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2 Be at Peace in the Moment

Hurry blocks our access to our deeper resources. One of life’s most precious skills is learning to slow down and live completely in the present moment.

The Sanctity of the Present Moment

Introduction by Christine Easwaran

Recently we got an appeal that packed the desperation of the times into just one line: “I need to decompress – my stress level is insane! Help!”

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a seventeenth-century Catholic priest, offers help in what he calls “the sacrament of the present moment.” Every time I read that phrase I’m reminded of how significant each moment is. Most of us are aware of this, but it’s so difficult to keep it in mind as time rushes us along. Tragically, we may need a crisis to remind us of what really matters because we’re so busy keeping up with all the things that don’t.

One of our friends, Jane, is a psychotherapist – one of many professionals who not only practice Easwaran’s program themselves but find it useful in their work. Jane recently sketched the kind of life she sees her clients dealing with. It’s a composite picture but one we all recognize, in others if not in ourselves:

Many couples come to therapy after realizing that they are disconnected from their partner and coexist or live parallel lives. She has a stressful position at the bank; he is a health care consultant who leaves Monday morning and returns Thursday night. The children are picked up after school at six or carpooled to soccer or dance, picking up burgers at the drive-through on the way. Then there’s homework or staying up too late to finish the laundry or work on that report. The next day, after they hit the snooze button several times, the rat race begins again.

Our days don’t have to be like this, even in today’s frantic world. Slowing down is within the reach of everyone. Not only that, it opens the door to peace of mind, a rich sense of fulfillment, and even joy – while helping us be actually more effective in how our time is used.

Heather, a longtime friend in Canada, learned this in one of the most challenging environments 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 same is true of the future too. Particularly when we are young – in our teens, twenties, even thirties – there is a tragic tendency to live in anticipation of some future event we think will bring us happiness. A child can hardly wait to become a teenager. Teenagers can hardly wait to get out of high school so they can go to college or get married and honeymoon on Molokai or get a job with an airline and visit faraway lands. When they do land a job, they look forward to a promotion. And on the job, promotion or not, they can’t wait for vacation.

Whenever we daydream, worry, or nurse a grudge, we are training the mind to escape from the present moment. We get trapped in the past or the future.

I know people who wish away all the workdays of the week just to slip away for the weekend to their vacation home in the woods. Those five workdays they are not really alive, because they are not living in the present.

Similarly, many people put in their time absentmindedly for fifty weeks a year while dreaming of the two weeks they can spend in Acapulco. When you let your mind do this, by the time you reach Acapulco you will be thinking, “The Galapagos! Those big tortoises! That’s what I really want to see.” Then you are not alive in Acapulco either, and if you do get to the Galapagos and meet one of those tortoises face to face, you will probably already be thinking about the penguins in Patagonia.

This is what I mean when I say we are trapped in time. At such times we are neither here nor there, neither in Acapulco nor in the Galapagos. The mind has been conditioned to be somewhere, anywhere, else – which means, really, nowhere and never.

Beneath the surface level of consciousness, perhaps one third of our attention is imprisoned in the past – in vain regrets, futile lamentations, nostalgic memories. “If only I could become twenty-five again, with the glow of youth on my cheeks and the sparkle in my eyes, what would I not do?” This sort of thing.

And another third is trapped in the future. “Just wait till I get my degree. After that let me become president. Then let me get the Nobel Prize, and then finally let me become the dictator of the whole world. Then I am going to be happy.” It sounds ridiculous, but if we could listen in on our thoughts this is the kind of thing we would hear.

The conclusion is unavoidable: if one third of our time, with all its energy and creative resources, is trapped in the past, and another third is trapped in the future, we are one-third people. That’s all of us that is here and now.

I started to understand this when I began to meditate. Meditation is a kind of glass-bottom boat for observing the mind, and when I saw what was happening under the surface, I decided I didn’t want to be a one-third person. I wasn’t even content to be a two-thirds person. I wanted to be whole, to be full.

In the Indian scriptures there is a glorious verse: “Take fullness from fullness; fullness still remains.” That is what I wanted. When you are full, you can give to everyone and still be full. You can love each person and still have love to give to everyone else. You can give fullness away like a millionaire scattering largesse. You can open a flea market for love, setting up a little stand and saying, “Take as much as you can. Help yourself!” and at the end of the day you will still be full.

The mantram helps us come back to the present moment and focus fully on what we’re doing. It makes us more effective.

The mantram can enable us to attain this state of fullness. With practice, we can train the mind to withdraw attention from the past and future whenever it strays there, until we rest completely in the present. Every time the mind wanders – as it surely will – you simply bring it back with the mantram and focus again on what you are doing.

Most wandering thoughts can be traced to past or future. “I don’t like the way he behaved to me this morning. I wonder what she meant by that remark last summer. How am I going to face my boss when I haven’t got that report done?” This is how the mind runs off, away from the present moment.

For example, you sit down for work and soon a little part of your mind taps you on the shoulder and whispers, “Hey, we’re going to a movie tonight! You almost forgot.” Instead of letting your mind wander to the coming evening, bring it back to what you are doing. If you let it wander during the morning’s work, it will wander in the evening too. When the time comes to see the film, you will be only partially there.

Or perhaps you are trapped in a boring meeting. The clock on the wall says ten-thirty in the morning, but for you it is already eight in the evening and you’re saying hello to your date. Your mind is not on the meeting; you scarcely hear the words. While your colleagues talk, you sit there waiting for the sun to set.

And probably your date is doing the same. Imagine: two people who want to be fully alive spending most of the day being anywhere but here and now.

Feeling Stressed Out?

Three Tools to Try

How can we make better use of our time – without feeling yet more pressure? In this chapter and the next, you’ll find three key tools. They each work well on their own, but they’re even better used in combination.

The Mantram It’s invisible, it’s portable, and it offers instant help. Repeat it silently anywhere, at any time. Use it as a “rapid focus tool” to bring the mind back to the present. You’ll then have all your resources at your disposal to tackle any challenge you’re facing – whether it’s an everyday problem, such as a tired child or stalled traffic, or a major crisis.