In this issue:
Many years ago, one of my sisters transferred my father’s 8mm home movies to video tape and gave each of her siblings a copy. In those home movies from my childhood, I got to see myself as a little boy.–Well, to be more accurate, I kind of got to see myself as a little boy, because I was often charging around in and out of the picture while other people stood still.
Just being still and focusing on the next thing that needs to be done is not so easy for many of us. While I talk about it a lot as a priest, often I do not find it easy to do. Yet I know how rewarding it is to make the effort to be mindful.
Lately, I keep remembering how Rev. Master Jiyu made a phone call. She would hold the phone in one hand and very deliberately press firmly on each button. She would then—again, very deliberately—raise the phone to her ear as if she had all the time in the world. It was not that this was a terribly slow process: it is just that there was nothing rushed about it.
Since there was nothing rushed about it, the number that Rev Master Jiyu phoned was more likely to be the correct number. So in the long run she probably actually saved time by taking care in phoning. But saving time was not the purpose of using the phone in this way. The point of doing things in this way was that the phone itself, and the actual physical act of phoning, was being treated with the same attention and respect that would be given in a very short time to the act of talking to someone on the phone. This is the real spiritual meaning of “mindfulness”–to give everything the attention and respect that is its due, for all things are of the Eternal.
Long ago, a Buddhist sage wrote, “Only when you concentrate your mind will Buddhas appear.”–When Rev. Master Jiyu concentrated her mind in making a phone call, she made a Buddha appear for me. And that Buddha is still teaching me.