When you come to Blue Cliff, you can see the monks and the nuns playing basketball, table tennis. They can do like you do in the world and when they cross the street, they have to go fast.
They know how to do that. Otherwise they will be run over by vehicles.
And from time to time it rains during walking meditation.
And instead of walking slowly, they begin to run and maybe 1000 people run after Thay.
We call it “running meditation”. It’s possible to run mindfully.
The practice is to be mindful. You can walk slowly or you can run fast. The question is not to be slow or to be fast. The question is whether you are mindful.
But for beginners, to do slowly is more easy to be mindful. And after that, you can do fast, and you can still maintain your mindfulness.
When you do things quickly without mindfulness, you lose yourself easily. That’s not good.
So you have to learn how to do slowly first in order for mindfulness to be possible.
And after that, you can do much more quickly and essential is that you don’t lose yourself. Even if you are in situations where you have to do things very quickly.
So the conclusion is that it’s not a problem of being slow or quick. The problem is about to be mindful or not to be mindful.
