Journal 2014

EKNATH EASWARAN’S Blue Mountain Journal PASSAGE MEDITATION & SPIRITUAL LIVING SPRING 2014 What’s the Point of Slowing Down? Redefining Efficiency By Christine Easwaran Spring 2014 Volume 25, No.1 © 2014 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, P. O. Box 256, Tomales, CA 94971 707 878 2369 The schedule was always tight, but Easwaran info @ easwaran.org was never in a hurry. Not once, then or since, www.easwaran.org did I see him pressured into speeding up to get more done in the time available. By his example, The Blue Mountain he was constantly teaching what he knew from Journal is a quarterly experience: the most effective way to accomplish publication of a lot is to do one thing at a time and do it well. The Blue Mountain The frst time I remember Easwaran asking me Center of Meditation, to slow down was on a beautiful autumn afternoon a California 501(c)(3) in 1960. The freeway was new and broad and there nonprofit organization was almost no traffc. I had no reason to hurry, but founded in 1961 under these conditions it was natural – and fun – by Eknath Easwaran to go the speed limit. So it came as a surprise to me to carry on his work. when he asked me to slow down – I wasn’t exceed- ing the limit, after all. But I dropped back anyway. In those days, I simply couldn’t understand why Easwaran placed so much importance on such matters. I thought it might be cultural. As an Amer i can, I took hurry for granted and considered it self-evident that speed means effciency and faster is better. I soon learned that effciency comes from complete concentration on one thing at a time, even when one has to manage several tasks. The secret is the unbroken fow of attention that 2 characterizes peak performance. The word slow is misleading when it implies The word slow sluggish. Easwaran was unhurried, but he was is misleading never sluggish. In an emergency he could act when it implies instantly, before those around him grasped what sluggish. was happening. When planning was called for, Easwaran was however, he would often slow down like a gym- unhurried, but nast poised before bursting into her routine. Then, he was never suddenly, he would act, still without hurry but sluggish. with intense precision, setting in motion one by one the things that needed to be done. Helping others to slow down occupied Sri Easwaran’s attention from the beginning of his career as a spiritual teacher until the end of his life. It was, he said, absolutely essential to learning to meditate. If that was evident to him in 1959, how much more important it must be today! For those who want to go deeper into this topic, I recommend re-reading the relevant chapter in Easwaran’s book Passage Meditation and the last book published during his lifetime, Take Your Time. We’ll pick up the theme again in our next issue when we take a deeper look at a closely related point in his program, One-pointed Attention. I might add a few comments on our new format. We have aimed at preserving the essentials you have come to expect – inspiration and guidance from Sri Easwaran plus practical illustrations of the eight-point program in action from readers like you – in a format that is beautiful and easy to read in both print and digital editions. If you have comments, we’d love to hear from you! Please write to [email protected] or to Blue Mountain, P. O. Box 256, Tomales, CA 94971. We expect to be refn- ing the details of this design throughout 2014. Christine Easwaran For the Board of Trustees 3 Easwaran in a question and answer session with a small group of students in 1968. 4 What’s the Point of Slowing Down? Frequently Asked Questions answered by Eknath Easwaran Quite honestly, I don’t see the point of slowing down. Could you explain why you attach so much importance to it? Even to see life, we need to go slow. To enjoy Even to see life, we need to go slow. To understand people, life, we need to understand situations, to arrive at considered to go slow. conclusions and to make wise decisions – for all of these, we need time. And this is just what is impossible in a speeded- up civilization; there is no time for anything. 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. Speeded-up people become automatic, which means they have no freedom and no choices, only compulsions. Since they take no time to refect on things, they gradually lose the capacity for refection. Without refection, how can we change? We frst 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. We need time for pondering life’s deeper questions instead of always making money or making things. We need time simply to be quiet now and then: time to refect on what we are doing, what we value, how we are spending our lives. So slowing down is not the goal; it is the means 5 Slowing down to an end. The goal is living in freedom – freedom is not the goal; from the pressures of hurry, from the distractions it is a means to that fragment our time and creativity and love. an end. The Ultimately, it means living at the deepest level of goal is living in our awareness. freedom. But surely this means I won’t get as much done? Of course, going slow doesn’t mean achieving little. If your concentration is one-pointed, going slow means achieving much. It is essential in this connection not to confuse slowness with sloth, which breeds procrastination and general ineffciency. In slowing down, attend meticulously to details, giving the very best you are capable of even to the smallest undertaking. Somehow, in our modern civilization, we have acquired the idea that the mind is working best when it runs at top speed. Yet a racing mind lacks time even to fnish a thought, let alone to check on its quality. When we slow down the mind, we work better at everything we do. Not only is the quality of our work better, we are actually able to get more done. A calm, smooth-running fow of thought saves a lot of wear and tear on the nervous system, which means we have more vitality and resilience in the face of stress. But I like excitement! Slowing down sounds a bit dull. When I talk about a slower pace of life, I don’t mean an idle sail far from any stirring breeze, with no adventure beckoning us. If anything is less desirable than a speeded-up life, it is a life of bore- dom and indifference. When we slow down and train attention at the same time, we are naturally cultivating enthusiasm for every day. We begin to 6 face each task with energy and focus. This is a diffcult balance to achieve – not hectic, not too casual – but it is a quality to be cultivated if we want to live at our best. It may sound paradoxical, but however tight our schedule, however many things clamor to be done, we don’t need to hurry. At work, as else- where, we need to cultivate discrimination so we can decide what is important and then proceed to do it at a moderate pace. If we can keep our mind calm and go about our business with undivided attention, we will not only accomplish more but we’ll fnd ourselves more patient, more at peace. So there’s a deeper meaning to slowing down – it’s not just about lifestyle? I believe it was the historian and philosopher We all need Will Durant who said that any person in a hurry time to give is not civilized. This is not a superfcial quip but freely of our a profound statement that calls into question the resources, achievements of our technological society. Even our skills, though we have attained a level of material abun- ourselves. dance that would astonish our ancestors, we seem to have less and less time for what really matters: strengthening the bonds of love that sustain a civilization. To be civilized means having the time to make a lasting contribution to our families and our communities. We all need time to give freely of our resources, our skills, our capacities, ourselves. Most of all, we need time to refect and to draw closer to the divine core of our being. We are familiar with the concept of famine for food. But there is also famine for time. I don’t think we are quite aware of the extent to which we are slowly starving. Loving companionship with family members and friends, service to the wider world, periods of refection on the timeless truths that sustain 7 The more we life – these have been crowded out by a dizzying fill up our days, round of scheduled activities that confer little the emptier we lasting beneft on anyone.

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