Free Meditation E-books, Tomorrow Only!

Posted on December 31, 2010 by  | Read 5 Comments | Add Comment

Remem­ber to visit our web­site tomor­row – Jan­u­ary 1, 2011 – to down­load free Essen­tial Easwaran Library e-books in PDF for­mat. This offer is avail­able only on New Year’s Day.

Visit this page on our site on Jan­u­ary 1st to down­load these titles for free: Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion, Time­less Wis­dom, Mantram Hand­book.

We wish you an inspir­ing and uplift­ing start to 2011!

Seizing Truth

Posted on December 30, 2010 by  | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing pas­sage is from Chap­ter 52 of the Tao Te Ching, a col­lec­tion of verses about Tao – “the Way,” the indi­vis­i­ble unity of life – tra­di­tion­ally ascribed to the great Chi­nese mys­tic Lao Tzu, who lived per­haps in the sixth cen­tury B.C.

The uni­verse had a begin­ning
Called the Mother of All Things.
Once you have found the Mother
You can know her chil­dren.
Hav­ing known the chil­dren,
Hold tightly to the Mother.
Your whole life will be pre­served from peril.

Open up the open­ings,
Mul­ti­ply your affairs,
Your whole life will become a burden.

Those who see the small are called clear-headed;
Those who hold to gen­tle­ness are called strong.

Use the light.
Come home to your true nature.
Don’t cause your­self injury:
This is known as seiz­ing truth.

– Lao Tzu

Com­men­tary by Eknath Easwaran:

“As human beings, we have been born with the capac­ity to make choices. No other crea­ture has this capac­ity, and no human being can avoid this respon­si­bil­ity. Every day, whether we see it or not, we have a choice of two alter­na­tives in what we do, say, and think.

“These alter­na­tives are: what is pleas­ant and what is ben­e­fi­cial. The first pleases us now. The sec­ond may be unpleas­ant at the begin­ning, as any­one who has begun a phys­i­cal fit­ness pro­gram knows; but it will improve our health and con­tribute to our peace of mind.

“Both choices promise sat­is­fac­tion. One we get imme­di­ately, but it comes and goes; the other requires effort, but its ben­e­fits stay with us and often ben­e­fit those around us as well.”

Read other com­men­taries from Easwaran in Words to Live By.

Easwaran on The Imitation of Christ: Talk 14

Posted on December 27, 2010 by  | Add Comment

This is the four­teenth 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 24.

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 New Year’s Gift: Free Passage Meditation E-books One Day Only

Posted on December 26, 2010 by  | Read 5 Comments | Add Comment

With the New Year fast approach­ing, con­sider that one of the very best res­o­lu­tions you could make would be to start or deepen your med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, or intro­duce some­one else to Easwaran’s writings.

For one day only, on Jan­u­ary 1, 2011, we’re offer­ing three Essen­tial Easwaran Library books as e-books – free of charge. You can down­load and read these e-books on your com­puter, or on a Kin­dle, iPad, or any e-book reader that can read PDF files.

The three e-books in this offer are Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion, The Mantram Hand­book, and Time­less Wis­dom. Together they pro­vide a com­plete intro­duc­tion to Easwaran’s method of pas­sage meditation.

These books are clas­sics that you can read again and again, dis­cov­er­ing deeper wis­dom each time. If you’ve been med­i­tat­ing for a while and encoun­tered new chal­lenges in your prac­tice, this could be a per­fect time to re-read these books.

Visit this page on our web­site on Jan­u­ary 1, 2011 to down­load any of these e-books for free: Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion, Time­less Wis­dom, Mantram Handbook.

Please remem­ber that this offer will last one day only. Visit our web site on Jan­u­ary 1st to get 2011 off to an inspir­ing start!

Shanti (Peace)

Posted on December 25, 2010 by  | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the book The Con­stant Com­pan­ion, a com­men­tary from Easwaran on the tra­di­tional Hindu names of God. This is a com­men­tary on the name Shanti (Peace).

“‘Peace’ here means not polit­i­cal con­cord but the pro­found peace that comes in the deep­est stages of med­i­ta­tion, the peace that ‘passes under­stand­ing.’ When the mind desires no more desires, but rests in the Self, the Upan­ishads say, that is the state of per­fect peace. ‘As an eagle, weary after soar­ing in the sky, folds its wings and flies down to rest in its nest, so does the shin­ing Self enter the state of dream­less sleep, where one is freed from all desires.’ The Upan­ishads describe our rest­less lives as the efforts of a bird that flies hither and thither, never find­ing rest until it set­tles down in its own nest at last.

“These stu­pen­dous con­cepts may sound philo­soph­i­cal, but they have a very prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion. As Pas­cal exclaimed, ‘Not the God of philoso­phers!’ Real­iza­tion of God means ‘cer­ti­tude, joy, peace.’

“After a lot of sus­tained, sys­tem­atic effort in med­i­ta­tion, we may finally suc­ceed in break­ing through the sur­face crust of con­scious­ness. What lies below is the uncon­scious, which has many lay­ers – strata on strata deposited by habits of think­ing and act­ing, lit­tle by lit­tle, every day of our life.

“Drilling through these strata in med­i­ta­tion means over­com­ing lim­i­ta­tions, all the obsta­cles cre­ated by self-will: the fierce, dri­ving com­pul­sion to have our own way, get what we want, stamp our­selves sep­a­rate from the rest of life. The biggest leap in med­i­ta­tion comes when we run head­long and throw our­selves over the rim of all dual­ity to land in the uni­tive stage, where noth­ing is sep­a­rate from the Lord. This state is shanti, per­fect peace.”

Read more from The Con­stant Com­pan­ion by Eknath Easwaran.

Be a Work of Art

Posted on December 23, 2010 by  | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the book Renewal by Eknath Easwaran.

“Great scrip­tures like the Bha­gavad Gita can be looked upon as artist’s man­u­als. Just as painters study their color and draw­ing man­u­als, you can read the Gita or the Ser­mon on the Mount as a liv­ing man­ual to help you make your life a flaw­less work of art.

“This is truly the supreme art. When your life becomes a work of art, your fam­ily will ben­e­fit from it every day. Even if you are the only per­son in the fam­ily using these artis­tic tools, like med­i­ta­tion and the mantram, your part­ner will ben­e­fit, as will your chil­dren, your friends, and, inter­est­ingly enough, even your enemies.

“I have been to few homes where the res­i­dent was the great­est art­work. When I entered Gandhi’s ashram in cen­tral India, close to my uni­ver­sity, there was not a sin­gle artis­tic arti­fact there – not even drift­wood. In those days I was very cul­tur­ally ori­ented, look­ing for beauty in all kinds of exter­nal objects, but when the cot­tage door opened, at five in the evening, and a brown, blessed fig­ure came out, I saw the great­est statue I have ever seen in my life. The great­est paint­ing I have ever seen came to life. That’s the high­est ideal for a human being.

“The most dif­fi­cult of the three har­monies is har­mony with one­self. It is the real basis for har­mony with oth­ers and the envi­ron­ment. I love music, but when some­body tells me about a great sym­phony they have heard I want to say, ‘I wish you could lis­ten to the divine sym­phony I hear when my mind becomes still in the depths of med­i­ta­tion.’ St. Fran­cis used to say, after he heard that sym­phony com­ing from the depths of con­scious­ness, ‘If it had con­tin­ued a lit­tle more, my life itself would have melted away.’”

Read more from Renewal.

The Centenary of Eknath Easwaran’s Birth

Posted on December 20, 2010 by  | Add Comment

We are delighted to share with you this sim­ple but very spe­cial cel­e­bra­tion of the Birth Cen­te­nary of Eknath Easwaran.

Easwaran brought a vivid sense of the divine to every­thing he said and did. Around him, every day was filled with quiet trea­sures – gem-like insights, pre­cious moments of lov­ing friend­ship, the glow of a deep pur­pose, and those lit­tle mir­a­cles of self-transformation that change life’s sor­rows into graces.

For this 100th anniver­sary of his birth, we are invit­ing you to expe­ri­ence one of those days. Even by Easwaran’s stan­dards it was an unfor­get­table one. On Jan­u­ary 18, 1992, about four months after a grave health cri­sis in which he was expected to shed his body, Easwaran had recov­ered enough to visit a BMCM retreat in San Rafael, California.

Through this video of his talk that day, we seek to share with you the spirit of that joy­ful reunion of a great spir­i­tual teacher with about a hun­dred of his stu­dents who had thought they would not see him again.

Today, the trea­sury of Easwaran’s books and recorded talks con­tin­ues to enrich our lives. As we watch this video, per­haps we can all remem­ber that when spir­i­tual teach­ings come to life in an open and enthu­si­as­tic heart, there is that joy­ful reunion of teacher and stu­dent – one that can con­tinue as long as there are stu­dents will­ing to devote them­selves to the chal­lenge and promise that such a great teacher holds out to us.

Watch the video here.

Passage for Meditation: The One Thing Needed

Posted on December 17, 2010 by  | Add Comment

This pas­sage is from Tukaram, a peas­ant farmer and com­mon man with no claim to learn­ing, who rep­re­sents the Bhakti school of Indian mys­ti­cism, the way of devotion.

The One Thing Needed

Of what avail this rest­less, hur­ry­ing activ­ity?
This heavy weight of earthly duties?
God’s pur­poses stand firm,
And thou, his lit­tle one,
Needest one thing alone:
Trust in his power, and will, to meet thy need.
Thy bur­den resteth safe on him,
And thou, his lit­tle one,
Mayst play securely at his side.
This is the sum and sub­stance of it all:
God is,
God loveth thee,
God beareth all thy care.

Trans­la­tion from John S. Hoy­land, An Indian Peas­ant Mys­tic: Trans­la­tions from Tukaram (Lon­don, Allen­son & Co., 1932).

This pas­sage can be found in God Makes the Rivers to Flow.

Easwaran on The Imitation of Christ: Talk 13

Posted on December 13, 2010 by  | Add Comment

This is the thir­teenth 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 23, “Of Med­i­ta­tion on Death.”

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

Gandhi’s Sandals

Posted on December 9, 2010 by  | Read Comment | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the book Patience, by Eknath Easwaran.

“Free­ing your­self from instinc­tive, reflex reac­tions will enrich all your rela­tion­ships – even with those who oppose you. When you are kind to a foe, he ceases to be a foe. In time, he may even turn out to be a friend.

“Gandhi’s life was filled with such rela­tion­ships. Once, dur­ing Gandhi’s cam­paigns for the rights of Indi­ans in South Africa, he came before the head of the Trans­vaal gov­ern­ment, Gen­eral Jan Smuts. Gandhi had already devel­oped the essen­tials of his later style, and it is easy to pic­ture him sit­ting before this able Boer sol­dier and inform­ing him qui­etly: ‘I want you to know I intend to fight against your government.’

“Smuts must have thought he was hear­ing things. ‘You have come here to tell me that?’ he laughs. ‘Is there any­thing more you want to say?’

“‘Yes,’ says Gandhi. ‘I am going to win.’

“Smuts was aston­ished. ‘Well,’ he says at last, ‘and how are you going to do this?’

“Gandhi smiles, ‘With your help.’

“Years later Smuts admit­ted, not with­out humor, that this is exactly what Gandhi did. By his courage and by the inward tough­ness that allowed him to stick it out with­out yield­ing and with­out retal­i­a­tion, Gandhi man­aged at last to win the general’s respect and friend­ship. Indeed, in 1939, on Gandhi’s sev­en­ti­eth birth­day, Smuts returned a pair of san­dals that Gandhi had made while impris­oned in South Africa and had given to him in 1914. ‘I have worn these san­dals for many a sum­mer since then,’ Smuts said, ‘even though I may feel that I am not wor­thy to stand in the shoes of so great a man.’”

Read more from the book Patience


  • 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.

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