Books by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Wherever You Go, There You Are is the Jon Kabat-Zinn book in our library. Where the rest of the bundle is about what meditation is for, this one is about the practice itself: short chapters, each on a single thing you might notice.
That makes it the book you keep rather than the book you finish. It is designed to be read a chapter at a time, which suits a practice that is also built a few minutes at a time. There is very little argument in it and a great deal of attention.
How to read it. Read one chapter at a time, and read it alongside Mindfulness: that book gives you an eight-week structure, and this one gives you the practice to put inside it.
It sits in the Mindfulness and Happiness bundle as the practice book rather than the argument. There is very little here about why attention matters and a great deal about doing it.
The book
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Jon Kabat-ZinnThe practice itself, in short chapters designed to be read one at a time. Its value is that it is about paying attention rather than about the benefits of paying attention, which is the opposite of how the rest of the shelf is organised.
What it argues- The practice is the point, not the results the practice is supposed to produce.
- Short chapters suit a practice built from short, repeated sessions.
- You do not need to empty your mind; noticing that it wandered is the practice.
- Formal sitting and everyday awareness are the same skill applied differently.
- Wherever you go, the same attention problem travels with you.
Suited to someone who already believes attention is worth training and wants the practice rather than the argument. Read alongside Mindfulness, which supplies the structure this book assumes.
Where to start
Read one chapter a day and sit for the few minutes it suggests before reading the next. The book is short and it is not meant to be consumed quickly, which is the most common way it gets misread. If you read it in two evenings you will have covered the pages and missed the book entirely, because the content is the practice rather than the description of it.
Where this fits
This is the practical companion to Mindfulness, which provides the eight-week structure. The Power of Now makes the argument this practice is built on, and Self-Compassion covers what to do when the practice makes you more self-critical rather than less. Read it alongside Mindfulness if you want a plan, and on its own if you only want the practice. It is the quietest book in this bundle and the one most likely to be returned to rather than finished.
The rest of this shelf
The Mindfulness and Happiness shelf holds 5 books in total. These are the others, each condensed into a guide you can finish in about 15 minutes:
- Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
- The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
- The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama XIV and Howard C. Cutler
- Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff
Sit down, with four more books
Wherever You Go, There You Are is in the Mindfulness and Happiness bundle with Ikigai, The Art of Happiness, The Power of Now and Self-Compassion.
Five complete guides, about 15 minutes each.
Explore Mindfulness and HappinessOne chapter, one thing to notice.