61
" It might have helped us considerably to have been shown, perhaps through some simple exercises in elementary school, that we are not our thoughts, that we can watch them come and go and learn not to cling to them or run after them. Even if we didn’t understand it at the time, it would have been helpful just to hear it. Likewise, it would have been helpful to know that the breath is an ally, that it leads to calmness just by watching it. Or that it is okay to just be, that we don’t have to run around all the time doing or striving or competing in order to feel that we have an identity—that we are fundamentally whole as we are. We "
― Jon Kabat-Zinn , Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
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" Citing both the Buddha and Aristotle, Sachs makes the case for a “middle path,” a path of moderation and balance between work and non-work (what he calls, quaintly in this day and age, “leisure”), savings and consumption, self-interest and compassion, individualism and citizenship. "
― Jon Kabat-Zinn , Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
76
" Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. —NADINE STAIR, EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY "
― Jon Kabat-Zinn , Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
77
" You might become aware of how addicted we can be to our devices, and to that 24/7 connectivity that has us always available and immediately responsive to everybody else, clutching our phones as if they were our oxygen line to life itself, and in the process, perhaps losing touch more and more with ourselves and with our moments—so that, ironically, some of the most important connections of all, namely, with our own deepest analog self, with our body, and with our present-moment experience, can be seriously eclipsed. "
― Jon Kabat-Zinn , Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness