When the news is fast, furious, and stressful – radically destructive Supreme Court rulings, mass murders, Omicron variants, Russia’s war on Ukraine, inflation, climate crisis, etc. –  here’s my 2005 conversation with JON KABAT ZINN, best-selling author of WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE about his book, COMING TO OUR SENSES: HEALING OURSELVES AND THE WORLD THROUGH MINDFULNESS. Kabat-Zinn is as responsible as anyone for mindfulness going mainstream. Over 200 medical centers and clinics nationwide and abroad now use his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. With the enormous growth in awareness and practice of mindfulness and meditation have come widespread claims of benefits. Best-selling author Daniel Goleman and neuroscientist Richard Davidson, both longtime meditators, examined the scientific research to find out what is true and what is not.

http://www.danielgoleman.info

With his latest book, WHY BUDDHISM IS TRUE (#4 NYT Best-seller), ROBERT WRIGHT, who’s been asking big questions for at least three decades, asks another: What can mindfulness offer people trying to make sense and justice of contemporary politics, culture, and economics? We talk evolutionary psychology, confronting cognitive delusions, tribalism, and Trump.

www.meaningoflife.tv
www.bloggingheads.tv
www.meaningfulresistance.net

 

 

On November 15, InsightLA, the leading Los Angeles-based Mindfulness Meditation organization, will host LIVING WITH A JOYFUL SPIRIT AND A WISE HEART, a day of deep teachings and timeless wisdom that will feature Trudy Goodman and Jack Cornfield in dialogue via video with a “who’s who” of the pioneers of mindfulness meditation in the West – Jon Kabat-Zinn (Wherever You Go, There You Are), Ram Dass (Be Here Now), Tara Brach (Radical Acceptance), Joseph Goldstein (Insight Meditatino), and Congressman Tim Ryan (A Mindful Nation). Both Trudy and Jack turn 70 this year. In the course of the conversation, we talk about their personal paths, what each of their guests means to them, and we tell the story of mindfulness in America over the last forty-five years.

Trudy Goodman has trained and practiced in two fields for over 25 years: meditation and psychotherapy. She studied developmental psychology with Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan, and for 20 years worked in a full psychotherapy practice. Since 1974, Trudy has devoted much of her life to practicing Buddhist meditation and teaching mindfulness. In 2002, Trudy founded InsightLA.

Jack Kornfield is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and founding teacher of the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies. They include, A Path with Heart; After the Ecstasy, the Laundry; Buddha’s Little Instruction Book; and A Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology.

https://www.insightla.org/

 

 

Originally aired September 2010

You startle awake to a rude alarm clock. Nothing you’d rather do than sleep a bit more. Coffee gets you going enough to make it out the door. On your morning commute you zone out, oblivious to radio reports of weather disasters or war casualties. At work, juggling your cell phone, landline, and email, you speak to countless faceless people without leaving your desk. You grab lunch over a pile of paperwork. Driving home, you look up to notice what must have been a beautiful sunset. At day’s end, you’re back where you started.

What’s getting lost in your daily shuffle? What toll is stress taking on your body? How could you lead a fuller, happier life?

JON KABAT-ZINN says the answer may be “living life moment by moment as if it really mattered.” He believes that by practicing mindfulness, we can literally and metaphorically come to our senses – as individuals and as a society. And there’s growing scientific evidence to back him up. TRUDY GOODMAN has done a lot to make that practice accessible here in LA, with the InsightLA center in Santa Monica.

http://www.insightla.org/

John Kabat-Zinn