This week, we will explore how slowing down the mind can provide a critical inroad to building the will. Slowing down can be challenging, but we have many opportunities throughout the day to keep trying. Remember that slowing down isn’t only about pacing, but also about setting priorities.
During retreats we often work together in small groups to reflect on an Easwaran reading or video talk and to brainstorm practical suggestions to try. Regarding the current topic of Slowing Down, what are some successes you have had? How has Slowing Down helped you to build your will?
Do you have a specific challenge that you’d like tips with? Review the reading below for ideas, or ask your eSatsang friends!
The following is an excerpt on Slowing Down on pages 59-61 from The End of Sorrow, volume 1 of The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living by Easwaran.
12. There has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist.
We are now getting into one of the central themes of the Gita. Looking at Arjuna compassionately, the Lord tells him, “You have always been; you will always be.” This is the realization we have to make in life – that we are immortal, that we have everlasting life. Jesus in the Christian scriptures often says, “I have come to bring you everlasting life.” It is into this experiential discovery that we shall move in the course of our meditation. As our meditation deepens, we shall find we are delivered from time into the Eternal Now.
One of the ways to test our progress on the spiritual path is to see how much we are able to free ourselves from the oppressive pressure of time. The clock is the most eloquent symbol of the tyranny of time. I sometimes speculate that before long we may be wearing watches with only one hand, showing a second divided into sixty subseconds. When we make an appointment we will say, “Come at two seconds and thirty-nine subseconds after two thirty.” This is the direction in which we are moving as we become more and more conscious of time. I notice that if at a traffic signal the automobile in front delays ten seconds, immediately the other drivers begin using the horn. I always ask, “What is the harm if that person repeats the mantram for ten seconds and gives us all a chance to slow down?”
The constant craze for going faster, faster, faster throws us more and more into consciousness of time; and curiously enough, when we are oppressed by time, we make many mistakes. It is possible to do our work and attend to our duties without in any way being oppressed by time, and when we work free from the bondage of time we do not make mistakes, we do not get tense, and the quality of our living improves.
One of the easiest ways to free yourself from the tyranny of time is to get up early in the morning. When we used to go for our walks in Oakland in the morning, I would invariably see a few people – usually the same people – making a dash to catch the bus as if they were participating in the Olympics. Often they would be too late, and I always wanted to ask, “Why do you want to run to miss the bus? You might as well walk slowly and miss it.” This is the irony. You run and you still miss the bus, and in addition, the expression you direct at the bus driver is far from loving. You think that he has been doing it on purpose – just waiting until he saw you coming, then stepping on the gas.
This simple step of starting the day early in the morning gives you an opportunity to get up leisurely, take a short walk, and then have your meditation. In meditation, also, do not be aware of time. The moment you become aware of time in meditation, there is an unfavorable factor introduced. When we were having our large class of four or five hundred people on campus, the first night in meditation a few people kept looking at their watches, which I did not object to. But I did begin to protest when they started listening to see if the watches were still ticking. Once you start meditating, forget about time. There is no need to check the clock; you can learn to time the length of the meditation fairly well by the length of the passage you are using.
In order to regain our birthright of eternal life we have to rise gradually above the physical level. Any habit that ties us to the body through a sensory bond eventually has to be thrown away. Right at the outset of the spiritual life we must begin to rid ourselves of physical habits, such as smoking, drinking, and overeating, which will impede our progress. This is not at all a moral or ethical problem; it is a question of spiritual engineering. As long as we tie ourselves to the body by stimulating the senses, and especially by building relationships on the physical level, we cannot realize this legacy of everlasting life.