Excerpt from Watering Our Good Seeds:
"When I wrote Living Buddha, Living Christ, I said that mindfulness is the
energy of the Buddha that is in you and its nature is the same nature as the
Holy Spirit, because where there is mindfulness, there is life. Where there is
attention, there is life. When you drink a glass of orange juice in mindfulness,
you are real and the juice is real, and because you and the juice are real, life
is real. If you drink your orange juice in forgetfulness, you are caught by your
anger, your jealousy; you are caught by the past, by the fear of the future, you
are not really there for your orange juice and your orange juice is not really
there for you. So you and orange juice, both of you are not real, and therefore,
life is not real at that moment.
So to drink mindfully means to be alive again, to live deeply that moment of
orange juice drinking. Since the energy of mindfulness is in you, the energy of
holiness is in you. Where there is mindfulness there is life, your presence and
the presence of life in you. Then if you continue to contemplate mindfulness,
you will see that you will become more concentrated. Yes, you drink mindfully
your orange juice, you are concentrated, even if your juice is not concentrated.
Every step you make when you practice walking meditation makes you concentrated.
You touch life deeply every step you make. So mindfulness is there and
concentration is there, also.
Mindfulness carries within itself the energy of concentration. If you are
concentrated, you are strong. When you look deeply, you touch deeply, and
because you are able to look deeply and touch deeply, you get insight. You
understand the nature of what is there: the object of your touching, the object
of your looking. Therefore, the energy of concentration carries itself. The
energy of insight is a liberating factor. If we suffer because we don't
understand, because we are overwhelmed by illusion, ignorance, once we get
insight we no longer suffer. We are no longer angry and suspicious. Therefore,
our insight is the liberating factor, and without concentration and mindfulness,
insight would not be possible. That is why I said that the energy of mindfulness
is the vehicle transporting concentration and concentration carries itself."
Summer Retreat 98
