STUDY GUIDE FOR

study guide for
What Is Life For?

How to Use This Course

This video is part of an ongoing monthly series in the teachings of Sri Eknath Easwaran. The talks on this tape, like all of Sri Easwaran’s talks, are rich and deep in content. They shed light on many aspects of life, but their true value emerges as we try to apply their teachings in our daily lives.

The Guide is meant to be used in conjunction with a daily practice of Sri Easwaran’s Eight Point Program, based on passage meditation. We do not recommend following the Practical Exercises if you are not practicing this program according to the instructions given in Sri Easwaran’s book Meditation, which can be found on our Web site, www.nilgiri.org. A brief list of those points can be found at the back of this Guide.

The Practical Exercises are suggestions for you to explore as they seem appropriate in your life. If you are already familiar with Sri Easwaran’s books, you will have seen some of these exercises before. But we suggest that you take this opportunity to really put them into practice, and discover their great power to deepen your spiritual life. Try them in moderation, exercising your common sense and not taking them to extreme lengths. Sri Easwaran always emphasized the importance of the middle path.

Before or after watching each talk, we suggest that you read through the notes and the Practical Exercise. Then, after watching the talk, try to put the exercise into action in your life. A week or so later, you may find it interesting to watch the talk again, with the experience of the exercise fresh in your mind. You may want to note the results in a journal.

A week-by-week curriculum for studying this tape, in coordination with readings from Sri Easwaran’s books, is available for use by Blue Mountain Center Satsangs and other interested individuals. If you would like to receive this curriculum via e-mail, just let us know, and we will gladly send it to you. A full listing of our Satsang groups is available on our Web site. For more information about this series, other publications of Sri Easwaran and Nilgiri Press, and a schedule of retreats based on the Eight Point Program, please contact

Blue Mountain Center of Meditation
Post Office Box 256
Tomales, CA 94971
800 475 2369
www.nilgiri.org

What Is Life For?

Introduction

In the first talk on this tape, given in June, 1988, Sri Easwaran vividly depicts both the Supreme Goal of life and the long, gradual path of self-transformation he recommends for reaching it.

One of the catalysts for this talk was a dinner conversation about religion, at Sri Easwaran’s spiritual community, Ramagiri Ashram. After dinner he found this definition of religion by Mahatma Gandhi, which emphasizes personal transformation as the essence of religion:

Let me explain what I mean by religion. It is not the Hindu religion, that I certainly prize above all other religions, but the religion that transcends Hinduism, which changes one’s very nature, which binds one indissolubly to the truth within, and which ever purifies. It is the permanent element in human nature, which counts no cost too great in order to find full expression and which leaves the soul utterly restless until it has found itself, known its maker, and appreciates the true correspondence between the maker and itself. (Young India, 1920)

Starting with an account of his own restless questioning – What is life for? – Sri Easwaran gives a talk which is
remarkable for its step-by-step account of the changes which took place in his consciousness as he progressed towards the climax of meditation.

In our practical exercise, we will try to experience for ourselves some of this “permanent element in human nature” which is always striving (albeit far beneath the surface) to “appreciate the true correspondence between the maker and itself.”

Outline of the Talk

Sri Easwaran begins by quoting Gandhi’s definition of religion, followed by the words of Gandhi’s contemporary, Albert Einstein, whose remarks about the process of scientific discovery convey what it takes to achieve a living sense of religion: “The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion, and the final emergence into the light – only those who have experienced it can understand it.”

For Easwaran, religion is not philosophy or dogma but a way of life, which he embarked upon halfway through life. He found himself faced with urgent inner questions: “What is life for?” “Where was I before I came into this life?” “What happens to me after I shed my body?” Eventually, these questions led him to the practice of meditation, which led to a series of discoveries:

_*Following Gandhi’s lead, Easwaran began by changing his diet and discovered that taste lies in the mind.

_*Acting on another clue from Gandhi, Easwaran looked at his own daily activities for ways to deepen meditation. “Gandhi would repeat over and over again that life is meant for selfless service.” Easwaran sought ways to make a contribution to life. He felt inadequate to the task, yet he offered simple assistance to his students, friends, and immediate family. He found that putting others first in this way deepened his meditation.

_*Easwaran also rearranged his activities to add more meditation periods to his day. This new emphasis on spiritual priorities led to further deepening in meditation.

_*His next discovery was an inner dimension of experience, beyond the physical. He developed a great curiosity about what he would see within himself.

_*Gradually he realized that desire is the key to progress in meditation. “If I could use some of my desires – syphon the prana, the vital energy, from those desires – I could drive my meditation deeper.” He discovered that desire is what gives value to anything in life.

_*This in turn led to the conclusion that “Joy does not lie outside; it lies inside. The source of all joy and fulfillment lies inside.” By gaining mastery over our desires we can live “in a world full of joy, full of love.”

_*“In meditation, as I went deeper and deeper, I began to see the world within as real as the world outside. When my concentration was complete, I was not aware of my body. I did not know [then] that I had a body and, yet, I was so much more alive, so much more awake than I had ever been.” These experiences led Easwaran to a new sense of trusteeship toward his body. “When I was totally unaware of my body, I gradually became aware of Somebody within. I couldn’t believe it. But I had to accept it.” When we get this kind of detachment we will naturally begin to take the very best care of our body. As Easwaran puts it, “It is the Lord of Love present in all who uses my body as a suitable instrument, my intellect as a suitable instrument.”

All of these steps led to considerable deepening in Easwaran’s meditation, and the same steps will lead to a deepening in ours.

^{Practical Exercise}

The discoveries Easwaran recounts in this talk all grew out of his intense spiritual search to discover the Self. When he speaks of his restless questioning, he is not speaking of abstract speculation, but active engagement with the many details of daily life – eating, reading, speaking, working – which he tried to perform with a new understanding. He learned to use every act and thought as a way to deepen his relationship to the divine, or in Gandhi’s terms, to appreciate the true correspondence between the Maker and himself. In this exercise we will use this idea of a personal relationship with the divine to capture some of that intensity and perhaps make our own spiritual discoveries.

Take a blank sheet of paper, and draw a line dividing it lengthwise. In the left-hand column, list all the main activities you will do tomorrow, or on a typical day. Leave some space between the items.

Now reflect on each activity, and in the right-hand column, opposite each item, write down a brief idea of how you can use that activity to grow into a closer relationship with your ideal. You can think of your ideal in whatever terms appeal to you. It can be God, or the Supreme Self, or the divine ground of existence. Or it can be simply your spiritual practice, or the Eight Point Program. Your plan can be as simple as listing which of the Eight Points you will use, or you can go into more detail, thinking about how that particular activity can be considered a way to grow closer to your ideal.

Take this paper with you through your day, and consult it every so often. If you like, you may want to fine-tune it during the coming week. After a week of this exercise, reflect briefly on what you’ve gained from it, and choose one or two ideas or new understandings which you want to integrate into your daily routine.

Further Reading

Eknath Easwaran, Chapter One: The Transformation in Gandhi the Man.

Suggested Passage for Meditation

Bahya ibn Paquda, “Duties of the Heart” in God Makes the Rivers to Flow.

The Face Behind All Faces

Introduction

Sri Easwaran gave this talk in April, 1987, on the evening before Vishu, a South Indian spring festival. The traditional ceremony to celebrate Vishu, which is focused on an altar decorated with a holy image and a small mirror adorned with Spring flowers, provides Easwaran with his theme: learning to see the divine in ourselves and others – what the mystics call the Face behind all faces.

Drawing from various sources in Indian spiritual literature, Sri Easwaran explores four qualities which help us cultivate this vision: optimum vitality, which is enhanced by mastering the thinking process; harmony with all those around us; the capacity to withdraw attention from the senses; and a deep faith.

According to Easwaran, when we gain this vision of the Self we achieve the purpose of life. We see the divine “In all of us, in our home, in our school, in our clinic, in our community, in our country and our world. This is not just a prophetic vision. It’s a practical realization, attested to by all the great mystics of all the great religions.”

^{Outline of the Talk}

Easwaran begins the talk with memories of a ceremony performed each spring in his ancestral home, and still performed today in Easwaran’s spiritual community, Ramagiri Ashram. One by one, members of the family are told to close their eyes and are led to face a small mirror surrounded by flowers. They are told, “Now open your eyes and behold the face of the Lord.” This ceremony is a simple reminder, Easwaran says, of the purpose of life: to see the divine in ourselves and all those around us. God’s face, say the mystics, is “the Face behind all faces.”

Though he had read about this vision before he took to meditation, and thought he understood it, it was only when his practice of meditation enabled him to bring his mind to a temporary stillness that he actually experienced it. He goes on to comment on three Indian spiritual sources which give clues to how this stillness can be attained.

First, he recites the invocation to the Katha Upanishad, a prayer for well-being which implies a connection between vitality and spiritual disciplines. By slowing down the mind, tools like meditation and the mantram help us transform negative thoughts into positive ones. This conserves vital energy, or prana, which often goes to waste in emotional agitation. The energy thus saved can be used by the body to protect or restore our health. In addition, by gaining conscious control over our attention we enrich our intellectual and creative contribution to life, and benefit from one of the most important factors in health – a strong sense of purpose and meaning.

Second, Easwaran quotes a section of the Rig Veda which emphasizes another key factor in stilling the mind: living in harmony with those around us. Working and living in close cooperation with others, overcoming the limits of selfish ambitions and desires, and sharing a common aspiration for the welfare of all – all these reduce the divisions and turmoil which impede concentration.

Third, Easwaran draws on selections by Mahatma Gandhi, in a book called Mohan Mala, to illuminate another important aid to stilling the mind: learning to “withdraw ourselves from the senses” in profound meditation. When all our attention rests on the inspirational passage, the conflicts and cravings which accompany much sense activity subside and a feeling of ineffable peace arises. This brings rest and renewal to the body, and allows us to experience a feeling of love for all life. Such love banishes fear and connects us to a deeper mode of knowing.

The fourth quality Easwaran mentions is faith – the willingness to work patiently and continuously, with “indomitable motivation and unflinching devotion.”

Every effort we make towards cultivating these four qualities brings us closer to the Goal, and reveals to us a little more of “the Face behind all faces.”

Practical Exercise

In this second exercise, we will use the same method as in the first – a side-by-side list. Start a new chart and, in the left-hand column, list some of the people you expect to see on the following day. It’s up to you how many you list, but try to list at least three, and make one of them a person whom you sometimes find it hard to get along with.

Now reflect a bit and in the right-hand column write down an idea or a strategy or one of the Eight Points which you can use to start seeing the divine in that person. For example, you may want to remember some of the selfless things that person has done for you or others. Or, upon reflection, you may realize that you are usually hurried or distracted or impatient at the times when you are with that person. In that case you may want to slow down or be more one-pointed with them, and try in that way to see their best qualities.

(This exercise may change the way you relate to these people, but not necessarily. In fact, with some people, though it is important to see their bright side, it is also necessary to see and resist their not-so-bright side. Please use your common sense in practicing this exercise.)

You may notice that your own state of mind has a great deal to do with how you see others. As an experiment, you might put your own name at the bottom of the left-hand column, and make a strategy for how you can see and nourish your own selfless qualities. In this way, you will be bringing the message of the Vishu ceremony to life.