Sunday, May 18, 2008

Befriending

"Mindfulness is moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention. Mindfulness arises naturally from living. It can be strengthened through practice. This practice is sometimes called meditation. But meditation is not what you think.

Meditation is really about paying attention, and the only way in which we can pay attention is through our senses, all of them, including the mind. Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience. Of course, our experience is vast, and includes our own body, our mind, our heart, and the entire world."

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness (Excerpts from Coming to Our Senses)