Story: We have the strongest medicine of all | Jon Kabat Zinn

Narrated by: Jack Kornfield

I’ve described the story I think some
time ago to you of Jon Kabat Zinn
who is the teacher of mindfulness in
hospitals now hundreds of them throughout America.

He began his work training people in
mindfulness in the basement of the
medical center in Massachusetts in the medical school
and the only people that he would see
were the ones that the doctors had given up on and
he would say that’s
“fine I’ll be down in the basement and after you’ve
done the surgery and tried the
medications and done all the things
those people whom you’re unable to help
send them down to me
because I have the strongest Medicine of all”

and what was the medicine that he had
the strongest Medicine of all
the great medicine that he offered was
people would come down with intractable
pain and all kinds of suffering that
they’d tried everything else to do and he said

“fine we will sit with this
and face it as the truth of your experience
we will sit with the truth of what is so
for you in a mindful way accepting what is true”
and no matter what was brought to him
he said “Yes we will sit with this also”

that’s why he was unafraid to take whoever came down
he said “yeah we have the best medicine
the big guns when everything else fails
that is to be here with what is true”

The Seven Factors of Enlightenment by Jack Kornfield