Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness

Arriving at Your Own Door is a collection of very short lessons in mindfulness. There are 108 lessons and it is easy to read the entire book in less than an hour. However that will be doing yourself and the book a disservice.Mindfulness is not our normal way of thinking and acting. Therefore the lessons and their potential impact on our lives is not obvious in many of the lessons. You need to give the lessons some thought. I have read the book three times and each time I gain a little more insight into the value of the lessons.Mindfulness is about becoming aware. The most common route to mindfulness is through meditation. However, you do not need to be involved in meditation to benefit from this book. You will need an open mind. You must be willing to look at things from a different perspective.There is one quote in the book that goes to the heart of mindfulness. "We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now." As Jon Kabat-Zinn points out, we are often trying to live in the future. There is no future. There is only now and trying to live in the future robs us of the present. "Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it."Do not expect long explanations of the lessons. The lessons are extremely brief. If you have not read or studied mindfulness, this might not be a good start because the ideas or thoughts might need further explanation. However if you are a student of meditation, of how the mind works, of mindfulness, then this is a very handy little reminder that will give you guidance in right thinking with lots of ideas to contemplate.

I enjoyed reading Arriving at Your Own Door. Arriving at your own door is like home coming. The book is like a rosary with 108 beads each connected with each other. I have learned many wonderful and valuable ideas and ways of living mindfully from Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. This book is another wonderful gift offered to me and many persons like me. I am very grateful to Jon for continuing serving people by living mindfully.Each lesson is like a flower petal with its own beauty and fragrance. One can start with any lesson, skip the next lesson and still remain connected with the earlier one. All parhs take us to the same door. I would wholeheatedly recommend this wonderfl book to any one interested in doing inner work as an ongoing pilgrimage.Jagdish P Dave Ph. D, Psy.D

The over one-hundred one-page exerpts from another Jon Kabat-Zinn book can be read in any order and can be spread over any period of time. Each page invites a Moment of reflection, which can carry you though out the day, or just bring inspiration for that brief Moment that you have. The pages can be read over and over, and they bring a freshness every time. Even the title invites a Mindful Moment in your Life.

This book is a page turner for me, for everyone. Very rich, and threatening to change my life for good, forever. I couldn't drop my Kindle e-Reader till I had read the very last sentence in lesson 108!

I have this beside my desk at work, it's great for slowing down and taking a moment to be more present.I expected more but that does not necessarily an issue - more a reflection of my thinking to solve issues and to be present needs a lot of work. Of course it does not.Overall, I would have liked some more words on the pages BUT i still use this and find it helpful anyway.

Great!! I just lost my mom this week and this book was an answer & blessing through this challenging year ahead. I felt comforted by reading it. Hope all how read it will enjoy this as much as I did. I felt as if I were talking to a trusted good friend who understood what I was going through. Peace.

LOVE THIS little BOOK!!! Thank you Jon Kabat-Zinn for writing this one. It is the perfect addition to my home. I bought and sent 1 of these to each of my daughters and sisters this year too. Great lessons that can be read individually or as a whole. I go back to it often. It's a keeper!

it gives you something to think about...bring on a new way of seeing things, its worth reading, I'd suggest it as a gift to a loved one..in my case I was my own loved one :)

I highlighted about 70% of this book on my Kindle!Each lesson is about half a page in length. Some are just a few lines. So this is a book that you can pick up and read for just one minute at a time, or read from cover-to-cover in about an hour. But I would recommend spending a little time to digest each lesson, perhaps reading each one a few times over.I felt like every page spoke to me directly. This book has refreshed and renewed my practice of mindfulness just at a time when everything seemed to be getting in the way.This book is perhaps not the best choice for a first introduction to mindfulness meditation. But it would be a very good second book to read.

I'm a big fan of quotes and targeted messages. I've had books on mindfulness before and while I appreciated the messages it wasn't easy to get the practical application for me. This is great. Jon Kabat-Zinn is apparently a scientist and researcher in mindfulness, as well as a teacher, and somehow the language here works better for me.I don't think you could learn mindfulness/meditation from this, but as a source of inspirational short messages its great.

Actually got me rather confused about mindfulness. I love mindfulness but some of the extracts have contradicted what I know to be true about mindfulness especially lesson 6 about non-attachment. To me mindfulness and non-attachment is about knowing who you are deep in your soul and not letting external factors take you away from knowing your soul. And not let external factors be a reflection of who you are, like how you look for example. Well this book seems to contradict that and has left me confused.

The most helpful book towards my goal of finding some peace in my life. Amazingly easy to read, bite sized bits, easy to refer back to and I now find it much easier to cope with any stressful situation - I'm currently having counselling for PTSD so I would highly recommend this book.

I love Jon Kabat- Zinn his books, meditation and talks, but this didn't hit the spot for me. I think maybe because I have it on kindle and it may be better in book form so that you can dip in and out of it -I may purchase the book now.