This month, we’ll focus on giving the gifts of time and attention through the subtle points of Slowing Down and One-Pointed Attention. Slowing Down dovetails nicely into our spiritual reading topic from last month, because part of slowing down is prioritizing how we spend our time effectively.
As this holiday period begins around the world, we consider gifts to our families, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. This month, we’ll also consider the generosity that comes from the gift of our time and attention. It’s a gift we can give every day, in any season. During the month, we’ll sharpen our focus on how we can give gifts of time and attention more of the time.
Is there something you have done in your life to help you slow down effectively? How has that helped you and those around you? We’d love to hear your strategies and tips!
This is an excerpt from Passage Meditation by Easwaran.
If we want freedom of action, good relations with others, health and vitality, calmness of mind, and the ability to grow, we have to learn to slow down. We simply cannot afford to pay the price of hurry, however attractive the packaging. The price is our very life. Again the profound words of Thoreau come to mind: “I have no time to be in a hurry.”
But it is not enough just to say this or to put a sticker on our bumper: “You are following a slowpoke.” We are dealing with a deeply imprinted pattern of behavior and long-standing habits. We need to have a strategy, take practical steps, and be prepared for a long struggle, though the benefits will accumulate as soon as we begin. It is we who must assume responsibility for changing these habits . . . for learning to slow down.
One practical step is to get up early in the morning. If you don’t do that, how will it be possible for you to avoid hurry? Naturally, a certain number of things have to be done before you start work: you need to meditate, eat your breakfast, brush your teeth, and so forth. Obviously, if you wake up at eleven o’clock and then start a program of going slow, you won’t be able to accomplish any work at all.
So get up as early as you can. In the country, the beauty of morning is unexcelled: the coolness, the special quality of the light, the dew on flowers and spiderwebs, the singing of the breeze, of the birds, of the whole earth. In the city too, things are at their best. There is relative quiet and the promise of new opportunities. Wordsworth found beauty even in the city in early morning:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”
When you rise, have your meditation at a fixed time, so that it will almost become a reflex. Just as many people feel famished at noon when it is time for their lunch, your mind will feel famished for meditation and will want thirty minutes to still itself. You may think that an extravagant claim, but why should the conditioning behind our habits always work against us? We can train ourselves to do automatically what benefits the body, mind, and spirit, just as now we too often compulsively do what harms them.
After meditation, if you have risen early, there will be time to go into the breakfast room, sit with your family or friends, say a few loving words, and go through your breakfast leisurely. In order to enjoy your food, or anything else for that matter, you have to learn to go slowly. But look at the number of people who eat and run. In fact, a restaurant near us has that name, “Eat and Run.” I don’t plan to go in. Running about is bad enough, but doing it after eating is simply asking for digestive trouble. I assume a lot of people do ask for it, though, because I see those little rolls of antacid pills sold like candy at counters everywhere.
I never heard of a restaurant in India called “Eat and Run,” but modern life has left its imprint there in other ways. We have an interesting phenomenon called the “railway meal.” I hope you never have to experience one. The railways serve meals right on the train when it pulls into a station, and you have about twenty minutes, or perhaps only fifteen, to eat. The man who brings the food just stands there hovering over you, concerned that the plate might go with you on the journey. He watches, he waits, and you know that the moment the bell rings, whether you have finished or not, he will snatch that plate away. People eat with arms flying to their faces, and after every mouthful they look at the time and quickly thrust some more food in their mouths. Consciousness is completely split between plate and watch. It doesn’t make for a very enjoyable meal.
Often people forget, not because they have a poor memory, but because they rush. At campus, when the instructor asks for the papers, they have to say, “Oh! It’s not here!” — adding, somewhat lamely, “I must have put it in the back of the other car.” Actually, as they flutter around getting ready to leave, such people aren’t really there. The madly dashing body bears some resemblance to the person you know, but the mind is not present. When you leave for work, for errands, for a trip, it is a good idea to slow down and spend a few moments checking through things mentally to make sure you are taking everything you need. Haven’t you ridden with someone who, about two or three miles from home, suddenly slaps his forehead or groans because something was left behind? You must either turn around and go back — and the second departure always seems a bit less interesting — or phone to arrange a complicated plan for retrieving the missing object, or do without it. And all this because the person was “saving time” by hurrying to get out of the house.
How much better to arrange an early start! That way you won’t have to arrive at the last moment and dash in with no time to be cordial to anyone. Why not be at your office, shop, or classroom ten minutes early and find out what others are doing? Chat with the people in the mail room; talk to the maintenance crew, who may have some interesting things to tell you.
Once, when I was on the Berkeley campus, I struck up a conversation with a man standing near me. I asked him what he did.
“Oh,” he said, “I’m more important than the president of the university.”
“Is that so?” I asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m the plumber,” he said. “If the president doesn’t come in, things are still okay for a while. But just let them try getting by without me.”
Wherever you build personal relationships like this, people behave kindly. They will be understanding and give you their time if you will give them yours.