Are we living in a Ceaseless Society? This is the term that used in the title of this 2006 talk at MIT titled “The Ceaseless Society: What Happens to Our Mind, Body, and Spirit When we Just Never Stop?”
Does it seem like we are always trying to get somewhere or accomplish something? If we are not doing “this”, then we are doing “that”. It seems like we are always “doing” and not just “being”. Sometimes it is just good to not be doing anything and just “being”. We are after all called “human beings”.
There are a few preliminary before Jon actually goes on stage to talk. If you want to jump directly to Jon’s talk, skip to 18 minutes into the video.
One of the speaker is Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn who had received a Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT in 1971. Kabat-Zinn specializes in mind-body medicine and mindfulness living.
Kabat Zinn is Founding Director of Stress Reduction Clinic at University of Massachusetts Medical Center and wrote many books, two of which are Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life.
Kabat-Zinn talks about how due to our business of our lives we sometimes lose sight of the present. We are so constantly striving to get “someplace” we forget where we are. He also discusses how mindfullness mediation and being in the moment can help us.
To boil it down, Kabat-Zinn says mindfulness meditation is basically… “Paying attention, on-purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally”.
Near the end of his talk, he recommended two reading material:
(1) Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
(2) Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot