Opening To Our Lives

Jon Kabat-Zinn's Science of Mindfulness

Interview by Krista Tippett, Host of Speaking Of Faith, a program on American Public Radio.

Scientist and author Jon Kabat-Zinn has changed medicine through his work on meditation and stress. We explore what he has learned, through science and experience, about mindfulness as a way of life; about slowing down time, as he says, and "opening to our lives." This is wisdom with immediate relevance to the ordinary and extreme stresses of our time; from economic peril, to parenting, to life in a digital age.

The real challenge that defines our humanity is this: how do we take on reality as it unfolds, navigate it, and truly stay awake and alive in this moment of life, whatever its contours. And here is the silver lining, if you will, of Buddhism's frank insistence on suffering as a feature of life: a parallel insistence that equanimity and even joy are within our grasp in every moment, without anything at all needing to change. The stakes for getting this right are high. As Thoreau said, in one of Jon Kabat-Zinn's favorite lines, "Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

Kabat-Zinn: "All of us... are being called upon to find out who we are and to live that authentically in the service of the world..."

no agenda
just this moment
just this breath

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