Wherever You Go, There You Are Book Summary - Wherever You Go, There You Are Book explained in key points

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Wherever You Go, There You Are summary

Name: Wherever You Go, There You Are
Rating: 4.4 (482 reviews)
Author: Jon Kabat-Zinn

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life

4.4 (482 ratings)

26 mins

Topics

Stress Reduction Meditation

Table of Contents

Wherever You Go, There You Are
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Experience life to the fullest.

A note to readers: This Blink was especially written for audio. If you’re trying to decide whether to listen or to read, we highly recommend listening!

Stop.

Take a deep breath in through your nose, and breathe out fully.

How do you feel?

When we feel stressed or threatened, our hypothalamus releases stress hormones that make our heart pump faster and our muscles tense up. This “fight or flight” reaction is natural, but can be quite harmful when experienced in situations where there is no immediate danger.

Mindfulness – that entails meditation and being present in the moment – cannot cure the effects of stress. It can only help us to come to terms with what simply is, and to pay attention to where our stress comes from. Mindfulness helps us understand that we have no control over what’s happening to us, but we can decide how to react to it.

This is Robyn. I live in Berlin, Germany, and started working for Blinkist in 2015—the same year in which I started meditating. I’m here to take you through the main ideas of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s bestselling work Wherever You Go, There You Are (1994). Together, we will explore what it means to be fully present in the moment, and also do some actual meditation exercises – but no worries, they’re not going to take longer than a couple of minutes. I hope they can show you how mindfulness can help you live a more peaceful, balanced, and satisfied life. Let’s begin with our first short meditation.

Blink 1

Sit down comfortably and close your eyes. Think about your mind as the surface of an ocean. It’s vast and beautiful, and there are always waves on the water—some are small, some are big. Sometimes, those waves get churned up by the winds of stress and anxiety, and become very turbulent. Observe these waves. Look at them with curiosity while taking a deep breath. Watch how the ocean’s surface slowly calms down again, and in your own time, open your eyes.

Many people think that mindfulness aims at eradicating the waves on our mind’s surface in order to create calm and tranquility, but this belief couldn’t be further from the truth. All of us face obstacles in our lives over which we have little or no control – but that doesn’t mean we have to see ourselves as victims to the winds that agitate the big waves within our mind. Mindfulness meditation can help us find shelter and learn how to surf these waves.

Okay, all of this was a bit abstract and symbolic. Let’s explore the concept of mindfulness in more detail before we’re doing another practice together.

An ancient Buddhist practice, mindfulness is about overriding our automatic approach to life. We often do things unconsciously, without being fully present in the moment. Mindfulness can teach us how to pay attention to what’s happening right now, purposefully and non-judgmentally.

The cultivation of mindfulness and meditation are often confused with things like relaxation, stress relief, or self-development. However, mindfulness isn’t about aiming for a particular feeling, nor is it about getting somewhere or becoming a particular kind of person. It’s about emptying the mind, becoming still, and allowing ourselves to realize who and where we already are.

You can see it as a tool that helps us reunite with aspects of ourselves that we often overlook. When I started meditating, it opened up entirely new ways of existing, both in my own skin and in this world. It helped me realize the richness and possibility of the present moment, and led me to richer and deeper experiences of joy and happiness, but also difficult emotions like anger and fear.

Let’s take a closer look at how mindfulness and meditation can help you deal with such difficult emotions.

Blink 2

Yes, I’m still here. Did this long pause irritate you? Maybe you felt some sort of impatience? Let’s stay with this feeling of frustration for a moment. Observe it. Where in your body do you feel it the strongest? Take a closer look inside. Once you think you got a hold of what you feel, ask yourself: What do these feelings of impatience and frustration want to tell me?

Patience and mindfulness are deeply connected. Patience means that you accept things as they are, that you realize events always unfold in their own good time. You cannot hurry spring to come or the grass to grow. Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help—in fact, it often ends up making things worse. (Think of that day when you were late for a meeting and spilled take-away coffee all over yourself because you bumped into someone whilst trying to catch the bus.)

Blink 3

Speaking of observing how you feel: Have you ever noticed that there is no running away from anything? That problems and difficulties will always catch up with you, no matter how much you want to escape them? If only you lived on a beautiful beach or had more money, your life would be happier… Think again. We often tend to look outward to find either the cause or the solution to our problems, because we are scared to take responsibility. But what if you accepted your reality, without trying to change it?

Meditation is not about self-improvement. In fact, that’s the opposite of being mindful. Mindfulness is about accepting life as it is, accepting yourself as you are.

Blink 4

Welcome back. I promised to talk a bit about the beautiful ways in which practicing non-doing can change your life. In order to unlock this potential, we have to understand that non-doing is inherently linked to inquiry. The easiest way to get from doing to being is through asking yourself questions such as: Am I currently doing something? If so, what is it? Can I stop it for a bit? Do I even have to do this?

No worries, you don’t need to find answers to all of these questions. It’s quite the opposite! Mindful inquiry is about asking questions without expecting answers; it’s about questioning the very question itself. At its core, it is about noticing when you’re in a state of mindless doing, and guiding yourself to mindful being.

Blink 5

Apropos formal practice: You might already know that mindfulness can be practiced both formally and informally, but we haven’t spent much time explaining what the differences are. Let’s take a look at what makes a practice “formal” before we explore how you can practice mindfulness informally in your everyday life.

Formal meditation basically means that you make sure to reserve specific periods of time for the development of mindfulness and concentration; think of going to a meditation retreat or introducing a mindfulness habit to your morning routine. In this dedicated time, all other activities are put on hold. However, the length of time you commit to formal meditation is entirely up to you. Just be sure to come out of your meditation mindfully. As a general guideline, Jon Kabat-Zinn finds 45 minutes per day to be a good standard practice; for him, that was enough time to achieve stillness and sustain attention. I have to admit that I find it difficult on some days to meditate for 45 minutes or an hour, so my goal is to spend at least 25 minutes meditating every day. That’s the minimum amount of time I feel comfortable dedicating to my practice on a busy day, but for example on weekends and more relaxed days, I would sit for up to an hour.

Blink 6

Exercises like the mountain meditation can be extended, too. If you do, however, find the idea of sitting still for an extended period of time too challenging, or if you want to complement your formal meditation practice through some informal ones, you can try a walking or lying down meditation instead.

When it comes to walking meditations, their purpose isn’t to try to get anywhere. You could even choose to walk in a circle or back and forth.

Blink 7

Mindfulness can become lax with the anticipation of finishing. The transition out of your meditation practice can sometimes feel very blurry or bumpy, but even this experience can be met with mindfulness. Bring genuine curiosity to the impulses which tell you it’s time to stop your practice, and try to put the ego aside that’s rushing through the last moments of your practice.

It probably comes as no surprise that your ego is the biggest obstacle you’ll face on your path to mindfulness. For instance, when you experience a significant moment during meditation, you might start congratulating yourself on doing so well. But be wary of such feelings as they may be your ego giving you a false sense of having “made it” to a higher level in your practice.

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What is Wherever You Go, There You Are about?

Wherever You Go, There You Are (1994) explains how to fully enjoy the present moment without worrying about the past or the future. By providing step-by-step meditation practices, both formal and informal, that can easily be incorporated into everyday life, Kabat-Zinn steers us toward the peace and tranquility that we’re yearning for.

Who should read Wherever You Go, There You Are?

Those who want to be fully present
People who want to learn how to meditate
Meditators hoping to expand and deepen their practice

About the Author

Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founding director of both the Stress Reduction Clinic and, at the University of Massachusetts, the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society. He’s studied under renowned Buddhist teachers (Thich Nhat Hanh among them) and leads workshops on stress reduction and mindfulness. He’s the author of multiple books, including Full Catastrophe Living and Everyday Blessings.

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