Absolutely, you can be too slow. And absolutely, these words are not synonymous. If you watch me walk down to the hall, I'm normally walking faster than other people. I'm just walking at a normal pace. Am I more mindful or am I less mindful than somebody doing walking meditation real slow? You can't really know unless you can read my mind. But generally for the majority of new meditators, especially, no matter how slow they're going over in the walking tracks, I will walk down to the hall more mindful at a faster pace. OK, why? The same reason why I can type at a very quick pace. Lots of practice, lots of practice, lots of practice. But when I learned typing at sixteen years old, in those days on the real machine that went "ckkh," sure I was slow. And why on earth is the letter "a" underneath our left pinkie?! Actually I know why, it was intentionally put there to slow you down. But that's just it. When I learned typing, sixteen years old, boy was it slow, right? But now I go along, pretty fast pace, I can type with less mistakes than I made when I was sixteen. So I can be more mindful at a fast pace.
Basically this is something we want to develop. We want to develop very good mindfulness at normal everyday pace, everyday level, whatever you do. We want to be mindful eating our food, talking with others, going to the bathroom, turning on the light switch. Can you be mindful turning on the light switch? It's just an average little job. We don't have to be real slow in every movement to turn on the light switch. But can we just be present with the action? The more you practice, slowly though, then you can apply it quicker, in regular routine. So the slowness does have its value, especially in retreat, but we don't want to get locked into being slow or else you become just like the person Rosemary and I know who shut the gates on the ferry too slow, and they got fired! So we don't want to be too slow.