60 pages • 2 hours read
Jon Kabat-ZinnWherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Pitfalls of Living in Ignorance (or Mindlessness)
Kabat-Zinn warns his readers that in living mindlessly, individuals cannot appreciate and fully participate in their lives. He stresses how “easy it is to sleepwalk through and therefore miss much of our life” (175). Kabat-Zinn uses the metaphor of a crowded attic to illustrate the way our minds are cluttered with useless thoughts that obscure our view of the present moment. These thoughts, like “old bags and accumulated junk,” “intrude, carry us off, [and] prevent us from concentrating” (27). Because of this “accumulated junk” clouding our view, “our ordinary waking state of consciousness is seen as being severely limited and limiting” (15).
It is limited that we cannot truly see what is in front of us if we are not working to live mindfully. Instead, our busy minds mean that we are interpreting “a personal fiction” that is colored by “thoughts, fantasies, and impulses” (10). These feelings and thoughts that are filling our mind, about our preferences, preconceptions, projections, and fears, “spin out continuously” and obscure what we are seeing (10). Kabat-Zinn calls this “the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking;” he warns that this “sickness” colors all that we see and “screens us from the world and from the basic purity of our being” (51). We cannot appreciate ourselves or our environment for what they are when living mindlessly; instead, we project our own thoughts onto our surroundings, each other, and ourselves.
As well as inhibiting us from participating in the purity of our being and our surroundings, our inability to fully exist in the present is also severely problematic because we cannot make authentic decisions over our direction if we are not perceiving what is in front of us and reflecting on it. Instead, one is simply propelled along by automated thoughts and conditioning: “stuck in the momentum coming out of the past, with no clue to our own imprisonment, and no way out” (145).
Kabat-Zinn uses the metaphor of a flowing river to help us to conceptualize the constant flow of our thoughts. When we live mindlessly, we allow the river (our racing thoughts) to carry us on; our actions are driven by automation rather than “undertaken in awareness” (18). Only with a commitment to mindful living can we “step out of the current” and let the metaphorical racing river of thoughts “guide us rather than tyrannize us” (18).
Kabat-Zinn warns readers, in his Afterword, that the digital age threatens our peace and stillness more than any other phase of human history. This busyness of modern life is “dramatically increasing the risk of never being present with and for ourselves” (175). Recognizing when we are living busily and mindlessly is of critical importance; Kabat-Zinn stresses that we must make time to reconnect with our authentic self and our immediate surroundings.
The Importance of Mindful Living
Kabat-Zinn suggests that it is only through mindfulness that we will be able to become our most authentic, transformed, and healed selves. Buddhism, which the practice of mindfulness originated from, “is fundamentally about being in touch with your own deepest nature and letting it flow out of you unimpeded. It has to do with waking up and seeing things as they are” (16). At its core, mindfulness simply means living presently. It involves achieving a measure of stillness and calmness so that life can unfold, moment-by-moment, and be viewed for what it is.
Although the concept is simple, it is challenging. Our minds are constantly cluttered with extraneous thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Kabat-Zinn warns that, “if we are not careful, our thinking can easily crowd out other equally precious and miraculous facets of our being” (18). Living mindfully entails viewing our constant thoughts with honesty, but with a level of objectivity and calmness. Mindfulness allows us to “see and know our thoughts as thoughts rather than getting caught up in them as reality” (18). Thoughts and feelings should be acknowledged and then let go, rather than dwelled on: “letting go […] is a conscious decision to release with full acceptance into the stream of present moments as they are unfolding” (48). Once these extraneous thoughts are released into the “stream of present moments,” the present moment is brought into awareness; it can be fully seen, appreciated, and acted upon.
Kabat-Zinn explores his own challenges with managing his anger as a way to explore the importance of (and inherent challenge of) living mindfully. After an incident with his family’s cat dish, Kabat-Zinn found that he was able to find the root of the feeling (he felt ignored and disrespected), reflect on it, and master it. He reflects that occasions where one feels angry, or any other heightened negative emotion, “are good opportunities to experiment with mindfulness as a pot into which you can put all your feelings and just be with them, letting them slowly cook, reminding yourself that you don’t have to do anything with them right away” (160). Kabat-Zinn found that the feelings, with time and reflection, were “more easily digested and understood” (160). Once these overwhelming feelings were held in the “pot” of mindfulness for a time, Kabat-Zinn found that he was able to understand them more fully and act on them in a way that felt authentic. This example serves as a lesson to readers on how mindfulness can help one to manage overwhelming situations, simply through a commitment to being present with, and cognizant of, one’s emotional experience.
The Challenges and Benefits of Meditation
According to Kabat-Zinn, meditation is a means by which one can reconnect completely with the present moment and therefore live mindfully. The main anchoring tenet of meditation is connection to one’s breath. Kabat-Zinn reminds readers that “breathing helps you to reconnect with the wonder of your body” (125).
During meditation, “big questions” about identity, purpose, and life’s meaning can be posed and pondered in a spirit of open-minded, curious inquiry, and without the pressure of deducing firm answers. Through these questions, and through observing the thoughts that come up in response to them without judgment, we can come closer to living a life that feels authentic and true.
Kabat-Zinn warns that during meditation, one does not try to achieve transcendence, nor is it about positive thinking: “Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself” (71). This can be challenging; there is often the temptation to affect or judge the nature of one’s thoughts. The challenge of meditation, which Kabat-Zinn refers to as “conscience discipline,” is to simply observe in acceptance and stillness: “We don’t have to let our anxieties and our desire for certain results dominate the quality of the moment” (45).
Kabat-Zinn uses the metaphor of stepping behind a waterfall to understand meditation. Thoughts still occur during meditation, just as a waterfall will continue to fall if we step behind it into a cave or depression. However, instead of participating in the thoughts, we are merely watching the thoughts. Metaphorically speaking, Kabat Zinn says, “We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent” (72). This can lead to prolonged periods of mindful concentration, where one is aware of the entirety of their experience. Often, the clutter of thoughts will fade so that the meditator is left with stillness; they can merely appreciate the majesty and power of their breath (the meditator shouldn’t condemn or rail against thoughts that come up; instead, they can acknowledge and observe the thoughts).
Meditation can be performed in a variety of positions: sitting down, lying down, walking, or in stretching/poses (as in yoga). Sitting down “embodies wakefulness,” when it is done with intention and erectness. Kabat-Zinn celebrates the inherent majesty and power of this posture above others, as when we “sit with dignity, we are coming back to our original worthiness” (79). He urges the meditator to channel a mountain, as mountains evoke “elevation, massiveness, majesty, unmovingness, and rootedness” (81). These are the exact qualities that should be brought into the posture and attitude in order to achieve a meditative state; one should be “moutainlike” in their “majesty and solidity” (76).
On the other hand, lying meditation allows one to scan their body, identify tension, and tap into emotional states that might have been unknown. Yoga “folds movement and stillness into one another” (104). In walking meditation, as in yoga, one practices “non-doing” while “doing”; the principle of “letting go into the next moment, not holding to the last one” is the same among all meditation types (88-89). All of these different methods of meditation are nourishing in different ways; Kabat-Zinn urges meditators to experiment with different types of meditation as well as different lengths of meditative practice to find a daily practice that best suits them.
