Mindfulness in the Contemporary World: An Interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness is about love and living lovingly
Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program in the US. In this interview, he reflects on its origins, its growth, and the vision behind it1.
You founded the Stress Reduction Clinic in 1979. Since the clinic’s inception, impressive changes have taken place in the field of healthcare. Mindfulness has gone mainstream and is increasingly being applied in medicine. What motivated you to want to spread this method?
That is one of those questions with an impossibly long answer, but in a single word I can summarize it as “karma.”
From an early age I have had an interest in and curiosity about the “big questions.” My father was a highly respected scientist, and my mother was a painter. I could see and sense that my parents had entirely different ways of seeing and experiencing the world. My father approached things through scientific inquiry and exploration, while my mother’s experiences arose from emotion and the senses.
I loved sc…
