..續本文上一頁ou making breakfast that way, he or she will be impressed, and he or she will have a chance to go back to himself or herself and become alive. You are giving a Dharma talk with your way of making breakfast. So eating breakfast is the same.

　　The principle of the practice is simple: to bring our minds back to our bodies, to produce our true presence, to become fully alive, and there you are! Everything is happening under the light of mindfulness. In the Jewish tradition, and in the Christian tradition, we used to say "doing everything as though in the presence of God." God is witnessing everything that is happening to us. The kitchen is also a place for practice. If you are in the Jewish tradition, you know that to lay the table, to pour the milk, to cook the food is also the practice. You do everything as though in the presence of God. That is another kind of language, but pointing to the same reality.

　　Here, God is mindfulness and concentration. Everything that takes place is exposed to the light of mindfulness and concentration, and that energy of mindfulness and concentration is the essence of a Buddha. You know you have the capacity of being a Buddha, if you know how to cultivate that energy of concentration and mindfulness. You may call that energy the energy of God; you may call it the Holy Spirit. Many people in the Christian tradition speak in that way: the Holy Spirit is the energy of God, and it is in us. We can profit from it very well, and in fact we can help it to be generated, and enhance the quality of each minute of our daily lives.

　　The Buddha warned us about getting caught in rituals. We don”t do things for the sake of being polite. All these rituals would be nothing if they were empty of life, namely empty of the energy of mindfulness and concentration. If the energy of mindfulness and concentration is there, you don”t need any rituals, but anything that happens may look like a ritual. When the priest celebrates the Eucharist, breaking the bread and pouring the wine, he should not perform it only as a ritual. It is not the gesture and the words that create the miracle of the Eucharist—it is his capacity for being alive, of being present at that moment, it is his capacity for making the whole congregation wake up to being alive, because he breaks the bread in such a way that everyone becomes awake, becomes aware that this piece of bread contains life. That requires strong practice on the part of the priest. If he is not alive, if he is not present, if he does not have the power of mindfulness and concentration, he will not be able to create life in the congregation, in the church. That is why empty rituals do not mean anything. There should be the real thing in it; the real thing we can call the Holy Spirit. Any of us, priest or not priest, monk or not monk, our practice is to generate the Holy Spirit in us, namely the energy of concentration and mindfulness.

　　Mindfulness and concentration always bring insight, and insight is the liberating factor. We suffer because there is a lack of insight into our nature, and into the nature of reality. In the teaching of the Buddha, the processes—mindfulness, concentration and insight—are the essence of the practice. The energy of mindfulness contains within itself the energy of concentration; and concentration always contains the capacity of seeing deeply. bringing insight. Mindfulness, concentration and insight are the heart, the essence of our practice. So when you practice walking with your feet, each step you make should have mindfulness, concentration and insight. If you do this, you can touch the earth, you become one with the earth, and you dissipate fear and loneliness. There is no other way. The way is the way of mindfulness, concentration and insight. When you …

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