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When I say Eknath Easwaran had all the time there is, I mean that he lived completely in the present. Instead of being hurried by time, he was master of it.
The cause, he explained, is that complete absorption brings a healing pause in the frantic activity of the mind.
Whatever we are doing in that instant fills our
consciousness. We are too absorbed to worry, to fret over the past or feel anxious about the future, to be divided by conflicts or dwell on what others might be thinking of us; we simply live. It’s as if the flickering of thoughts is our real clock: when it...
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the most effective way to accomplish a lot is to do one thing at a time and do it well.
efficiency comes from complete concentration on one thing at a time, even when one has to manage several tasks. The secret is the unbroken flow of attention that characterizes peak performance.
“hurry sickness,”
“polyphasic thinking”:
not just trying to do many things in too little time, but trying to think about
several things at once. At last, he felt, clinicians were looking at the r...
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“Type A behavior,” he explained, “is above all a continuous struggle to accomplish more and more things in less and less time, frequently in the face of opposition – real or imagined – from other persons.”
Type A’s how to become Type B’s – or, in Easwaran’s language, how to slow down, learn to be more patient, and find meaning, love, and rich relationships in lives impoverished by years of hard driving in the fast lane. Dr. Friedman and his colleagues were demonstrating that even when time pressure is forced on us, we can learn to deal with it in freedom.
slowing down.
Wisdom has always been conveyed through stories. Stories are what we remember; they wrap ideals and values in images that stay with us all our lives. Great spiritual teachers consistently teach first by story and parable; explanations are dry by comparison.
From the perspective of an unhurried mind, familiar situations open up. We glimpse possibilities we had never suspected, little ways to change how we respond – and those little ways, as we act on them, quietly begin to transform our lives. An unhurried mind opens a door to discoveries in every moment. We don’t have to change the circumstances around us; we simply need a mind that is quiet, calm, and kind.
