in an entirely different and more direct way – a first-order, first-person experience – rather than filtered through the mind of another.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
5. “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… We may only go in circles…” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
6. “When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
7. “You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment,it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
8. “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
9. “The awareness is not part of the darkness or the pain; it holds the pain, and knows it, so it has to be more fundamental, and closer to what is healthy and strong and golden within you.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
10. “Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
11. “From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.”
12. “Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
13. “Wherever you go, there you are” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
14. “It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
15. “Discipline provides a constancy which is independent of what kind of day you had yesterday and what kind of day you anticipate today.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
16. “He who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
17. “The only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets. You’re only here now; you’re only alive in this moment.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
18. “Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else’s. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else’s journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way?” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
19. “The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
20. “Can you question who you are? And are you comfortable with not knowing?”
21. “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
22. “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
23. “You make problem, you have problem” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
24. “No one can listen to your body for you… To grow and heal, you have to take responsibility for listening to it yourself.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
25. “If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn
