Being At Home Together - Jon Kabat-Zinn

In this meditation, Jon will guide us in taking up residency in awareness and apprehending the vast scope of human experience and interconnectedness in the only moment they can be apprehended— this one — and point out mindfulness’s individual, social, and global potential for optimizing well being and healing.

Transcript

Let's establish ourselves in whatever way feels comfortable to you,

In whatever posture feels comfortable to you.

And in particular,

Because we're so cognitively and conceptually addicted,

Giving yourself over to the felt sense of the body as a whole,

Sitting here breathing.

Whether you're anchored on a cushion or you're anchored on a chair.

And letting the whole ocean of thought and all the waves of thought that arise at the surface,

Just do itself,

That it is not at all an impediment to meditation practice of any kind.

Unless we create an impediment by wanting things to be different from the way they are.

But to just recognize that your heart or your mind or your consciousness or whatever you want to call it,

Is the entire ocean.

It's not merely the waving on the surface.

And so can you drop in and rest here in an awareness that is grounded in the body,

But is itself boundless,

Mysterious in some very,

Very interesting and precise ways.

And seeing if you can take up residency here moment by moment by timeless moment.

And noticing if there's a certain way in which an agenda is creeping in.

A doing.

A striving.

A wishing for some thing,

Some result,

Some condition.

And if that is the case,

Simply noticing that sort of current in the mind stream.

And noticing that the noticing function or the awareness function or the awarenessing function,

If you will,

Isn't at all caught in that whirlpool or eddy or current.

And whatever its essential nature is,

It's far larger by virtue of the fact that it can hold whatever it is that arises.

Within its boundlessness,

Within its boundless domain.

And noticing,

It's hard to avoid noticing,

Especially if you open your eyes,

That we're all in our separate domiciles,

If you will.

On virtually every continent on the planet.

And yet we're all together in the room of the human heart and the room of our collective intentionality.

Right here in this moment,

No matter what time zone you're in.

And marveling at this.

This sense of the possibility of being at home together.

Each in our own unique ways.

And yet also with a kind of larger open-hearted spaciousness and intentionality.

And a feeling for,

Why don't we call it the community?

Of people who are in the same place.

And the community of people who,

In some profound way,

And again I'm intuiting here,

Are in love.

With perhaps we might say what's deepest and best and in many ways most impossible to articulate.

About what is really going on here in our humanity.

On this very fragile planet.

At this very fragile moment.

And scary moment.

In many ways.

We all deeply in our hearts know that the objects of attention are not what it's really about.

It's the attending itself.

And the tenderness in some sense of the attending,

The vulnerability,

The open-hearted spaciousness of it.

And the non-self-centered dimension of it.

When we inquire who's sitting,

Who's breathing,

Who's meditating.

Who goes by the name filled in the blank.

And in your heart of hearts you know that you don't know fully.

And may not even know who's making the claim.

And that name is not what it's really about.

And that not knowing is,

And knowing that you don't know is wisdom.

And it's already here and it's already,

I'll use a pronoun here,

Possess a pronoun,

Ours.

But I mean it as a sense,

In the sense of a sort of natural property of the unfolding possibilities of the human enterprise,

Genome.

Genome,

Which is completely evident,

Contains wakefulness,

Contains compassion that arise unbidden in key moments but can also be cultivated as a kind of,

If you'll pardon my saying this,

A new default mode,

A default mode of equanimity,

Of clarity,

Of the boundless spacious characteristic of human awareness.

So the whole domain of the non-instrumental,

Yes,

The various doorways into meditation,

The non-instrumental,

The non-instrumental,

Yes,

The various doorways into meditation practice involve highly instrumental protocols of one kind or another,

What to do after you discover that your mind can't really stay on any object of attention,

Never mind the breath sensations in your body or your belly,

And then it wanders off and it can fall into any number of ruminative whirlpools.

And all that instrumental,

Instructional set are really,

You know,

Signs pointing towards something that's already here,

Non-instrumental.

So Tibetans sometimes call it non-meditation,

A characteristic of mind that's,

As they call it,

Non-fabricated,

Unfabricated,

Undistracted,

But not as a goal,

But as a kind of expression of or characteristic of our capacity to reside in,

To take up residency in awareness itself.

So the dance between the non-instrumental and the instrumental,

Absolutely fundamental to this practice,

Is dropping in,

Taking a stand,

Taking our seat,

And not merely in formal meditation,

But in life itself,

Because there's no separation whatsoever,

Except in contrived imaginings between meditation and life itself unfolding in awareness.

And this love affair has to,

In a certain sense,

Bring in an enormous amount of non-attachment to name and form and view and perspective,

And especially our own,

When it comes to recognizing diversity,

When it comes to recognizing injustice,

When it comes to recognizing vast separation between the way different groups see reality,

Which is playing itself out moment by moment in the United States at this moment.

And it's as if half of the body of the country is living in an entirely different reality that demonizes,

Or in some sense,

Dehumanizes the other half.

There is,

This is a profound disease and dis-ease,

And our envelopes are all going to be extremely stretched,

Whether you're an American or whether you live someplace else on the planet,

No matter what country you're in in the coming days,

Months,

And years,

To in some sense recognize a more fundamental way of being that liberates us from delusion,

Not just liberates those other people from delusion,

But liberates us from our own delusions,

Including the scientific delusion sometimes.

And of course,

Those deep,

Deep,

Deep delusions are the most important ones.

And of course,

Those deeper elements of selfing that manifest is greed,

More for me to satisfy my endless hunger or loneliness,

Confusion,

Insecurity,

And damn anybody else,

Especially those others that see the world differently.

That's a form of madness.

And that's a pandemic,

A virus of its own.

And very hard to recognize when it's in us.

And we create this othering.

And so in the remaining minutes of the sitting,

Dropping underneath,

I invite you to drop underneath everything that I've said or anything that's evoked in you,

And seeing if it's not possible to simply keep up a seamless continuity inhabiting a wakefulness that wouldn't be quite appropriate to call yours,

But it's not.

I would say ultimately,

It's not a lot of risk in saying this,

But perhaps you're truest nature beyond the greed,

The hatred and delusion that reside not just in everybody else,

But in us.

8 Resting in the miraculous,

Extraordinary genius,

Let's say,

Of this emergence in the form of you in this moment,

In the envelope of your skin,

In the condition of your body at the moment,

However it is,

Wherever it is on the planet.

So as those of you who have sat with me know,

Sometimes I'll ring bells at the beginning of a period of guided meditation.

Sometimes I'll talk a lot during the meditation.

Sometimes I won't say a word.

Those are probably in many people's estimations the best meditations are the ones where I don't say anything or point out anything.

But each one is really a unique opportunity for us.

And the invitation is always the same.

Are you awake already?

Who knows?

How would you know?

Who's breathing?

Who wants to know?

Who are you?

Anyway.

What are you when it comes right down to it?

Is it possible to take a holistic perspective that integrates all the neuroscience and all the other dimensions of science but doesn't get caught in a kind of reifying of that and missing the profundity of the non-instrumental formless elements of deep inquiry into the nature of embodied wakefulness,

Wisdom,

Compassion,

Kindness in the only moment any of us ever get.

Makes sense?

Well 1000s,

What do you think?

DC?

Reviews

I am grateful for this experience with who I consider to be the father of “medicinal” meditation or, perhaps healing mindfulness. As an acupuncturist and yoga teacher, I’ve followed Dr Kabat-Zinn and incorporated his recordings and philosophies into my practice for decades. Great to have him here on Insight Timer now❣️🥰🙏

Grateful for this opportunity to return to the work of my first meditation teacher so many years ago and sense the evolution in his own practice and in his teaching. I would love to hear more from Jon Kabat-Zinn on Insight Timer.

The collective intentionality of our humanity rests on helping others see and benefit from meditations such as this. Thank you for sharing Jon! Tusen tack! ❤️

Jon Kabat-Zinn, through his book and his CD's, was my first meditation teacher. Decades later, having since explored meditation in other forms and with other teschers, I'm still impressed by the wonderful, durable foundation he gave me. I was delighted to find this on Insight Timer.

So nice to hear Jon Kabat Zinn again! My first meditation instructor (on CDs!) 14 years ago! ❤️

Profound words and ideas. Mostly, it's Jon talking about being present with compassion and elucidating what that means. Deep sitting at the end.

Loved the deep unconditional egoless essence this took me to inside myself , thank you

Lots of talking. If you want silence, this is the wrong meditation for you. If you want wisdom that sinks in, give it a listen.

I vow to listen to Jon Kabwt Zinn every day until I can move to a practice of my own.

Jon Kabat Zinn, my introduction to mind-body medicine in 2001 - twenty years later and I could not be more grateful for being, here, now. ❤️🙏🏽

This is very inspiring in only a way Jon Kabat-Zin can deliver

Reading Wherever you go there you are. and found this enjoyablemeditation. On this journey or path I have found much resistance but its starting to fade which is very interesting

JKB is the best! Thank you for this offering.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is incredible-the creator of MBSR, a great soul with empathy and wonderful lguided meditations and talks. Please add more sessions with him!

Great instruction, articulating the feel of meditation so well

Extraordinary experience, thank you.

Deep bows. Thank you for your words of wisdom. 🤍

Lovely to hear Jon KZ again. It's been too long. Always a pleasure. Always enlightening. Thank you 🙏

🙏 for introducing me to meditation some 30 years ago now. It was lovely to hear your voice and your words 💕💕

Thank you for this practice. I am grateful for your observations and found myself longing for spaciousness between them. Nevertheless, I found comfort and solace in them. Sending good wishes.