It’s easy to see why multitasking can be dangerous (car accidents, etc.), counterproductive (doing a lot things, but none of them well) and bad for your health (stress overload). Less obvious is why sages have advised against it hundreds, even thousands of years before iPods, BlackBerries and wireless whatevers, when multitasking meant talking while stoking a fire.
That there is spiritual value in doing one thing at a time has been recognized since the first seekers gathered around yogis in a cave and on up through time to Ram Dass’s “Be Here Now” and Eckhart Tolle’s “Power of Now.” Understanding why spiritual teachers have always advised against what one guru called “dividing the mind” can help motivate us to slow down and focus when we’re tempted to multitask.
First, let’s pause for a moment to realize that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as multitasking. By that I mean we can only pay attention, consciously, to one thing at a time. Sure, we can drive on a freeway and listen to the radio. We can walk down a busy street and talk on the cell phone. We can dribble a basketball and also notice what the other players are doing. In fact, life as we know it would be unthinkable without the ability to do more than one thing at a time. The species would not have survived if our ancestors couldn’t forage for food or nurse a child and not pay attention to threats from predators. But it’s possible only because some tasks—driving, walking, dribbling, nursing—are automatic once you master them. Multitasking, on the other hand, implies paying attention to more than one at a time, which researchers say can’t really be done. What seems like multitasking is actually paying attention to one thing, then another, then a third, or maybe back to the first, and so on, in rapid succession. That’s why it often leads to blunders and sloppiness.
Back to the spiritual issue. One reason not to multitask is that it tends to agitate the mind. Which is, of course, the exact opposite of a core spiritual goal: attaining a calm, clear, pure, awareness—what the Bhagavad Gita compares to a candle flame in a windless place, and the Taoists compare to a motionless pond after the stirred-up mud settles.
A second reason, related to the first, is that when you do one thing, and you sink into that one thing with the fullness of your being, your senses engage what they see, hear, touch, taste, and smell more completely than they do when your attention flits about like the proverbial bumblebee in a garden. Simply put, you notice more. You appreciate what’s before you in a new way. You see more, hear more, taste more, smell more, feel more. Taken a step further, sustained attentiveness can connect you with the objects of experience in a deeper, more intimate way—perhaps so intimate that the boundary between perceiver and perceived dissolves, giving rise to a taste of mystical unity.
At such times, you come closer to encountering the essence of things, and the essence of everything is divinity. You encounter beauty at a level that approaches ecstasy, not mere pleasure. What arises in you might be awe and wonder, not just enjoyment. What might also arise is a level of a gratitude you haven’t experienced before—a pure, spontaneous, uncontrived thankfulness for whoever or whatever is responsible for creating such a sublime universe and the human capacity to appreciate it. This is the beginning of authentic devotion—the kind that rises up in spontaneous ecstasy and tears of joy, as opposed to the sentimental, intellectualized worship we’re familiar with.
That’s why gurus and sages told us not to multitask long before the sacred texts were on Kindle, and even before they were written on parchment and clay. Simplify. Pay attention. Notice. Don’t overload the senses and agitate the mind.
And now a caveat. Don’t become an anti-multitask fanatic. Don’t make yourself nuts by slowing down and focusing to the point where nothing gets done. Don’t attempt to avoid any semblance of doing more than one thing at a time. The story is told of a Zen novice who walks into the head roshi’s quarters and sees the master eating a bowl of rice while reading a book.
The novice is aghast. “But master,” he says, “you said that when we eat we should only eat, and when we read we should only read.”
“That is correct,” says the roshi. “And right now I am only reading and eating.”
Thank you Philip.