When I came to America on the Fulbright exchange program many years ago, my friends warned me about the pace of life I would find here. I had never been out of India and was used to the leisurely gait of the village, so I listened politely but without much understanding.
I sailed the Atlantic and arrived in New York City – I just couldn’t believe my eyes! As I stepped from the harbor into the city, I saw people with briefcases and bulky shopping bags scurrying along the sidewalks. Men were pushing huge racks of clothes on wheels and dragging carts of food through the streets, and everyone seemed to be in a terrible hurry.
A few days later I experienced a freeway for the first time, and again I was stunned. The cars tore by, and for a moment I thought there must be a race in progress. I couldn’t imagine why all those people were going sixty or seventy miles per hour. I had to admit, sadly, that my friends in India certainly knew what they were talking about.
I then made my first decision in this country: no one is going to make me run. I will walk, I said to myself, at the same old bullock-cart pace of three miles per hour – in an emergency, four. I will keep the sensible and life-prolonging pace that prevails in the rural areas around the world. I have maintained it ever since, and I believe too that I’ve acted as a bit of a brake on the speed of those around me.
People say that modern life has grown so complicated, so busy, so crowded that we have to hurry even to survive. We need not accept that idea. It is quite possible to live in the midst of a highly developed technological society and keep an easy, relaxed pace while doing a lot of hard work. We have a choice. We are not mere victims of our environment, and we don’t have to go fast just because everybody else does and urges us to do it too.
Often we may not even be aware that we are hurrying. If we have lived that way all our life and been around people who hurry, it is difficult for us to see how fast everything moves. What can we compare it to? Speed becomes a habit we do not know we have. I’m told that people who live next to freeways no longer hear the cars, and perhaps you have had the same experience around a piece of noisy machinery. Rushing about is very much like that.
Initially, our bodies do the speeding under our conscious direction. We run down the stairs, bolt into rooms, slam doors – it is mainly physical. But after a while we become habituated to going faster and faster, and speed gradually takes over the mind. A kind of compulsive pressure builds up. Now we really have a problem, because it is very hard to change such a pattern of living. Just as an eye cannot observe its own working, so a rapid mind cannot take the time to perceive its own rapidity.
When the mind starts whirring in this way, a person easily loses control of his thoughts and actions. My wife and I once went into a café in San Francisco during the lunch hour, and the people working there were in such a flurry that one nearly hit the head of the fellow next to me with a plate. She hadn’t lost her temper, she had no grievance against him, but the sheer speed of her movement so unnerved her that the plate flew out of her hands. A great deal of carelessness results from hurry, and all kinds of accidents that we choose to call chance or fate or luck are actually simple processes of cause and effect. We do not see the causal connections because we move too fast to notice.
Speeded-up people can be likened to automata, to robots. Perhaps you remember that insightful Chaplin movie Modern Times? Charlie stands at an assembly line in a factory, and for eight hours a day he tightens a nut with his wrench as each piece goes by. From time to time the boss turns up the pace of the conveyor belt, and poor Charlie has to work even faster. Throughout the day he makes the same movement with his arm. When he comes out after eight hours, he cannot stop. Though he has no wrench, he makes the same gesture all the way home, to the amazement of the passersby. This is what happens to speeded-up people. They become automatic, which means they have no freedom and no choices, only compulsions. Since they take no time to reflect on things, they gradually lose the capacity for reflection. Without reflection, how can we change? We first have to be able to sit back, examine ourselves with detachment, and search out our patterns of behavior. Paradoxically, people who hurry are actually stuck in the same spot.
Slowness & Sensitivity | 
When we go faster and faster, we grow more and more insensitive to the needs of everyone around. We become dull, blunted, imperceptive. In the morning, for instance, when we are moving like a launched missile, our vigilance falls; we may hurt the feelings of our children or partner and never know it at all. To be aware of others, we have to go slowly and pay attention to what is happening. Our faculties must be alert and fully functioning.
Sometimes, under the goad of speed, we act as if other people are not there. When we move fast, those around us seem to be blurs, like statues glimpsed through the fog. Our minds are elsewhere, and we have just enough attention in the present moment to avoid knocking everybody down – and sometimes not even that much! We will shove our way in front of others when they are reaching for something, squeeze by them at the door, shut the lights out on them when we leave the room, disturb them by talking out loud to ourselves or whistling or banging things about – and all this because we do not truly see them. We are caught in this relentless pattern of rushing, and around and around we go, with our faces grimly set and our eyes vacant. Not a pretty picture, but one we can change, and change completely.
We need to remember, too, that hurry is contagious. When a person comes rushing into a room with an agitated mind, it has an impact on the people there. If they are not very secure themselves, they will become even more agitated by the sight of someone hurrying about out of control. Suppose the family is trying to get breakfast when in races the high school junior already late for school. She calls out to remind her mother to pick up her shoes from the repair shop on the way to the supermarket. She scrambles about trying to remember where she left her notebook. She spills some milk pouring it on her cereal, which she tries to eat standing up. In a few minutes the relaxed atmosphere in the room has dissipated, and everyone becomes edgy.
Happily, the opposite also holds true. When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present. Such collectedness too is contagious. Until we learn to act in freedom, most of us will be temporarily calmed or agitated by those we are around.
Not only individuals, but even institutions can become insensitive to the needs of others under the pressure of speed. I have noticed that at some big boulevard intersections, there is not enough time for pedestrians to cross before the light changes. Disabled people just cannot make it and often give up trying. Older people must hold up their hands halfway across and appeal to the drivers not to run over them. Little children naturally need time to get across, but now they have to be dragged. What do we gain by all this? What harm is done if people get a few more seconds? Institutions like those that control traffic consist of individuals; let us urge them to reverse this trend. If we do not, the pedestrian signals may change. Where they now say STOP and walk, they may soon say STOP and run – perhaps even faster! faster!
This encouragement to hurry has spread throughout our society. It has even touched reading. To get the maximum out of a good book or article, we need to go slowly and participate actively, asking questions of what we read and pondering the assertions. Now consider the advertisements for reading courses that appear even in respected newspapers and magazines. They claim they can teach you to read ten books in the time it used to take you to read one. But what kind of reading will it be? A wit said that after taking one of those courses, he read War and Peace in less than an hour and came away knowing it was about the Russians. Isn’t it much better to read one worthwhile book with concentration, reflect on it, and assimilate it?
“Hurry Sickness” |
Speed begets many physical disorders, often simply from stress. Digestive, breathing, and nervous problems may be cured when the pace of life slows down.
We may think stress strikes only at hard-driving professionals, but people in all occupations – bus drivers, police officers, teachers, construction workers, athletes – can fall victim. Doctors and therapists alleviate the symptoms, as indeed they should. But something more is called for, and that is a complete and permanent change in the patterns of living.
Often, physical problems constitute a clear call from the physical system that something in our daily life is destroying it. Pain, disease, loss of optimum health are meant by beneficent nature to be signals, very much like the signs on freeway ramps: “Stop! You are going the wrong way!” What clearer warning could we want? If we fail to heed this plain language, whom can we blame but ourselves? Unfortunately, we often refuse to accept this responsibility and cry out when diseases come, “Why me?”
In their classic research on “Type A behavior,” two brilliant San Francisco specialists, Drs. Meyer Friedman and Ray H. Rosenman, claimed there exists a particular kind of personality that is prone to heart attacks. Heart disease has long been linked to certain physical risk factors like hypertension, high cholesterol levels in the blood, smoking, and lack of exercise. But these doctors’ research, first published in their book Type A Behavior and Your Heart, located the culprit in the life-style itself and the ways of thinking that produce it. Decades of research since then leave the Type A hypothesis controversial, but I think there can be no doubt that the syndrome these physicians identified is stressful in the extreme.
“Diet and cigarettes are the bullets,” the doctors wrote, “but behavior is the gun.” They believed that a primary cause of coronary artery and heart disease is a complex of emotional reactions “that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons.”
In other words, one of the most distinctive features of such a personality is hurry. The hurried person, aggressively seeking satisfaction and profit, buys a heart attack. Imagine people waiting on the sidewalk for a department store to open during one of those gigantic, once-in-a-lifetime, all-must-go clearances. All kinds of people gather, shoving to get in. Then the doors open – the poor employee who opens them gets mashed up against the wall – and everybody runs in, yelling, “Where are the heart attacks?”
Characteristically, such people move, walk, and eat rapidly – and, I would add, think rapidly too. They become frustrated, even angry, if a car or person ahead of them goes too slowly. They cannot bear to watch someone take more time with a job than they would, even if the job is being done well. Waiting – at a restaurant, for the bank teller, in a checkout queue at the supermarket – is slow torture. Even to wait their turn in conversation can be excruciating, and when the person they are talking to is at a loss for words, they often rush in to finish the sentence themselves. After reading the list, many of us must be wondering how it happened that we were chosen as a model.
The hurried and harried person frequently tries to do two things at once. When you stop him at work to ask a question, he thinks about what he intends to do next. If you pause a little to choose your words, something pleasant and persuasive, he immediately fills the gap with his own, blunt and to the point. You always feel that he wants to get the conversation over with as soon as possible. When he swims – to relax, he maintains – his mind is on his personal and professional problems. Perhaps he has even arranged for phone calls to come to him at the poolside. While he shaves in the morning, he tries to eat breakfast, if he bothers with it at all. While running to catch the departing bus, he stuffs his papers into his briefcase. When he drives, he must hear the latest news, no matter how heavy the traffic. I am reminded of Thoreau’s observation that most of us cannot lie down for a half-hour nap without asking when we wake up, “What’s new? How has the world fared without me?”
The Competitive Drive |
The competitive drive exhibited in Type A individuals is often praised as a positive quality – the way to “get ahead.” Yet any work undertaken in this spirit leads to impaired health and benefits no one.
Often in the classified section of the newspaper you will find advertisements that read, “Salesman wanted – must be aggressive.” In other words, that person must be ready to force people to buy things they don’t want or need. All of the ingenuity of the salesman, and it may be considerable, goes not to the task of serving people but is pitted against their will and judgment so that desires for superfluous things and services can be roused in them. “Aggressive” surely seems an accurate description. But while such techniques may improve sales, we should remember that in this case the salesman really buys as he sells, and he constantly sends in his orders for a long list of destructive physical and emotional ailments. His aggression is directed against himself as well as against his customers.
This competitive drive is not confined to making money or acquiring power either. It crops up in amateur games and sports intended chiefly for recreation. Winning, not enjoyment, becomes the goal, and misguided adults inflict this attitude on youngsters playing in baseball and football leagues.
Some people pursue a hobby with the same frantic intensity; they simply have to have more imported beer cans than anyone else in town. “Hurry sickness” afflicts not only people with important responsibilities or positions; competitive enthusiasm is all too often spent on trivia.
Even if the body of the hurried person manages to escape a heart attack or some other major disease, it becomes exhausted much earlier than need be. I am convinced that many of the problems we now associate with old age are completely avoidable. Most of us accept unquestioningly that at some point in the future we will grow senile, that we will fall in the bathtub, walk with a cane, or live entirely in the past. It is just a matter of time, we think, before we will be alone and helpless or an unwanted burden on others. I assure you that this does not have to happen, and one thing we can do right now is take steps to avoid hurry, which saps the body’s vigor. When we rush about, our vitality ebbs rapidly; when we act calmly, we glow with strength and beauty even in the evening of life. My grandmother, for example, was vibrantly alive until the day she shed her body at an advanced age.
How Can We Slow Down? |
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 spider webs, 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.
Slowing Down at Work |
At work, many people strive to squeeze in as many tasks as they conceivably can. Instead of concentrating on the essentials and doing what is required in a slow, thorough way, they hunt for the nonessentials and work on them first.
In India, we have an expression for this: “painting the bullock-cart wheels.” Your neighbor in the village, say, has some important things to do; his relatives are coming, and the house needs repairing. He says in a serious tone that he intends to do it, but first he wants to take just a little time to decorate the wheels of his bullock cart. The wheels on those carts are huge, and even an ordinary paint job on them takes a long while. If he starts to work in fancy designs, little triangles and curlicues in lots of different colors, the painting can drag on indefinitely. So he paints the wheels while the meaningful tasks go untouched. At the last minute, with a pointed reminder from his wife, he realizes that he can postpone no longer, and in a burst of agitation he rushes about to get the important things done. He usually doesn’t succeed.
By postponing, you set the stage for a drama of crisis at a later date. When you can evade things no longer, you rush about frantically with your adrenalin pouring – body under stress, mind scattered – and barely squeeze by with a second-rate job. Or perhaps you miss the deadline altogether and have to accept penalties. I have a friend who lives near a post office that stays open until midnight. One April 15, when income taxes fell due, the postponers raced down there at about eleven-thirty at night to mail in their returns. Soon many, many cars were backed up, each with a driver anxiously waiting to get his or her envelope postmarked before the deadline. Finally a man saved everyone by coming out of the post office with a big cardboard box and walking down the street so people could throw their envelopes in it. But of course many others did not have their returns ready at all and had to give Uncle Sam a bonus.
At work, as elsewhere, we need to cultivate discrimination so we can decide what is important and then proceed to do it at a moderate pace. Hurried work and work done under pressure yield no joy, and that may be why so many of us don’t even associate joy with work. We expect to find happiness after we leave for the day. But all truly creative people know that no sharp line lies between work and other activities. Work should challenge us – be difficult, if you will – but that is no reason for us not to find satisfaction in it. Quite the contrary.
But where hurry prevails, there can be no satisfaction for the doer. Hurry clouds judgment, and more and more a person thinks of pat solutions or shortcuts to save time and gives an uninspired, sloppy performance. He – or she – spills, shatters, rips, drenches, bursts, and burns things, not to mention the injuries, even serious ones, he inflicts on himself and others. Slowing down, on the other hand, is not inefficient. It means more efficiency. It means you will make fewer mistakes, have fewer accidents, and do a more creative job.
During the day – not only at work, but in the post office, restaurant, or bank – you can also combat the fast pace of others. Good spiritual manners require that you say to people who help you, “Take your time. I’m in no hurry.” You can perform this service for those who serve you, and they will respond immediately. I remember standing in a queue in the Berkeley post office during the Christmas season amid much fuming and pawing of the tile floor. When I arrived at the window, I told the clerk I was not in a rush. She sighed, looked directly in my eyes, and thanked me. More than that, the people behind me heard me say it and became a little ashamed of their impatience; they too began to relax.
The patience we show at work, on errands, and at home is our insurance against all the distressing ailments brought about by hurry. Patience means good digestion; impatience means poor digestion, even gastrointestinal disorders. Patience means slow, deep breathing; impatience means poor lungs and irregular breathing. Patience means a slow, steady pulse; impatience means – well, find out for yourself by taking your pulse rate when you become angry. When you are patient, all the vital processes work smoothly. In the present context, patience means not hurrying when dealing with others and giving them as much of our time as they can profit from.
At the end of the workday, you might try to bring things to a close a little early so that you have time to clear off your bench or desk, put away tools or papers, and organize your materials for the following day. I understand that some executives never leave the office until their desks are cleared. We may not be able to go so far, but we can avoid the heaped-up, untidy work area that suggests a heaped-up, untidy mind.
Emergencies |
If we maintain a leisurely pace throughout the day, we have a better chance of arriving home safely. A large number of automobile accidents occur at twilight, and one reason seems obvious: we have been so drained by a day of hurry that our senses and mind are far less alert. In an emergency, those who are calm respond more quickly; they really observe what is happening in front of them. They grasp the connections between events better, see emergencies arising, whereas the vision of the hurried person is blurred.
The deliberate person acts promptly in the emergencies that demand it and acts in a more measured fashion at other times. In every case the response will be appropriate and freely chosen, not dictated by compulsion. Such a person can be contrasted with two extremes.
On the one hand, there are those who constantly hurry, hoping thereby to be more efficient. As we have seen, they fail to gain their objective. Something urgent, some kind of emergency, is always happening for them, and they are so overtaxed that they become incapable of responding to a genuine emergency when it arrives.
On the other hand, a few people cannot move quickly even when the occasion requires. Rather than take a good, brisk walk to put the muscles of the body to work, they dawdle along, often listening to their thoughts. They may not even sense when a real crisis has arisen, because they are absorbed in themselves. This is not what I mean by slowing down.
When Work is Over |
At home, after returning from a day at work, most of us like to have an evening of recreation with family and friends. To enjoy such recreation, though, you need detachment from your work – the ability to drop it mentally at will. If you have been rushing all day, you will be so entangled and tense that you will not be able to let it go. While circumstances may require you to bring work home from time to time, it is something else again to leave the work there and bring the thought of it home, fretting over what has already happened and what may happen on the following day.
Think of a job as a kind of apparel. You walk in, slip into your occupational coat as, say, a librarian, well driller, city planner, or printer, and for eight hours you give yourself wholly to your job. But at the end of the day, you take off this coat and hang it on a hook; you don’t stuff a sleeve into your back pocket or purse and drag the rest on the ground behind you all evening long and throughout the weekend. Working with concentration and then being able to drop your work at will is a skill that can be developed with practice. If you do not learn this kind of detachment, you will be burdened by work as Sinbad the Sailor was by the Old Man of the Sea, who straddled his neck, squeezing him with bony legs.
When you come home from a workday without hurry, once again to join your family and friends, you will be able to give freely of yourself. You may find as you walk in the door that some distressing situations have developed, especially if you have children. But since you have husbanded your vitality wisely, you will have sufficient patience to ease these domestic difficulties even though you have put in a full day’s work.
Commonly people come home and say, “Don’t bother me with it! I worked hard today.” But though your employer may expect only eight hours from you, life is capricious and requires many more; we must be prepared to serve. Do you see how vulnerable we become if we insist on having everything just the way we want it when we return home? Every time things fall short of our desires, which may happen frequently, we will be frustrated and angry. In effect we are saying to life, “Please, please, let everything be just as I like it – lots of quiet, a refreshing drink, my slippers, the paper, and the reclining chair all ready. No difficulties, please . . . you know I can’t take them.”
I have been speaking of the person who leaves home for a day’s work, but much of it applies equally to those who remain. There is the same need to set a leisurely pace and use discrimination in the performance of tasks, the same need to organize work and be able to drop it at will, the same need to be patient and considerate towards those around us, whether it be those who stay home with us, such as children and older folks, or those who return home, perhaps care-laden, from their day’s activities.
In my native state of Kerala we have a beautiful tradition: every twilight the woman of the house lights a lamp, usually a brass one with the wick floating in coconut oil, and moves from one member of the family to another, displaying for all this symbol of their unity. Even without such a lamp every woman can, through her love, be a radiant light in her home.
In the evening, when you have been reunited with those close to you, rushing and tension are completely out of place. Let us be relaxed and responsive to everyone. If the children want your attention, listen cheerfully, not with half a mind but fully; you will find it vivifying to see the world, your world, through a child’s eyes. Some people rush so much that even when the day is over they miss this opportunity. Still hoping to get a lot more done, they easily become exasperated and shush their children or implore, “Can’t you hurry?” What a blessing our children are not given to hurry! It is one of the things they can teach us. So we can ask for the day’s news, find out what happened at school, ask them to repeat the big report they gave on the chief imports and exports of Paraguay. Not a very inspiring subject perhaps, but the love we feel in listening quite transforms it. When children belong in our lives in this way, they will not want to go out and do things which harm themselves and others.
People who claim they hurry in their work to gain more leisure time should not be taken seriously. In my observation, quite a number of them do not know how to enjoy their off hours. They have become addicted to excitement and excessive external stimulation. Some head for the new movie about demons or disasters certain to elevate their blood pressure and jolt them out of their humdrum existence. Others spend an evening wiping out their lucidity at some night spot featuring tall drinks and deafening music. Still others, having rushed all day, arrive late at a play or meeting and repeat, “Pardon me . . . pardon me . . .” as they distract the audience and step on their feet. And having blustered in, they probably won’t remember where they parked the car – was it Polk Street or Jackson? Perhaps they quarrel about it, and since their speeded-up nerves have finally reached their limit, the whole day ends in an explosion.
Final Suggestions |
How can we reverse these patterns of hurry and tension? The first thing, as I mentioned, is to rise early so you can set a relaxed pace for the day. Eat slowly at mealtime, sharing yourself generously with others. Arrive beforehand at your job and work on the essentials at a steady rate, not pushed by the clock or competition. Build friendly and loving relations with those at work and at home by practicing patience at every opportunity. Put things in order when you leave your job, and learn to detach yourself from your work at will. Cultivate discrimination in recreation so that you choose what really revitalizes and avoid what drains your time and energy.
The mantram is also particularly helpful in the case of hurry, because it gives the restless mind something to fasten on and gradually slows it down. Repeating the mantram on a brisk walk brings the words, breathing, footsteps, and mind into rhythmic harmony. An excellent way to take a short, refreshing break from work, it is also an aid in training yourself to drop your work at will. When you begin to feel yourself rushed, just stop a minute, repeat your mantram, and then be deliberately slow in whatever you are doing. On occasion you may have created a comic skit when you dropped something by rushing and, as you went to sweep it up, knocked something else over. Then you banged your shin, and so forth. The best course to follow at that time is to repeat the mantram a few times and recollect yourself so you can proceed at a measured pace.
Nor should we ever allow ourselves to be rushed by others. If the telephone rings while you are cooking dinner, find a convenient point to stop instead of immediately running to answer it and leaving the soup to boil over. We need not be intimidated by such things as telephones. After all, a phone call constitutes a request to talk to us, not an imperial command. If the message is important, the caller will stay on the line for a time or try again later.
I have another suggestion that may be of some value. When I recommend to someone that they slow down, they often raise a legitimate question: “There is so much that I have to do; how can I go through it slowly and get it all done?” I usually answer by referring to my own experience as a teacher in India. As chairman of the Department of English at a large university I had heavy responsibilities. But I wanted very much to train myself to do things slowly and without tension because I knew it would be a help on the spiritual path.
I began by making a list of all the activities I engaged in on the campus, the things that I was expected to do and the things that I liked doing. It turned out to be a long list. I said at the time what people tell me today: I simply cannot go slowly and take care of all these vital matters.
Then I remembered my spiritual teacher, my grandmother, who had great responsibilities in our extended family of over a hundred people and in our village. She always fulfilled those responsibilities splendidly, and I recalled that she had an unerring sense of what was central and what was peripheral. So, using her example, I started striking from my list activities not absolutely essential.
I was amazed at the number that could go. Those connected with colleges know the number of conferences, meetings, symposia, lectures, receptions, and so forth that it is generally assumed we have to attend. Often the gathering has very little to do with our chief duties. So I began to avoid those functions that I could not justify to myself. I thought at first that I would be censured when I no longer appeared at the monthly meeting of, say, the bicycle parking committee. But after several months of nonattendance, I noticed from the conversation of another member of the committee that he had not even noticed my absence. Putting aside my likes and dislikes, keeping my eye on what was necessary, using as much detachment as I could, I struck more and more from the list. Soon half of it was gone, and I found I had more time to give to what seemed likely to be of permanent value.
Reengineering our patterns in the ways I have mentioned will not be easy or painless. It will require persistent effort for a long time to reverse the patterns of hurry we have built up over the years. But the benefits are magnificent, and we begin to receive them the very first day we try to make these changes. From the beginning, we have embarked on a new course that will bring us abundant energy, better health, increased peace of mind, more harmonious relations with others, rich creativity in work and play, and a longer, happier span of life.
Next Chapter: 4 One-Pointed Attention
