From the point of view of the meditative traditions the entire society is suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that society as a whole is experiencing a lack of focus and mindfulness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn's quote highlights a societal issue where distractions and a fast-paced lifestyle prevent individuals from being present and attentive in their lives. By comparing this phenomenon to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), he emphasizes the need for mindfulness and the cultivation of attention in a world overwhelmed by constant stimuli.
In practice
During a mindfulness workshop, I quoted Jon Kabat-Zinn to illustrate our need for focus in a distracted society.
Once you have established yourself as a center of love and kindness radiating throughout your being, which amounts to a cradling of yourself in loving kindness and acceptance, you can dwell here indefinitely, drinking at this fount, bathing it in, renewing yourself, nourishing yourself, enlivening yourself. This can be a profoundly healing practice for body and soul.
One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.
Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us.
Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.
The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.
In Asian languages, the word for mind and the word for heart are same. So if you’re not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you’re not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.
I am not a religious man. I have not attended a service for many years. But I do believe in God. My own practice of religion, you could say, it a nonpractice. I personally feel that it's just as worthy on a weekend to rake the lawns of an elderly neighbor or to climb a mountain and marvel at the beauty of this land we live in as it is to sing hosannas or go to Mass. In other words, I think every many finds his own church- and not all of them have four walls - Judge Haig (Page 399)
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.
As precious as life itself is our heritage of individual freedom, for man's free agency is a God-given gift.
We cannot do justice to the deeds of former times if we do not in some degree remove ourselves from the circumstances in which we stand and substitute those by which the real actors were surrounded.
I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.
To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong.
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