Can we be on holiday all the time?

This week Kate, a YA living in Aldergrove, Canada, shares her thoughts on how to approach work and daily life to try to be on holiday all the time.

Upon reflection, it appears that I’ve worked hard to build a life that is seemingly fresh, all the time. I enjoy contract, project-based work, so I spend time stringing different kinds of work together. Winter contracts strung together, and glued in the middle with summer work on a farm. I live on a cooperative farm with 14 people so there’s things constantly happening, meetings being held, and work to be done. Things are busy, and changing and shifting, and this seems to be the life I’m drawn to, going on 6 years now. It’s really rewarding – as I think the life I chose is rather idealistic to some extent and intentionally (or perhaps circumstantially) departs from the 9 to 5 office job. This kind of working life also affords for travel excursions to California between contracts, or seasons, or whatever the latest is.

When I think back, I began to choose this kind of a working life because of a real aversion to what I considered “drudgery” associated with “office work” – also known as regular, consistent work. I was afraid that if I took up regular work, I would spend each day working towards my next 2 week vacation – only to spend the 2 week vacation longing for more time to spend “away from it all”. I deeply desired to never have to experience this kind of roller coaster, because I sensed that I was likely to.  

So you see, I know Easwaran is my teacher when I read things like this in Easwaran’s The Mantram Handbook, and have a little chuckle:

“With vacations, for example, we work for 50 weeks at our jobs looking forward to two exciting weeks in Acapulco or Bahamas. All our expectations are on those two weeks, so our job seems like drudgery; our home life is humdrum. Expectation mounts as the vacation draws near: we plan, we pack, we talk. Then for two frantic weeks, we are determined to have a good time, even if it kills us. When we get back, there should be an ambulance waiting to take us to the intensive care unit. All we have to show for this is a few slides, a bad sunburn, and a towel from the Hotel Ritz. We go back to our same old routine, which seems duller than ever, and soon we are looking forward to next year’s vacation.”

Gulp. But the neat part is, Easwaran has some recommendations, written just for me:

“I respond much more to Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of a vacation. He was asked by a Western journalist, 'Mr. Gandhi, you have been working fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, for fifty years. Why don’t you take a vacation?' Gandhi’s reply was, 'I am always on vacation.' We can make every day a vacation by getting away from preoccupation with ourselves, and our own personal satisfactions. We learn to do this by thinking more of the needs of others, and by repeating the mantram in order to keep our mind even, to shed our likes and dislikes, and to drop our problems at will.”

And while I would say I don’t experience much drudgery in my patchwork of contracts, I still find a yawning margin for improvement and desire to be on holiday all the time, like Gandhi: at ease, and free in all my words, acts and deeds – all the time. I have drawn real inspiration from Easwaran’s story about Gandhi, and apply it to my gnawing aversion to the “banal”. Just imagine – feeling unpressured, while still effective, being relaxed, yet alert.  And never bored! In other words, on holiday all the time. It sounds wonderful to me.

Kate practices "being on holiday," celebrating her various work projects with some fresh juice!

Of course there are times when this kind of work life requires fitting things in where I can – an hour there, an hour here. And as you can imagine, sometimes those little windows don’t feel long enough, and create a kind of building pressure, or rushed attitude toward the job – the opposite of vacation-ville. One pointed attention can work absolute magic for my mind when it wants to speed up, and forget that we are on holiday. Some days I can actually feel something egging my mind on, “Faster, faster, FASTER!” Over time, I’ve learned to stop, take a few mantram breaths, and give more one-pointed attention to the task at hand, and make a conscious effort to increase concentration. I also remind myself that the people who I’m working with need my careful, measured attention, so slowing up the pace is actually serving them better. Usually, I feel an immediate kind of relief, and a measure of relaxation return. When I feel my eyes darting towards the time again, I repeat the exercise. Sometimes, there’s an awful lot of mantrams going on, and other days, much more concentrated work.

Interestingly, I find that spiritual reading often really helps with remembering that always being “on vacation” is a goal that we can all aspire to and attain. Included in that is reading about lives of the mystics (including Easwaran), and reading about their day-to-day lives, and how they describe them. Their stories are anything but banal – which is so inspiring to me, as some of them lived in convents and monasteries, with regular and undoubtedly rigorous schedules. (My current nightstand book is Take Your Time!)

May we all enjoy the best of both worlds through our 8 point program – the rest and relaxation of a vacation alongside the satisfaction and fascination of an engaging work life!

Easwaran: Answering the Need of the Times

This week we’re pleased to share an article by Eknath Easwaran published in the Blue Mountain Journal in 1999. Easwaran explains how the practice of meditation is perfectly suited to young, idealistic adults (or, indeed, idealistic adults of any age!). He also shares his lofty vision of the impact that meditation can have in shaping the future of the world.

In Berkeley, California, in the 1960s, when hundreds of students attended my talks and classes on meditation, skeptics told me, “These young people are here because of the need of the times.” I said, “Exactly. The need of the times is a deep spiritual hunger, and it is to that need I am responding.”

I have come to the careful conclusion that many, many people in this country – not only the young, but also the not so young – are ready for the challenges of the spiritual life. But unfortunately they don’t know it; and even if they know it, they don’t know where to go or what guidelines to follow. This is where modern civilization is at a loss. In order to bring meaning into our lives, we have to unify our desires, and that can be done, as far as I know, only through spiritual disciplines.

Suited to Our Times

This is the importance of our work. I don’t have any modesty where our mode of meditation is concerned; I think it is perfect for our times. It is practical, precise, and profound; and it is universal. You don’t have to accept any philosophical claims to practice it, and you don’t have to adopt a different religion. When I came to this country, I went about systematically looking at all the methods of meditation available. But I have never found a method so open to everyone and suited to the temper of our times.

In every religion, whatever it is called – meditation, contemplation, interior prayer – meditation is concentration. This has nothing to do with concentration on an external object. The aim of meditation is to still the mind, and concentration on objects of the senses cannot still desires. If you concentrate on a shop window, you want to go and buy what you see. In meditation you want to get detached from such cravings more and more, until the mind is still.

A Crying Need

This is the kind of unified desire I want all of you to develop, for the sake of an anguished world that desperately needs a spiritual renewal to lead us out of darkness into light. Everything in your life can flow into a mighty river of unified desire. Restless desires are one of the best signs of being prepared for the spiritual life, and there are a lot of restless people in this country. You can pour all that energy into this channel of meditation. The motivation should be the highest: to see the tremendous drama that is celebrated in Christmas enacted in your own heart. When you have an overwhelming desire to see the birth of the Messiah or the birth of Krishna or the birth of the Buddha in your own heart, it has to take place. There is a saying in our scriptures: where there is a crying need, that need itself contains its fulfillment. But it doesn’t come automatically; you have to practice it every day.

A Spiritual Renaissance

The whole world needs our work now. And each individual’s contribution becomes effective to the extent his or her desires are unified. Everyone has a part to play, and anyone who doesn’t play that part is contributing to the problem. But when we do play that part, we are contributing to the solution.

Just as there was a cultural renaissance in Europe six centuries ago, the world needs a spiritual renaissance. Just as there was a great revolution in this country two hundred years ago, our country needs a great spiritual revolution here and now. And the wonderful feature of a spiritual renaissance is that it has nothing to do with governments or corporations. It can be brought about only by little people like us – every man, every woman, every child – changing their personality from selfish to selfless, from human to divine.
 
 

Eight-Point Parenting

This week's blog post is from Adam and Emily, a couple from Alameda, California, who are using the eight points to find balance, unity, and sanity in their life with a new baby.

Adam: A week or two before Rosalie arrived, my boss told me to "get ready for the atom bomb" because everything was about to turn upside down for Emily and me. Okay, this way of putting it didn't quite meet my ideal of non-violent language, but the meaning was right on. Our lives were about to transform, and there was going to be a whole lot of energy released in the process.

Adam & Emily: Of course, this huge increase in family duties and challenges has meant lots of opportunities for whittling down our own personal wants and needs in favor of what's best for the family – a.k.a. spiritual growth! We've tried to refocus our day to hone in on being united as a family, in as many ways as we've been able. Here are a few of our experiments:

Emily, the mantram: For me, Easwaran nails it when he says, "Parents of small children will find the mantram a perfect lullaby." For the first four months of Rosalie's life (she's almost 8 months now), Adam and I would take turns bouncing Rosalie to sleep or calming her, especially during the wee hours of the night. I found singing the matram to her particularly helpful for my own sanity, and found Rosie calmed with it too. If I was really tired and couldn't even muster the energy to sing it myself, I would play it on my phone for her. Our friend, Jan, a passage meditator and musician, recorded this mantram song for our daughter. He called it Rama For Rosalie since Rama is both my mantram and Adam's (now it's our family mantram!). We still sing the mantram to Rosie a lot, but thankfully she's sleeping through the night these days.

Also, she's recently graduated to sitting at the table with us for breakfast and dinner, so we've been including her in saying grace and mantrams which she seems to like.

Adam, sharing passages: For a while we didn't know how to share passages with Rosalie – after all, she's just a baby. But recently we had an idea. At bedtime we spend a few moments at a little puja table we've set up in her room. (A puja table is a spot for spiritual connection with the divine, a.k.a. devotional worship – check out Rosie's in the photo below). As an extension of Rosalie's bedtime story, Goodnight Moon, we make a visit all together to the little puja table in her room and say goodnight to Baby Jesus, Mother Mary, Krishna, the Buddha, and Easwaran. It occurred to us that this could be our opportunity to share a brief child friendly passage – like Let Nothing Upset You, the Prayer of St. Francis, or The Path. Rosalie tends to be pretty calm and engaged as we recite these, and it's been a fun way to be united around a passage as a family.

Emily and Adam, one pointed attention: Emily: I pay full attention to Rosalie while she is nursing, as opposed to looking at my phone or being lost in other thoughts. Adam: and I've tried to use eye contact with Rosalie as a cue to be one pointed (and often to say the mantram). She can stare for a long time!  

We both found these experiments to be valuable. Discussing recently, we feel that she really has benefited from our focused attention. We aren't sure if she has learned to be more one pointed, or just has kept away from learning to be distracted. One mom commented that compared to her baby, Rosalie is able to concentrate on playing with a toy for a long time.

Adam, inspiration from Granny: Since learning that Rosalie was on the way, I've been working occasionally on a pet project to compile Easwaran's stories about Granny. After all, I figured, I want to be more like Granny! So I started making note of the "Granny Stories" I found – from Eawaran's books, audio and video talks, and journal articles – and putting them all into one website, with the original material from Easwaran right there on the page. I've been calling it "the Granny Project" and have it online here:  http://bit.ly/GrannyProject

I hope the project will help some others to connect with Granny and Easwaran – I know it has already helped me to keep them "with me" in my heart and mind more of the time, and I'm grateful to them both for that. So far the project only has a fraction of all the Granny stories out there. But part of the fun of the project is contributing to it together. You can suggest additions via the link at top right on each page. The project has already been a collaboration: my mom has found many of the stories, and Emily has given lots of advice for making the website usable.  

Adam and Emily: The eight points – and you all – have been tremendous sources of strength on this journey. Even so, it's often tough going. Little experiments like these help us take courage and have faith that little by little we will move toward our ideal together, and "bring forth much fruit with patience."

What's helped you move a bit closer to your ideals in your own family life, whether with friends, partners, parents, or kids? We'd love to hear from you in the comments below!