I just love the level of presence in Jon. His work and life are of incredible value for society. Something which was always important to me, and I am thankful he mentioned it: it is about the teaching, not the teacher. I can’t believe Jesus wanted to be this holy figure everyone is praying to. People just got it wrong, again. Instead of being and putting the teaching to the test of life, they projected the responsibility to the teacher. One day he will save us. It seems like an easy road but it is already hell.
Mindfulness-training is the best there is . Mindful walking meditation , mindful sitting meditation , mindful working , resting talking writing etcetera , try to do everything as much as possible in meditativeness/mindfulness . Do not prejudice , do not lie , no mocking no hating , no agression , no violence , do not feel inferior and not superior , we are all equal as humans ... I am no buddhist no muslim no christian no theist no atheist no gnostic no agnostic , etcetera . I am pro the unity in impartiality principle . Neutrality is great , loving everybody equal . I try to be a master in mindfulness training , a master of/to myself ... (Thich Nhat Hanh was a great mindfulness master , Eckhart Tolle is a great mindfulness master) ...
Wisdom is timeless,no place to go,nothing to do, nothing to atteint,life is doing you more than you are doing life...former teacher thanks a lot for reminding us humility and awareness in a Time when humanity and earth are confronted to so many huge problems it is true that mindfulness is but just a step aside to connect with the entire world.merci monsieur Zinn.
The world is changing! Thank you for this amazing wisdom. I often feel I missed out on something because I didn't become aware earlier in life and I know, where I live it was harder to find this information but when Jon Kabat-Zinn says this was not as available 10 years ago...even 5 years ago...I am thankful I am here now.
Amazing as always. It is tough to see people "argue" about political views and or slurs from this talk, being as it shows how easily politics can and DO separate people. We gotta work together as a whole!
Thanks Jon for sharing your life experience. Thanks for bringing these lessons in so simple words. Because of the vibrations inside me, i know the learning is deaper that just the intellect, the knowing. Namaste
I knew he couldn’t get thru this without mentioning Buddhism. People project it on him cause they know MBSR was a collaboration with TNH. By declaring himself to not be a Buddhist he has a wider audience. No religious bias. He’s a Genius. He speaks with Authority about the Dharma. The last 10 mins is pure Buddhist thinking. Perfect answer about the renegade Rinpoche’s.
Thank you. Answer to last question really clicked in. There is witnessing, there is breathing, there is happening. Also you stance on enlightenment. Yes:)
It's important to note that you may be whole the way you are, but allowing this to come to fruition is when you actually become whole. It's paradoxical. When you focus on being whole, you're not, when you're no longer focused on that, you are. When you pray for something, you let it go and it comes to fruition.
You should have a lot of fun pushing this button so he repeats this over and over10:55 she can see the modality shift she had a place to do... I thought to go and in memory to attain to make it all happen.
An excellent commentary for people learning to teach mindfulness to others. I watched the entire video and saw no evidence of any anti-Trump or pro-gun-reform comments, so I would not give much credence to Well Researched comments in this thread.
republicans and democrats are both wrong , it is good that they become impartial . See the dvd film with actor Robin Williams in it : "Man of the year" , he plays the usa president who is nor republican nor democrat . Very inspiring film ... Enjoy .
I love your slant on mindfulness, but to speak of the horrible dark side of the US and refer to other countries as not experiencing this makes me doubt your knowledge of history.
I wish Jon would decouple his great insights into meditation from leftist political opinions (anti-Trump, pro gun-reform, etc), it turns me off and I'm sure it does for ~50% of the country as well, all of whom could benefit from mindfulness, nonetheless thanks for another great talk.
Anthony Mayfield I honestly think it's an outgrowth of mindfulness, but not left or right. If some insights have associations with a certain American political party or philosophy is not particularly important.
Well mindfulness raises your agreeableness which is correlated with left-leaning politics but also your conscientiousness which is correlated with right-leaning politics so it's hard to say. I think it's more selection bias, but either way mindfulness should be completely secular and apolitical, it doesn't help advance the cause of mindfulness to take snipes at the president thereby turning off roughly ~50% of the US population.
Anthony -- there's really no basis for saying that agreeableness or conscientiousness is correlated with either political affiliation. I do agree about insulting people, but I see none of that here. If one speaks the truth, and that truth happens to offend people because they don't like it or falsely reject it, then the issue lies not with the speaker. I've been a very hard critic of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and I try to base these criticisms on facts and data and uncontroversial evidence. But what I've seen is that the truth or falsity of the criticism takes a back seat to the tribalistic tendency to reject it as a threat, and dismiss the messenger as essentially an "outsider" who's biased. This is done on both sides. If criticizing Obama, you're not truly liberal, perhaps racist, perhaps brainwashed, or probably a Republican. If criticizing Trump, you're a leftist, anti-American, politically correct, etc. It's quite true that this back and forth is about even in the United States (with a slight advantage for Democrats in terms of numbers), but if all that means is rejecting anything that's considered criticism of the person or party one identifies with, we're in big trouble.
Well imagine if I did a talk on mindfulness and kept sniping at Obama, it would be roundly criticized, but because it's Trump it's socially acceptable, just a suggestion! Mindfulness shouldn't become like the Valley = totally elitist and looking down at middle America. And also, there actually is a basis, go read the medical literature and you will find it found in the literature.
Jon is without doubt a great teacher, but it is unfortunate that his method of teaching mindfulness has become an international franchised product. What started as a wonderful idea has ended up as McMindfullness.
