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 science, and when I discovered Buddhist meditation and martial arts, I was able to bring these two ways of seeing the world together in my own unique way. From there grew the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which became my “karmic assignment.”
Was helping people learn to experience in a new way one of your intentions when you developed the MBSR program?
The educational system focuses primarily on making students better thinkers but gives little attention to our own capacity for awareness and to the cultivation of consciousness. Mindfulness is a way of restoring our balance. Rather than becoming lost in our thoughts or consumed by our emotions, we can experience greater equanimity, clarity, wisdom, and self-compassion when we learn how to inhabit that other dimension of existence.
Not only education, but modern science as well tends to look only at numbers and data, while these represent only a small part of the whole.
Yes, that is often the case, but every truly good scientist is both artist and scientist. Everything that is interesting is found at the boundary between knowing and not-knowing. I realize I now sound like a meditation teacher, but when you are in a laboratory or thinking about psychology, you need to know what you know. If you cannot move beyond that, you will not be able to make that insightful, unique connection that no one has ever made before.
Long ago, Hans Selye spoke at Omega. He was the first scientist to relate the word “stress” to human conditions, rather than using it as a technical term. The MBSR program seems to be the next phase in the study of stress.
I think it shows great genius that Selye used the word “stress” in that way, because it is true that if you do not know how to have a good relationship with life, this will certainly have consequences for your health. If you stand at a production line for twelve hours a day or constantly tell yourself that life is not worth living, the body will respond to that in a more or less predictable way.
The MBSR program essentially says that you can look inward and that self-regulation can take place. You can use the various systems of your body to bring body and mind into alignment. In this way you can influence the ups and downs that are part of life—in a manner that minimizes stress and maximizes a sense of well-being and contentment.
How did you know you wanted to continue studying Mindfulness as a way of reducing stress?
It actually all happened in the course of ten seconds during a retreat in 1978. In a flash, I saw in detail what I was meant to do. I know this sounds strange, but it felt almost like a dream fulfilling itself. I myself had little to do except to be an instrument to make it possible. On the other hand, there was, of course, a strong intention and an enormous amount of work for me to do. Something like this does not simply arise on its own.
Were you certain that Mindfulness would help reduce stress when you started your research in 1979?
No, there was no certainty that it would work or that people would be willing to participate in something that most resembled nothing whatsoever. Paying attention to obvious things like the breath and sensations in the body would probably appear to be a waste of time.
Today, people are realizing that a sense of well-being does not come from outside, or from a pill—it is found when you look inward. All suffering, stress, and addiction stem from not realizing that you are already where you are looking to be.
The MBSR training you offer together with Saki Santorelli is one of the most popular programs. How do you keep the work feeling fresh after the many decades the program has been offered?
We experience the freshness of it as we teach the program, because it arises from the present moment. We do not use our notes from thirty years ago or even from thirty minutes ago. We feel from moment to moment what is needed when we sit with a group. In that way, we embody what we want to teach the participants. We use no paper, so we cannot do it any other way than we do.
You spent several weeks in China speaking about the MBSR program. What was it like to reintroduce a tradition that originated there but was not carried forward after the Cultural Revolution in 1970?
It felt like the closing of a karmic circle. The level of interest in secular mindfulness was extraordinary. I kept asking myself what it would be like if China were to return to the deep roots of wisdom—the Taoist and Chan Buddhist traditions—given that it will play an increasingly prominent role in the world over the coming hundred years.
It is sad how much of their tradition has been lost but wonderful to see their interest in it. I encouraged them not only to explore the MBSR program but also to look deeply back at their own origins and to consider how this might influence healthcare, industry, the environment, and society.
So Mindfulness can help us to act from a sense of morality and ethics?
Mindfulness is about love and living lovingly. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity about life and compassion for life, and your actions will be in accordance with that. All ethics and morality, the sense of connectedness, all of it arises from paying attention.
How is your own personal growth? What astonishes you most in your work?
Since becoming a grandfather, I have been discovering how to divide my time and find balance across the different areas of my life that call for attention and time. There is an overwhelming need to bring mindfulness closer to people, but at the same time I must say no to ninety-nine percent of requests to speak publicly, and that is difficult.
At the same time, I try to stay true and to embody my work, to articulate its mysteries, and not to fall into the trap of thinking I have arrived. Given the state of the world today, I find it a challenge to act according to what a Zen teacher called the “thousand-year view.” The crises of today will reverberate through the next three, four, or five generations. All I can do is strive to be as integral as possible in what I do in this brief moment.
It is interesting how Mindfulness is about being in the present moment and yet simultaneously encompasses the long term.
Yes, this is what helps people realize that this is a way of being that looks not only forward but also back through time. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tibetan, and other historical traditions are all different currents in the same river, different directions in the same ocean. Looking ahead, we can trust that the seeds we plant will ultimately change the world.
But why do you do it? The real reason is transformation. Societal transformation will not happen in a month, a year, or a lifetime. But we see it happening, right before us, from person to person. We need not worry about the future if we attend to the present moment with care and awareness. In a sense, that is the best insurance policy we can have.
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