Contents

Introduction

PART I Entering

Beginner’s Mind

The Breath

Who Is Breathing?

The Hardest Work in the World

Taking Care of This Moment

Mindfulness Is Awareness

Doing Mode and Being Mode

A Grounding in Science

Mindfulness Is Universal

Wakefulness

Stabilizing and Calibrating Your Instrument

Inhabiting Awareness Is the Essence of Practice

The Beauty of Discipline

Adjusting Your Default Setting

Awareness: Our Only Capacity Robust Enough to Balance Thinking

Attention and Awareness Are Trainable Skills

Nothing Wrong with Thinking

Befriending Our Thinking

Images of Your Mind That Might Be Useful

Not Taking Our Thoughts Personally

Selfing

Our Love Affair with Personal Pronouns — Especially I, Me, and Mine

Awareness Is a Big Container

The Objects of Attention Are Not as Important as the Attending Itself

PART II Sustaining

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

A World-Wide Phenomenon

An Affectionate Attention

Mindfulness Brought to All the Senses

Proprioception and Interoception

The Unity of Awareness

The Knowing Is Awareness

Life Itself Becomes the Meditation Practice

You Already Belong

Right Beneath Our Noses

Mindfulness Is Not Merely a Good Idea

To Come Back in Touch

Who Am I? Questioning Our Own Narrative

You Are More Than Any Narrative

You Are Never Not Whole

Paying Attention in a Different Way

Not Knowing

The Prepared Mind

What Is Yours to See?

PART III Deepening

No Place to Go, Nothing to Do

The Doing That Comes Out of Being

To Act Appropriately

If You Are Aware of What Is Happening, You Are Doing It Right

Non-Judging Is an Act of Intelligence and Kindness

You Can Only Be Yourself — Thank Goodness!

Embodied Knowing

Feeling Joy for Others

The Full Catastrophe

Is My Awareness of Suffering Suffering?

What Does Liberation from Suffering Mean?

Hell Realms

Liberation Is in the Practice Itself

The Beauty of the Mind That Knows Itself

Taking Care of Your Meditation Practice

Energy Conservation in Meditation Practice

An Attitude of Non-Harming

Greed: The Cascade of Dissatisfactions

Aversion: The Flip Side of Greed

Delusion and the Trap of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Now Is Always the Right Time

The “Curriculum” Is “Just This”

Giving Your Life Back to Yourself

Bringing Mindfulness Further into the World

PART IV Ripening

The Attitudinal Foundations of Mindfulness Practice

Non-Judging

Patience

Beginner’s Mind

Trust

Non-Striving

Acceptance

Letting Go

PART V Practicing

Getting Started with Formal Practice

Mindfulness of Eating

Mindfulness of Breathing

Mindfulness of the Body as a Whole

Mindfulness of Sounds, Thoughts, and Emotions

Mindfulness as Pure Awareness

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Recommended Reading

About the Author

Also by Jon Kabat-Zinn

About Sounds True

Copyright