Whenever you are in doubt, it is best to pause. Few things are so pressing that they cannot wait for a moment of breath.

Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you.

. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .

It all comes through learning to pause for a moment, learning not to just impulsively do the same thing again and again. It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.
The result is that we cease to cause harm. We begin to know ourselves thoroughly and to respect ourselves.

When speaking to an audience
pause frequently. Pause before you say
something in a new way
pause after you have said something
you believe is important
and pause as a relief
to let listeners absorb details.

The next time a challenging situation presents itself, take a pause and make the conscious choice to meet it with curiosity or humor or the knowledge that this too shall pass.

"Why is patience so important?"
"Because it makes us pay attention."

It made me think of the way so many of us live our lives. We can see what we want, and nearly kill ourselves trying to get it in a way that’s not working. Meanwhile, if we just stopped, got quiet for a minute or two, and looked at things a little differently, we’d notice the door to what we want being held open for us by the nice lady in the bathrobe across the room. Then all we’d have to do is fly through it.

Healing a hurting humanity starts with a sacred pause, to listen, to learn, to understand, to accept, to forgive, to respect. That sacred pause transcends the fear-driven brutality of the primitive human survival intinct and makes way for a thoughtful, intentional, peaceful, humane response. Peaceful coexistence on this lovely planet is not impossible. It is imperative. Our future, our humanity, our very survival depends on it.

The trick is to find happiness in the brief gaps between disasters.

It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.

The often-used phrase “pay attention” is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail.

To pause there would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world. To stop there would be to accept helplessly the probability of civilization destroyed, the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind handed down to us from generation to generation, and the condemnation of mankind to begin all over again the age-old struggle upward from savagery towards decency, and right, and justice. Surely no sane member of the human race could discover victory in such desolation.

To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine — unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are.