"When was the last time you sat happily doing absolutely nothing? Can't remember? You're not alone," writes Lane Jennings (The Futurist, March-April 2005). There is a worldwide movement that challenges the cult of speed in this overscheduled world. U.S. journalist Carl Honoré says that going slow does not mean ignoring deadlines, but allotting appropriate measure of time to one's duties and pleasures. "Taking the time to learn about life experiences, expectations, values, and concerns of a new patient can help doctors provide better care and achieve faster cures." Honoré describes the effects of fast-moving life of the twenty-first-century existence, thus:

Studies in many countries find that more and more people are living on the edge of exhaustion, neglecting the quality of their lives as they futilely strive to maximize quantity and cram more activities into every hour of every day...

The price paid for constant speed is high, whether measured in money or human lives....Hurried meals lead to bad eating habits, poor nutrition, and chronic illness. The lure of speed behind the wheel is a major factor in the estimated 1.3 million traffic fatalities that occur worldwide every year. Psychological costs of speed include community breakdown, family stress, and poor work and school performance. The Japanese have a word for it—karoshi ("death from overwork")—and officials reported a record 143 victims in Japan in 2001.

Brain scientist Richard Restak observes—in his book The New Brain: How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind—that in the modern society, the workplace environment calls for the ability to process the information quickly, and shift from one activity to another without getting bogged down or losing time. Further:

As a result of our "make it quick culture" attention deficit disorder is becoming rampant in modern society....Such facility in rapid information processing requires profound alterations in our brain. And such alterations come at a cost—a devaluation of the depth and quality of our relationships....The demarcation between here and elsewhere has become blurred. Thanks to technology, each of us exists simultaneously in not just one here but in several.

Even a child is familiar with the saying, "Haste makes waste." We are asked to avoid "Hurry, worry and curry" on purely medical grounds. Multitasking—performing various tasks simultaneously—is one of the features and functions of computers so that when we imitate the computer in this respect, it is but natural that we often seem to be working like automatons. In this jet age, can we possibly live up to Mr. Judge's advice to perform our duty "carefully and cheerfully," putting "our whole heart into it"? Often quality is sacrificed to quantity, when things are done hastily. Haste is related to anxiety and it can be counteracted by patience—a very important ingredient of spiritual life. Mr. Judge writes:

As calmness is the one thing necessary for the spirit to be heard, it is evident how important patience is. It also prevents one from precipitating a thing, for by precipitation we may smash a good egg or a good plan, throw the Karma off for the time, and prevent certain good effects flowing.

Nothing is gained, but a good deal is lost, by impatience—not only strength, but also sight and intuition. So decide nothing hastily. Wait; make no set plan. Wait for the hour to make the decision, for if you decide in advance of the time you tend to raise a confusion. (Letters That Have Helped Me)

The proponents of the martial art of self-defence, kung-fu, are very apprehensive these days, as one of its deadliest tricks—the "dead-lock"—is used by children with rudimentary knowledge of kung-fu, to get high, reports Sangzuala Hmar (The Times of India, March 21, 2005). "Dead-lock is used by experts to block the artery that supplies oxygen and blood to the brain, forcing a person to fall unconscious....Young boys in Mizoram are doing the same to 'just have some fun.'" One of the children explains that it is addictive because before falling unconscious, we experience a pleasurable feeling that permeates deep within. C. Dosavunga who runs a martial arts school in Aizwal, said he never teaches the move, fearing its misuse. Dead-lock can be fatal, as Mickey, a doctor at the Medical Consultant of Care Clinic explains: "The condition can lead to hyper-ventilation and if there is a delay in the supply of oxygen to the brain, it can lead to brain damage and brain death."

Knowledge is a double-edged weapon. "Arcane knowledge misapplied is sorcery." We are easily tempted to use certain knowledge to our own advantage. Hence, some forms of knowledge can be made public only after ascertaining the purity of motive of the recipient. It is precisely because of the possibility of misuse that "the occultists will not give out their even more perilous secrets promiscuously," writes H.P.B.

Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, recently discovered the fossilized leg bones of dinosaur Pedopenna daohugouensis, with large feathers on its leg. Pedopenna or "feather foot" would have been less than a meter long and was found in the Daohugou fossil beds of Inner Mongolia. The fossilized leg bones of this dinosaur reveal it to be as bird-like as archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird till now, writes Jeff Hecht (New Scientist, February 19, 2005). This and the earlier discovered fossils of the dinosaurs with flight feathers on the hind legs has stunned the world of palaeontology making them wonder as to whether the back legs also played a role in flight. Xu concludes that Pedopenna and other creatures appearing with it must have lived in the late Jurassic age. Xu observes that if the fossil beds turn out to be this old, the exquisite preservation of the Daohugou fossils means it could be an extremely significant location for studying the origins of birds.

H.P.B. explains that the Secondary age—which comprises Triassic, Jurassic and Chalk or Cretaceous periods—"is the age of Reptiles, of the gigantic Megalosauri, Ichthyosauri, Plesiosauri, etc., etc." (S.D., II, 713). H.P.B. observes that the stories of various Rishis like Pulatsya, Kasyapa, etc., are not fairy-tales. For instance, the fable of Kasyapa with his twelve wives, giving birth to numerous and diversified progeny of nagas (serpents), reptiles, birds, and all kinds of living things, is a veiled record of the order of evolution in this round. Thus:

He [Kasyapa] was also the father of Garuda, the bird, the "King of the feathered tribe," who descends from, and is of one stock with the reptiles, the nagas; and who becomes their mortal enemy subsequently—as he is also a cycle, a period of time, when in the course of evolution the birds which developed from reptiles in their "struggle for life,"—"survival of the fittest," etc.,etc., turned in preference on those they issued from, to devour them—perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to make room for other and more perfect species. (S.D., II, 253-54)

Birds developed from reptiles, as is further corroborated by one of the Stanzas of Dzyan, explaining the evolution of animals: "Animals with bones, Dragons of the deep and flying sarpas (serpents) were added to the creeping things. They that creep on the ground got wings." H.P.B. explains:

This is a point on which the [esoteric] teachings and modern biological speculation are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between the reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, especially in the ornithoscelidae, hesperornis, and the archaeopteryx of Vogt. (S.D., II, 183)

Human nature at its best or worst does get revealed during crises such as mass tragedies, like the recent one from the tsunami attack. When reporters and T.V. anchors like Nandita Das (The Indian Express, February 5, 2005), visited Sri Lanka as volunteers along with the Red Cross, even a month after the tsunami disaster of 26th December, some of them had eye-opening and conscience-touching experiences. Nandita Das writes:

We have all got so numbed to tragedies through electronic overload. We watch death and devastation on T.V. over a sumptuous dinner. We read [or avoid reading] about the anguish and pain of innocent people in the dailies while sipping our morning coffee....Sensational journalism and entertainment compete for our emotions. We have begun to comfortably co-exist with the deep horror of human suffering. We sigh, mourn a bit, feel helpless and move on.

However, even in the face of these, the silver lining too was visible when at Galle, in southern Sri Lanka Das met the seaside folk. She writes:

I thought to myself, surely, it's not going to be easy for them to befriend the sea again. But this was my logical mind assuming that the response to such a tragedy would invariably be that of anger and betrayal. But as I talked to people, I realized they had no anger! They felt the sea, their provider, had been much abused by the human race and she was expressing her anguish. They believed she knew that the lesson had been learnt and they now ought to apologize to the sea in all humility. Was this Buddhism speaking or the native wisdom of the islanders?

The answer to this, as H.P.B. gave years ago, was that the people in the Buddhist countries with their innate faith in the just Law of retribution, are more resigned and patient with nature's fierce acts through the elements. Besides, the natives truly have not yet forgotten their folk-wisdom, in spite of the inroads of western materialism into the Asiatic countries. These simple people can more easily come to terms with life's ups and downs, although sometimes such disasters bring out the best as well as the worst in us, and that depends on the individual's culture.