Just this week, after a lot of controversy, Vijay Mallya secured several Gandhi memorabilia for $1.8 million in a New York auction. He intends to donate them to the country. Of course, we need to ponder over the irony of a liquor baron acquiring the items of an avowed prohibitionist for the sake of the country. But that will have to wait for another day. Let's get back to those items. One of them was a watch. Gandhi was obsessive about time and the one concession he made to modernism was to dangle a watch from his loin cloth to make sure he does things on time.
Sure, some things require being done on time. You want the anesthesiologist to know how much time it takes for the neurosurgeon to operate so as to prevent you from sitting up on the operation table when the surgeon is still sawing your skull. But there are lots of things that are now time bound that must be freed from the clutches of time. Let me take two of them.
One is exercising. I used to care about whether I walked for 15 minutes on the treadmill, trying to get up to 20 minutes, and so on. Now I don't care. I don't turn the timer on. I walk as long as I feel like walking. By being free from that clock, I find I am not staring at it trying to find excuses to stop when I have been on for just 8 minutes. I suspect I walk longer, and I am certainly feeling better. Isn't that what it is all about?
The other is meditation. I used to struggle to meditate for about 10 minutes. After a few years, I got it up to about 20 and there were thrilling days when I hit 30 minutes. Then, enlightenment dawned on me. I have stopped looking to see how long I sit and just focus on meditating and not on how long I can sit. Wow! It has freed me from trying to compete like I am in a race. I enjoy my meditation sessions more, and who cares how long I have done it for.
This weekend, we are supposed to turn our clocks ahead by one hour for some daylight savings reason. Should I bother? I wonder.
தாய் மண்ணே வணக்கம்
6 years ago
2 comments:
you can be like kramer and refuse to acknowledge daylight savings time. i imagine this will infuriate everyone around you more than it bothers you.
one point regarding your note on not bothering to check time while exercising: i think your stance makes sense as long as you're the type of person who is committed to trying to get as much out of exercising as they can. clearly you do because you notice the effect it has on you. others do it simply because they 'have to.' for these people, they are looking for any excuse to stop. if they employed your philosophy, i doubt any workout would last longer than 10 minutes!
i don't think this would hold true for meditation though (since the people who are doing it are typically doing it voluntarily), so i think you're on with that one.
You make a good point, but I guess it applies to both exercising and meditating. If you want to 'get something out of it', then you work at it. If your motivation is externally driven, then even a closk will not help.
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