Lessons from a Recent Train Ride

By Dawn Raffel

In August I rode the train from New York to Vedanta Society of Providence for Krishna Janmashtami. My plan was to reach Providence by early afternoon the day before the festival, but my train was beset by engine troubles. An anticipated brief delay became longer and longer until, in the end, I arrived four hours late.

Fortunately, I reached the Vedanta Society in time for the evening meditation. This was followed by Swami Yogatmananda’s remarks to the children who were enjoying their final evening of residential camp. As one would expect, these comments were invaluable to the adults present as well. Swami posed this question: If you are on a train from New York to Providence and while onboard, you keep running in the direction of New York, where will you end up? The answer is obvious and the analogy demonstrates that everything is up to God.

Faith in God, faith in oneself, and concentration were presented as keys to success. Swami discussed Swami Vivekananda’s extraordinary powers of concentration, which allowed him to read, absorb, and retain the contents of vast quantities of books at a rate that astonished the people around him.

After the evening ended, I started to think again about faith, concentration, and my recent experience with Amtrak. I had been eager to reach Providence—certainly, I wasn't running in the opposite direction. As the delays accrued, I became frustrated and impatient. You could say that I was mentally running in the direction of Providence. Did I reach Providence any sooner as a result of my mental exertions?

Nowadays, when we talk about distraction, our phones are top of mind. With their seemingly endless array of messages, news, and entertainment, they're often blamed for our inability to concentrate. But any observation predicated on “nowadays” tends to be superficial, because human nature doesn't change that much. People have always found plenty of ways to distract themselves. Our gadgets may be the most visible, up-to-date instruments with which we indulge the urge, but the real culprit is the restless mind.  

My train ride made me consider that there is a difference between focusing on a goal, whether worldly or spiritual, and becoming impatient when things don't go according to a schedule that is out of my control. The former is concentration and the latter is an age-old form of distraction, born of my mind’s false belief that it is—or should be—in charge. Restlessness didn't make the train go faster, and I very much doubt it did anything for my spiritual development; it was a waste of time. I'm grateful for the lesson—and happy to report that the train ride home was without incident.