Mindfulness As The Soul Infusion of Being Into Doing

There are times when even the best of us just 'go through the motions.' We are not really present to what we are doing . Our body may be involved in the task, but we are mentally, psychologically, emotionally--and maybe even spiritually--elsewhere.

Perhaps the task doesn't interest us. Perhaps we are not totally engaged in the activity in question. Maybe the task is ordinary, hum-drum, boring. And if that is the case we presume to have reason to 'tune out' and not really 'invest our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls' into what we are doing. It doesn't matter. We are just washing the dishes. No big deal.

No Excuses To Dis-Engage The Immediacy

If you buy into the validity of Zen then we are never just washing the dishes. No task is un-worthy. No doing is to be divorced from being, alienated from a fitting and proper infusion of soul. This is why the 'ordinary' is such a steady influence when it comes to the training ground of that pristine attentiveness to the uninterrupted flow of the present tense that is Zen (and is also vipassana and the Buddha's Four Foundations of Mindfulness). After all, it is easy to be alert and attentive when our interest is piqued in accordance with our desires or preferences. That is easy. Everyone can pretty much do that. But not so with the ordinary and banal. There is no excitement inherent in the activity of the ordinary unless we infuse our doing with being. Where we care about every act. Where we come to assume a worship-full stance in relation to even the most trivial of events and instances, because 'just this' is our life... just this is Eternity expressed in the everyday. For the practitioner of Zen (and some might say all of the world's Non-Dual Wisdom Traditions) there is never a worthy excuse for dis-engaging the immediate. No matter how colourless and bland it may seem, if we bring the totality of being at our disposal into our doing then it all comes alive. The Buddha in the dishes and the diapers, the dust and the driving is revealed. As soon as we show up, so does the Buddha.

No excuses.