Take Your Time

by Eknath Easwaran

  When Saturday arrives, you might say firmly, “I’m going to see my movie.” She will say just as firmly, “Fine, then; I’m going to see my play.” If you are caught in these rigid choices, you are not only not going to spend Saturday night together, you will gradually find you spend less and less time together doing anything. You get used to doing what you want, and if you are rigid in one thing, you are going to be rigid everywhere else. Rigidity is a habit of mind, and if left to its own it will grow more and more unyielding.

  If you want to free yourself from being dictated to by your own habits like this, you can turn your attention away from your film and accompany her to As You Like It instead. You’ll miss your movie, but you will gain her appreciation.

  You don’t like Shakespeare. You don’t like blank verse. You detest ballads. But you go, and you give the play your complete attention too. I have seen people dragged to the theater to please their partner; they can’t pay attention, so they sit through three acts thinking about something else. Of course, they have a miserable time. But that’s not what you do. You give all your attention to the play, trying to follow the language, and after a while your interest gets caught – perhaps by those glorious words:

  All the world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players.

  They have their exits and their entrances,

  And one man in his time plays many parts,

  His acts being seven ages. . . .

  “Hey,” you say, “this is rather good.”

  You have never been able to pay attention to Shakespeare, and now you’re getting interested – just because you wanted to move closer to a lover of Shakespeare. At the end of the play you admit, “You know, I really enjoyed myself. Honestly!” And you are being honest: you enjoyed it through her eyes.

  Training the mind to be patient begins with wearing likes and dislikes casually, like a favorite old sweater.

  It is not possible for a mind that is rigidly conditioned to slow down because such a mind is in constant turmoil – roiled like the surface of a lake in a high wind. What gives power to the wind is what I call “likes and dislikes.” To put it simply, the mind is conditioned to go after what it likes and to avoid what it dislikes, and so it is never at rest.

  If we can observe our mind with a little detachment, we can watch this process. I’ve done this countless times. When faced with some trifling dislike – perhaps a dinner that is not to our taste – it is natural for the mind to experience a slight downturn. Similarly, when we get the dessert that we like, the mind puts on a smile. There isn’t much danger here unless such likes and dislikes become rigid – but if they do, they can wreak havoc with our peace of mind.

  Training the mind to be patient and calm under all circumstances, then, often begins with learning to wear our likes and dislikes loosely, casually, like a favorite old sweater.

  There are many other benefits of this. If we can become less rigid in things like films and food, we will be freer in other areas too. We will find it easier to face a task at work that we don’t like but must be done. At times when things don’t go as planned, we will be less likely to get frustrated and disappointed. And, most important, we can work with people we don’t like without our peace of mind getting rumpled.

  Please understand that I am talking here about personal preferences, not about questions of value. We make legitimate, important distinctions every day – for example, between real food and junk food or between healthy and unhealthy lifestyles – which are not a matter of what we like or dislike. Problems arise because it is easy to confuse likes and dislikes with what is right or wrong.

  Unfortunately, what we like is easily confused with what is best for everyone. The difference is really between what is pleasant and what is of lasting benefit. Pleasure is fleeting; a real benefit lasts. Sometimes, it is true, they coincide. What is pleasant can be beneficial. But usually this is only with something simple, such as a glass of orange juice. Most of the time, we need to scrutinize the credentials of any experience that promises to please us and ask: “What are the long-term effects of this experience? What are the costs – not just in dollars but in calories, security, relationships, or self-esteem?”

  I have always enjoyed movies, for example, but it is more and more difficult to find something I want to see. A good film is hard to uncover among the hundreds that are filled with excessive, graphic displays of violence. It is not merely that I do not enjoy movies like this; I don’t approve of what they do to my mind.

  Once again, the Buddha had a very practical touchstone for questions like these. In his eyes, everything we do shapes the kind of person we are becoming. So he says, “If an experience calms your mind, slows you down, makes you more likely to be compassionate and kind, that experience is beneficial; you can enjoy it. If it agitates your mind, speeds you up, excites your senses, or makes you angry or resentful, it is not beneficial; you should avoid it.”

  With every choice, take time to ask, “What are the long-term effects of this experience? What are the costs – in calories, security, self-esteem?”

  Likes and dislikes come in the way of love. A rigid person may expect others to enjoy what he or she enjoys. But people have ideas of their own, and other people often enjoy things that leave us cold. To love, we have to learn to loosen our own personal preferences and expectations. Then we can enjoy, if not the things they enjoy, at least their enjoyment of those things.

  A friend once confided in me, “I find it extremely difficult to talk with my father, and it saddens me because I want to get closer to him. We don’t argue or anything; we just care about such different things. When he starts to talk about golf, I want to scream. I have no interest in golf whatsoever. Of course,” he added, “I would never tell him that.”

  “Then it’s simple,” I said. “You don’t need to have any interest in golf. What you’re interested in is your father. Just listen to him and not to the golf.”

  This is not just for parents and children. It is in little ways like these that companionship grows and the benefits of each other’s experience are shared. After all, trying to make other people fit our likes and dislikes is likely only to make us move farther apart. If we care about a relationship, instead of always trying to force the other person to come our way, we can look for opportunities to go his or her way, which is good for both.

  By observing how the mind responds to food, you can get a precious early warning when your mind is starting to get out of control.

  Food is an excellent arena for learning to juggle with rigid likes and dislikes. Most people are nutrition-conscious today. We are aware that there is a difference between what is good for the body and what merely appeals to our taste. But we still get swayed by old conditioning when it comes to certain favorite foods.

  I have seen children turn their faces away and say “Icky, icky, icky” when they are served something they don’t like. But we older people are not so different. We may not say anything out loud, but inside we too turn away and say “Icky, icky, icky” when life presents us with something we don’t like.

  I can sympathize with this easily. Today I am free of likes and dislikes where food is concerned, but that freedom was won only after a struggle. As a boy, like most Indians, I could not imagine enjoying a meal without hot chilies and spices. It was through Gandhi’s example that I began to understand that this isn’t a healthy diet. Immediately, I began to reduce spices and salt.

  For some time afterward, I confess, my meals didn’t taste very good. In fact, they seemed not to have any taste at all. But today, after many years of training, I am free. I can taste my food now instead of tasting only the spices in it, and if I were served a meal of highly spiced, deep-fried food, I wouldn’t find it enjoyable at all.

  By juggling with my likes and dislikes this way, I have changed my eating habits completely. Today one of my great favorites is asparagus,
which I had never heard of in India. Today I consume such quantities of asparagus that the checkout clerks can’t believe the amount I buy.

  You might be surprised to find the topic of food in a discussion about patience and peace of mind, but taste is one of the sure barometers of inward weather. When I was suffering through a winter in Minneapolis, there was a big sign over a bank that would say “Sunshine” or (much more often) “Snow” or “Storms Ahead.” It’s like that with the palate. When your mind is under control, your taste buds will ask politely for food that is good for you. But when you are speeded up, your palate is likely to clamor for its old favorites – and you are going to be much more vulnerable to its demands. In this way, by observing how the mind responds to food, you can get a precious early warning when your mind is starting to get speeded up or out of control.

  This connection between food and the mind is unsuspected today, when people are subject to trifling likes and dislikes every day. There seems to be no end to the division and subdivision of taste. When I want ice cream I have one hundred and forty-seven varieties to choose from, and it’s not enough to want chocolate; I have to decide between possibilities like Dutch, Bittersweet, Super Fudge Wonder, and Chewy White Chocolate Macadamia. (Often I just tell the clerk, “Give me the one you like best.”) And for coffee I have to specify Sumatran, Colombian, Kona, or one of a dozen other varieties. I know people whose whole day is affected when they can’t get the coffee they like made just the way they like it. As our preferences get fractioned finer and finer like this, the range of what we can tolerate narrows to a slit – in everything, because this is a habit of the mind.

  I used to go with friends to a nearby coffee shop before my evening talk. One person would order coffee with low-fat milk; a second had to have it with half-and-half. A third took her coffee black and a fourth only drank decaf. I myself am partial to espresso decaf – and one of us insisted on tea.

  One evening I suggested, “Why not let one person order the same for everyone?” That is what my mother used to do. At tea time she would make a big pot of tea the way she liked it, with whole milk fresh from our cow and a little sugar, and serve it to everyone. We all enjoyed it, and it never occurred to us that we should have a special beverage made to our personal specifications.

  Preferences can get more and more rigid until nothing is right, nothing will please.

  We have all known older people who find it impossible to tolerate any change of scene or routine. They must sit in the same chair, watch the same programs on TV, eat the same dinner, have the same conversations over and over again. Anything new would not fit into their rigid scheme. And they explain, “We’re too old to change.”

  If left alone, preferences like these get tighter and tighter until finally nothing is comfortable; nothing will please. The room will always be too cold or too hot, the food too rich or too plain. The neighbor’s dog will be too loud and your friends will not speak loudly enough. Nothing will be quite right.

  But it is not only older people who get caught like this. I had a friend who found it disturbing to eat in restaurants – not because he didn’t enjoy the food, but because they never arranged the service the right way. As soon as he sat down, he had to rearrange everything: the knife, the fork, the spoon, the glass, the napkin. If a salad fork was not provided, he would ask for one, even if he did not order salad. And he would always order a second spoon – I’m not sure for what. He would be visibly nervous until everything was just so. The arrangements, in fact, were much more important to him than the food, which I would have thought to be the first priority while eating in a restaurant.

  This kind of rigid behavior is harmless, however difficult it may be to live with. But consider the person who simply must have things his way or lose control completely. I see items in the papers where a fight breaks out because one person is too slow at a green light or takes another person’s parking place. Most people would just shrug when this kind of thing happens. Some feel forced to use strong language. But what of the man who pulls out a gun and shoots another man dead over a parking place? Has rigidity gone so far that he simply can’t tolerate any violation of what he wants?

  We can learn not to be rigid by playing with likes and dislikes in little things.

  Such incidents are still rare, though I am afraid they are becoming more common in our hurried world. But on a smaller scale, this kind of thing goes on all the time. I often see people get upset over a minor deviation from routine.

  When I was teaching on my old campus in India, I used the blackboard often. The physics department had the best blackboards, so I got permission to use their hall when it was not occupied, and they suffered me to teach Shakespeare and Milton where only Newton and Einstein could be mentioned before.

  Now, I am right-handed, so I always kept my chalk on the right side of the board. And every day I would go in expecting the chalk to be there and find it at the other end of the board instead. Patiently, I would pick it up and put it where it belonged. But I did get a little irritated. I would ask myself, “Why can’t these physics people leave their chalk in the proper place?” And at the end of my class I would place it again to the right.

  This little drama happened every day, to the great entertainment of the students. If they came in and found the chalk left inadvertently somewhere else, they would considerately move it to the wrong end of the board.

  Then one day it occurred to me that the physics professor who played the other role in this drama must be doing the very same thing: finding that I had left the chalk at the wrong place for him and having to move it every day before starting his class. Perhaps he wasn’t even right-handed.

  That afternoon, when my class was over, I carefully placed the chalk where he would keep it.

  I did this for a couple of days and nothing happened. I thought all was well. Then one day I came in and found the chalk on the right! Instead of leaving it where he wanted it, he was placing it where it would be convenient for me. It was a marvelous illustration of how ready we are to assume that our way is the only way – and how, if we only go the other person’s way a little, he might move in our direction too.

  Training the senses does not mean depriving them. It means educating them – teaching them not to demand things at our expense.

  We can have rigid likes and dislikes about anything from clothes to opinions, but the most practical place to start loosening them is with the senses: our little preferences in what we taste, smell, watch, listen to, and touch. Freedom from the tyranny of likes and dislikes begins with training our senses to want what we approve of and to obey when our judgment says no.

  Training the senses does not mean denying them or depriving them. It means educating them not to demand things that will cost us in health, security, or freedom. In training the senses, we don’t forfeit anything in life of lasting value.

  Sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell are the channels that connect the mind to the outside world, and the study of the interaction of senses and mind is most fascinating. Just as the body assimilates food, the mind assimilates what the senses take in. In yoga psychology, in fact, it is said that we eat through our senses. What we experience becomes part of who we are.

  Most of us are careful about the food we eat, but in terms of what our senses eat, we exercise little judgment at all. We forget that we are eating constantly, especially – whether we are reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to music – through our eyes and ears.

  The senses should act as the mind’s office staff, the mind’s assistants. The mind is the boss, at least in name. But all too often the boss doesn’t boss, and the senses behave like boisterous companions trying to get the mind to have a good time. “Hey,” the eyes say, “take a look at this new red sports car. Isn’t it terrific?”

  The ears say, “Studio quality audio – just listen to the sound!”

  Touch says, “See how soft the upholstery
is!”

  Smell says, “Don’t you just love that new car fragrance?”

  Taste, for once, is at a loss, but he finally steps forward and says, “Great! Let’s get in and go get some pizza.”

  Often all these five characters talk at once. In fact, very often they don’t even agree; they are trying to get the mind to pay attention to different things altogether. That is what happens if we eat a good meal and watch a movie at the same time. No wonder we feel confused! And with all this ruckus, who has a chance to hear the still, small voice within?

  To enjoy life in freedom, we have to train the senses to listen to us, for the simple reason that attention follows the senses. To do this, it is not necessary to deprive ourselves of good food or good entertainment, but simply to enjoy what is beneficial and ignore indulgences we will regret afterwards.

  When the senses are trained, they are alert and sensitive. There is a sense of freshness and newness about everything. Instead of feeling you are in the same old groove, you find choices to be made all the time.

  In other words, the kind of life I am talking about is not a life bleached of color. It is just the opposite. I don’t think I have ever known anyone who enjoys life more fully than I do, ups and downs alike. Everything that is good, everything that is wholesome, everything that is beautiful can be enjoyed. What is important is that we not cling to it, but enjoy it as part of a life that is lived for a goal higher than our own personal pleasure.

  Permanent joy is far, far higher than pleasure that comes and goes.

  One of the main difficulties in grasping this is that we don’t have anything lofty to compare with the humdrum pleasures of sensory experience. Until we have tasted something higher and longer lasting, it’s hard to understand what spiritual figures in all ages keep trying to tell us: “Permanent joy is far, far higher than pleasure that comes and goes.”