QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 
Slowing Down
I worry that if I slow down, I won’t get as much done.
Slowing down and one-pointed attention work together. 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 inefficiency. 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 finish 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.
I’m still not sure I see the point of this. Why do you attach so much importance to slowing down?
Even to see life, we need to go slow. To enjoy life, we need to go slow. To understand people, to understand situations, to arrive at considered 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.
Could you explain more about the link between speed and stress?
Virtually all psychological stress, I would say, comes from the rush and hurry of a frantic mind, which jumps recklessly to unwarranted conclusions, rushes to judgments, and often is going too fast to see events and people as they truly are. Such a mind keeps the body under continual tension. It is constantly on the move, desiring, worrying, hoping, fearing, planning, defending, rehearsing, criticizing; it cannot stop or rest except in deep sleep, when the whole body, particularly the nervous system, heaves a sigh of great relief and tries to repair the damage of the day.
Simply by slowing down the mind — the first purpose of meditation — much of this tension can be removed. Then we are free to respond to life’s difficulties not as sources of stress but as challenges, which will draw out of us deeper resources than we ever suspected we had.
Could you say more about the effects of speed on our society today?
I believe it was the historian and philosopher Will Durant who said that any person in a hurry is not civilized. This is not a superficial quip but a profound statement that calls into question the achievements of our technological society. Even though we have attained a level of material abundance 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.
Loving companionship with family members and friends, service to the wider world, periods of reflection on the timeless truths that sustain life — these have been crowded out by a dizzying round of scheduled activities that confer little lasting benefit on anyone.
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. I would suspect that our sense of time-famine comes from a mind that is speeded up, too distracted to make wise choices between what brings only temporary satisfaction and what is of lasting value. When we complain that there is not enough time, what we really mean is that there is not enough time to do everything we want.
So we try to fit more and more into the same twenty-four-hour period by moving faster or by multitasking — that odd term used by efficiency experts to describe the practice of doing several things at the same time. What starts out as a set of physical habits gradually invades the nervous system. Eventually, a speeded-up life creates a chronically speeded-up mind, and we become incapable of benefiting from the opportunities for leisure and reflection that might come our way. Doing more and more satisfies us less and less. We feel increasingly cut off from what is best in ourselves and from those we want to love.
During nearly forty years as a teacher of meditation in this country, I am glad to say that I have helped thousands of harried men and women slow down and start living richly textured, creative, selfless lives full of meaning and purpose.
Based on this long experience, I would venture to say that the mark of an educated person is the use of time which he or she makes. I think it should be possible to look at a person for a day and make a good guess at how civilized that person is.
What about our children?
It has been a sad observation for me over the past forty years to see that we seem to be passing on to our children our inability to slow down, reflect, and make the wise choices that enrich our own lives and the lives of those around us.
I am not in favor of shunting children from activity to activity, which robs them of their innocence. I see with my own eyes how children are rushed from karate to soccer to gymnastics to ballroom dancing. As beneficial as this training might seem, we need to ask ourselves what is lost when the fleeting years of childhood offer so little chance for looking at the sky, watching the plants and the animals, examining leaves floating in puddles or ants parading along a twig.
Slowing down is closely connected with one-pointed attention: doing one thing at a time, and doing it with complete attention. In the case of rushing, the problem is not only one of speed. Our attention is riveted on ourselves — our needs, our deadlines, our desires — so there is no attention to give to those around us. Especially for children we need to slow down so that we can give them our attention, which they require as much as food and sleep.
How does slowing down fit into the rest of your eight-point program?
When I present the spiritual life, what I am presenting is life at its best — physically, mentally, intellectually, and of course spiritually. It is a total approach based on the practice of meditation, and supported by other allied disciplines which give us the opportunity of living a long, healthy, happy, productive life of selfless service. Each point in my eight-point program of meditation is linked to all the rest. For example, if you slow down, it will help you in making your mind one-pointed, in getting some measure of control over your senses, and in being very supportive of those around you.
In particular, I think everyone today needs to work hard at slowing down, because the pace of life has sped out of control. Every one of us can benefit by planning our day well and going through our tasks with concentration at a slow, even pace which does not put us under undue pressure.
But it’s not just about moving physically at a slower pace — it’s about slowing down inside?
A hurried pace originates in the mind. You might stop at someone’s desk to be sociable, but that doesn’t mean your thoughts have stopped. If you’re pretending to chat while your mind has sprinted ahead toward the conference room, you might as well take the rest of you there too.
This is the real crux of slowing down: beginning to slow down internally, in the mind. The more we slow down the thinking process, the more control we have over our lives.
Could you explain more about the relationship between a speeded-up mind and negative emotions?
Fear, anger, selfish desire, envy: all these are associated with a speeded-up mind, and when the mind speeds up, it takes basic physiological processes with it. The thinking process hurtles along, thoughts stumble over one another in an incoherent rush — and, on cue, the heart begins to race and breathing becomes quicker, shallow, and ragged.
Interestingly enough, the reverse is also true. Once the mind gets conditioned to speed, not only do speeding thoughts make the body go faster, speeded-up behavior can induce negative emotions as well.
Suppose you’ve slept through the alarm and are in a rush to get off to work. You rip through the kitchen like a whirlwind, grabbing whatever you need as you go, trying to button your shirt while you eat your toast on your way out the door. The next time you catch yourself like this, watch and see how prone your mind is to negative responses.
Everything seems an obstruction or a threat. Your children look hostile — if you see them at all — and even the dog seems out to ruin your day, draping herself right across the threshold in the hope of tripping you up. “Watch out!” the kids say once you’re gone. “It’s going to be another of those mean-mood days.”
A thrilling realization comes when you begin to understand this two-way relationship between speeded-up thinking and negative emotions. If you are chronically angry, fearful, or greedy, you know well how much damage these tendencies have done to your relationships. And you know, too, how dauntingly hard they are to change when you approach them head-on. Their roots go deep in your past conditioning. You can talk them out, analyze them in your dreams, reason with yourself, go to anger workshops and fear seminars; still they wreak havoc, out of control.
How does meditation help us to slow down?
Suppose that instead of going after chronic anger or fear directly, you were to tackle the thought process itself — the mind in its Indianapolis speedway mode. When a car is going a hundred miles per hour, you can’t safely slam on the brakes. But you can lift your foot off the accelerator. From one hundred miles per hour the speed drops to ninety-eight, then to ninety-five, then ninety, until finally you’re cruising along at a safe and sane fifty-five. You’ve decelerated gradually and safely.
This is exactly what happens to the mind in meditation. You put your car into the slow lane — the inspirational passage — and you stay there, going through the words of the passage as slowly as you can. Distractions will try to crowd in, and you don’t want to leave big gaps for them to rush into. For the most part, though, you just increase your concentration. In this way, little by little, you can gain complete mastery over the thinking process.
One-Pointed Attention
I really want to help my community and the world. Why do our efforts seem to have so little effect?
Most of us have minds that are scattered or distracted: sometimes positive, sometimes negative, constantly changing with our shifting moods and desires. Flickering attention is a sure sign of a divided mind. Division is tension. Division is friction. Division is ineffectiveness. Division is futility. And a mind divided cannot stand.
Most of us have a mind that is divided; that is why it sometimes cannot stand under the impact of life. It is the concentrated, focused mind that reaches people. All the great changes in the world for good and for ill have come from the impact of men and women with an overriding singleness of purpose and a concentrated mind. In our own times, on the positive side, Gandhi is a perfect example. To make our full contribution, we need to train the mind to be at peace and then radiate that peace to those around us.
Can you say more about how we can make our full contribution?
Whoever we are, we can improve our contribution to the world simply by giving complete attention to the job at hand in a spirit of detachment. We don’t have to compare our lives or work with others’. All that is expected of us is that we give our very best to whatever responsibilities come our way. As our capacity to contribute increases, greater responsibilities will come to us. That is the way spiritual growth has always taken place down the centuries.
When I began to meditate, I don’t think it ever occurred to me to change jobs or to try to make a “spiritual” contribution with my writing. I simply gave more and more attention to my teaching — to my colleagues and especially to my students. I was meditating every day on the words of the Bhagavad Gita, where Sri Krishna counsels: “Do your best; then leave the results to me.”
What does it mean to work in a spirit of detachment? And how does it tie in with one-pointedness?
It is helpful to keep each of these three aspects in mind — attention, detachment, and the job at hand. But before I comment on them, I want to emphasize that they are really not separate. They are three elements of a single skill.
When you dedicate yourself to the task at hand with complete concentration and without any trace of egotistic involvement, you are learning to live completely in the present. You are making yourself whole, undivided, which is the goal of the spiritual life and the meaning of that much-misunderstood word yoga.
In reality, all these three amount to unifying our attention. We don’t usually think in these terms, but when we ignore responsibilities, we are actually dividing our attention. When we postpone or neglect a task that needs doing, we are dividing attention. When we do a job halfheartedly, we are dividing attention.
Even when we get personally entangled in our activities, we are dividing our attention. And if “dividing attention” sounds abstract, let me assure you it is utterly practical. When we divide our attention, we split ourselves, which weakens everything we do. In this sense, perhaps the simplest expression of our goal in meditation is that we are trying to make ourselves whole.
How do we do this in practice?
Let me offer a few practical suggestions from my own experience.
Over time, every job becomes routine. For a year or two everything seems new; every task presents an interesting challenge. But after a few years, it’s “Oh, another patient, another client, another performance, another report.” New things have a way of becoming old; new hats become old hat; everything becomes passé.
The answer is not to change jobs, drop out, or walk away, but to give more attention and do the very best we can. With complete attention, everything in life becomes fresh.
Therefore, the Gita says, don’t ask, “Is this interesting? Is this exciting?” If a job is exciting today, it’s going to be depressing later. Unless it is at the expense of life, give it your very best. Doing a routine job well, with concentration, is the greatest challenge I can imagine. You’re not just doing a job but learning a skill: the skill of improving concentration, which pays rich dividends in every aspect of life.
Finally, in attending to the task at hand, the Gita urges us never to get attached to personal pleasure or profit. Whatever the job, do it as a service to others. Don’t do it to gain credit or prestige or to win attention.
Sometimes people ask me incredulously, “You mean you’re not interested in the results of what you do?” Of course I am interested. I doubt that there is anybody more interested in his work than I am, because I know how much people can benefit from what we are doing at the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. But after many years of practice, I have learned to do my best and then not worry about whether things will work out my way.
I work hard and I worry a lot. What can I do to stop worrying?
This habit of worrying is a significant comment on our times. I know people who put a great deal of effort into developing this habit. When they leave home, they worry about whether they have locked the door; they have got to go back and turn the key in the lock to make doubly sure. Then they realize they have left the letter inside and worry whether they have remembered to write the address. If we lock the door and mail our letters with attention on what we are doing, these little problems don’t arise at all.
It is in these small matters of daily life that lack of concentration shows up easily. People worry because they don’t concentrate. Whatever you are doing, give it your full attention. We can guard ourselves against tension by learning to be mindful in everything we do.
Similarly, when the day is done, leave your work at the office. Many people who work hard bring their work home with them, yapping like a poodle at their heels. At the dinner table, when they sit thinking about their deadlines and responsibilities, the poodle is nestled under the chair, whining away. They curl up with it at night and dream about reports that haven’t been filed, statistics that don’t point to the right conclusions, mail that hasn’t been responded to or that has been sent out with the wrong memo attached. This is what I mean by bringing the poodle home: it’s not just in your briefcase, but in your cranium too.
It takes a lot of control to work with concentration for eight hours and then drop your work at will, but this is one of the greatest skills that one-pointed attention can bring. When you enter your office, you give all your attention to your job; once you leave, you put the job out of your mind. This simple skill guards against tension and allows you to give your very best. If you have given your best, there is no need to worry about the results.
Could you explain how one-pointedness can help in conflicts?
The person who can give undivided attention when others are being unpleasant is a real peacemaker. Slowly he or she can disarm the hostile person simply by listening without hostility, with complete and loving attention.
When you see opposition, do not get afraid. Look upon tough opposition as a challenge to test your inner growth—to see if your capacities have grown so that through patience, courtesy, and the depth of your conviction, you can win over your opponent into a fast friend.
But all this takes time, and it takes the capacity to concentrate. You have to be willing to develop these skills, which is the purpose of slowing down and one-pointed attention.
How does a one-pointed mind help with our interpersonal problems in general?
Many problems that we take for granted are not really necessary; they arise from attention getting distracted and caught without our consent.
For example, all of us are familiar with the toll negative memories can take. When they come up, they simply won’t let us alone. They claim our attention, and dwelling on them only makes them stronger. The mind gets upset until finally the body begins to suffer. But if you can turn attention away, just as you do in meditation, the memory will gradually lose its emotional charge. The memory itself is not lost; it simply loses its compulsive hold on you.
Again, when a friend has offended you, it is not your friend that causes the agitation; it is dwelling on what happened. Attention is caught, and the mind cannot stop thinking about it. When you go to the theater, you can’t pay attention to the film. When you go to bed, you can’t stop thinking about what happened, so you toss and turn all night. Dwelling on resentment or hostility or any other negative emotion magnifies it; the answer is to turn attention away.
Happiness comes when we forget ourselves, and misery when we can’t think about anybody else. This is essentially a problem of attention getting trapped. One of the greatest benefits of meditation is that it releases the precious faculty of redirecting our love and attention from our little selves so it can flow towards other people. It’s an exhilarating experience, because most of us have no idea of the capacity for love we have imprisoned.
Training the Senses
Could you explain how training the senses helps meditation?
Attacking the mind directly is extremely hard. But there is something we can attack directly to deepen meditation, and that is eating. Through our eating habits — especially likes and dislikes in eating — we can learn to get at the mind indirectly.
You can begin simply by ceasing to choose foods that don’t benefit your health and instead choosing foods that do. With this simple resolution, you’ll strengthen your will and deepen your meditation — and please your physician, too.
I first became interested in changing my diet for the better under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, when he was writing weekly articles for his paper Young India. Diet was an important topic for him, and he experimented all his life to discover the very best. Indians can be quite traditional about food; they always want the dishes that mother used to make. But Gandhi put tradition aside in favor of health, and his example appealed to me deeply.
I too, of course, had been brought up on Indian cuisine — first Kerala style, later Central Indian. And I had enjoyed it all thoroughly. It never occurred to me to ask what the purpose of food is. Gandhi’s example prompted me to ask; and I concluded, to my great surprise, that food is meant to strengthen the body. So I started changing. I began to eat fruits and vegetables that wouldn’t have appealed to me in earlier days at all. As I began to focus more on health, I found that I enjoyed salads, and that highly spiced curries no longer seemed palatable. I was prepared now to agree with Gandhi’s dictum that taste lies in the mind.
Today, if I were to eat junk food, my body and palate would protest. I work every day from morning till night, every day of the year, and the energy for this kind of work comes partly from food. Eating what gives you energy for selfless service, keeping your body healthy and light, is a matter of teaching your taste buds what to enjoy.
As always, the purpose here is training the mind. With training, your senses begin to listen to you, and when your senses begin to listen to you, your mind becomes calm and clear. Then you always have freedom of choice.
You’ve talked about the joy of actually defying desires. Could you explain what you mean by that?
I don’t think I really understood what Gandhi was getting at until much later, when I began to meditate. It was then that I made what was for me a remarkable discovery. When I needed a lot of drive to go deeper in meditation — for example, if I had a problem to solve that required more energy and creativity than usual — I found that I had only to pick a strong sensory urge and defy it. When you suddenly need cash, don’t you go and shake the piggy bank? It was a little like that. I would look around intently to see what kind of cravings I had, and then I would walk up to a really big one and say, “Come on, because I am really broke.” The desire would come on strong, and I would push it back and come out with both my pockets loaded.
My whole outlook on desire changed. Formerly, when a strong urge would come, I used to do what everybody does: yield to it, and not reluctantly either. Now I began to rub my hands with joy at the prospect of doing just the opposite. “Here’s another desire! It’s strong, so I’ll gain even more by defying it.” I began to understand that any strong desire, when it is defied, generates a lot of power.
Not every desire, I should say, is to be rejected out of hand. I distinguish very carefully between harmless desires and desires that are harmful to the body or mind — or, of course, to those around you. If the desire is for food that is wholesome, you may well be able to yield with full appreciation. But if it is a desire for something sweet that you don’t need, you will find you can get equal satisfaction out of refusing it. It’s a deceptively simple change in perspective. Your attitude toward the body becomes very different: you see it no longer as an instrument of pleasure, but as an instrument of loving service.
Isn’t it all a bit grim?
You don’t have to give up all desires to be strong; you just have to give up all selfish desires. For example, when you have food that strengthens the body, especially when it is cooked and served with love and eaten in the company of family or friends, you don’t need to pass it up just because you like the taste of it. The Lord would say, “Dig in; I am in that desire too.”
I am very much like my grandmother in this respect. When there was a feast coming I don’t think she ever thought about the food before or after; but while she was eating I have never seen anyone enjoy a meal more. At our ashram, whenever there is a special occasion, whether it be Jewish or Christian, Hindu or Muslim, we really have a feast. And when someone comes in and puts a steaming platter of blintzes on the table, we don’t turn our eyes away and say, “We can’t eat blintzes; they’re not mentioned in the scriptures.” We sit down, repeat the mantram, and polish them off.
The question in all these matters is, are you doing this for yourself or for others? In other words, we don’t need to turn our backs on the innocent delights of life to be spiritual. We can participate fully in life as long as we are trying our best to put those around us first.
Why do you advocate a vegetarian diet?
Vegetarianism not only helps us to maintain our health on the optimum level but also has the spiritual purpose of deepening our awareness of the unity of life.
I am fortunate in being born in a Hindu family that has been vegetarian probably for over a thousand years, but I am not a vegetarian because my ancestors were; I am a vegetarian because I have come to know that I form one unity with everything around me. As our spiritual awareness deepens, we will come to have great compassion for animals and will never want to be a party to their ill-treatment. Vegetarianism affirms the unity of all life.
One of the remarkable developments in meditation is that even if we take to meditation without any desire to practice these related disciplines, after a while we will be drawn to them. The changeover, for example, from nonvegetarian to vegetarian food can be made gradually.
Could you explain the link between training the palate and improving relationships?
That was a personal discovery. I soon found that by loosening compulsive likes and dislikes about food, I was undoing the whole habit of disliking. It paid immediate dividends in personal relationships. I didn’t have to dislike someone just because I disagreed with his opinion or because she disliked me. This kind of realization disarms people, and I soon found that all my relationships had improved.
What is the real purpose of juggling likes and dislikes?
Juggling with likes and dislikes is much more than learning to be flexible about the relative merits of foods or jobs or people. The real issue is freedom. Our habitual responses in small matters reflect the way we respond to life itself: the person with rigid tastes in food is likely to have rigid tastes in other fields as well. All of these hold him hostage. He is happy so long as he gets everything the way he likes it. Otherwise — which may be ninety-nine percent of the time — he is unhappy over something. He might as well be bound hand and foot.
My grandmother used to tell me, “Don’t ever beg from life.” Life has only contempt for people who say, “Please give me two things I like today: one in the morning, preferably just before lunch, and another about midway through the afternoon, when I start to get irritable. Oh, and please remember to keep everything I dislike at a convenient distance.” This is panhandling, and we usually get what we deserve: disappointment, with a capital D.
We are not beggars, Granny would say; we are princes and princesses. We can learn to say to life, “It doesn’t matter what you bring today. If you bring something pleasant, I will flourish; if you bring something unpleasant, I will still flourish.” Once we have tasted the freedom of juggling at will with our personal preferences, we can face whatever comes to us calmly and courageously, knowing we have the flexibility to weather any storm gracefully. This is living in freedom, the ultimate goal of training the mind.
You say we should be careful with our media choices, but my friends think I’m being overly strict. Why’s it so important?
You know the slogan “You are what you eat.” I would say, “No, your body is what you eat. You are what you think.” Just as the body is made of food, the mind is made of thoughts: everything we think, feel, and take in through the five senses.
Of course, there are books and movies and even television shows that provide good entertainment and good education. The point is to be able to choose. With junk food so readily available, most of us have learned to be selective about what we put into our mouths; why not be careful about what we let into our minds?
Nutritionists remind us that before we eat something, we should ask, “Do I want this to be part of my body?” Similarly, we should remind ourselves every time we go out for entertainment or switch on the TV, “This experience is going to become part of me. Will I be the better for it? Will it leave me calmer, or will it agitate me? Will it make me more compassionate, or will it stir up anger or leave me depressed?”
In other words, I am talking about learning to make choices — reclaiming the power to choose what goes into your mind. After all, don’t you like to choose the food you eat? It is the same with what you feed your mind.
The spiritual life is hard work at times, and then I really need some relaxation. What sorts of entertainment do you recommend?
Entertainment is essential for all of us. Recreation is part of spiritual living. I look upon everything I do as part of my spiritual practice. So I take great care that what I see and hear is likely to be innocent entertainment − with a good story, good cast, good direction, but none of the degrading drawbacks I have come to expect on the stage or screen.
As a former professor of English literature, I enjoy classics. But nourishing entertainment need not be great art. For years I had tickets to our local college’s summer repertory theater, whose plays were selected to please a community crowd. I would take a carload of young friends and stop for ice cream before the show. So leading the spiritual life doesn’t mean bleaching the color out of life. We can enjoy all that is wholesome everywhere − in plays, in music, in films, in conversation, in simply being together.
What about vacations? Aren’t they important, too?
The mind needs R&R − relaxation and refreshment. But all too often we misinterpret this need, just as we misinterpret a desire for food. We think in terms of escape, “getting away from it all.”
And that is what we need − but not in the usual sense. “Getting away from it all” doesn’t mean the mind can count on finding refreshment on a beach in the Bahamas. Our real need is to lift the burden of constantly thinking about ourselves.
Someone once asked Mark Twain why he didn’t take a vacation. “I would like to,” came the reply, “if I didn’t have to take that fellow Mark Twain with me.” That is the heart of the matter. The best theater in the world would be one that lets us check our ego at the door − and then, I would say, lets us forget to pick it up again when we go home.
This is the secret of healthy entertainment, and understanding how the mind works explains why. The relief we get from a movie or a theater performance doesn’t come from the activity. It comes from concentration. When the mind is absorbed in a single focus, it has no attention to give anything else − not even the insistent demands of I, me, and mine.
In this light, any concentrated activity can be right recreation. Sports like tennis that require sustained concentration are particularly good because they exercise the body as well as focus the mind. Even work can be recreation if we get so absorbed in it that we forget ourselves. And to me, the best recreation of all is selfless service − work done for others without any desire for recognition or reward. That is why Gandhi said, “I am always on vacation.”
Putting Others First
If we put others first, won’t they exploit us? I don’t want to be a doormat.
Putting others first does not mean saying yes to everyone. Love often expresses itself in saying no. When you allow people to exploit you, you aren’t just hurting yourself; you are helping the exploiter to hurt himself as well. To connive at somebody who is not living up to his responsibilities not only doesn’t help the situation; it doesn’t help that person either.
We aren’t helping inconsiderate people when we give in to their demands or let them walk all over us. It only feeds the habit of rudeness to let them have their way. The more insensitive the other person is, the more reason for you to alert your mind to be calm and compassionate and, if necessary, to face opposition firmly but tenderly.
How do we stand up to someone who’s making an unreasonable demand — in our family, for instance?
Love often shows itself in the inward toughness that is required to say no to an attitude or desire that we think will bring harm. Parents have to do this often, for children who grow up without hearing no from their parents will be terribly brittle when they have to take no from life itself — and, worse, they will have a hard time saying no to themselves.
But loving opposition, whether to children or to adults you live or work with, has to be done tenderly and without any anger or condescension. Otherwise you are likely only to be adding more self-will to the flames. This is a difficult art. Go slowly, and remember that it is always better not to act in the heat of the moment. Whenever time allows, instead of responding immediately to an unwise demand, take a mantram walk first, meditate, and then speak when you can do so with kindness and patience. Remember, too, that the very best way to change someone is to begin with your own example.
It requires enormous judgment, and bravery too, to oppose nonviolently people we love — to fight the sin but not the sinner. In time, we can lovingly wear them down with our patience, and when we see signs of regret and reconciliation, we make friends again and completely forget the barrier that stood between us.
I get a bit confused about being kind. I know I’m a people-pleaser.
Putting others first is an area in which the mind can often play tricks on us. Interestingly enough, often when we think we are thinking of others, putting their needs first, we are really just trying to please — which means we are really thinking about ourselves. You can see how slippery self-will can be.
I find it very hard not to fight back if someone attacks me. Anything else feels weak.
Strength is often equated with the capacity to attack, but to me it means the internal toughness to take whatever life deals out without losing your humanity. It is those who never stoop to retaliation, never demand an eye for an eye, who are truly strong. They have the toughness to be tender, even sweet, while resisting violence with all their heart. By contrast, those who are ready to strike back at the slightest provocation are not strong but fragile. They may espouse a higher view of human nature, but almost anything can break them and make them lash back at those they oppose.
How did you learn to stay calm and kind under attack?
For those of us who have had our intellects honed, it’s very difficult to keep from using sharp words. When you’re being criticized or attacked, it’s almost considered an intellectual responsibility to answer back with compound interest. And that’s just what I used to do in faculty meetings, along with everyone else — until I began to understand that if somebody attacked me, there was no need to get angry. It didn’t improve the situation on any level — and besides, something within me rebelled against being bounced around like a rubber ball. So I started repeating my mantram silently and keeping quiet.
This doesn’t mean making a doormat of yourself. Just the opposite. It is training — learning to get your mind under control. The first goal is to break the connection between stimulus and response. Later, once you have a measure of detachment, you can reply to criticism without identifying yourself with your opinions or the other person with hers, choosing words that are kind, respectful, and to the point. The key is to have a choice.
Most personal disagreements, I would say, arise from the unwillingness to see the other person’s point of view. It is not that we have to accept it, but under no circumstances should we refuse to acknowledge that the other person has a point of view — one that deserves to be listened to with respect and evaluated with detachment.
Most of us acknowledge this in principle, but in practice it is all too rare. It took years of retraining my mind to learn to listen with respect to opinions utterly opposed to mine, weigh them objectively, and either retain my own opinion or revise or throw it out according to what I learned.
When we are able to do this — to be completely loyal to our own ideals while respecting the integrity of those who differ from us — often they begin to respond. What matters is the friendliness we show, the attention with which we listen — and, more than anything else, the complete absence of any sense of superiority. The superiority complex is most rampant where our sense of separateness is inflamed. The less separate we feel from those around us, the less superior we will feel too. Once we grasp this, every disagreement becomes an opportunity for spiritual growth.
Do people always respond positively? What if they don’t?
While I was teaching literature, I had a colleague whose manner and opinions were opposed to mine in every conceivable way. I probably worked on that relationship throughout my tenure on campus. Not only did I learn to stay calm when he attacked me; I went out of my way to be kind to him. I don’t think the effort ever made much difference to him. Our relationship never changed: I never did succeed in winning him over.
But that didn’t matter. What was thrilling to discover was how much I had grown by trying. Because of that challenge, I learned to make myself unshakable in any storm of criticism or ill will. That skill proved invaluable later, and those years of trial gave me one of the most important lessons I have ever learned in personal relationships.
As you learn to be patient, you get confidence. Next time, when a bigger outburst comes, instead of retaliating, being unkind, or making sarcastic remarks, you use the incident to train the muscles of your patience by repeating the mantram.
Have you any emergency advice for when we lose our temper?
Whenever I found myself caught in a foolish situation I used to ask my grandmother, “Granny, if you found yourself in a situation like this, what would you do?” It took years for me to understand her simple answer: “Son, I wouldn’t get into a situation like that.”
This is very practical advice. Don’t get into quarrels in the first place. If you do find yourself getting caught in one, close your mouth, start your mantram, and take the closest exit. If you can, go for a fast walk — even five minutes will help to quiet your mind. You’ll be surprised at how effective this is. And when your mind is quiet, you remember the good things the person has done to you and forget the bad things on which you have been dwelling.
Second, throw yourself into highly active selfless work, with a concentrated mind. For a while, your anger may make it difficult to concentrate. If you are very angry, don’t deal with powerful machinery. But when you are able to concentrate, your anger will have been transformed into power to help others, to deepen your meditation.
I know I have a tendency to be judgmental. How can I overcome this?
When we keep pointing a finger of judgment at others, we are teaching our mind a lasting habit of condemnation. Sooner or later, that finger of judgment will be aimed point-blank at ourselves. It is not that people do not sometimes warrant judgment; fault is very easy to find. But judgmental attitudes and a suspicious eye only poison a situation. To right wrongs and help others correct their faults, we have to focus on what is positive and never give in to negative thinking. Love, sympathy, and forbearance require steady strength of mind. Love means that whenever negative thoughts enter the mind, we can turn our attention to positive thoughts instead. This is all that is required to guard ourselves against lapses from love.
The key to this is giving — our time, our talents, our resources, our skills, our lives — to selfless work, some cause greater than our small personal interests. By working hard to give what we can, and by cultivating kindness and compassion under every provocation, we can escape destructive ways of thinking.
This does not mean becoming blind to what others are doing. That is not what mercy and forgiveness mean. I know when somebody is being rude or unkind, but it does not impair my faith in that person or lower him in my eyes. I keep my eyes on the core of goodness I see in him, and act toward him as I would have him act toward me. There is only one way to make others more loving, and that is by loving more ourselves.
But what if the person is really annoying?
The more you learn to change your likes and dislikes at will, the more clearly you will be able to see the core of purity and selflessness that is the real Self in everyone. This is seldom easy. Some people are a little more irritating and self-willed than others; there is no doubt about it. But instead of criticizing such people, which only makes their alienation worse, you can focus all your attention on what is best in them.
This is one of the most practical skills I have learned from my grandmother, and it can be tremendously effective in helping those around you. It is something like turning a flashlight on a particular spot. I don’t diffuse my attention to take in both positive and negative behavior; I keep concentrating on what is kind, what is generous, what is selfless, and the amazing response is that this kind of support draws out and strengthens these very qualities. Not only that, as they become more secure, such people begin to spread this consideration to their other relationships too.
What about when we’re dealing with someone who has treated us badly in the past?
Experience, we believe, does not teach us that others are trustworthy; it teaches us that we had better watch our flanks. The memory of past letdowns can weigh down any sensitive human being, making trust an elusive commodity to acquire. Worst of all, when negative memories cast a shadow of mistrust over our relationships, we lack the vitality we need to withdraw our attention and act with kindness, as if those shadows were not there. That is why any effective reformation of character has to start with reforming the thought process itself.
Here the power of the mantram makes itself felt. Each time your thoughts start to wander down dark alleyways of the past, by drawing on the mantram you can call them back and point their feet in the direction you really want them to go. Gradually, with practice, your thoughts will wander much less frequently; in time, they may even forget the address of those alleyways they once haunted.
What’s at the root of negative tendencies like anger?
All these habits of mind that can make life hell, the mystics say, can be traced to one central flaw of attention. To call it self-preoccupation comes close: the habit of dwelling on my needs, my desires, my plans, my fears. The more deeply ingrained this pattern of thinking is, the mystics say, the more we make ourselves a little island isolated from the rest of life, with all the unhappiness that has to follow. This is not a moral judgment; it is simply the way happiness works. Asking life to make a selfish person happy, my grandmother used to say, is like asking a banana tree to give you mangoes.
But there is a better word for this habit of mind: self-will, the insistent drive to have our own way, to get what we want, whatever it may cost. Self-will has a million forms, but every one of them is a kind of torment. Whenever we feel life is being unfair to us, whenever we hurt because people are not treating us right or paying us attention or giving us our due respect, nine times out of ten what is hurting is our self-will.
Self-will has always been human nature, but today it is almost worshipped in some circles. Unselfishness is considered old-fashioned and unnatural, and to be happy, some professional psychologists say, we have to learn to assert ourselves, attend to our personal needs first, “look out for number one.”
To be sure, there are reasons for these extreme positions. People think that being unselfish is boring, that a selfless person cannot possibly enjoy life because he is constantly making himself a doormat, that to have a high sense of worth you have to have a big ego. These are just misunderstandings, but the observation remains true: our age sets a premium on self-will in aggressiveness, competitiveness, and self-aggrandizement; that, we are told, is the route to joy.
I like to think of self-will as love turned around. Love is energy, and self-will is that energy focused on oneself. We can learn to free that energy, and when we do, our lives will fill with love — which is what living in heaven means.
This sounds so difficult. How do we turn self-will around?
Friends often tell me, “But I can’t make myself pure! I have very negative thoughts. A person like you wouldn’t understand just how negative!” I assure them that indeed I do understand. How many are born pure in heart? Yet in all the major religions, superb teachers have given clear instructions in how to make our minds pure so that divinity can shine forth: how to transform our personality from self-centered to selfless, from unconcerned to caring, eventually even from human to divine.
Intellectual study cannot be of much help in this transformation. Only meditation, the systematic turning inward of attention, can take us deep into consciousness where the obstacles to a pure heart hide.
From this point of view, meditation can be described as nothing more or less than the purification of consciousness, by removing everything that obstructs our vision of the divine core in others and in ourselves.
In meditation, when you go through an inspirational passage such as the Prayer of Saint Francis with complete attention, each significant word or phrase drops like a jewel into the depths of consciousness. With each sentence you are absorbing the loftiest image of human nature. When your absorption in the passage is complete, nothing else will remain in your consciousness. Saint Francis’s ideals will gradually displace all negative thoughts, so that little by little, divinity begins to shine through. Your mind is empty of yourself, true; but that is also to say it is full of God.