Reader Reviews

This review is from: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Paperback) I have revisited this meditation guide many times since first reading it nearly five years ago. Kabat-Zinn is not a yogi, sage or Zen master. Rather, he is a meditation teacher and the director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He also teaches Massachusetts prison inmates how to meditate. He approaches meditation in a non-spiritual way. "Meditation can be a profound path for developing oneself, for refining one's perceptions, one's views, one's consciousness," he writes. "But, to my mind, the vocabulary of spirituality creates more practical problems than it solves" (p. 264). In this easy-to-read book, Kabat-Zinn shows us how to cultivate mindfulness in our lives. The "practice, practice, practice" of meditation enables us to find our "soul path, a path with heart" (p. xvi), and to "chart a course toward greater sanity and wisdom in our lives" (p. xx). Through meditation, Walden Pond can be found in our breath (p. 24). Meditation, Kabat-Zinn tells us, "is a Way of being, a Way of living, a Way of listening, a Way of walking along the path of life and being in harmony with things as they are" (p. 88). "Dwelling inwardly for extended periods, we come to know something of the poverty of always looking outside ourselves for happiness, understanding, and wisdom" (p. 96). Besides learning how to surf the waves of life through mindfulness training, in this book you will also find words to live by on non-doing, patience, letting go, non-judging, voluntary simplicity, the delusion of positive thinking, ahimsa (non-harming), anger and parenting. Whether you are new to the meditation cushion or a longtime practitioner, if you are looking for a simple, how-to book on meditation, "this is it." G. Merritt