Easwaran in Large Print

Posted on September 29, 2010 by  | Read Comment | Add Comment

If you’d like a copy of one of our books in large print, a spe­cial­ist pub­lisher with an unusual name, Read­HowYouWant, has pro­duced a num­ber of Easwaran’s books in a dif­fer­ent format.

By search­ing on “Easwaran large print”, you can find the fol­low­ing titles on Amazon.com:

Con­quest of Mind (2nd ed.)
Patience
Take Your Time
The Mantram Hand­book
Climb­ing the Blue Moun­tain
The Bha­gavad Gita

Another way to read almost all of Easwaran’s works in a larger font size is to read the e-book ver­sion on your com­puter, or on an e-book reader such as Kin­dle. You can then change the font size to suit your own needs.

We’re always grate­ful for your feed­back. If you do buy a large for­mat edi­tion of an Easwaran book, please send us a comment.

Strength in the Storm: Spoken Book

Posted on September 27, 2010 by  | Add Comment

Lis­ten to Paul Bazely read­ing from the spo­ken book Strength in the Storm, by Eknath Easwaran.

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from chap­ter 1.

“Steadi­ness of mind is one of the most prac­ti­cal skills. Noth­ing is more vital than learn­ing to face tur­moil with courage, con­fi­dence, and com­pas­sion. For­tu­nately, we already pos­sess these capac­i­ties, but we need a calm mind to draw on them. That is the prac­ti­cal impor­tance of a calm mind.”

The com­plete spo­ken book is avail­able here.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

Easwaran on the Gita: The War Within

Posted on September 24, 2010 by  | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from Eknath Easwaran’s com­men­tary on the first verse in chap­ter 1 of The End of Sor­row: The Bha­gavad Gita for Daily Liv­ing.

“Once I was on a train going from Delhi to Simla, high on the Himalayas, and on the way we passed through Kuruk­shetra, the his­tor­i­cal bat­tle­field of the Bha­gavad Gita. My fel­low pas­sen­gers were talk­ing about the tremen­dous bat­tle which took place there, and when we arrived at the scene, they eagerly climbed out to have a look.

“To me there was no need to dis­em­bark, because I already had an inkling that the real bat­tle­field in the Gita was right inside each pas­sen­ger on the train. The lan­guage of bat­tle is often found in the scrip­tures, for it con­veys the stren­u­ous, long, drawn-out cam­paign we must wage to free our­selves from the tyranny of the ego, the cause of all our suf­fer­ing and sorrow.

“By set­ting before us the inspir­ing ideal of the vic­to­ri­ous man or woman as one who has con­quered him­self or her­self, the mys­tics urge us on to fight this bat­tle and erad­i­cate all that is self­ish in us.

“How can we ordi­nary men and women, liv­ing in the midst of our fam­ily and soci­ety, achieve such a vic­tory? In the Gita Sri Krishna gives us the pre­cious jewel of spir­i­tual wis­dom, of imme­di­ate prac­ti­cal value to everyone’s life.

“He tells us how we can learn to fight the bat­tle against self-will and sep­a­rate­ness through the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion and its allied dis­ci­plines, and he shows us how in our own daily lives we can gain the will and the wis­dom to trans­form anger into com­pas­sion, fear into courage, and greed into tire­less striv­ing for the wel­fare of others.”

Read more from chap­ter 1 of The End of Sor­row: The Bha­gavad Gita for Daily Liv­ing, Vol­ume 1: The War Within.

Slowing Down to Find My Real Self

Posted on September 22, 2010 by  | Add Comment

Recently, a friend from one of our Sat­sangs (fel­low­ship groups) wrote us about how they made a sig­nif­i­cant break­through in real­iz­ing how “slow­ing down” affected their most basic relationships:

“I took my dad to the doc­tor this week, and had to push him in a wheel­chair. I was tired, work­ing too many hours, and felt speeded up. As I pushed him into the doctor’s office, my inside, neg­a­tive thoughts screamed, ‘Run away! Run away! I don’t want to be here.’ But thank­fully, I didn’t run away, and out­wardly I appeared calm and kind.

“It took a lot of energy to act with com­pas­sion. When I got home, I spoke on the phone to han­dle a small per­sonal prob­lem, but my agi­ta­tion spilled out on the per­son on the other end of the phone line; I was very unkind and impa­tient. I lost it!

“At sat­sang later that week, a friend spoke of how she found her­self speak­ing neg­a­tively about the help she was giv­ing an elderly friend. It was affect­ing how oth­ers saw the elderly friend. She vowed not to speak neg­a­tively. I knew I had to do the same.

“The next week, I slowed down to avoid agi­ta­tion, got more sleep, said my mantram more, and stopped the neg­a­tive thoughts by remem­ber­ing my sat­sang friend’s vow. I now knew I was blessed to be able to help my father.”

Easwaran on The Imitation of Christ: Talk 7

Posted on September 20, 2010 by  | Add Comment

This is the sev­enth 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 1, Chap­ter 18.

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

The Three Stages of Meditation

Posted on September 17, 2010 by  | Add Comment

The fol­low excerpt is from the book Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion by Eknath Easwaran:

“Mod­ern psy­chol­ogy com­monly asserts that we can­not enter the uncon­scious fully aware. The mys­tic responds, ‘Oh, yes, you can! I have done it.’ The jour­ney can­not be ade­quately described, but I like to think of it as a return from exile.

“Into those strange and won­der­ful realms we too can go, to chal­lenge the wild beasts that roam there, search out the cas­tle where old King Ego reigns in our stead, and claim our throne and the vast inner trea­sure that is right­fully ours.

“For this is our own land, the one to which we were born. Even if tem­porar­ily we endure ban­ish­ment, even if the king­dom lies in some dis­or­der because of the usurper’s mis­rule, we can return tri­umphant and set every­thing right.

“But ‘chal­leng­ing wild beasts’? It is no exag­ger­a­tion: I mean the self­ish desires and neg­a­tive feel­ings that stalk us. How pow­er­ful they are! It has always seemed to me a lit­tle wish­ful to say ‘I think’ or ‘I feel.’ For the most part, our thoughts think us, our feel­ings feel us; we do not have much say in the matter.

“The door of the mind stands open all the time, and these unpleas­ant men­tal states can pad in when they will. We can have a drink, pop in a tran­quil­izer, lose our­selves in a best­seller or a ten-mile run, but after we come back the beasts will still be there, prowl­ing about the threshold.

“On the other hand, we can learn to tame these crea­tures. As med­i­ta­tion deep­ens, com­pul­sions, crav­ings, and fits of emo­tion begin to lose their power to dic­tate our behav­ior. We see clearly that choices are pos­si­ble: we can say yes, or we can say no. It is pro­foundly lib­er­at­ing. Per­haps we will not always make the best choices at first, but at least we know there are choices to be made. Then our deft­ness improves; we begin to live inten­tion­ally, to live in freedom.

“For we can change all these things. We do not have to accept our­selves as we are. Genetic code or brain bio­chem­istry, astro­log­i­cal con­fig­u­ra­tions or Tarot read­ings, early trau­mas or upbring­ing – none of these can ever limit our poten­tial. The Bud­dha explains, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.’ By chang­ing the very mode of our think­ing, we can remake our­selves completely.”

Read more here.

Passage for Meditation: Living in Wisdom

Posted on September 15, 2010 by  | Add Comment

These are the clos­ing verses of the sec­ond chap­ter of the Bha­gavad Gita (“Song of the Lord”), India’s best-known scrip­ture, a mas­ter­piece of world poetry on which count­less mys­tics have drawn for daily prac­ti­cal guidance.

The Gita is a dia­logue between Sri Krishna, an incar­na­tion of the Lord, and his friend and dis­ci­ple Arjuna, a war­rior prince who rep­re­sents any­one try­ing to live a spir­i­tual life in the midst of worldly activ­ity and conflict.

This trans­la­tion is by Eknath Easwaran, from Time­less Wis­dom: Pas­sages for Med­i­ta­tion from the World’s Saints & Sages.

Liv­ing in Wisdom

They live in wis­dom
Who sees them­selves in all and all in them,
Whose love for the Lord of Love has con­sumed
Every self­ish desire and sense-craving
Tor­ment­ing the heart. Not agi­tated
By grief nor han­ker­ing after plea­sure,
They live free from lust and fear and anger
Fet­tered no more by self­ish attach­ments,
They are not elated by good for­tune
Nor depressed by bad. Such is the seer.

Even as a tor­toise draws in its limbs
The sage can draw in his senses at will.
Aspi­rants abstain from sense-pleasures,
But they still crave for them. These crav­ings all
Dis­ap­pear when they see the Lord of Love.
For even of one who treads the path
The stormy senses can sweep off the mind.
But they live in wis­dom who sub­due them,
And keeps their minds ever absorbed in me.

When you keep think­ing about sense-objects,
Attach­ment comes. Attach­ment breeds desire,
The lust of pos­ses­sion which, when thwarted,
Burns to anger. Anger clouds the judg­ment
And robs you of the power to learn from past mis­takes
Lost is the dis­crim­i­na­tive fac­ulty,
And your life is utter waste.

But when you move amidst the world of sense
From both attach­ment and aver­sion freed,
There comes the peace in which all sor­rows end,
And you live in the wis­dom of the Self.

The dis­united mind is far from wise;
How can it med­i­tate? How be at peace?
When you know no peace, how can you know joy?
When you let your mind fol­low the Siren call
Of the senses, they carry away
Your bet­ter judg­ment as a cyclone dri­ves a boat
Off the charted course to its doom.

Use your mighty arms to free the senses
From attach­ment and aver­sion alike,
And live in the full wis­dom of the Self.
Such a sage awakes to light in the night
Of all crea­tures. Wherein they are awake
Is the night of igno­rance to the sage.

As the rivers flow into the ocean
But can­not make the vast ocean o’erflow,
So flow the magic streams of the sense-world
Into the sea of peace that is the sage.

They are for­ever free who have bro­ken out
Of the ego-cage of I and mine
To be united with the Lord of Love.
This is the supreme state. Attain thou this
And pass from death to immortality.

Thinking in Freedom

Posted on September 10, 2010 by  | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the book Con­quest of Mind, by Eknath Easwaran.

“How many times have you exclaimed, ‘I wish I could stop think­ing that! I wish I could stop crav­ing this. I wish I didn’t always react like a vend­ing machine to this kind of per­son or that kind of sit­u­a­tion. I wish I could be dif­fer­ent from the way I am!’ The Bud­dha would reply, ‘You can.’ If you have felt this desire fer­vently, you have what it takes to learn to live in freedom.

“This is not a book about the Bud­dha and his teach­ings, yet I will men­tion him often in these pages. The rea­son is sim­ple: no one teaches more clearly that mas­tery of life depends on mas­ter­ing the mind. If we want to grow to our fullest human stature, the Bud­dha would say, all we have to do is teach the mind to think dif­fer­ently; how to be calm, kind, and cre­ative in any situation.”

Read a longer excerpt from Con­quest of Mind.

Training the Mind is a Glorious Challenge

Posted on September 8, 2010 by  | Add Comment

We’ve just issued a new edi­tion of Easwaran’s book titled Con­quest of Mind. Easwaran explains how, just as a fit­ness rou­tine can result in a strong, sup­ple body, spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines such as pas­sage med­i­ta­tion can shape a secure per­son­al­ity and a resilient, lov­ing mind.

To shed light on the think­ing process, Easwaran takes the time­less teach­ings of the Bud­dha and other mys­tics and illus­trates them, often humor­ously, with scenes from con­tem­po­rary life. And he shows how train­ing the mind is a glo­ri­ous chal­lenge – one that brings joy and pur­pose to life.

What’s new in this third edi­tion? If you have the 2001 (sec­ond) edi­tion with a blue cover, the answer is that we’ve updated the cover and the inter­nal design to fit with the books in our Essen­tial Easwaran Library (Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion, Time­less Wis­dom, The Mantram Hand­book). We’ve also restored three chap­ters (“Deter­mi­na­tion,” “Detach­ment,” and “Dis­crim­i­na­tion”) from the first edi­tion from 1988.

If you haven’t read Con­quest of Mind, and you’d like a clear, lively account of how to get a grip on your thoughts, this book could be for you. And if you read it some time ago, but with­out the three “D” chap­ters, try this new edition.

Do send us your com­ments if you’d like to give some feedback.

Con­quest of Mind (3rd Edi­tion): Take Charge of Your Thoughts and Reshape Your Life Through Meditation

Easwaran on The Imitation of Christ: Talk 6

Posted on September 6, 2010 by  | Add Comment

This is the sixth 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 1, Chap­ter 14, “Of Avoid­ing Rash Judge­ment,” Chap­ter 15, “Of Works Done in Char­ity,” and Chap­ter 16, “Of Bear­ing with the Defects of Others.”

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


  • 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.

    We hope you’ll join the con­ver­sa­tion as well.

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