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The Beauty of Going Slow
We all know what it’s like to be in a rush. The hurried, panicked
feeling of trying to get somewhere on time, finish something quickly, or
rush toward the end of the day when we can finally collapse into bed.
The modern world encourages this speediness, offering an endless barrage
of quick fixes we can squeeze into our schedules: 15-minute meals,
10-minute workouts, or five minute self-care routines.
We rush towards many things — appointments, deadlines, life milestones —
and when we do, we miss out on the present moment. We move at a pace
that never really allows us to be here, and then wonder where
the days, weeks, and months have gone. The faster we try to go, the more
behind we feel. We take shortcuts over the scenic route, and arrive at
our destination frazzled, tired, and cranky. We rush through our
15-minute recipe, turning it into a frenzied 30 minutes, and end up
disappointed by what’s on our plate. We squeeze in the 10-minute
workout, realizing it’s more suited to 20, and end up with a twisted
ankle and a sore shoulder.
A couple weeks ago, an evening of freezing rain hit my city and left the
streets coated in a thick sheet of ice. I stepped outside that weekend
for my typical walk to the farmer’s market, hopeful the sidewalks had
been cleared. My hopes were diminished when I realized my usual route
was now an impassable skating rink. Frustration bubbled up — I had plans
and a schedule to keep — but as my typical 15-minute walk stretched
into an hour of careful steps and detours, I let go of the day I had
imagined and chose to simply enjoy the extra time outside.
On the way home, I stopped in a café for a cup of coffee and sat down to
enjoy it before continuing on. A man walked in, his arm in a sling, and
thanked the owner for letting him sit there the day prior after he’d
slipped and fallen on a patch of ice. “It turns out I broke my elbow,”
he said. “You were so kind to let me wait here for my ride to the
hospital. I just had to come back and say thank you.” A little girl
approached my table to tell me she liked my purse, showing me her toy
dinosaur while her mother offered a smile from across the room.
These small, human moments reminded me of the gifts we find when we
allow ourselves to slow down and take our time — things we’d otherwise
miss. The three teachings below speak to exactly this. I hope they’ll
each inspire you to embrace the beauty of slowing down.
—Lilly Greenblatt, digital editor, Lion’s Roar
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Rev. WonGong explains how a rushing mind can trip us up — literally.
When our minds are preoccupied with too many thoughts, every step can
trip us up. Don’t let your distracted mind interfere with your step!
Don’t trip over your thoughts! It is so easy to slip from the present
moment.
One day, the founder of Won Buddhism, Sotaesan, was climbing over a
steep mountain pass behind Chong-Nyon Hermitage with one of his
students, Choon-Poong Lee. Sotaesan said, “Climbing a steep pass
naturally enhances my practice in one-pointedness of mind. You rarely
stumble on a steep trail. Actually, you are more prone to stumble on a
level trail. So, too, you are more prone to make mistakes on an easy
task than you areon a difficult one. A practitioner who maintains
consistent awareness on either steep or level trails, or on easy or
difficult tasks, will achieve the single-practice samadhi.”
Sotaesan said that a person’s mind is so extremely subtle that it exists
when we take hold of it, but it slips away when we drop our
mindfulness. So, without awareness, how can we cultivate our minds?
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To heal our painful habits, we need to turn attention inward and
reconnect with our experience through stillness, silence, and
spaciousness.
How is it possible to become more familiar with inner refuge? If we are
ill and are given a prescription for medicine that we’ve been told is
absolutely necessary for our recovery and well-being, we are motivated
to take our medicine. So perhaps we need to think of turning toward
inner refuge as taking the medicine that will release us from our habit
of disconnecting from the source of being. You have three pills to take:
the pill of stillness, the pill of silence, the pill of spaciousness.
Start by taking at least three pills a day. You can choose when to take
stillness, when to take silence, or when to take spaciousness as your
medicine. Actually, if you pay attention, opportunities will choose you.
When you are rushing, you become agitated. Your agitation has chosen
you. At that very moment say, “Thank you, agitation. You have reminded
me to take the pill of stillness.” Breathe in slowly and go toward your
agitation with openness. Your stillness is right in the midst of your
agitation. Don’t distract yourself and reject this moment, thinking you
will try to find stillness later or somewhere else. Discover the
stillness right here within your agitation.
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Zen teacher and yoga instructor Donna Quesada addresses our all-too-common need to get it done, whatever it is, right now.
When I first started doing zazen, or Zen meditation, as part of my
formalized training, my teacher told me to count my breath, and as
everyone else does when they start, I raced to get to the number ten, as
if I would win some big prize for getting there quickly. While nearly
hyperventilating one day, I realized how silly it was to rush to ten.
Where is it we want to go? And where will we go after ten? Back to one
again, of course! It is what the beloved Zen master Shunryu Suzuki meant
when he said that there is no such thing as “this afternoon.” He meant
that we could only do one thing at a time.
We go through life forever trying to get to ten. We look to the clock
with great expectations, forever asking, even as grown-ups, if we’re
there yet. We humor the children when they ask, but we ask too, in our
own rushed ways, in all the days of our lives, and in everything we do,
forever rushing to the end. The end of what? If this continues
throughout every activity, throughout the rest of our lives, the only
end in sight is death.
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