My Aunt, who recently visited us and stayed in our home for a few days, sent a package to us via my Mom. I stopped by this morning, en route to work, already well behind schedule and under the gun with a full day’s worth of work to accomplish in what never amounts to a full day’s worth of time.When i picked up the package, I was momentarily tempted to start exploring the contents, and suddenly thought of an insightful passage I’d read many years earlier in ‘Zen in the Martial Arts‘. It gave me cause to take the box with me and go through it this evening when I can be ‘in the moment’.
The passage from the book is as follows:
I was having tea with Master Han in his office when the mailman arrived with a letter from the master’s family in Korea.
Knowing he had been eagerly anticipating the letter, I paused in our conversation, expecting him to tear open the envelope and hastily scan the contents. Instead, he put the letter aside, turned to me, and continued our conversation.
The following day i remarked on his self-control, saying that i would have read the letter at once.
“I did what I would have done had I been alone,” he said. “I put the letter aside until I had conquered haste. Then when I set my hand to it, I opened it as though it were something precious.”
I puzzled over this comment a moment, knowing he meant it to be a lesson for me. Finally I said I didn’t understand what such patience led to.
“It leads to this,” he said. “Those who are patient in the trivial things in life and control themselves will one day have the same mastering in great and important things.”
I need to do this more often. I only seem to be able to stay this conscious every now and zen.