“If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing… We may only go in circles…”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Jon Kabat-Zinn 27

American academic 1944

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“This is where we came from. This is where we are going. And it is only to be approached through cognitive activity.”

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Context: There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules. The noetic enterprise is a primary obligation toward being. Our salvation is linked to it. Not everyone has to read alchemical texts or study superconducting biomolecules to make the transition. Most people make it naively by thinking clearly about the present at hand, but we intellectuals are trapped in a world of too much information. Innocence is gone for us. We cannot expect to cross the rainbow bridge through a good act of contrition; that will not be sufficient.
We have to understand. Whitehead said, "Understanding is the apperception of pattern as such"; to fear death is to misunderstand life. Cognitive activity is the defining act of humanness. Language, thought, analysis, art, dance, poetry, mythmaking: these are the things that point the way toward the realm of the eschaton. We humans may be released into a realm of pure self-engineering. The imagination is everything. This was Blake's perception. This is where we came from. This is where we are going. And it is only to be approached through cognitive activity.