“Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.”
Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are
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Jon Kabat-Zinn 27
American academic 1944Related quotes

Quoted in Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970), ch. 35

Within You Without You, from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Lyrics

Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations"
Context: The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.

“You are not going to find yourself anywhere except right where you are.”
Shades of the World (1985)

as spoken by Peter Hovenden
"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 90