A Practice for Today: Choosing and Using a Mantram

Posted on May 16, 2012  | Add Comment

“When­ever you are angry or afraid, ner­vous or wor­ried or resent­ful, repeat the mantram until the agi­ta­tion sub­sides. The mantram works to steady the mind, and all these emo­tions are power run­ning against you, which the mantram can har­ness and put to work for you.”

- Eknath Easwaran

Rep­e­ti­tion of a mantram is the silent rep­e­ti­tion in the mind of a hal­lowed name or phrase from one of the world’s great reli­gions. It can be prac­ticed when­ever pos­si­ble through­out the day or night. Click here for instruc­tions on repeat­ing the mantram.

Click here for a list of mantrams rec­om­mended by Easwaran.


Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 50

Posted on May 14, 2012  | Add Comment

This is the 50th in a long series of talks Eknath Easwaran gave on The Imi­ta­tion of Christ by Thomas a Kem­pis. In this talk Easwaran reads and dis­cusses book 3, chap­ter 18, “That tem­po­ral mis­eries must be borne patiently after the exam­ple of Christ.”

We hope you have enjoyed this series of audio talks. We will begin re-posting these talks, start­ing with Talk 1, on May 28, 2012.

Note that all of the talks in this series are avail­able for down­load from our store. The series is described on this page.

Here is an excerpt from the begin­ning of the talk:

“The keynote of this chap­ter is it is much bet­ter for us to suf­fer our­selves than to cause suf­fer­ing to oth­ers. It is very easy to bear the suf­fer­ings of oth­ers, but it’s rather dif­fi­cult for us to suf­fer. And it is in choos­ing to suf­fer our­selves rather than con­tribute to the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers that joy comes, secu­rity comes, and wis­dom comes.

“When we inflict sor­row on oth­ers, the great mys­tics say, that sor­row is always going to come back to us, and when we con­tribute to the joy of oth­ers, that joy also is always going to come to us. So when there are occa­sions, par­tic­u­larly when we live in the bosom of the fam­ily, where some­body who is dear to us does some­thing in a way which pro­vokes us, it is not easy to refrain from resent­ment. It is not easy to feel not agitated.

“But it is easy to repeat the holy name, the mantram, go for a walk repeat­ing Jesus Jesus Jesus, Rama Rama Rama. It is in this way that we grad­u­ally learn not to have resent­ful thoughts, and the power of the holy name can be expe­ri­enced by all of us when in our anger we call upon him to extin­guish it, in our fear we call upon him to dis­pel it.”

For pre­vi­ous talks, see Easwaran on Thomas a Kem­pis, under Categories.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow


Free Passage Meditation Presentation: Thursday, June 14 in Oakland, CA

Posted on May 11, 2012  | Add Comment

If you’re new to pas­sage med­i­ta­tion and would like to find out more, and if you live near Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, do join us for a free pas­sage med­i­ta­tion pre­sen­ta­tion in your area. These pre­sen­ta­tions pro­vide an intro­duc­tion to the prac­tice and ben­e­fits of the eight-point pro­gram of pas­sage med­i­ta­tion. All are very wel­come: there are no pre­req­ui­sites, no prepa­ra­tion is needed, and you can just show up on the day.

Our pre­sen­ta­tions are led by expe­ri­enced pas­sage med­i­ta­tors. You will hear how ordi­nary peo­ple in dif­fer­ent con­texts are prac­tic­ing pas­sage med­i­ta­tion in their daily lives, and how it is help­ing them in their rela­tion­ships, home, and workplace.

If you would like to attend, please arrive promptly (or even a few min­utes early) at the start­ing time given above. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, email us at BMCM.Retreats@easwaran.org or call us at 800.475.2369.

We look for­ward to see­ing you!

In Oak­land, California:

Date: Thurs­day, June 14, 2012
Time: 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Loca­tion: AgeSong at Lake Mer­ritt
Land­mark Room
1800 Madi­son Street
Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia 94612

Street park­ing is available.


New Video Clip: We Are Pure Awareness (5:57 minutes)

Posted on May 11, 2012  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

In this new video clip Easwaran explains how, through med­i­ta­tion, we can shed our false iden­tity, and find we are pure love, pure joy.

This talk ref­er­ences Shankara (c. 788 – 820), a sem­i­nal fig­ure of the Hindu tra­di­tion, who was born in Ker­ala state, south India, and entered monas­tic life as a teenager.

(Tran­script fol­lows below.)

TRANSCRIPT
This is exactly what the spir­i­tual teacher does. Over a long period of sad­hana, remind­ing us in so many dif­fer­ent ways, through his own per­sonal life, through the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion, through the self­less ser­vice we are all able to ren­der, until the great day comes, as it came to Gandhi, to Teresa, Eck­hart, to the Bud­dha, when we shed our false iden­tity. It takes many, many years. And when we shed our false iden­tity, we dis­cover, exactly as Eck­hart says, “The pau­per dis­cov­ers that he is a prince; the pau­per dis­cov­ers that she is a princess.”

Shankara, who comes from my native state of Ker­ala, who is prob­a­bly one of the most tow­er­ing fig­ures in the spir­i­tual world, he has a beau­ti­ful — we can almost call — gypsy song.

[San­skrit recitation]

Shankara, who dis­cov­ered his iden­tity very early in life, he is again nar­rat­ing the same story with which I began. Manobud­dhya­hankara chit­tani na aham. Aham — I. Na — no. “I am not.” Mana, “I am not my mind.” He is telling us on the basis of his per­sonal expe­ri­ence, though it con­tra­dicts all our beliefs, Na aham manah bud­dhi — “I am not my intel­lect.” Manobuddh ahankara — “I am not my I.”

Then he goes on into details, and con­cludes by say­ing chi­danan­darupa. After I shed this false iden­tity, I have dis­cov­ered I am chid, I am pure aware­ness, which has no sex, no color, no race, no form. That’s why, in the world in which I live, I don’t have any shad­ows of the com­pe­ti­tion between man and woman at all. That’s why I am able to draw men, I am able to draw women, draw chil­dren equally well, because this is a false iden­tity that I have shed, about color, race.

And Shankara is now telling us, in very beau­ti­ful lan­guage, we are all pure aware­ness. In pure aware­ness there are no divi­sions. If you ask me, “Is pure aware­ness many?” I’ll say, “No.” If you ask me, “Is pure aware­ness one?” I’ll say, “No.” These don’t apply. There is only pure aware­ness here. And, pure aware­ness, Shankara says, is ananda. It is untold joy, infi­nite love. That is what pure aware­ness is.

This is what med­i­ta­tion, sup­ported by all the dis­ci­plines, can lead every­one to. It doesn’t mat­ter from which coun­try you come, which reli­gion you pro­fess, which stra­tum of soci­ety you belong to, which sex you belong to; all these [are just] conditioning.


A Practice for Today: Putting Others First

Posted on May 9, 2012  | Add Comment

“When dif­fer­ences arise, remem­ber that to dis­agree, it is not nec­es­sary to be dis­agree­able. Take time to lis­ten with com­plete atten­tion and respect; there may be less to dis­agree about than you think.”

– Eknath Easwaran

Putting oth­ers first means gain­ing free­dom from self­ish­ness and sep­a­rate­ness, and find­ing joy in help­ing others.

Click here for basic instruc­tions on putting oth­ers first.


Untying Our Wings

Posted on May 7, 2012  | Add Comment

This excerpt from Eknath Easwaran appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of our quar­terly Blue Moun­tain journal.

“All of us have wings, though we do not sus­pect it because they are so tightly tied. We are not meant to stay on the ground and peck at crumbs of per­sonal plea­sure and profit. We are meant to soar – to give our time and love freely to every­one around us. That is the essence of spir­i­tual growth, and the whole pur­pose of med­i­ta­tion and the other skills of spir­i­tual liv­ing is to free our wings and allow us to fly high.

“In India’s mys­ti­cal lit­er­a­ture, the ties that keep us earth­bound are called ‘knots that stran­gle the heart’ because they con­strict our capac­ity to love. There are mil­lions of these ties, but per­haps the eas­i­est to see are what I call per­sonal attach­ments: pos­ses­sions and activ­i­ties we cling to that claim our time and atten­tion at the expense of those around us.

“Many of these attach­ments are mate­r­ial. Most of us have accu­mu­lated things that tie us down one way or another, often because we think they add to our sta­tus or pres­tige. Other attach­ments might be activ­i­ties we enjoy that ben­e­fit no one, includ­ing our­selves. What­ever it is, we can’t imag­ine doing with­out it. That is the hall­mark of an attachment.

“These ties might seem gos­samer, but they add up. They can bind us so tightly that we can scarcely move beyond the lim­ited cir­cle of our per­sonal likes and dis­likes. Imag­ine if your favorite pos­ses­sions were actu­ally attached to you. How dif­fi­cult it would be to drag them around even for a day! Yet the men­tal load we carry is no less bur­den­some. Shed­ding even a lit­tle of that load leaves us feel­ing as light and free as if we really did have wings.”

Read the rest of this article


The challenge of karma yoga — the path of selfless action

Posted on May 4, 2012  | Add Comment

“This way appeals to those who want to make some con­tri­bu­tion to the wel­fare of oth­ers, but karma yoga is more than ser­vice. Ser­vice – work that ben­e­fits oth­ers – is nec­es­sary for every human being, the Gita main­tains; it is incum­bent on us to give back to life as we take from it.

“But this becomes yoga only when it is self­less: when we for­get our­selves in that work and desire noth­ing from it for our­selves, not even recog­ni­tion or appre­ci­a­tion. When we learn to act in this way, ego­tism shrinks and sep­a­rate­ness grad­u­ally dissolves.

“Such self­less ser­vice is rare. Much more com­mon — among those who help the world at all — are those who do good but need some kind of recog­ni­tion or reward. Such peo­ple have ben­e­fited the world enor­mously, so these words are not meant at their expense. The ques­tion is sim­ply what effect this work has on them. If it loosens ego­tism, pride, and the bonds of sep­a­rate­ness, it can be called karma yoga, but not if it is mak­ing these bonds stronger.”

- Eknath Easwaran from Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita, page 120.


New Video Clip: Our Choice As Human Beings (3:30 minutes)

Posted on May 4, 2012  | Read Comment | Add Comment

Many of our obsta­cles on the spir­i­tual path come from our evo­lu­tion­ary past, Easwaran explains in this new clip. The con­cept of super­im­po­si­tion helps us under­stand our present sit­u­a­tion and points to the way for­ward for us as human beings.

The tran­script for this talk is included below.

TRANSCRIPT: So I’m answer­ing that ques­tion of how we came to have all these obsta­cles, seri­ous obsta­cles — anger, lust, fear — which pre­vent us totally from wak­ing up to the indi­vis­i­ble unity of life.

This is our legacy through mil­lions, mil­lions of years of evo­lu­tion, and in the Hindu scrip­tures they use a very pic­turesque term: adyaropa. What­ever the mis­ad­ven­tures that we have gone through in our ani­mal stages, or even in our cave man stages, we super­im­pose them on our self, we attribute the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the body — because that’s what the tiger iden­ti­fies with, the croc­o­dile iden­ti­fies with — totally, total iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the body.

But when we come into the human con­text we have the choice: Shall I now iden­tify myself totally with the urges of the body, with the demands of the body, or shall I begin to rise above the flux by putting love first, the wel­fare of those around me first, and giv­ing to the world rather than grab­bing from it first?

In adyaropa, which is often trans­lated as super­im­po­si­tion, we super­im­pose the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the con­tainer on the con­tained. I’ll take one or two absurd exam­ples. Take milk. What would you say if some­body told you the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the milk are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the bot­tle; they say milk is made of glass, you can see through it, if you try to break and drink it it’ll hurt your mouth. You’ll find it very ridiculous.

This is exactly what we do every day when we yield to the pri­mor­dial urges of the phys­i­cal body. And it is this super­im­po­si­tion that we have to break through in order to become aware of the unity of life, which is the divine ground of existence.


A Practice for Today: Slowing Down

Posted on May 2, 2012  | Add Comment

“Allow your­self time to get to every engage­ment a lit­tle early. Cul­ti­vate per­sonal rela­tion­ships in all your activ­i­ties. It will help to reverse the deper­son­al­iza­tion of our world.”

- Eknath Easwaran

Slow­ing down means set­ting pri­or­i­ties and reduc­ing the stress and fric­tion caused by hurry. Click here for basic instruc­tions on slow­ing down.


Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 49

Posted on April 30, 2012  | Read Comment | Add Comment

This is the 49th in a long series of talks Eknath Easwaran gave on The Imi­ta­tion of Christ by Thomas a Kem­pis. In this talk Easwaran reads and dis­cusses book 3, chap­ter 17, “That all our anx­i­eties are to be placed on God.”

This excerpt is from the begin­ning of the talk.

“When we used to travel by bus on the Blue Moun­tain in South India, some­times we would see a man or woman car­ry­ing a heavy bas­ket of veg­eta­bles or fruits on the head, seated on the bus with the bas­ket of fruits and veg­eta­bles on the head.

“So I think on one occa­sion, I said, ‘Why don’t you just get rid of this weight by putting it down on the floor?’ This thought had never struck him at all.

“When we choose to groan under our bur­dens, we are just in the posi­tion of the vil­lager, car­ry­ing the bas­ket of sor­row on our head. when we might as well put it down on the divine ground.

“In the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion, one of the great devel­op­ments that take place is that, when we have sor­row and heart­break, which come to all in life, instead of resist­ing them and rebelling against them, which makes the load only heav­ier, we can so go about it that the bur­den of sor­row or heart­break or even ill­ness can be laid at the feet of the Lord as an offering.”

For pre­vi­ous talks, see Easwaran on Thomas a Kem­pis, under Categories.

Note that all of the talks in this series are avail­able for down­load from our store. The series is described on this page.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow


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