Integrating Meditation With Action

Meditation helps me to let go of some of the worries of the day and relax a bit.  When I meditate, I give my thoughts and feelings permission to be whatever they are, and focus on something simple like my breath.  In this way I sometimes feel like I am able to find a place that is “away” from the storm of the hustle and bustle of my life.

I typically meditate either alone at home, or while I’m walking to work in the mornings.  In both of these cases, I am able to focus on meditating since these activities don’t require much thinking.

I would like to be able to have this same sense of calmness as I go about my everyday activities — doing tasks at work, talking to people, or running errands.  However, when I’ve tried this it has been difficult to both maintain this state of mind and carry out my activities at the same time.

I’ve heard people talk about “mindfulness” as paying attention to everything that you’re doing as you’re doing it.  For example,drinking a cup of tea “as if the axis of the world turned on the movement of the cup”.  I can see how this might work, but it seems difficult to have a lot of  “mindfulness” AND think about what needs to be done for the task at the same time.  It seems to make thought-intensive tasks much slower than just doing them normally.

At any rate, I would love to hear any thoughts or insights on this from you.