From the point of view of the meditative traditions the entire society is suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that society as a whole is experiencing a lack of focus and mindfulness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn's quote highlights a societal issue where distractions and a fast-paced lifestyle prevent individuals from being present and attentive in their lives. By comparing this phenomenon to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), he emphasizes the need for mindfulness and the cultivation of attention in a world overwhelmed by constant stimuli.
In practice
During a mindfulness workshop, I quoted Jon Kabat-Zinn to illustrate our need for focus in a distracted society.
Once you have established yourself as a center of love and kindness radiating throughout your being, which amounts to a cradling of yourself in loving kindness and acceptance, you can dwell here indefinitely, drinking at this fount, bathing it in, renewing yourself, nourishing yourself, enlivening yourself. This can be a profoundly healing practice for body and soul.
One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.
Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us.
Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.
The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.
In Asian languages, the word for mind and the word for heart are same. So if youβre not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, youβre not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.
I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me.
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.
In all their jollity in this world, the wicked are but as a book fairly bound, which when it is opened is full of nothing but tragedies. So when the book of their consciences shall be once opened, there is nothing to be read but lamentations and woes.
If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonders.
There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.
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