There are two ways of living.

One is living like a buffalo, just being alive and breathing but with no intensity and passion in life.

The other way is like a Buddha, living intensely in the present moment in the current action.

Have you experienced a nightmare? During a nightmare you will experience that even if you want to open your eyes you cannot. You want to move your hands but you cannot. Then the nightmare becomes so intense. It may be that a lion is chasing you and has almost caught you or you are falling down a deep chasm or you are in some such life-threatening situation in your dream. When it comes to its maximum intensity, the very intensity wakes you up. If the nightmare is not that intense, you cannot wake yourself up and come out of it. If it is very intense then that very intensity wakes you up, and suddenly there is no nightmare. It was only a dream, but you thought that it was reality.

The moment you are lost in the action, you become like a flute on the lips of Existence itself.

Understand, even when you were falsely thinking it is happening, you were actually out of it. It was only a film going on in front of you. Intensity does not depend on the nature of the work or action. It can be as complex as running a billion dollar company or as simple as cleaning the floor. It is not the ‘what’ that is important, but the ‘how’ that is important. If you can do what you are doing with a totality and intensity that you are completely lost in the action, you have caught the thread of intensity. The moment you are lost in the action, you become like a flute on the lips of Existence itself. The air that goes into the flute comes out as music because you become a channel for the energy of Existence to flow through you. Be total and intense. That is all that is needed for the arrow to hit the target, whatever it may be.

source: Living Enlightenment