Such personal ways do take time, of course. When you know a transaction is going to take a little longer, you simply plan accordingly. The appeal of the autoteller is that we don’t have to plan; we can get money at the last minute – assuming the machine is open and is not malfunctioning. Is that gain worth even a small loss to our humanity? Is anything worth the deprivation of human relationships?
Trust, intimacy, and concern can flourish when there is personal contact.
Everywhere today I see fewer and fewer personal contacts between people, which means fewer and fewer relationships where trust, intimacy, and concern can flourish.
Television, for example, apart from its other drawbacks, has had a devastating effect on human companionship. We say we do not have time to talk to our neighbors, let alone the teller at the bank or the mail carrier; yet the surveys consistently show that we watch, on the average, five or more hours of television every day.
When people say to me, “We don’t have time for all this,” I ask, “How many hours a day do you watch television?”
They count and say sheepishly, “Oh, about four.”
I just suggest, “Why don’t you cut it in half?”
I do not ask people to eliminate television, but why not keep it within reason? I do watch good shows on television, though they are few and far between. But even then I like to watch with friends. We enjoy each other’s company, and we are together not just physically but in spirit too.
Nothing makes us feel so secure as knowing that we have brought a little joy into the life of someone we care about.
Most of us want to be liked by those around us. We like to please and be loved by those we love. And nothing makes us feel so secure as knowing that we have brought a little joy into the life of someone we care about. As John Donne said, “No man is an island.” That is why selfless relationships lead to happiness, while a self-centered life leads to loneliness and alienation. As human beings, it is our nature to be part of a whole, to live in a context where personal relationships are supportive and close.
Yet although it is natural, this is one of the first things to be forgotten when we get speeded up. Because when the mind is going too fast, it is impossible to be sensitive to the needs of others. It is impossible to resist the insistent little voice inside that demands, “You have got to get your way!” So often, this is what damages loving relationships in our hectic world.
I was fortunate as a boy because I had a loving grandmother who taught me not to insist on always having my own way. In my early years, of course, I tried to test my will against hers. Don’t think I didn’t try quite a few times! Sometimes it worked with my mother, too. But never with my granny – not even once.
In India, one of the easiest ways to bring mothers and grandmothers to their knees is not to eat. Children learn this at an early age. You just say “Don’t want!” and your mother gives in, your granny gives in, and you get your way. I had seen quite a few of my cousins doing this, so I said to myself, “Why don’t I try it too?”
One morning at breakfast, I tried it on my mother. She was really shaken. “I made it specially for you,” she coaxed. “Just taste it. Once you taste it, you will like it.”
In fact, she had prepared especially beautiful rice cakes that morning, and the coconut chutney was most tantalizing. There was nothing I wanted more than to eat that breakfast. Except one thing: I wanted to get my way, too.
So I stubbornly pushed my plate away.
My granny came in at that moment, just returned from the temple, and she saw immediately what was going on.
She sat down next to me and began to comment on the breakfast. “These rice cakes are as light as a flower. And look at the special chutney from fresh coconut. Your mother has made it all for you. Don’t you want to eat it?”
Again I pushed my plate away.
“All right,” she said, “then I’m going to eat it myself.”
“Why don’t you, Granny?” I said, not thinking she would.
She just sat there and ate it all. Not one bite was left! I had learned an important lesson: never to trifle with my granny.
My mother was always softhearted. After a while she said, “I can make fresh rice cakes for you.”
My granny said, “He doesn’t want to eat them.” I still wanted to get my way. I couldn’t bring myself to say, “All right, I’ll eat them up.” I stuck to my self-will and went without my breakfast.
My granny must have done this three or four times, and after that I never bargained about food – never in the kitchen, never at mealtime. That strategy was left out; there was never any confrontation over food. And my grandmother would explain to my mother, “You see, you have to do that with children. That is the way they learn.” My mother understood, but she retained her soft heart. She was not like my grandmother. I was fortunate to have both these wonderful women to raise me: my grandmother, who I realized years later was my spiritual teacher, and my mother, who I came to think of as her teaching assistant.
All children try at times to get their way like this and bend their parents to their will. My mother always said that I was an angel until I went away to college; but my granny, while she respected me deeply and in many ways had much higher ambitions for me than I could ever have had for myself, knew that I was far from perfect. In her tough but tender way, she taught me over and over to turn my back on my self-will, because she knew that I would be crippled in all my relationships if I carried that habit into my adult years.
Later on, when I was a teenager, if she had to tell me not to do something, she felt that since I was past childhood she should give me a reason. I would just say, “You don’t have to tell me the reason, Granny. I won’t do it.” She used to brag to the entire village, “Is there any other boy in this village who will say he doesn’t want to hear the reason?”
This is the kind of perfect relationship that comes as the stubbornness of self-will subsides. When you don’t always insist on your own way, love, trust, and respect come naturally. The greatest relationship can exist between older people and younger people when they share this kind of trust.
When irritations or conflicts occur in a relationship, don’t move away. Move closer – even if it’s hard.
We expect professional and financial success to require time and effort. Why do we take success in our relationships for granted? Why should we expect harmony to come naturally just because we are in love?
Naturally there are going to be differences when two people are in love. Even identical twins have differences of opinion, and they come from the same combinations of genes and the very same background. Why should two people from, say, New York City and Paris, Texas, expect life together to be smooth sailing?
When irritations or conflicts occur in a relationship, my advice is, don’t move away. Don’t say, “I am not going to talk to you; I don’t want to see you.” Instead, that is the time to say, “I am going to get closer to you anyway. I am going to try to put your welfare first.”
There is a very close connection between patience, kindness, and love. Yet this word “kindness” is so simple – so humble perhaps – that we seem to have forgotten what it means. It opens a great avenue of love. Most of us can be kind under certain circumstances – at the right time, with the right people, in a certain place. If we find ourselves unable to be kind, we may simply stay away. We avoid someone, change jobs, leave home. But in life we often have to move closer to difficult people instead of moving away.
I believe that it comes naturally to us to want to contribute to the welfare of those we love. But I am enough of a realist to understand that there are obstacles that stand in the way of the free flow of concern and compassion for those around us. If we understand these obstacles, we will be better prepared to overcome them.
In most disagreements, it is really not ideological differences that divide people. It is often self-will
, lack of respect, putting ourselves first instead of the other person. Sometimes all that is required is listening with respect and attention to the other person’s point of view.
Instead, most of us carry around a pair of earplugs, and the minute somebody says something we don’t like, we stuff our ears until we can start talking again. Watch yourself the next time you find you are quarreling with someone you love. It won’t look like a melodrama. It will be more like a situation comedy on television: two people trying to reach an understanding by not listening to each other. One person is saying, “What did you do the other day when I asked you to wash the dishes?” And the other replies, “What about you?” Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? They are not trying to settle their differences; they are trying to make sure that neither of them will forget.
To stop this quarrel, simply listen calmly with complete attention, even if you don’t like what the other person is saying. Try it and see. Often the action will be like that of a play. For a while there is the “rising action”: his temper keeps going higher, her language becomes more heated; everything is heading for a climax. But often enough, the ending is a surprise. The other person begins to quiet down. His voice becomes gentler, her language kinder – all because you have not retaliated or lost your respect. Whatever happens, you walk away feeling better about yourself. You have stayed kind, kept your cool, not let anger push you around. The taste of freedom that brings is worth any amount of practice.
The more defenses we carry, the more insecure we feel – because defenses prevent us from moving closer to others.
In personal relationships, most of us are far from free. We are always wondering how the other person is going to react – always fearing an attack, a snub, or perhaps just indifference. So we have all kinds of ego-defenses – moats of suspicion, drawbridges of diffidence, walls of rigidity, and several inexplicable trapdoors. With all of these barriers, we expect to sit in our citadel undisturbed, the ruling monarch of our realm. But just the opposite is true. In fact, the more defenses we have, the more insecure we feel, because it is these defenses that prevent us from moving closer to others.
When we practice giving our best without getting caught up in others’ attitudes and reactions, we find that they often begin to lower their defenses, too. Little by little, centimeter by centimeter, the walls begin to come down. Then they too can give their best to the relationship without anxiety or fear.
If just one person in a group is always on guard, it is natural for everyone else to raise their defenses also. It becomes a reflex. As soon as we see someone who is on guard, we say, “He makes me feel uncomfortable.” We retreat into our citadel, draw up the bridge, close the trapdoors, and wait until he goes away. But the secure person, the person who is comfortable with herself and tries to remember the needs of others, makes everyone else comfortable as well.
To love, we need to be sensitive to those around us – not racing through life engrossed in all the things we need to do.
So much of the richness of life is to be found in companionship that I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to heal bonds that have weakened and to bring freshness back to relationships that have grown stale.
Most relationships begin to fall apart through disagreements, and disagreements are not settled by argumentation and logic. They are resolved – or, more accurately, dissolved – through patience. Without patience you start retaliating, and the other person gets more upset and retaliates too. Instead of retaliating with a curt reply, slow down and refrain from answering immediately. As soon as you can manage it, try a smile and a sympathetic word.
There is a close connection between speed and impatience. Impatience is simply being in a hurry. Our culture has become so speeded up today that no one has time to be patient. People in a hurry cannot be patient – so people in a hurry cannot really love. To love, we need to be sensitive to those around us, which is impossible if we are racing through life engrossed in all the things we need to do before sunset. In fact, I would go to the extent of saying that a person who is always late will find it difficult to love; he will be in too much of a hurry. A late riser will find it difficult to love; she will always be going through the day trying to catch up.
Anger can be contagious – but so can peace of mind. Which do you want to spread?
It takes some self-knowledge to understand that when we associate with people, we participate in their mental states. We are affected not just by what people say and do, but also by what they think.
When we are thinking angry thoughts about somebody, we are throwing abstract rocks at him. Sometimes I think a rock does not hurt so much as a harsh thought, because the hurt from a rock can heal much more rapidly. We know how long people can suffer because of resentment and hostility.
Living in a place where people are angry and impatient is living in an atmosphere worse than smog. We are all concerned about pollution of the atmosphere we breathe, but internal pollution is equally dangerous. One angry, impatient person can upset a whole group.
Conversely, have you ever known anyone whose mind was so calm that agitated people find rest in her presence and angry people become forgiving? People with the skill of putting others first often play this role. Without preaching to others or advising them, the peace of mind they radiate has a transforming influence on those around them.
We all need support, whether in a family context or in the context of companionship among friends. And I believe we can find it, even in our hectic world.
The Buddha might have called this “right companionship.” Everything we do, he reminds us, either adds or subtracts from our own image as human beings. We can seek out the goodness in people. We can seek out what is noble in human character. We can look for goodness and nobility in choosing our friends, in choosing to whom to give our attention and our love.
We cannot afford to give unquestioning admiration to a person simply because he or she happens to be prominent in the media. Everywhere we look – television, newspapers, magazines, books – such individuals are played up. They are not meant to be role models; they are simply gifted athletes, musicians, actors, or actresses. But because of the constant attention of the media and our innate need to have someone to look up to, they take on an aura of supreme importance.
Rather than looking to the media for love and inspiration, isn’t it better to look around us? If we confuse media glamour with reality, we are going to find it very difficult to love. Whether we realize it or not, we will always be expecting perfection, which means we will be increasingly disappointed, frustrated, and insecure.
There is only one way to be completely happy: to forget ourselves in the service of others.
In my early days of teaching in San Francisco, someone in my audience once asked, “You are an educated, cultured, enlightened person. Do you believe in hell? Do you believe in heaven?”
“I have seen people in hell,” I replied. “And I have seen one or two people in heaven, too.”
If you look back upon your own life – at the times when you were filled with anger, when your mind was in turmoil, when you couldn’t sleep – you have been a visitor to hell. But in those rare moments of self-forgetfulness that come to all of us, when you forget your petty, personal desires in helping your family or community or country, you pay a brief visit to heaven right here on earth.
Gandhi, in whose India I grew up, lived in heaven always. He was a citizen not just of India but of heaven too. When the people of India were blessed with good fortune, which was seldom, he was immensely happy. But while they were suffering under the burdens of poverty, famine, and the injustices of foreign rule, he lived in heaven because he was able to help relieve their suffering by showing them how to stand on their own feet and resist injustice nonviolently. Heaven and hell are just two states of mind.
My grandmother used to say in her simple language that there are millions of people who suffer
because they make demands on life that life cannot fulfill. Even after centuries of civilization, we still haven’t discovered that there is only one way to be completely happy, and that is to forget ourselves in the service of others. When we forget ourselves in trying to add to the welfare of others, happiness comes to us without our asking.
When you look around in any country, you are likely to find a few men and women who have this remarkable gift of being able to forget themselves. These are the people who live in heaven. All their attention is on others, so they don’t have attention left over for dwelling on what they want and insisting on their own way. They don’t have time to keep asking, “Am I happy? Is the world tending to my needs?” They are occupied only in giving, only in loving.
To live in heaven always, we have to slow down the mind. All negative thoughts are fast. They are going a hundred miles per hour, so of course we can’t turn, we can’t stop, we have got to crash. But positive thoughts are slow. Patience is always in the slow lane. Good will is never in a rush. And love is actually off the highway, for it is not a stream of thoughts at all but a lasting state of mind.
If you could see into the minds of people in a hurry, you would see thoughts whirling round and round like the laundry in a dryer, faster and faster. Such people get angry without any convincing reason – over trifles, over little pinpricks that would be laughable if the consequences weren’t often disastrous – all because the mind is racing out of control. And there are physical implications, as I said earlier. When the mind is going too fast, it naturally begins to affect the body, because body and mind are not separate; they work together.
Take Your Time Page 10