Easwaran on the Dhammapada of the Buddha

Posted on May 31, 2010 by  | Add Comment

From the Intro­duc­tion to Easwaran’s trans­la­tion of The Dhamma­pada:

If all of the New Tes­ta­ment had been lost, it has been said, and only the Ser­mon on the Mount had man­aged to sur­vive these two thou­sand years of his­tory, we would still have all that is nec­es­sary for fol­low­ing the teach­ings of Jesus the Christ. The body of Bud­dhist scrip­ture is much more volu­mi­nous than the Bible, but I would not hes­i­tate to make a sim­i­lar claim: if every­thing else were lost, we would need noth­ing more than the Dhamma­pada to fol­low the way of the Buddha.

The Dhamma­pada has none of the sto­ries, para­bles, and extended instruc­tion that char­ac­ter­ize the main Bud­dhist scrip­tures, the sutras. It is a col­lec­tion of vivid, prac­ti­cal verses, gath­ered prob­a­bly from direct dis­ci­ples who wanted to pre­serve what they had heard from the Bud­dha him­self. In the oral tra­di­tion of the sixth cen­tury before Christ, it must have been the equiv­a­lent of a hand­book: a ready ref­er­ence of the Buddha’s teach­ings con­densed in haunt­ing poetry and arranged by theme – anger, greed, fear, hap­pi­ness, thought. Yet there is noth­ing piece­meal about this anthol­ogy. It is a sin­gle com­po­si­tion, har­mo­nious and whole, which con­veys the liv­ing pres­ence of a teacher of genius.

Dhamma­pada means some­thing like “the path of dharma” – of truth, of right­eous­ness, of the cen­tral law that all of life is one. The Bud­dha did not leave a sta­tic struc­ture of belief that we can affirm and be done with. His teach­ing is an ongo­ing path, a “way of per­fec­tion” which any­one can fol­low to the high­est good. The Dhamma­pada is a map for this jour­ney. We can start wher­ever we are, but as on any road, the scenery – our val­ues, our aspi­ra­tions, our under­stand­ing of life around us – changes as we make progress. These verses can be read and appre­ci­ated sim­ply as wise phi­los­o­phy; as such, they are part of the great lit­er­a­ture of the world. But for those who would fol­low it to the end, the Dhamma­pada is a sure guide to noth­ing less than the high­est goal life can offer: self-realization.

Read more . . .

Being Patient with Ourselves

Posted on May 28, 2010 by  | Add Comment

From one of our fel­low­ship groups:

“In a recent sat­sang dis­cus­sion, we noticed how we have a ten­dency to be down on our­selves. If we’re asked in our dis­cus­sion ques­tions where we’re mak­ing progress, and where we encounter chal­lenges, all our con­ver­sa­tion seems to focus on our failures.

“One of us had a copy of your new lit­tle book, Patience, and she showed us a sec­tion near the begin­ning, aptly titled ‘Being patient with our­selves.’ Hav­ing read it out loud, we were duly cheered! And ready to con­tinue the spir­i­tual struggle.”

Favorite Easwaran Video Clips

Posted on May 24, 2010 by  | Add Comment

We are always on the look­out for selec­tions from Easwaran’s video talks for post­ing here and on his YouTube chan­nel — clips that show new view­ers the wis­dom and appeal of his teachings.

If you have sub­scribed to our DVD series, or if you watch videos in your Sat­sang meet­ings, do con­tact us with sug­ges­tions for new clips, last­ing up to 10 min­utes. Just email us with the first and the last words of your selec­tion and tell us roughly where it occurs on the video. Or give us those details in the com­ment sec­tion below.

And please tell us why you chose a par­tic­u­lar clip.

Huston Smith Endorses Our New Book, Patience

Posted on May 21, 2010 by  | Add Comment

Hus­ton Smith, author of The World’s Reli­gions, has long been a reader of Easwaran, so we sent him a copy of our new book, Patience, just for his interest.

We were delighted and very grate­ful when he sent us the fol­low­ing message:

“There is an adage that runs, ‘with what life requires of us in the way of patience, who needs asceti­cism?’ The small­ness of Easwaran’s book on patience belies the quan­tity of wis­dom it con­tains on how to acquire the patience life requires of us.”

A Reading from Gandhi the Man

Posted on May 19, 2010 by  | Add Comment

The first chap­ter of Easwaran’s book Gandhi the Man, read by the British actor Paul Bazely.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

Easwaran on YouTube

Posted on May 17, 2010 by  | Add Comment

Friends have been urg­ing us for some time to post video clips of Easwaran on YouTube. We have now done so. In fact, as you may have noticed, the videos of Easwaran on this blog are embed­ded from his chan­nel on YouTube.

If you want to view them all, visit his YouTube chan­nel. See what you think of our choices!

If you sub­scribe to his chan­nel, you’ll receive an email when­ever we post a new clip. And if you sub­scribe to this blog, you’ll get a weekly email list­ing all of our posts for that week — includ­ing any videos we’ve added to his YouTube channel.

Easwaran Reads from the Katha Upanishad

Posted on May 7, 2010 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

Easwaran reads from his trans­la­tion of one of India’s clas­sic texts: Canto 3 of the Katha Upanishad.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

Passage Meditators Linked Worldwide

Posted on May 5, 2010 by  | Add Comment

There it was, rolling in on our com­puter mon­i­tors, just like many other enroll­ment forms. After 30 days of pas­sage med­i­ta­tion, K.M. from Trinidad and Tobago was enrolling in our world­wide weekly online spir­i­tual fel­low­ship group, called eSat­sang. Yet, this was dif­fer­ent from oth­ers. This enroll­ment marked the 44th coun­try the eSat­sang had entered. 44 countries — wow!

Here they are, in all their glory:

Argentina
Aus­tralia
Aus­tria
Bel­gium
Bolivia
Canada
Chile
China
Czech Repub­lic
France
Ger­many
Hol­land
Hong Kong
India
Indone­sia
Iran
Iraq
Ire­land
Italy
Japan
Korea
Lithua­nia
Mada­gas­car
Malaysia
Mex­ico
Monaco
Morocco
Nepal
New Zealand
Pak­istan
Philip­pines
Rus­sia
Sierra Leone
Slove­nia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Swe­den
Switzer­land
United King­dom
Uruguay
USA
Wales
and now...Trinidad and Tobago

Grow­ing to just under 900 mem­bers in 7 short years, the eSat­sang now lit­er­ally spans the globe and links pas­sage med­i­ta­tors world­wide. We are inspired here at the Cen­ter just know­ing that Easwaran’s pro­gram of pas­sage med­i­ta­tion is tak­ing seed in so many diverse coun­tries, and in so many won­der­ful peo­ple around the world. Good luck K.M., and all other 892 of you out there!

We laugh together, we cry together, we walk the spiritual path together.

Posted on May 3, 2010 by  | Add Comment

“How was the Setu retreat?” we asked a friend. The retreatants, all over 65, are a very lively bunch. (Setu retreats focus on spir­i­tual issues sur­round­ing the later stages of life.)

“You know what makes it great?” she said. “You don’t have to pre­tend – to seem younger than you are, or more together, or more ener­getic. When I lost my sun­glasses, for instance, every­one laughed because they’re always for­get­ting things too – they know how it feels.

“We don’t pre­tend with the big things, either. When one of us grieves because a loved one has passed on, we grieve with that per­son. We turn as a group to Easwaran’s teach­ings to give us strength with all the chal­lenges of grow­ing old, and those teach­ings make us brave. They help us to find mean­ing in the most dif­fi­cult day. We’ve seen that again and again.

“So there you have it. We laugh together, we cry together, we walk the spir­i­tual path together. What more could you want?”


  • A few times a week we’ll post some­thing here to show­case the time­less wis­dom of Eknath Easwaran.

    We’ll also post items about the Blue Moun­tain Cen­ter of Med­i­ta­tion – new book announce­ments, retreat sched­ules and updates, news from our fel­low­ship groups.

    And we’ll post items from some of Easwaran’s many friends around the world who have brought his prac­ti­cal wis­dom into their lives.

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