Hurry is built into our culture; the more you look, the more instances you will see. Look at the amount of time we are granted by traffic lights to cross a busy street. The first time I encountered this phenomenon, I waited dutifully at the corner until the sign flashed “Walk” and then stepped off the curb. When I was halfway across, it suddenly commanded: “Wait!” I wanted to object, “I haven’t crossed yet! If you want me to stop on this busy street, I’m not likely to make it home in one piece.”
I see people hurry to cross streets now before the light changes, dragging little children behind them. I remember one old man holding up a pleading hand as he tried to hurry, as if to beg the cars not to run over him. I can imagine the day when the signal will say “Wait” and then, more honestly, “Run!” And we will obey, sprinting across in the unquestioned belief that it is right for us to be so hurried.
7. Cultivate Patience
Patience is one of life’s unsung virtues. When people write about love, they use capital letters, italics, and calligraphy; everybody gives love the red-carpet treatment. But where patience is concerned, who cares? Nobody writes poems about patience. There are no popular songs about it. If the word does make an appearance, it is only because it contains two syllables and fits the meter.
This is unfair, because patience is the very heart of love. I don’t think any skill in life is more valuable. Patience is the best insurance I know against all kinds of emotional and physical problems – and it is absolutely essential for learning to slow down.
Very few people are born with patience, but everyone can learn to develop it. As with slowing down, all we have to do is try to be patient every time life challenges us. And there are many, many opportunities to practice every day.
This doesn’t require a gigantic canvas. Mogul art, one of the highlights of artistic achievement in India, often is in miniature. The artist concentrated on very small areas, working with such tenderness and precision that one has to look carefully to see the love and labor that has gone into it. Living is like Mogul art: the canvas is so small and the skill required so great that it’s easy to overlook the potentialities for artistry and love.
One beautiful, balmy Sunday soon after my mother and nieces arrived from India, Christine and I took them out for ice cream. I rode in the back of our VW bus with Meera on one side and Geetha on the other. They chatted gaily the whole way, without a break, asking me all kinds of questions. I kept reminding myself of what most of us older people forget: that every child has a point of view. They have their own way of looking at life which makes them ask these questions, and for them, things like why Texaco and Mexico should be spelled differently when the endings rhyme are matters of vital importance.
When we got to town, we had to walk slowly because my mother was almost eighty. The children, however, wanted to run – and they wanted me to join them. I didn’t say, “It’s not proper for a pompous professor to be running about. It takes away from his pomp.” Instead, I made a good dash for it. I thought I would meet with appreciation, but little Geetha just objected, “You’re not supposed to step on the lines.” There was no “thank you,” no “well done”; I had to do it all again.
Geetha had just learned to read, so when we reached the ice cream parlor she stood staring at the big board. “What are all those flavors?”
I protested, “There are over a hundred!”
She tried to read a few and then asked, “What is that long word I can’t read?”
I said, “Pistachio.”
“That’s my flavor.” So she got that, double dip, and Meera got butter brickle.
They nursed their cones all the way home. I was in the back seat between them again, and every now and then they would exchange licks – across my lap. My first impulse was to warn, “Don’t drip on me!” Then I reminded myself that from their point of view, ice cream is much more important than clothes. We made it home without incident, with the girls and my mother laughing happily about a perfect day.
We learn patience by practicing it, the Buddha says. What better way than by sharing time with children at their own pace and seeing life through their eyes?
8. Slow Down Your Mind
This is the real crux of slowing down: developing an unhurried mind.
In India I had the privilege of meeting a Sufi teacher whose name is known around the world today: Meher Baba. The key to his message was expressed in simple, memorable words: “A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.”
This quiet statement, so apparently out of step with the modern world, is not only wise but extremely practical. To make it intelligible, I like to compare the mind with something familiar: television.
Imagine your mind as a kind of television with thoughts constantly changing channels. In this case, however, the remote control device is out of your hands – the mind changes channels on its own. When a thought succeeds in holding your attention, your mind is settling on a particular show. But when you get speeded up, the mind is racing through split-second shots like a rock music video.
Destructive thoughts like fear and anger tend to be fast. If we could see the mind when it is caught in such thoughts, we would see thoughts tumbling over each other so fast that we don’t know what we are thinking.
That is why anger has such a dramatic effect on the body. The next time you get angry, check your vital signs; you will notice your breathing in a race with your heart. You breathe faster and faster, the heart beats faster and faster; stress hormones get pumped into your system to prepare you for fight or flight. When I see somebody in a fury, I see it as one-thousandth of a heart attack. No amount of nutrition and exercise can protect us against the ravages of an untrained mind.
The more we slow down the thinking process, the more control we have over our lives. That is why Meher Baba says a mind that is slow is sound. When your mind stops racing, it is naturally concentrated rather than distracted, naturally kind instead of rude, naturally loving instead of selfish. That is simply the dynamics of the mind.
People who don’t easily get provoked, even when there is cause for provocation, don’t “fly off the handle.” It’s difficult to upset them, difficult to speed up their minds. They can stay calm in the midst of pressure, remain sensitive to the needs of all involved, see clearly, and act decisively. During a crisis – from a minor emergency at the office to a major earthquake – such people help everyone else to stay clearheaded. They are protecting not only themselves from danger, but those around them too.
The Buddha called this “living intentionally.” It is a way of life. Slowing down is not the goal; it is the means to an end. The goal is living in freedom – freedom from the pressures of hurry, from the distractions that fragment our time and creativity and love. Ultimately, it means living at the deepest level of our awareness.
An unhurried mind brings the capacity to make wise choices every day – choices of how we use our time, of where we place our resources and our love. I am not just talking about avoiding the rat race, but about a life full of an artistic beauty – a life that has almost vanished from modern civilization, but is quite within the reach of everyone.
In this, I believe, we do more than simply elevate our own personal lives. We begin to remake our civilization. We can begin to transform our global jungle into a real global village, where our children will remember naturally the needs of all the children on the face of the earth. This is our destiny. This is what we were all born for and what we have been looking for all of our lives, whatever else we have been seeking.
Ideas and Suggestions
Experiment with getting up a little earlier each day. Use the time you gain for getting a more relaxed start on the day: more time for breakfast, a few minutes’ walk, or reading something inspirational. Avoid the temptation to check e-mail, catch up on the news, or anything else that you know just adds to the pressure or s
peeds you up.
Try controlling your own “information overload.” What do you really have to read? Can you watch less TV or set a limit to Internet browsing? Experiment and keep track of the results.
Try the “red pencil”exercise.
Meals are a great time for giving relationships a more important place in your day. If you often eat alone, find a friend to share lunch with. Give yourselves enough time not to hurry – and avoid talking business!
Set aside a regular time for reflection. A weekend morning, before the day gets started, is a good way to begin. You might use the time for thinking about what’s really important to you in the long run – a “Lifetime To Do” list, or even a “To Be” list.
See if you can find a situation where you’re regularly pressured to speed up. Can you think of a way to forestall it, perhaps by starting earlier or rearranging your time? If you can break the pattern, you’ve made a major gain in what the Buddha calls “intentional living.”
Practice patience – make a game of it. Make a date to do something special with a small child or two and go at their pace, see through their eyes, enjoy their enjoyment.
When you catch yourself getting angry, observe your mind; see if you can catch it beginning to speed up. If you’re feeling adventurous, try to step back a little rather than react. (At this point, you’re just learning to observe your mind; there will be specific techniques to try in later chapters.)
CHAPTER 3
One Thing at a Time
Even when we have a lot to do, we can avoid stress and hurry by tackling one thing at a time.
Most of us have times when the mind starts playing one of its old tapes – “He did this to me; she said that to me;” – and just won’t be switched off. Our emotions can get so stirred up that we cannot sleep, we cannot eat, we cannot let that memory go.
At such times, the skill we need is the ability to turn our attention completely away from that old incident – to withdraw attention from the past and bring it back to the present.
I have talked to people caught in old resentments like this and tried to console them. “When did this quarrel take place?”
They answer glumly, “Seven years ago. In Minneapolis.”
I remind them, “That’s seven years and two thousand miles away from here and now.”
It is not an incident in the past that agitates our mind at times like these. It is the attention we give the thought of that incident now. The more attention, the bigger the incident appears. Without attention, it is simply a ghost from the past.
That is why the training of attention is such an important part of bringing the mind to a calmer, more peaceful state. Along with slowing down, we need to learn how to keep our mind focused – and one of the most effective ways to learn this is to do, with complete attention, only one thing at a time.
When the mind is uncontrolled, we don’t think our thoughts – our thoughts think us.
Trying to get through life without control over your attention is a little like trying to reach a destination with no control over your car.
Suppose you leave work at five as usual, get in your car, and head for home. It is a beautiful day, and you are enjoying the view and the unusually light traffic when suddenly, without warning, your car swerves into the right-hand lane. You grab the wheel sharply, but the car ignores you and pulls off onto the next exit. In horror, you realize that you are not driving your Ford any more. It is driving you – it has a mind of its own.
You want to go home, but your car has other ideas. It finds the town tempting. You start to panic. What is the matter with this car?
After a desperate struggle, you manage to get back on the highway. But soon you feel that irresistible tug on the wheel. The car takes over once more, pulling to get off the road. After fighting with you for a few exits, it gets its way and careens off at Paradise Drive. The malls on both sides of the road are full of shops; your Ford seems fascinated by window-shopping. But you don’t care; all you want is to get back on the highway again.
It’s a fight like this all the way home. When you finally arrive, three or four excursions later, you’re out of gas and late for dinner. Where did the time go? Who was in control?
A story like this belongs in the realm of science fiction, but when it comes to our attention, we often have as little control as the driver of this car. With temptations and distractions on every side, we are used to the mind weaving all over the road, swerving from lane to lane and causing danger to ourselves and everyone around us.
The next time you wash the dinner dishes, for example, see how many times your thoughts wander in just fifteen minutes. You may catch your mind straying to the quarrel you had last week over some absurd little disagreement. It flickers back to the pan you are scrubbing, but only for a moment; then it is off again.
Now the suds remind you of snow, and your unruly thoughts wander back to Christmases past. A few lines of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” float through your mind. You are no longer standing in front of a sink in California; you are two thousand miles away in the depths of a Minnesota winter.
From dishes in California to snows in Minnesota – this happens in the thinking process of everybody. We like to say we were thinking those thoughts, but it would be more accurate to say our thoughts think us because we have so little control over them.
Directing attention at will is the most precious skill in life.
Fortunately, we don’t have to put up with this. Attention can be trained, and no skill in life is greater than the capacity to direct our attention at will.
The benefits of this are numerous. If you have trained your mind to give complete attention to one thing at a time, you can achieve your goal in any walk of life. Whether it is science or the arts or sports or a profession, concentration is a basic requirement in every field. And complete concentration is genius.
I have a friend who is an excellent driver with a first-rate car. On a long-distance trip she glides smoothly into the through lane and cruises straight to her destination without even changing lanes. She never seems to exert herself, and she always manages to think a little ahead. Streams of traffic just part like the Red Sea before Moses to let her through. And her concentration is like that too. When she is behind the wheel, her mind is steady and her attention never wavers.
This kind of one-pointed attention is helpful in whatever job you are doing. But perhaps the greatest benefit is the emotional stability it brings. In order to get angry, your concentration must be broken – your mind has to change lanes. In order to get afraid, your mind has to change lanes. In order to get upset, your mind has to change lanes. It is not that you choose to let your attention wander; your mind simply takes over and changes whether you want it to or not. If you can keep your mind in one lane, your concentration is unbroken; you are master of your attention. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the challenges, you will not lose your sovereignty over your thinking process.
A wandering mind is not just a modern problem. Even in the days of the Compassionate Buddha, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, people used to complain to him, “I have problems at home. I have problems at work. I can’t sleep well; I can’t eat well; I am always upset.”
The Buddha would look at them with his wise eyes and say, “Nobody is upsetting you. Nothing is upsetting you. You get upset because you are upsettable.”
Then he would add, “Don’t you want to be unupsettable?”
“Yes, Blessed One.”
“Don’t you want to be happy?”
“Of course, Blessed One.”
“Then,” he would say, “you have to train your mind.”
That is what we all yearn for – a mind that cannot be upset by anything. And we can achieve it, too, but it calls for a lot of work in the training of attention.
The Buddha was perhaps the most acute psychologist the world ha
s seen, because he understood the workings of the mind from the inside. When we have resentments or hostilities or ill will, he would say, not only our attention but our vital energy is caught in the past. When we learn to recall attention from the past and keep it completely in the present, we reclaim a tremendous reserve of vital energy that has been trapped in the past like a dinosaur. Every time we do this, we restore a little more of our vital wealth to the present moment.
Just as all of us carry the burden of resentments from the past, we all have fears and anxieties related to the future. This is part of our conditioning as human beings. But here, too, we can learn to prevent our energy from wandering into the future and keep it completely in the present.
In the long run – I am anticipating many years of training attention – you won’t think about the past at all. It is not that you cannot remember the past; you just don’t think about it. You won’t think about the future, either: not that you don’t plan for the future, but you are not entangled in what it will bring. You live one hundred percent in the present – which means you are one hundred percent alive.
When we live one hundred percent in the present, we are one hundred percent alive.
Until it is trained, the mind will continue to go its own way, because it is the nature of an untrained mind to wander. If your mind were to appear on one of those late-night television talk shows, the host would ask it, “Why do you keep wandering like this?”
Take Your Time Page 4