Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

getting, progress-oriented people. But who is to say
that his realizations of one morning spent in his
doorway are less memorable or have less merit than
a lifetime of busyness, lived with scant appreciation
for stillness and the bloom of the present moment?
Thoreau was singing a song which needed hearing
then as it does now. He is, to this day, continually
pointing out, for anyone willing to listen, the deep
importance of contemplation and of non-attachment
to any result other than the sheer enjoyment of being,
all "far better than any work of the hands would have
been." This view recalls the old Zen master who said,
"Ho ho. For forty years I have been selling water by
the river and my efforts are totally without merit."
It reeks of paradox. The only way you can do
anything of value is to have the effort come out of
non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of
use or not. Otherwise, self-involvement and
greediness can sneak in and distort your relationship
to the work, or the work itself, so that it is off in some
way, biased, impure, and ultimately not completely
satisfying, even if it is good. Good scientists know this
mind state and guard against it because it inhibits the
creative process and distorts one's ability to see
connections clearly.