My Favorite Passage: The Katha Upanishad (Cowboy and Stagecoach Version)

Posted on April 29, 2011 by  | Add Comment

Laura, one of our sat­sang coor­di­na­tors, wrote in: “Great idea, to share favorite pas­sages and sto­ries con­nected to them!”

“My favorite long pas­sage of late is ‘The Razor’s Edge’ from the Katha Upan­ishad. The imagery of the char­iot as the body, with the Self – the heart of the char­iot – ensconced within, really speaks to me. I pic­ture a stage coach kind of affair (all those west­erns of my youth) with the Atman light­ing up the cen­ter. Then good old dis­crim­i­nat­ing intel­lect (who wears a cow­boy hat and a ban­dana) sits up top, hold­ing the reins (the mind) which slip out of his hands if he gets sleepy and loses focus. Some­times he even falls off the stage coach and then those wild horses – the senses – really take off! But undaunted, dis­crim­i­na­tion catches up and climbs back on, grabs the reins and one-pointedly leads that rig to journey’s end, cir­cum­vent­ing death and unit­ing with the Lord of love. Wow! What a scenario!

“My favorite stanza comes later in the passage:

Get up! Wake up! Seek the guid­ance of an
Illu­mined teacher and real­ize the Self.
Sharp like a razor’s edge is the path,
The sages say, dif­fi­cult to traverse.

“It’s stir­ring to be awak­ened by these words, and of course Easwaran him­self appears as the illu­mined teacher, mak­ing the path, sharp though it is, tra­vers­a­ble. This engen­ders devo­tion in me, and immense gratitude.”

Thank you, Laura! If you have a pas­sage you’d like to write to us about, please scroll down to the end of this post for guidelines.

Here’s the com­plete ver­sion of “The Razor’s Edge” pas­sage. Click the Play but­ton on this page to lis­ten to Easwaran read­ing this passage.

The Katha Upanishad

The Razor’s Edge
In the secret cave of the heart, two are

Seated by life’s foun­tain. The sep­a­rate ego

Drinks of the sweet and bit­ter stuff,

Lik­ing the sweet, dis­lik­ing the bit­ter,

While the supreme Self drinks sweet and bit­ter

Nei­ther lik­ing this nor dis­lik­ing that.

The ego gropes in dark­ness, while the Self

Lives in light. So declare the illu­mined sages,

And the house­hold­ers who wor­ship

The sacred fire in the name of the Lord.


May we light the fire of Nachiketa

That burns out the ego, and enables us

To pass from fear­ful frag­men­ta­tion

To fear­less full­ness in the change­less Whole.
 


Know the Self as lord of the char­iot,

The body as the char­iot itself,

The dis­crim­i­nat­ing intel­lect as

The char­i­o­teer, and the mind as the reins.

The senses, say the wise, are the horses;

Self­ish desires are the roads they travel.

When the Self is con­fused with the body,

Mind, and senses, they point out, he seems

To enjoy plea­sure and suf­fer sor­row.
 

When a per­son lacks dis­crim­i­na­tion

And his mind is undis­ci­plined, his senses

Run hither and thither like wild horses.

But they obey the rein like trained horses

When a per­son has dis­crim­i­na­tion

And the mind is one-pointed. Those who lack

Dis­crim­i­na­tion, with lit­tle con­trol

Over their thoughts and far from pure,

Reach not the pure state of immor­tal­ity

But wan­der from death to death; while those

Who have dis­crim­i­na­tion, with a still mind

And a pure heart, reach journey’s end,

Never again to fall into the jaws of death.

With a dis­crim­i­nat­ing intel­lect

As char­i­o­teer, a well-trained mind as reins,

They attain the supreme goal of life

To be united with the Lord of Love.
 


The senses derive from objects of sense-perception,

Sense-objects from mind, mind from intel­lect,

And intel­lect from ego; ego from undif­fer­en­ti­ated

Con­scious­ness, and con­scious­ness from Brah­man.

Brah­man is the first Cause and last refuge.

Brah­man, the hid­den Self in every­one,

Does not shine forth. He is revealed only

To those who keep their minds one-pointed

On the Lord of Love and thus develop

A super­con­scious man­ner of know­ing.

Med­i­ta­tion empow­ers them to go

Deeper and deeper into con­scious­ness,

From the world of words to the world of thought,

Then beyond thoughts to wis­dom in the Self.
 


Get up! Wake up! Seek the guid­ance of an

Illu­mined teacher and real­ize the Self.

Sharp like a razor’s edge is the path,

The sages say, dif­fi­cult to traverse.
 


The supreme Self is beyond name and form,

Beyond the senses, inex­haustible,

With­out begin­ning, with­out end,

Beyond time, space, and causal­ity, eter­nal,

Immutable. Those who real­ize the Self

Are for­ever free from the jaws of death.
 


The wise, who gain expe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge

Of this time­less tale of Nachiketa

Nar­rated by Death, attain the glory

Of liv­ing in spir­i­tual aware­ness.

Those who, full of devo­tion, recite this

Supreme mys­tery at a spir­i­tual

Gath­er­ing, are fit for eter­nal life.

They are indeed fit for eter­nal life.

The Katha Upan­ishad, part 1, canto 3. This trans­la­tion is by Eknath Easwaran, adapted for med­i­ta­tion from the ver­sion in the book Essence of the Upan­ishads: A Key to Indian Spir­i­tu­al­ity.

If you have a favorite pas­sage that you’d like us to include in this series on the Time­less Wis­dom blog, here’s how:

  1. Please choose a pas­sage from one of Easwaran’s antholo­gies – either God Makes the Rivers to Flow, or Time­less Wis­dom. If you don’t own these books, you can find many pas­sages on our web site. (We rec­og­nize and respect the great inspi­ra­tion from other spir­i­tual writ­ers, but for this blog we are request­ing that you select a pas­sage that has been explic­itly cho­sen by Easwaran, as the mis­sion of the www.easwaran.org web site is to pub­lish Easwaran’s works.
  2. Tell us why you par­tic­u­larly like this pas­sage, and let us know if there’s a par­tic­u­lar line, or stanza in a long pas­sage, that appeals to you. You can give us your rea­son in just one sen­tence, or write more if you like.
  3. Con­tact us with your pas­sage choice in one of two ways. You can write a com­ment below this post, or below any of the “favorite pas­sage” posts, with the title of your pas­sage and a brief rea­son for your choice. We’ll then repro­duce your com­ment, with the com­plete pas­sage in a sub­se­quent post.

Or, if you’d like to write more about your choice, email us at info@easwaran.org, with the address line: Time­less Wis­dom blog – my favorite passage.

Either way we’ll be delighted to hear from you, and we’ll get back to you.

We’ll be pub­lish­ing another favorite pas­sage story next week.

Easwaran, Christine, and Anandamayi Ma: Ageless Beauty

Posted on April 28, 2011 by  | Add Comment

For Easwaran, Anan­damayi Ma was one of the great­est saints of mod­ern India. He and Chris­tine met her by chance in the early 1960s while they were trav­el­ing in north­ern India, and, as you’ll see from the excerpts below, he was deeply moved by the encounter.

“When Chris­tine and I were vis­it­ing Vrin­da­van, the place where the his­toric Krishna lived, I learned by hap­pen­stance that a beau­ti­ful woman saint named Anan­damaya Ma was there in her ashram that day and accept­ing vis­i­tors. I ran back to get Chris­tine, and we arrived just in time. There was quite a large crowd.

“Anan­damayi Ma was a very beau­ti­ful woman even phys­i­cally, though she was prob­a­bly about sixty when we saw her. Yet that phys­i­cal beauty was lost like a can­dle in the sun because of her spir­i­tual splen­dor. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her eyes were fath­om­less, and there was a glow on her face of a ‘light that never was, on sea or land,’ as Wordsworth says.

“As we were leav­ing, this gra­cious and saintly woman took a gar­land from her own neck and put it around Christine’s.“

Easwaran’s last com­ment on the visit gives us an inspir­ing insight into the true nature of age­less beauty:

“Anan­damayi Ma was an amaz­ing illus­tra­tion of the beauty that shines forth even in the last years of life when all self­ish desires are extin­guished. This is pos­si­ble for all of us, though it takes many, many years of med­i­ta­tion and dili­gent rep­e­ti­tion of the mantram.”

My Favorite Passage: Gandhi’s “The Path” Quiets My Inner Critic

Posted on April 27, 2011 by  | Read Comment | Add Comment

We’ve already received some great responses to our call for favorite pas­sages. Please keep writ­ing in!

Our first response came from Duff, who chose Mahatma Gandhi’s “The Path,” and draws our atten­tion to this line:

“Though, there­fore, from my weak­ness I fail a thou­sand times, I shall not lose faith.”

Duff writes that this is “one of the ear­li­est pas­sages I learned twenty years ago and it still qui­ets that inner critic who still pops up and says I am ‘not per­fect.’ If Gandhi could rec­og­nize that he failed a thou­sand times, I can rec­og­nize that I need not be per­fect in my practice.”

Thanks, Duff, and here’s the pas­sage in full:

The Path
I know the path: it is strait and nar­row.

It is like the edge of a sword
I rejoice to walk on it.
I weep when I slip.

God’s word is:
 “He who strives never per­ishes.“

I have implicit faith in that promise.

Though, there­fore, from my weak­ness I fail a thou­sand times,

I shall not lose faith.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Mohan­das K. Gandhi – uni­ver­sally known as Mahatma Gandhi; the title means “great soul” – was born in British India in 1869 and died in Jan­u­ary 1948, after hav­ing led his coun­try to free­dom through a non­vi­o­lent strug­gle based on love and self­less ser­vice. This pas­sage is from a col­lec­tion of his writ­ings enti­tled My Reli­gion (Ahmed­abad, India: Nava­ji­van, 1955).

If you have a favorite pas­sage that you’d like us to include in this series on the Time­less Wis­dom blog, here’s how:

  1. Please choose a pas­sage from one of Easwaran’s antholo­gies – either God Makes the Rivers to Flow, or Time­less Wis­dom. If you don’t own these books, you can find many pas­sages on our web site. (We rec­og­nize and respect the great inspi­ra­tion from other spir­i­tual writ­ers, but for this blog we are request­ing that you select a pas­sage that has been explic­itly cho­sen by Easwaran, as the mis­sion of the www.easwaran.org web site is to pub­lish Easwaran’s works.
  2. Tell us why you par­tic­u­larly like this pas­sage, and let us know if there’s a par­tic­u­lar line, or stanza in a long pas­sage, that appeals to you. You can give us your rea­son in just one sen­tence, or write more if you like.
  3. Con­tact us with your pas­sage choice in one of two ways. You can write a com­ment below this post, or below any of the “favorite pas­sage” posts, with the title of your pas­sage and a brief rea­son for your choice. We’ll then repro­duce your com­ment, with the com­plete pas­sage in a sub­se­quent post.

Or, if you’d like to write more about your choice, email us at info@easwaran.org, with the address line: Time­less Wis­dom blog – my favorite passage.

Either way we’ll be delighted to hear from you, and we’ll get back to you.

We’ll pub­lish another favorite pas­sage story on Friday.

In the Forest of the Mind

Posted on April 25, 2011 by  | Add Comment

In this short video, Easwaran presents a short poem by Kabir, a medieval mys­tic claimed by both the Mus­lims and the Hindus.

This excerpt is from a talk in which Easwaran gives prac­ti­cal advice on how to approach the goal of med­i­ta­tion through daily prac­tice: deep­en­ing con­cen­tra­tion dur­ing med­i­ta­tion and dur­ing the rest of the day; uni­fy­ing desires; loos­en­ing one’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with likes and dis­likes; and get­ting free from con­tem­po­rary society’s fast-paced atmos­phere of hurry.

The com­plete talk, DVD 1: Kabir: Stages of Desire is avail­able here.

Read about other talks here.

Kabir and the Carpet: My Favorite Passage Series

Posted on April 22, 2011 by  | Add Comment

Many of us who read Easwaran’s antholo­gies, God Makes the Rivers to Flow or Time­less Wis­dom, have a favorite pas­sage – one that cheers us up when we feel low, one that keeps us going on the spir­i­tual path, one that we find par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful, or prac­ti­cal, or intriguing.

We are start­ing a series of posts to share our enthu­si­asm for these pas­sages which bring us all that is pos­i­tive, uplift­ing, and authen­tic from the great saints and sages of the world.

Here’s one such story from a friend in the UK, who recently moved to a new house:

“‘Do you want this car­pet?’ The ven­dor asked us, as we were work­ing out the details of the house pur­chase. He was point­ing to a large rug that wasn’t new, but the col­ors were muted, and pleas­ing, so we were happy to accept. And it was a good size for our mantram stretches before med­i­ta­tion each morning.

“When I turned it over to clean it, I saw the name on the label was Kabir. It reminded me of Kabir, the weaver saint, a 15th cen­tury mys­tic hon­ored by both Hin­dus and Mus­lims, who spent his life in a tiny shop on one of the wind­ing alley­ways of Varanasi, in north India. I’ve always loved his poems in God Makes the Rivers to Flow, and I par­tic­u­larly like ‘Weav­ing Your Name’ – a con­stant, gen­tle reminder to me to keep my mantram going:

Weav­ing Your Name
I weave your name on the loom of my mind,
To make my gar­ment when you come to me.
My loom has ten thou­sand threads
To make my gar­ment when you come to me.
The sun and moon watch while I weave your name;
The sun and moon hear while I count your name.
These are the wages I get by day and night
To deposit in the lotus bank of my heart.

I weave your name on the loom of my mind
To clean and soften ten thou­sand threads
And to comb the twists and knots of my thoughts.
No more shall I weave a gar­ment of pain.
For you have come to me, drawn by my weav­ing,
Cease­lessly weav­ing your name on the loom of my mind.

If you have a favorite pas­sage that you’d like us to include in this series on the Time­less Wis­dom blog, here’s how:

  1. Please choose a pas­sage from one of Easwaran’s antholo­gies – either God Makes the Rivers to Flow, or Time­less Wis­dom. If you don’t own these books, you can find many pas­sages on our web site. (We rec­og­nize and respect the great inspi­ra­tion from other spir­i­tual writ­ers, but for this blog we are request­ing that you select a pas­sage that has been explic­itly cho­sen by Easwaran, as the mis­sion of the www.easwaran.org web site is to pub­lish Easwaran’s works.
  2. Tell us why you par­tic­u­larly like this pas­sage, and let us know if there’s a par­tic­u­lar line, or stanza in a long pas­sage, that appeals to you. You can give us your rea­son in just one sen­tence, or write more if you like.
  3. Con­tact us with your pas­sage choice in one of two ways. You can write a com­ment below this post, or below any of the “favorite pas­sage” posts, with the title of your pas­sage and a brief rea­son for your choice. We’ll then repro­duce your com­ment, with the com­plete pas­sage in a sub­se­quent post.

Or, if you’d like to write more about your choice, email us at info@easwaran.org, with the address line: Time­less Wis­dom blog – my favorite passage.

Either way we’ll be delighted to hear from you, and we’ll get back to you.

We’ll be post­ing another favorite pas­sage story soon.

Favorite Passages: A Story from Easwaran to Inspire Us

Posted on April 22, 2011 by  | Add Comment

We are start­ing a series of posts to share our enthu­si­asm for these pas­sages which bring us all that is pos­i­tive, uplift­ing, and authen­tic from the great saints and sages of the world.

To inspire us, here’s an extract from Easwaran’s pref­ace in Time­less Wis­dom, titled “In the Com­pany of Saints and Sages.” In it, he talks about a Hindu fes­ti­val that takes place in April called Vishu.

“In Ker­ala state, South India, where I grew up, the new year is ush­ered in with a cer­e­mony many years old. The night before, while most of the fam­ily is asleep, a spe­cial shrine is assem­bled with all kinds of lus­trous objects – yel­low flow­ers, brass­ware, gold jew­elry, ripe fruits, lighted oil lamps – arranges around a mir­ror draped with gar­lands. The next morn­ing, each mem­ber of the fam­ily is led to the shrine with eyes closed and asked, ‘Would you like to see the Lord?’ We open our eyes, and shin­ing in the midst of this bright set­ting we see our own face in the glass. It is a beau­ti­ful reminder of the divin­ity in each of us – the viewer and every­one else around.

“Nat­u­rally, the reminder tends to get for­got­ten later, as life closes in again. But in my home, when­ever one of us chil­dren began to mis­be­have, my grand­mother had only to ask, ‘Do you remem­ber where you saw the Lord on New Year’s?’

“The pas­sages in this book are like that New Year mir­ror. They show us our orig­i­nal good­ness. They remind us that what­ever mis­takes we have made in the past, how­ever self-centered our words or behav­ior may be today, at the cen­ter of our per­son­al­ity lies a spark of the divine that can never be extin­guished, that does not even have to be earned, for it is an essen­tial part of our nature as human beings.

“When you and I look into a mir­ror, we see a famil­iar face with a dis­tress­ing ten­dency to show fatigue or age. But that is not what the mys­tics see. They look at us – through us, into us – and see some­thing tran­scen­dent, lumi­nous, time­less, ‘the face behind all faces’:

I look into the mir­ror and see my own beauty;
I see the truth of the uni­verse reveal­ing itself as me.
I rise in the sky as the morn­ing sun, do not be sur­prised..
I am light itself, reflected in the heart of every­one.
 – Fakhrudin Araqi

Every par­ti­cle of the world is a mir­ror.
In each atom lies the blaz­ing light
of a thou­sand suns.
 – Mah­mud Shabestari

Radi­ant is the world soul,
Full of splen­dor and beauty,
Full of life..
 – Abra­ham Isaac Kook

“Words like this are not just poetry. They are a pas­sion­ate attempt to describe the direct, per­sonal encounter with a real­ity beyond words, put into words by men and women over­whelmed by the desire to share that expe­ri­ence with any­one who will lis­ten. When we hear with open hearts, the words stir a response within us. We glimpse in them a reflec­tion of our own true Self. The won­der­ful poten­tial latent in us begins to shine, as a pos­si­bil­ity we can not only imag­ine but long for and begin to live by.”

* * * * *

Would you like to share your favorite pas­sage on this blog? Here’s how:

  1. Please choose a pas­sage from one of Easwaran’s antholo­gies – either God Makes the Rivers to Flow, or Time­less Wis­dom. If you don’t own these books, you can find many pas­sages on our web site. (We rec­og­nize and respect the great inspi­ra­tion from other spir­i­tual writ­ers, but for this blog we are request­ing that you select a pas­sage that has been explic­itly cho­sen by Easwaran, as the mis­sion of the www.easwaran.org web site is to pub­lish Easwaran’s works.
  2. Tell us why you par­tic­u­larly like this pas­sage, and let us know if there’s a par­tic­u­lar line, or stanza in a long pas­sage, that appeals to you. You can give us your rea­son in just one sen­tence, or write more if you like.
  3. Con­tact us with your pas­sage choice in one of two ways. You can write a com­ment below this post, or below any of the “favorite pas­sage” posts, with the title of your pas­sage and a brief rea­son for your choice. We’ll then repro­duce your com­ment, with the com­plete pas­sage in a sub­se­quent post.

Or, if you’d like to write more about your choice, email us at info@easwaran.org, with the address line: Time­less Wis­dom blog – my favorite passage.

Learn Passage Meditation in Boston or Virginia

Posted on April 20, 2011 by  | Add Comment

In Boston: One-Day Retreat, April 30, 2011

In Vir­ginia: One-Day or Week­end Retreat, May 14, 2011
(with a week­end option for returnees: May 13 – 15 )

If Easwaran’s writ­ings speak to you, and if you yearn to model your daily life on his wise and gen­tle teach­ings, you can begin the jour­ney – or deepen it – at a BMCM pas­sage med­i­ta­tion retreat. We have been offer­ing med­i­ta­tion retreats for 25 years, teach­ing thou­sands of peo­ple how to prac­tice Easwaran’s eight-point pro­gram of pas­sage meditation.

Each BMCM regional retreat has two sec­tions: one for those who are new to pas­sage med­i­ta­tion, and one for those with an estab­lished pas­sage med­i­ta­tion practice.

We offer a slid­ing scale fee struc­ture and finan­cial aid. Full infor­ma­tion includ­ing times, loca­tion, and enroll­ment. Or call us at 800.475.2369.

Easwaran on The Imitation of Christ: Talk 22

Posted on April 18, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 22nd 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 2, Chap­ter 7, “Of the Love of Jesus Above All Things.”

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

Taking the Plunge

Posted on April 15, 2011 by  | Read Comment | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from an arti­cle by Eknath Easwaran which appeared in the Sum­mer 2006 issue of the Blue Moun­tain journal.

“The vil­lage in South India where I grew up didn’t have swim­ming pools, but we had some­thing bet­ter: a river. And I don’t mean a creek that you can jump across with the help of a pole. Ours was a broad, rush­ing tor­rent that would swell to full flood dur­ing the mon­soon rains, when most young peo­ple took great delight in try­ing to swim against the tur­bu­lent cur­rents that boiled over the river­banks and swept down­stream. The game was to see if you could make it to the other shore directly across from where you started rather than let the cur­rent carry you downstream.

“It was hard; that was the chal­lenge of it. I was a good swim­mer, yet often I would fin­ish up some­where down the river. Two or three of my cousins, how­ever, were par­tic­u­larly skilled at gaug­ing the strength of the cur­rent. They would sin­gle out a rock or tree on the oppo­site bank to aim for, far upstream, and then plunge in and swim for all they were worth. For every stroke they took, the river would take two – but if they had gauged the cur­rent cor­rectly, they would climb out on the oppo­site shore pre­cisely across from they started. Occa­sion­ally an alli­ga­tor or two would get mixed up in the pro­ceed­ings, and some of the slow­est swim­mers would put on sud­den spurts of speed.

“After an hour of this, most of us would just lie there on the grass to recu­per­ate, exhausted but sat­is­fied. The chal­lenge brought a fierce sense of exhil­a­ra­tion and mas­tery. It tested every ounce of our sta­mina and res­olute­ness, so that we emerged from our swim much stronger than when we went in. What sat­is­fac­tion would there have been in sim­ply pad­dling about and let­ting the cur­rent carry us away?

“I often remem­ber those days when I look at the Prayer of St. Fran­cis, which makes a per­fect guide for how ordi­nary peo­ple like you and me can rise to our human stature. If you study the words closely, you will see that line by line St. Fran­cis is call­ing for noth­ing less than a rever­sal of all our human con­di­tion­ing – swim­ming against the cur­rent of past habit, present human nature, and all that the world values.

“I can imag­ine him telling us per­son­ally, ‘Every­thing I tell you is dif­fi­cult. If it is easy, it is not from me. I am ask­ing you to go com­pletely against the accepted pat­tern of life, where every­body says to make as much money as you can, pur­sue your own plea­sure and profit and pres­tige and power with­out thought of any­one else, and then retire to your ranch to do your own thing, for­get­ting the world and by the world for­got­ten. That’s what every­one does, but I am call­ing you to some­thing vastly higher – to live in the image of God.’”

Read the entire article

Eknath Easwaran, Swami Omkar, and Louise Wilding

Posted on April 13, 2011 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

There are many dif­fer­ent sto­ries about Easwaran’s con­nec­tion with Indian spir­i­tual fig­ures. Swami Omkar (1895 – 1982) was a swami and teacher known for his sweetly gen­er­ous nature. He founded Shanti Ashram in Andhra Pradesh and the Peace Cen­ter on the Nil­giris (Blue Moun­tain), in South India.

Eknath Easwaran and Sister Lalita

Easwaran with Louise Wild­ing (Sis­ter Lalita), on the Blue Mountain

When Easwaran and Chris­tine were in Kota­giri, South India, in the early six­ties, they met Louise Wild­ing (Sis­ter Lalita) who was pres­i­dent of Swami Omkar’s sum­mer ashram in Kota­giri. She arranged a weekly pro­gram where young men could med­i­tate with Easwaran, sing devo­tional songs, and hear him expound the spir­i­tual life in Tamil. And she remained a stead­fast friend and sup­porter of Easwaran through­out her life.

Med­i­ta­tion with Easwaran and Chris­tine after a talk at Swami Omkar’s ashram

Easwaran chose Swami Omkar’s Prayer for Peace as a rec­om­mended pas­sage for med­i­ta­tion. Lis­ten to Easwaran read­ing this pas­sage here (click the Play but­ton to start the audio).

Prayer for Peace
Adorable pres­ence,

Thou who art within and with­out,

above and below and all around,

Thou who art inter­pen­e­trat­ing

every cell of my being,

Thou who art the eye of my eyes,

the ear of my ears,

the heart of my heart,

the mind of my mind,

the breath of my breath,

the life of my life,

the soul of my soul,

Bless us, dear God, to be aware of thy pres­ence

now and here.
 


May we all be aware of thy pres­ence

in the East and the West,

in the North and the South.

May peace and good will abide among indi­vid­u­als,

com­mu­ni­ties, and nations.

This is my earnest prayer.
 


May peace be unto all!

We’ll share more sto­ries about Easwaran and his asso­ci­a­tion with Indian mys­tics in future posts.


  • 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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