‘Do you know who you are fully, right now, in this moment? That is the question. That is what mindfulness is all about, because this really is it. Mindfulness is an ongoing inhabiting of the nowscape. It is a wakefulness that lies beyond being continually caught in liking and disliking, wanting and rejecting, and in destructive and unexamined emotional habits and thought patterns, no matter how important the issue, no matter how little or how great the stakes. That might be a worthy assignment, a worthy challenge we could proffer ourselves and practice embodying in the world in this very moment, right here, today.
Each moment of now is what we could call a branch point. We do not know what will happen next. The present moment is pregnant with possibility and potential. When we are mindful now, no matter what we are doing or saying or working on or experiencing, the next moment is influenced by our presence of mind, and is thus different from how it would have been had we not been paying attention, had we been caught up in some whirlpool or other within the mind or body or the outer landscape. So if we wish to take care of the future that, when we get there, will also be now, the only way we can do that is to take care of this future of all past moments and efforts, namely, the present. The only way we can do that is to recognize each moment as a branch point and realize that it makes all the difference in how the world, your world, and your one wild and precious life, will unfold. We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.
Ample incentive to act with integrity and presence, and with kindness and compassion, for ourselves and for others. Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.
Not a bad reason to practice being here for it. That is what formal meditation practice is all about.’
byJon Kabat- Zinn, Coming To Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness.