Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

poor physical product quality

Muy bueno como introducción al mindfulness

Mindfulness is one of the latest American fads. Boo, Hiss!!! These techniques have been known to lots of us before it became a mainstream cure-all for what ails people. Do the things recommended in the book and judge the effectiveness/relevancy of 'mindfulness' for yourself.If it works, continue to use it. If it doesn't, toss it out. The problem won't be the book. The ineffectiveness will be all your own creation. See, that's how it works. Sometimes it's great news, at others you won't like the truth of it. So anyway, who am I to tell you what's true or not? No one! Don't take my word for it, try it and if you find it has value, use it. If you find it useless, move on to something that may be more for you. See, whatever answer you need is inside you already. This book may surface it, and it may not. Just keep looking until something clicks. That said, life is a journey... some signposts are correct for some and others are right for others. Trick is not to give up. Keep looking.You are where you are because you're not somewhere else. Things are as they are since that is how they are presently. What is your purpose in life? It is whatever you're doing now? Get it? No? Start with this well-written introduction to something that may change the direction and focus in life. No kidding... Oh, I was not paid for this review, nor was I given a free copy, or an exit pass on the wheel of Karma.

Review for Amazon by Jerry Woolpy of Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-ZinnThis is a book that defines meditation as awareness of yourself in the immediate present. It is not mystical, spiritual, or religious. It explains thinking as an epiphenomenon of the mind and the self as an ever changing nonentity linked to situations. We tend to think in the past and the future ignoring the sensations of the moment that we are actually in. By taking time to be mindful of our breadth, a pleasant image, or a compassionate idea, for five, fifteen, or even forty-five minutes a day we can reinforce a mindset to actually witness our connectedness to the universe and to discern an objective sense of the truth without the bias of selfish judgments and personal tastes.Mindfulness may help us to correct the direction of our lives (karma) toward relieving suffering and not causing the suffering of others (ahimsa). It provides a new way of being alive instead of trying to be something that you are not already. But like charity recommended in the Talmud, do not do it for self-aggrandizement or to impress others. It is strictly a personal effort. Mindfulness does not stop the vicissitudes of your life, but it helps you to cope with them. The apt metaphor is “You Can’t Stop the Waves but you Can Learn to Surf”.Contrary to common opinion, mindfulness is not shutting-off from the world but it is seeing the world more clearly. It involves concentration (samadhi) rather than relaxation. And it is not a way of doing. If someone hits you with a stick, rather than hitting back, you consider the chain of events that may have led to the hit. Maybe you should be angry at the hitter’s parents or the lack of compassion in the hitter’s upbringing. Notice how all events are connected. What may look like a show of strength may actually be weakness.Consider being soft when your impulse is to be hard. Mindfulness is openness, curiosity, availability, engagement. You can meditate sitting, standing, or even walking. The right way is the way that you choose to do it. Peter Matthiessen has written: The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.Mindfulness makes us aware of choices that we did not know we had. When you stop outward activity with a decision to sit, you may break the flow of bad karma and open the possibility of replacing it with good karma.The current edition of the book adds at the end: We all are. Perfectly what we are, including all our imperfections and inadequacies. The question is: can we be with it? Can we sit with it? Can we know it? Can we embrace our own wholeness and embody it, here, where we already are, in the very situations, good, bad, ugly, lost, confusing, heart-rending, terrifying, and painful, that we find ourselves in?

This books is perfect. I love how is written and I love the content. Reading it is a powerful exercise even if you won't start meditating. If you are thinking about buying it.. buy it! It's really one of the best books I've ever read!

For us, old people a precious help to live our old age happy and in good health.I gave it to 5 friends and members of our family, and to a teacher in the USA who is meditating with his students every morning. The students love it.!It may help us all to wake up and to realize in what kind of world we are living , and what we can do to make amends right where we are. Since my husband is almost blind, I read 2 or 3 pages every morning, we talk about it and it is an excellent way to improve and deepen our relationship.

同著者の "Full Catastrophe Living" がマインドフルネスによるストレス低減法の詳細な実践マニュアルとすればこの本は、その「こころ」を簡潔にかつ自在に説いた本といえます。日常生活におけるマインドフルネス瞑想法を多面的に解説しています。"Wherever you go,there you are" というタイトルの意味は、どこか条件の良いところへ行っても行かなくても、あなたの心は今のまま、といったところでしょうか。ふつうに生活している「いま」を意識して生きることが瞑想の目的だということでしょう。各トピックは１〜５ページと短いので、たいへん読みやすいと思います。

This book's six-word title not only captures the essence of its message, but in fact actually serves as an executive summary of its thesis. Which - stated in slightly more than six words! - goes something like this:We're all constantly in motion, going from one activity to another, being with one person after another, having one thought after another. It's easy to lose ourselves in this continuous stream of change, such that we sometimes speak and act with insufficient awareness of the impact of our words and our deeds. But, through the practice of staying mindful, we need not "lose ourselves" in any situation. We can train ourselves to be more fully self-aware no matter what the circumstances. Wherever we happen to be at any particular moment, that is the right time and the right place for mindfulness, precisely because that is where we happen to be at that moment.Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the renowned Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, structures his book into three distinct sections. The first part ("The Bloom of the Present Moment") considers the manifold virtues of staying focused on our present-moment experience, as opposed to dwelling on past events and/or planning for future events. The second part ("The Heart of the Practice") offers useful instruction on various aspects of practicing meditation, and includes some very useful scenarios for meditating outdoors in nature. The third and last part ("In the Spirit of Mindfulness") gives practical examples of taking the learning from meditation practice and putting that learning to good use in everyday situations.This closing section finds the author very generously sharing from his own experiences with mindfulness in daily life, even in some instances where he himself fails in his efforts to be mindful. These episodes proved for me to be the most powerful passages in this extraordinarily useful book - one that can be of service to both the beginning and the seasoned meditator, and one that can be returned to again and again for renewed insight into the practice and the benefits of always being right there, wherever you are.