Meditation is Not What You Think

Book excerpt: More than twenty years ago, Jon Kabat-Zinn changed the way we thought about awareness in everyday life with his now-classic introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are. He followed that up with 2005's Coming to Our Senses, the definitive book for our time on the connection between mindfulness and our well-being on every level, physical, cognitive, emotional, social, planetary, and spiritual. Now, Coming to Our Senses is being repackaged into 4 smaller books, each focusing on a different aspect of mindfulness, and each with a new foreword written by the author. In the first of these books, Meditation Is Not What You Think (which was originally published as Part I and Part II of Coming to Our Senses), Kabat-Zinn focuses on the "what" and the "why" of mindfulness--explaining why meditation is not for the "faint-hearted," how meditation can actually be a radical act of love, and why paying attention is so supremely important. By "coming to our senses"--both literally and metaphorically--we can become more compassionate, more embodied, more aware human beings, and in the process, contribute to the healing of the body politic as well as our own lives in ways both little and big.