Living Buddha, Living Christ Chapter 2 – Mindfulness and the Holy Spirit

When the Buddha was asked “what do you and your monks practice?” he replied, “we sit, we walk, and we eat.” The questioner responded, “but sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats” and the Buddha told him “when we sit we know we are sitting, when we walk we know we are walking, and when we eat we know we are eating”.

What does it mean to truly know something, to be deeply aware? We go through our days performing a multitude of tasks without really being aware of our actions. Take breathing for example. We breathe without any conscious effort at all. If we were truly aware of our breathing we would feel CO2 concentrations increase in our body, our diaphragm contract in response, and our lungs expand. We would feel air rushing through our airways and swirling deep in our lungs. We would feel our heart rate increase in response to new oxygen infused blood, and we might hear the sound of blood rushing through our ears. We might feel the calming, peaceful feeling that envelopes us as we exhale, only to begin the process anew. To be aware is to feel, understand, and love the entirety of our experience, no matter how mundane.

For the Buddhist the path to awareness is through the practice of mindfulness. In the words of TNH, mindfulness allows us to “touch deeply the present moment, see and listen deeply, and the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love, and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy”.

To THN, the practice of mindfulness is much like the Holy Spirit in that both are agents of healing and a pathway to God. The Buddha was called the King of Healers. Can we not make the same claim about Jesus? Oftentimes in the Bible, Christ was able to heal with just a touch. Sometimes healing required only touching Jesus’ garment. But it wasn’t the act touching that performed the miracle. It was the presence of the Holy Spirit within Jesus that brought about healing. When you touch deep understanding (mindfulness in the Buddhist vernacular) and love (the Holy Spirit in the Christian vernacular) you are healed. 

When the energy of the Holy Spirit is in us, we “are truly alive, capable of understanding the suffering of others and motivated to transform the situation”. When the energy of the Holy Spirit is present, “God the Father and God the Son are there”. THN believes the presence of the Holy Spirit can be strengthened within us through mindfulness. Citing Jesus’ baptism as evidence, he notes that, after the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus during his baptism, Jesus retired to the wilderness to strengthen the Holy Spirit within him. To THN, Jesus practiced mindfulness for 40 days to build this strength. For us, the simple act of really hearing a bird sing or really seeing the blue sky (or become aware of our tongue) through mindfulness allows us to touch and strengthen the Holy Spirit within us.

To THN, all of us have the seed of the Holy Spirit within us, the “capacity of healing, transforming, and loving”. When we touch that seed (through Buddhist mindfulness or Christian prayer) we touch God the Father and God the Son.