(The modern epidemic of time scarcity)
Introduction: Making Peace with Time To be able to be unhurried when hurried; To be able not to slack off when relaxed; To be able not to be frightened And at a loss for what to do, When frightened and at a loss; This is the learning that returns us To our natural state and transforms our lives. —Liu Wenmin, early sixteenth-century poet
We measure time. We lose time. We kill time. We are strapped for time. These days, that last sentiment is what I hear most often from people. With varying degrees of vexation, agitation, or despair, they are constantly telling me, “I don’t have enough time!” It’s not surprising that many of us feel this way. The pace of life today is far more frenetic than it was a generation ago, and unimaginably faster than what it was in the ancient world of Moses or Confucius.
Stress contributes to the inability to think clearly or make competent decisions, to short tempers, and to sloppy work. As a result, we have more everyday problems: arguments at work and home, car accidents as we speed and yak on our cell phones, and unresolved grief because we don’t have time to mourn properly.
As I began to adjust to a Western lifestyle after so long in monastic simplicity, what struck me more than anything else was the new aversion to the mundane tasks of daily life. Thus the ubiquitous time-saving tools—instant coffee, fast food, ATMs, microwave ovens, personal computers—as if somehow life would be better if we could speed our way through it. That message has only escalated since then.
And how much of the time-related stress in our lives comes from trying to accommodate every single person who wants a piece of our day? Do you suffer from the “disease to please,” striving to satisfy all those who make a claim on your time?
The thinner we spread ourselves, the more we skitter over the surface of our lives, never going deep. And since we can be tracked down just about anywhere, anytime, it seems there is literally no escape. In the pages that follow, I’ll teach you how to wean yourself from the addictions that sap time and energy, to clear out all the debris and distraction—in much the same way that a snow globe becomes calm and clear when you stop shaking it and allow the flakes to settle.
(The timeless now as the alternative to linear time)
Every moment can be lived fully, free and unconditioned, and every moment holds infinite possibilities and opportunities for a fresh start. Every moment of heightened consciousness is precious beyond price, for awareness is the primary currency of the human condition. Buddhism
One of the main obstacles to making peace with time is that we tend to experience it linearly: we keep moving forward, doing and accomplishing things, rather than just being. We are human beings, after all, not human doings. It costs us dearly to live only on the linear axis of time. We lose connection with our deeper and most authentic selves, too often mistaking mere movement for purpose and meaning. We adapt to a faster and faster tempo that keeps us feeling busy, but rarely with a sense of accomplishment.
We watch ball games at night under powerful lights. We eat food with little regard for season or source. These artificial means keep the rhythms and cycles of nature from us, further removing us from indicators of time passing.
When I rejoined my parents after an hour or two spent tapping into the timeless, I was a happier, more present, more patient, more aware, more engaged human being. Right now you may still be struggling within the limited perspective of experiencing time linearly. “I can’t do two things at once,” you may find yourself saying. “There are only twenty-four hours in a day!”
We don’t need to find that impossible extra pocket of time in the day; rather, we can incorporate the spacious outlook of our spirituality into every minute of our life by reimagining and reframing the expanse of time we have.
A simple definition of enlightenment is the deep flash of awakening to the knowledge that we are much more than our time- and space-bound, material selves living in a material world.
Emaho! (That’s Tibetan for “Hallelujah!”) We can stop the train.
Rather, each moment is intersected by a realm of infinite spaciousness and timelessness, known in Tibetan as shicha, the Eternal Now. This is the precious awakened dimension that I call Buddha Standard Time, and it is available to us every instant. “Let go the past,” the Buddha said, “let go the future, and let go what is in between, transcending the things of time. With your mind free in every direction, you will not return to birth and aging.” When we are in touch with being only in the present moment, only with what is, instead of what we regret, fear, or anticipate, our sense of limits in time will no longer have negative power over our lives. This is ancient, timeless wisdom. People have been writing about living in the present moment as far back as the Pharaoh Akhenaton, who in the fourteenth century BCE wrote, “He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has.”
(Natural time and harmony with nature’s rhythms)
An obsession with order and time can drive us mad. Clocks, like modern society, are impersonal and mechanical, and sometimes they make us want to rebel.
Time is learning to release ourselves from the tyranny of artificial time. When we harmonize with nature and the rhythmic flow of Natural Time, we rediscover the cycles of growth, change, decay, and regeneration in the world around us, bringing a better sense of awareness and connectedness to our busy days.
Buddhist Time Management I think I’ve been studying time my whole life, but looking back, I see I was not always connected to Natural Time. As a kid living in suburban Long Island with a restless spirit mostly channeled through a love of competitive sports, I grew up tethered to the clock and stopwatch.
Always a bit of a control freak with an inborn sense of responsibility not to waste a single hour, minute, or second, I suddenly had to surrender to days divided into twelve- to fourteen-hour-long meditation sessions, punctuated only by temple chimes; hours spent in total silence except for periods of chanting and one fifty-minute Buddhist discourse from the meditation master each evening. To my initial dismay, there were no meals after midday. But there was plenty of time to ruminate from noon till breakfast the next morning. In that extraordinary environment, I heard and experienced what Buddha said: to enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and refine one’s mind.
(Meditation as the discovery that time is in the mind)
Then, several days would vanish without a trace. I learned to observe the inhalations and exhalations of my breath, and focus only there—in the immediacy and freshness of the now—while letting everything else come and go. Breathing in and out, and becoming simply aware of it. Watching the breath… becoming the breath… being the breath. No time, no space or location. Nothing needing to be done. No one trying to get anywhere. What peace, what harmony, what bliss. The more I practiced meditation, the better I got, until one day I sensed myself outside of time. Everything was perfectly at rest and in complete harmony, just as it was. After that fleeting yet unforgettable breakthrough experience, it became a little easier for me to meditate, but it would take a long time to unwind the superficial complexities and conditioning of my former self.
Through countless hours of meditation, I uncovered a secret: the more concentration and awareness I managed to achieve, the more time disappeared. It’s not time that we lack in our rushed lives, but focus.
All of those experiences changed me and taught me that time is mainly in the mind. When we stop our minds, even for a moment, we stop the universe: no time, no space, no conditioning and compulsions. Just limitless peace and harmony. In Zen, this “taste” of enlightenment, fleeting yet timeless, is known as satori (breakthrough). It is a momentary illumination, the sudden appearance of a bright star on the horizon or in your heart that will guide you the rest of your days.
He taught us that we suffer because of our denial of and resistance to time’s flow, and our clinging to illusions of fixity and security.
This is living in Natural Time. It is not at all foreign to us. These are the simple, practical essentials of natural mysticism. Reunion with the natural state is the meaning of the word yoga (whose literal meaning is “union with god” and which is derived from the Sanskrit word meaning “yoke”). So, how can we reach and sustain that state that we knew as children and now enter into only sporadically? Many of us have learned to transcend ordinary time and be transported into a splendid higher reality through prayer or contemplation in a church, temple, mosque, or place of pilgrimage.
(Breath practices and nowness-awareness as daily entry points)
By returning to Natural Time and freeing ourselves from our watches, schedules, and deadlines, we will find that everything begins to unfold more smoothly. When you are in a good frame of mind, take off your watch. And put away your cell phone and other electronic devices. Take a walk, take a nap, or sit or lie in a bathtub, pool, lake, or hammock, with no time referents of any kind. Relax and enter into a timeless zone: nowhere to go, nothing to do, free of scheduling and appointments, free of past and future thoughts and memories and plans. Simply and attentively present, you are cultivating nowness-awareness.
If you are truly attentive, your mind will be clear of all distractions for ten whole seconds, while your body is nourished with extra oxygen and your heart is touched with a little divine peace. Even with only one breath cycle, you may have felt a touch of serenity, a little loosening of your jaw, and an ability to think more clearly afterward. So simple, a trip into Natural Time!
Your life will transform if you just begin to insert these little breath breaks or moments of attentiveness throughout your day. Try it! The lesson is not to compartmentalize your life, with 99 percent spent in busyness and 1 percent in spiritual nourishment. Instead, train yourself to integrate this sublime awareness into each moment as an enlightening way of life and a path of joy. Bringing focused attention to your breath in the ever-present moment is the most basic of all meditation practices and the first step to entering Natural Time.
Our true, intrinsic nature is free, open, flowing, and joyful, while at the same time clear, radiant, and centered. This is what we seek to liberate and actualize when we devote ourselves to awakening to Natural Time and beginning to live in the moment.
MINDFUL MOMENTS Reaching for Your Higher Self 1. Run an environmental scan over your to-do list. I find this an important practice when I feel off center. In our Western culture that often measures quality and success by how many things we did in a day, how many places we visited, and how busy we were, I find it restorative to take a step back and reflect. Consider all the things on your list that “must” be done, and ask yourself, “Really?”
(Addictions as substitutes for the timeless)
Finding Time in Losing Addictions Among all the substances we misuse and abuse, the greatest is time. Our small self will do anything to save a few seconds or minutes, even if it squanders days and years of our lives.
When you think about it, our conventional addictions—to coffee, soda, cigarettes, chocolate, sugar, alcohol, drugs, and the like—for the most part arise in an effort to balance or control time. We take caffeine in the morning, and often throughout the day, to wake up, stay alert, stimulate our creativity, juggle our schedule, keep from falling asleep, and otherwise stay productive when we might not feel productive. We smoke cigarettes to calm down, relax, and improve our focus, especially if we have a stressful occupation or a boring, repetitive job in which time slows to a crawl and we need breaks to relieve the tedium. We devour chocolate and other sugary snacks to both stimulate us and numb the pain and frustration of the daily grind or an emotional upset. Our blood-sugar levels soar, life’s impermanency is temporarily forgotten, and the things we can’t change no longer matter—at least for the few minutes that the euphoria lasts. We drink and take drugs to drown our sorrows from attachments to things that time has taken from us or that we have let pass by, and to ease our worries about the future. These substances allow us to escape into a chemically induced fantasy world where time appears to stop and everything is pleasurable and comforting.
The Buddhist way to overcome stress and unease is to use skillful means—effectively and appropriately engaging in what needs to be done. I know a young professional woman with a stressful job. “At the end of the day,” Marian told me, “I just want to crash in front of the TV with a bottle of wine.” That’s how she spent most evenings, and then she would go to sleep and begin the cycle all over again.
Instead, I urged Marian to try taking a brisk walk, eating natural, home-cooked foods, meditating, engaging in vigorous
exercise or the martial arts, making or listening to music, painting, taking photos, writing a poem or blog, or experimenting with other ways that put her in touch with her higher Self. If Marian pursues these activities in Full Connection Meditation, she will feel fully refreshed and replenished, and able to apply skillful means to her life’s work.
As adults, we are constantly consuming information. Some people even take their BlackBerry into the bathroom with them. As we go from screen to screen in our homes, in our cars, at the office, and in all of the places in between, we are cutting time up into thinner and thinner slices until it slips right through our fingers.
(The small self and the higher Self)
It’s not easy, in our empirical, materialistic, and rational information-based culture, to intuitively feel this intrinsic relationship with the entire chain of being. But when we can come to experience the power of that connection, we find that it erases boundaries, small-mindedness, and fearful, cloudy thinking and emotions.
Schweitzer is another great example of someone who could distinguish between the self and the Self. As a young man, he had become celebrated throughout Europe as a theologian and an organist. His book on the historical Jesus challenged Protestantism, and his concerts of Bach’s music were unequalled. Yet living the life of a theological giant and musical celebrity was not who he was. Looking within, he realized that his deepest Self would be manifested in a life of compassion and serving others. In the spirit of the Wise Fisherman, he threw fame and fortune back into the sea. To his amazement, Schweitzer became even more renowned when he forsook modern civilization for the African jungle, but being the world’s most famous doctor never went to his head.
Onward and inward, I like to say. Growing up, and growing “in,” to become your authentic self can be a real challenge. First, you have to strive to recognize and acknowledge the limitations of your small self and compassionately accept all your warts, because denying or ignoring your problems sidesteps the issue at great cost. In this moment, could you easily list your likes and dislikes, inclinations, aversions, bad habits and good sense, hot buttons, blind spots and prejudices, greatest hits and flops? Try it. For the basic principle of enlightened living is seeing things as they are. While retaining a modicum of healthy self-esteem—that is the Middle Way—you should not allow yourself to feel that you are more special than anyone or anything else. And thinking you’re worse than others is simply another form of narcissism. For rest assured, none of us, neither saint nor sinner, is closer to God or Buddha than any other; we all possess Buddha-nature. How can we be any closer to our higher Selves, which are already closer to us than our breath and our blood?
It will help you experience a deeper reality amid the impermanence of life and let go of the stress, hindrances, and distractions that cloud your self-identity and awareness.
Make Time for Your Life I hope the previous experiment in contemplating the impermanence of your small self helped you realize the importance of connecting to your higher Self. Otherwise, life can just unroll like a crazy quilt before us and we miss the best part of the ride, the soaring, magic-carpet flight to realms of self-discovery, self-realization, and connection to all beings.
I choose not to waste time on empty desires. I vow to overcome craving for experience. And when I do I feel an upsurge in energy, spacious attention, and clarity, Thus arises the understanding and time to do what has to be done. When we choose to step away from our culture’s addiction to increasingly grandiose forms of consumption and competition, we find all kinds of satisfaction and contentment through freedom and autonomy, including extra energy, extra time, and extra space in a new and different quality of life. Who doesn’t have time for such rich forms of experience?
The real you will never, ever be captured. If you’re like most people, seeing a photograph of yourself or hearing your voice on tape makes you uncomfortable. “That’s not what I look [or sound] like!” you say. Everything we do and create is like an entry in our diary or Facebook page: that moment’s manifestation of self.
Spiritually, this signifies our small or everyday self, while the carving at the top symbolizes our highest, most evolved sacred Self. Just beneath the topmost face, there is usually a large pair of wings extending horizontally. These symbolize the soul taking flight into the realm beyond time and space. Together, the totem’s many faces—arranged like the chakras, or natural energy centers in the body—point to the whole or totality of being and the rising, upward process of awakening, growth, and maturity, reaching our full, majestic potential. To see the whole, you need the panoramic view from atop the totem pole. That requires overcoming the distractions in your day that keep you from seeing and
And that requires finding eternity in the crystalline present moment, being 100 percent engaged in your current activity. To live in Buddha Standard Time, you’ll need to find moments throughout the day when you can transcend your smaller self.
(Sacred feminine wisdom and the balance of being and doing)
She felt free to create, dream, and enjoy without any urgency. Fortunately, there is a natural bridge between the two halves of the brain that prevents us from living exclusively in one hemisphere or the other.
She is the very image and embodiment of Prajna Paramita, the highest wisdom; shunyata, vast emptiness, infinite openness; and warm, all-embracing, compassionate spaciousness. In fact, in Buddhist literature supreme wisdom is called the Venerable Mother, the womb of enlightenment, because it is the great mystery, our primal essence. Think of how much energy you have when you are nurturing or being nurtured. We must give to receive, and we must laugh, cry, think, and feel every day to be truly alive and well. It’s not hard to recognize that love and gratitude are instrumental in replenishing us when we feel drained. How much of our cultural addiction to sex, television, the Internet, and other transient outlets for novelty and entertainment, for example, comes from loneliness and a lack of the powerful, active, attentive awareness-wisdom energy of the Divine Mother? As
play out as the years roll by: keeping our daily schedule, planning ahead, learning from the past, and making forward progress. Father Time represents the tirelessly dynamic and inventive quest for improvement, novelty, and achievement. This sacred masculine or yang energy embodies doing.
(Practical pauses and body-clock alignment)
Try the following tips for making peace with time in other situations. 1. WHEN YOU WAKE UP, STOP YOURSELF FROM THINKING “WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TODAY?” and feeling the burden all at once. Just rest for a moment, awake and aware. Take a deep, invigorating breath. Then do the next thing to begin your day. 2. LISTEN TO YOUR INNER VOICE. If it’s shouting, “You need to get this done!” try to notice that thought without feeling driven and utterly overwhelmed by it. Be sure to take pauses throughout the day without thinking of what you should
be doing. There is an art to feeling comfortable while unmoored, to rest in the still eye of the storm. 3. EVERY TIME THE PHONE RINGS, LET IT GO FOR AN EXTRA RING or two. Instead of rushing to pick it up, use it as a found moment to renew your nowness-awareness. Then get on with the call. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh recommends that we use the extra telephone rings, or a moment after the doorbell rings, as a little mindfulness bell, to remind us to slow down, calm and clear our mind, and take a moment to breathe, smile, and relax. TIME OUT
The practice of concentrative meditation serves just this purpose: as we train our awareness to focus on just one thing to the exclusion of all else, our capacity to pay attention overall becomes more and more refined, our attention span lengthens, and we more easily manage to push distractions to the side and stay fixed on the object of our interest. When we focus all our attention on one thing, the ripples of that acute concentration extend out to enhance our performance at everything. The simple practice of concentrating on the breath helps hone, focus, and sustain the attention, in the same way that gathering the light of the sun with a magnifying glass can set a pile of leaves ablaze.
months show that our body’s circadian rhythms are independent of light, darkness, temperature, food, water, and other external stimuli.
Meridian Clock 3–5 A.M.: Lungs 5–7 A.M.: Large intestine 9–11 A.M.: Spleen 7–9 A.M.: Stomach 11 A.M.–1 P.M.: Heart 1–3 P.M.: Small intestine 5–7 P.M.: Kidneys 3–5 P.M.: Urinary bladder 7–9 P.M.: Pericardium/heart governor 9–11 P.M.: Triple burner (middle three chakras or energy centers) 1–3 A.M.: Liver 11 P.M.–1 A.M.: Gallbladder
A bit early in the day, perhaps, but many yogis traditionally do pranayama and other breathing exercises at this time. Midday, from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M., when the heart meridian and its related structures, including the physical heart, the circulatory system, and the Heart chakra, are most active, is the ideal time to communicate and network with others—at meetings, at lunch, or on the phone. From 1 to 3 P.M., when the small intestine is most active, digesting and absorbing food after lunch—ideally, the main meal of the day—is the proper time for rest, study, and other quiet, reflective activities.
For those who like to ponder life’s most profound mysteries, deepest night is traditionally regarded as the best time for meditating on the nature of the universe, the mysteries of life and death, and the paradoxes of enlightenment. At about 2 A.M., the atmospheric energy for the entire day changes from yang to yin, and consequently there is a sudden expansion of consciousness during the next couple of hours. This is the complementary opposite to roughly 2 P.M., when the energy changes from rising yin to falling yang and there is a sudden sinking or diminution of consciousness, and everyone in the lecture hall seems to be fast asleep.
The chakras are your very own seven-jewel watch that enables you to keep time and balance. The chakras provide high accuracy, good temperature stability, and the ability to operate in any environment; they require little maintenance beyond clean air, healthy food, proper activity and rest, and positive, uplifting thoughts and feelings. They are known for their highly consistent precision. Unleash their internal subtle energies, untie the knots and kinks in your psyche, and unblock your channels.
When we breathe through the left nostril, it has a calming effect; through the right, energizing.
Buddha taught that Patient Forbearance is the antidote to anger and violence, and that no one can make us angry if we don’t have seeds of anger in our own heart. Michelangelo said that “genius is infinite patience.” Patience is truly the virtue to cultivate for making peace with time and change.