I can think of: as a hospital nurse, where skilled professionals prize the ability to do lots of things at once and do them fast.
Sometimes I can’t believe the chaos that goes on day after day on a hospital ward. Medications have to be given on time. Patients ring their call bells and you have to respond. Machines and phones and doctors and visitors and family – it’s a chaotic environment.
I took great pride in doing as much as I could as fast as I could. But I used to wonder: How can this be healing? Most patients are in pain, afraid, tired. This just adds to their discomfort and anxiety.
Then I heard Easwaran speak at a meditation retreat, and I went back to work determined to slow down.
It wasn’t easy. When you’re immersed in an important task and a call bell rings, you tend to rush in with the attitude “What do you want?” and your mind still on what you had been doing. Now, I started just paying attention to the patients and giving them what they needed.
The rest of the staff didn’t get what I was doing. They were rushing around, and when they saw me not rushing around so much they wondered if I was really doing the job. Some of them resented that I didn’t seem to be carrying my load.
But I found I was actually getting more done – and without all that rushing. It surprised even me. Others began to notice too, and their attitude changed. They saw that the call bell rang less frequently and the care I gave was more effective. When a patient is given undivided attention, they don’t ring the call bell as often. They seem to be more relaxed, even in a not-so-relaxed atmosphere.
In years gone by, whenever he saw work pressures mounting around him, Easwaran would frequently walk through the workplace smiling but silent, a quiet reminder to slow down and focus on the task at hand. He was a model of moving without hurry with unshakable concentration, never rushed by circumstance. In whatever he did he was all there, completely absorbed in the present. Instead of being driven by time, he was its master.
In this chapter he explains why slowing down gives us more time instead of depriving us of it – and, as always, offers practical suggestions from his life for how to cultivate this vital skill.
Be at Peace in the Moment
By Eknath Easwaran
One of the curious games I learned as a Boy Scout was musical chairs. There would be thirteen of us and only twelve chairs, and we would all circle around while someone sang our Scout song. Whenever the singer stopped, everyone had to find a seat – and of course, one boy would be without.
Each time around, one more chair would be taken away. As the game got faster and faster, we would begin to push each other and do all kinds of impossible things like trying to jump on a chair from behind, panicky because we were afraid we’d be out of the game.
Many people seem to treat life like this. Time keeps taking away the chairs, and we run around in more and more of a panic trying to get a seat – even if it means someone else will have to go without.
But in every age and culture there are a few – people like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Mahatma Gandhi – who find this approach to life as meaningless as the game. After a few rounds of scurrying like the rest of us, they quietly step aside.
Like children, we might feel sorry for them. “Poor Francis! He can’t run around any more.” But we have to admit they seem to enjoy their choice. Great spiritual figures like these go through life without fuss and frenzy as if they had all the time in the world, and their lives seem so much richer than ours that we have to stop and wonder why. They even seem to accomplish more, so that their lives have enduring value, meaning, and the power to inspire.
Where does this sense of fullness come from? How can such people live without hurry but make each moment count? The Buddha would give a simple answer: it is because they live completely in the present – the only time there is.
STORY
Slowing Down to Catch Up
“I was running late to get to a meditation retreat about 185 miles away. I was riding my motorcycle, and because I was behind I exceeded the speed limit as often as possible by as much as I dared. (Above 85 mph the highway patrol can take you to jail.) My speed resulted in my arriving at the retreat after 3.5 hours pretty tired and feeling a bit sheepish about leaving things so late that I had to hurry in the first place. On the way home I decided to go no faster than the speed limit and say the mantram whenever I was tempted to speed up. I arrived home quite rested 3.5 hours later.
“This reminded me what a waste of time it is to hurry somewhere. It not only takes me away from whatever’s happening right now, but can also put me and others in dangerous circumstances.”
– Jack D., California
By contrast, most of us live very little in the present. If we could watch our thoughts, we would be surprised to see how much time we spend in the past or future – or simply daydreaming, out of time altogether. And when we do focus on the present, we try to fit in several things at once. Very seldom can we say we are fully present in the present moment.
Yet, to repeat, now is the only time there is. The present is all we have. If we feel we don’t have enough time, the first thing to do is not throw it away. Instead of ceding it to the past and future, we can take steps to give our undivided interest to here and now.
In practice, this means we need to learn to slow down and give complete attention to whatever we are doing. And of course we need to be clear about our priorities, so that what we do is chosen wisely. From this perspective, this book presents a set of skills for living fully here and now.
Now is the only time there is. If we feel we don’t have enough time, the first thing to learn is not to waste the time we have.
Time travel is a staple of science fiction. There is something endlessly fascinating about being able to visit the past or future, perhaps make a few improvements, and come back wiser for what one learned. Imagine having a vehicle that could travel forward or backward in time as easily as a car travels through space. How tempting to be able to go back and fix up history the way it ought to be, undo a past injustice or mistake, or slip into the future to check on investments and then dash back to make a fortune. It seems like such a good way to make the most of time.
The truth is that all of us already have a vehicle like this: our own mind. When we nurse a resentment or dwell on an anxiety, we are stepping into a private time machine and whisking ourselves away from the here and now. Whenever we rehash old experiences, whether pleasant or painful, we have left the present and are traveling in the past. Every fear or anxiety or wishful fantasy is a trip into the future. And just as we can go out to the garage, step into the car, and drive off wherever we like, the mind can escape in its time machine whenever it likes. There is always gas in the tank for trying to get away from here and now.
Most of us spend much more time doing this than we think. And with every trip, we are training the mind not to remain in the present, but to wander in the past and future as aimlessly as in a dream.
Everybody likes to bask in pleasant memories – the time we won all those trophies, prom night, the day we were chosen Manager of the Year. Unfortunately, the past is not always pleasant. And whenever we train the mind to dwell on pleasant memories, we are training it to get caught in unpleasant ones too: the time we finished last, or did something ridiculous we’d like to forget, or hurt or were hurt by someone we loved. This is the stuff of resentment, anxiety, self-deprecation, guilt, and fear, which can make life a terrible burden.
The
