Time Managing

We often see time as needing to be managed, yet we perform many contradictory actions against this notion. We spend time managing time, which is time spent on management of itself. Orienting tasks, planning ahead, concerned that we may accidentally drift along without consuming this fleeting resource. Some of it is necessary, of course, but outside of this planning we are much less careful about our time than we think.

In eastern thought, and in particular the profound metaphysical teachings of Advaita Vedanta, we learn much about the falsity of the material world. Their primary aim is to provide the correct Knowledge which has us understand that there is no fundamental difference between objects such as a gold watch, a human body, and a rock. Here is Verse 8 from Chapter 6 of the Gita, “Yoga of Meditation” or Dhyana Yoga.

“The YOGI who is satisfied with knowledge and wisdom, who remains unshaken, who has conquered the senses, to whom a lump of earth, a stone and gold are the same, is said to be harmonised (i. e. , is said to have attained NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI)”

Over time, this thought process develops a healthy dispassion for material objects, which are merely modifications of the same underlying form to create apparently unique and divergent objects of varying utility.

From a scientific perspective, all matter is composed of the same fundamental unit but their quantity, energy levels, and arrangements provide the cause for the world of plurality – the objects we see around us. From this perspective, one slowly loses the initial thirst for the material because an inner eye is developed that sees beneath the physical objects manifest before us. Still we may decide to purchase or own this thing or that thing because it eases a part of us, but nevertheless we incrementally lose attachment to them. The world presents itself to us in such a convincing abstracted form that this perspective largely goes unnoticed because we interact at a gross level. Gross signifies “larger” or “more manifest” than the underlying particles we manipulate.

For example, a person with such Knowledge sees a gold watch to be nothing but gold arranged into the form of a watch, and gold itself to be an arrangement of particles. This progresses down micro scales until we reach the brutal fact that it is unknown what the fundamental essence of reality is. We may give it a name, like quarks and the like, but naming and defining a thing is not a proof of its reality, nor does it explain what it actually is. Until the root of existence is understood by the eye of science, academics ask us to hold our existential breath and is one of the reasons why they tend towards atheism, and in my view is a partial cause of our thick headed culture of overconsumption.

At the very moment of acquiring an object, as described in The Nectar of Supreme Knowledge, we get a small glimmer of the sense of desirelessness. It is the sense of fulfillment when the object of desire has just reached our grasp and is ours to consume and enjoy. We tend, at this time, to lose the nagging desire for it – the feeling of “not having it yet.” In this moment we reveal to ourselves what it’s like to not have a desire. Most of us will never notice this, as we are in the throws of indulgence.

In that state of desirelessness, we relish in the material object completely, and are given a hint at what it would feel like to never have had the desire to begin with. For example, when you’re eating that day-long desired ice cream cone, you’re not thinking about getting the ice cream cone – hence desirelessness, and pure Bliss.

After some time with an object, we must put it away. As it rests, it must be maintained. This is where an unseen problem arises, one which we don’t realize until we’re much older, or perhaps even never.

The late Swami Chinmayananda, in The Holy Geeta, describes

“When an individual develops a desire strong enough to make a deep attachment, instinctively, he starts entertaining a sense-of-fear for the non-winning of the object so deeply desired; and, if it has been secured, then again he fears for the security of the same acquired object.”

Such profundity cannot be overstated, and this particular passage stuck with me ever since I read it on December 4th, 2022.

Look around your home. Objects lie everywhere: piled, stacked, scattered, broken, pristine, dirty, smelly, resented, overused, unused, and forgotten. Every now and then while cleaning our house we must lift them, dust under and around them, and find new ways to arrange them so the home seems not to belong to a disturbed hoarder.

Most objects around us are absolute reflections of the desires which consume our thoughts – certainly more true if we can afford them. I personally devote most of my time off-work to music, and thus I have studio monitors, a midi keyboard, recording equipment, and a few bass guitars. I’m also concerned with eating, hygiene, and sleeping, so I have objects to support those desires as well. What I don’t have is a stripper pole, a popcorn stand, or a 3D printer; those are things I never think about.

Once we come to own an object, we must first learn to use it – tedious and time consuming. Next, we spend time concerned about what to do with it. Later, we become concerned about its maintenance and security. What happens if X breaks? What happens if I can no longer afford Y? How would I get to work if my car’s Z stops working? Where do I put Q now that I don’t use it? In parallel, we conceive of new objects to acquire, and how we’ll go about doing that. Unhinged madness.

All these objects must be maintained, and all at once. Food once purchased must be cooked before expiry. Dishes and clothes must be washed, dried, then stored. Garbage must be taken out. Floors must be vacuumed. Printer paper and ink must remain in stock. Camera memory cards must be emptied, and batteries charged. Bathtub must be cleaned. Bedsheets must be washed, dried, and done. Televisions, computers, and technology break down and decrease in effectiveness. Watch battery must be changed. Bulbs must be swapped. Stagnant money must be reinvested or its value lost to inflation. Supplements must be resupplied. Shoes must be shined. Tires must be changed. Gas must be filled. Countries must be visited. Eyes require new prescription. Relationships require tending. Work must be done. Projects must be completed. Organizations must continue running. The mind must be disciplined. The body must be exercised.

The never ending time spent managing the world of objects is a testament to the human’s primary metaphysical goal of entropy reduction, or keeping particles in their “optimal arrangements” according to some necessity. We are fundamentally concerned with decision-based particle rearrangement – whether we know it or not. Even those who seem chaotic are trying to satisfy a desire to arrange the world in such a way to access that chaos consistently. For example, it may seem that an addict is chaotic, but a deeper look would see them as attempting to quieten or sort internal conflict – successful or not. This is still a proclivity for entropy reduction, except with disastrous outcomes.

The more we acquire, the more we own, the more time we must inevitably spend in maintenance and security. Such is the stupid trade we make with the time we so claim to value, for in reality we whore it out to the multitude unnecessary object oriented ventures and trivialities.

The perspective is this: be weary of what you decide to own, and what you decide to undertake. None of it is as trivially completed as you think. Toss away the unnecessary objects by realizing their true nature – that they are nothing but name and form. As soon as we call an arrangement a Ferrari, we want it, and when we call it excrement, we run from it. To be clearer, a pile of gold dust brings little desire in our bosom, yet the same dust, melted and formed into a watch, has us running to the nearest jeweler. 

At all times we should look at objects – including other humans – by the corner of our eye with extreme suspicion, knowing very well we are yet again on the verge of becoming nothing but slaves to salivating, enjoying, maintaining, and discarding these external but eternally unkeepable things.