A Closer Look: Death and not delaying spiritual life

Posted on July 29, 2011 by  | Read 4 Comments | Add Comment

Death may seem an odd choice for this week’s closer look, but for Easwaran it is a great moti­va­tor for the spir­i­tual life. He tack­les the sub­ject directly in this dra­matic story:

“I once read a story about a man who kept putting off tak­ing to the spir­i­tual life in order to have just one more fling, to make one more deal. Time after time he told him­self that next week, or next month, or next year, he would change his life. Then one night he had a dream: he dreamed that he was dying. There was no chance now to change his direc­tion; time had run out on him, and all his plans for mak­ing a new start in life could never be ful­filled. It was a ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence, and as he strug­gled to wake up, he vowed pas­sion­ately not to post­pone the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion a sin­gle morn­ing more. But it was too late. When he tried to sit up, he found it was no dream; he was on his deathbed.

“It is a sober­ing story, but most of us have a ten­dency to post­pone in just this way. Once we have fin­ished paint­ing the kitchen, we say, once we have fin­ished our term paper, once we have paid off our loan, then we will have time to devote our­selves whole­heart­edly to trans­form­ing our lives. But when the kitchen has been painted and the term paper has been turned in, there will still be let­ters to write, check­books to bal­ance, garages to clean, places and peo­ple to see. So the Bud­dhist mys­tic Milarepa advises, ‘The affairs of busi­ness will drag on for­ever; do not delay the prac­tice of meditation.’”

A good, if stark reminder – very help­ful for one of our blog team, who’s been so caught up with fam­ily duties over the last week that she’s been going to bed late and falling asleep in morn­ing meditation. She’s resolved to drop some of the less impor­tant chores and go to bed on time!

How about you?

* If you’d like to share a phrase or sen­tence that struck you from these excerpts,
* Or, if you exper­i­ment with apply­ing Easwaran’s teach­ings in your own life and would like to tell us about it,

please write to us in the com­ment box or email us at info@easwaran.org with the sub­ject line “Time­less Wis­dom blog: Not delay­ing the spir­i­tual life.”

If you want to read more, this extract comes from an arti­cle in the Sum­mer 2011 edi­tion of our free quar­terly Blue Moun­tain journal.

Do write in – we’d love to hear from you, and your com­ments will help us all to put our pri­or­i­ties where they matter!

A Practice for Today: Slowing Down

Posted on July 28, 2011 by  | 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.

From a Yoga Teacher: “A Legacy of Love”

Posted on July 27, 2011 by  | Add Comment

Many yoga teach­ers enjoy Easwaran’s books, espe­cially his writ­ings on the Bha­gavad Gita. We very much appre­ci­ated this recent email:

“As a yoga teacher, the Bha­gavad Gita has had a huge influ­ence on my teach­ing. As you know, Easwaran’s three vol­ume Gita set has been a life changer for me.

“The great thing about Easwaran’s books is he always takes these deep, ancient, truths, ideals, and sto­ries and shares them in a way that you can wrap your heart and mind around — so that you can put them into prac­tice in your every­day life.

“Peo­ple often seem sur­prised when I tell them that my med­i­ta­tion teacher is no longer with us and that I never got to meet him face to face because I talk about him as if he is still alive. Well, to me — Easwaran is still very much alive in his books, in his talks, and mostly in my heart. Such a strong spirit and light can never be extinguished.

“This is the magic of writ­ing and leav­ing a legacy of love — Easwaran has touched so many lives with­out him even know­ing it.”

What a beau­ti­ful note! If you’re a yoga teacher and would like to tell us what you think of Easwaran’s books, or how you use them in your classes, please write in to us – either via the com­ment box below, or to info@easwaran.org with the sub­ject line “Easwaran for yoga teachers” – we’d love to hear from you.

The three vol­ume set men­tioned in the email is The Bha­gavad Gita for Daily Liv­ing by Eknath Easwaran.

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 29

Posted on July 25, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 29th 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 12, “Of the King’s High­way of the Holy Cross.”

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

Mantrams and prayers for the people of Norway

Posted on July 23, 2011 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

Our hearts go out to the peo­ple of Nor­way after the recent tragic events.

Easwaran often quoted from Gandhi at times like this, so here is a pas­sage from our web­site that we hope will bring solace.

In the Midst of Darkness

I do dimly per­ceive that whilst every­thing around me is ever chang­ing, ever dying, there is under­ly­ing all that change a liv­ing power that is change­less, that holds all together, that cre­ates, dis­solves, and re-creates. That inform­ing power or spirit is God. And since noth­ing else that I see merely through the senses can or will per­sist, He alone is.

And is this power benev­o­lent or malev­o­lent? I see it as purely benev­o­lent. For I can see that in the midst of death life per­sists, in the midst of untruth truth per­sists, in the midst of dark­ness light per­sists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the Supreme Good.

– Mahatma Gandhi

A Closer Look: Shopping, sales, and a test of love

Posted on July 22, 2011 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

There’s some­thing about sales – of clothes, tech­nol­ogy, or what­ever – that makes them hard to resist, at least for some of us. Easwaran was in favor of a rea­son­able level of com­fort in life, but he urged dis­crim­i­na­tion. Here he takes a pen­e­trat­ing look at the pit­falls of shop­ping, and he offers us a gen­tly humor­ous chal­lenge as well:

“In today’s con­sumer world, a lot of power is wasted in pro­duc­ing items which are nei­ther nec­es­sary nor ben­e­fi­cial. But buy­ing less and own­ing less con­serves per­sonal energy as well. Shop­ping for things we do not need, for exam­ple, wastes a lot of vital­ity, even if it is only win­dow shop­ping; energy flows out with every lit­tle desire. It is a sur­pris­ing con­nec­tion, but an extrav­a­gant shop­per will find it dif­fi­cult to love. When such a per­son goes shop­ping, he or she scat­ters love like largesse all over the depart­ment store base­ment. We can become bank­rupt in love this way, just as we can in money. So if you want a good, stiff test of your capac­ity to love, go into your favorite store some day – prefer­ably when there is a sale – and see if you can walk straight through, look­ing nei­ther left nor right, and come out unscathed. It may sound impos­si­ble, but it can be done.”

From Love Never Faileth, pages 73 — 74. This excerpt is from a chap­ter on Mother Teresa titled “Hunger for Love.”

The phrase here that struck our blog team was “an extrav­a­gant shop­per will find it hard to love” – as Easwaran says, that’s a sur­pris­ing con­nec­tion. Do you have any reflec­tions that you’d like to share with us? A vari­a­tion on Easwaran’s test of love is to go into a depart­ment store with your shop­ping list and buy only what is on the list – no “bar­gains”! Let us know how it goes if you try it.

Please write in the com­ment box below, or email us at info@easwaran.org with the sub­ject line “A Closer Look: Shopping.”

A Practice for Today: Learning to Meditate

Posted on July 21, 2011 by  | Add Comment

“When med­i­tat­ing, do not fol­low any asso­ci­a­tion of ideas or try to think about the pas­sage. If you are giv­ing your atten­tion to each word, the mean­ing can­not help sink­ing in.”

- Eknath Easwaran

Pas­sage med­i­ta­tion is the silent rep­e­ti­tion in the mind of mem­o­rized inspi­ra­tional pas­sages from the world’s great reli­gions. Click here for basic instruc­tions in pas­sage med­i­taiton. Click here to explore a free, online course on pas­sage meditation.

Pas­sages for meditation

The Magic of Meditating with Others

Posted on July 20, 2011 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

For spir­i­tual liv­ing you need spir­i­tual friends – Easwaran stresses this over and over. Some­times it’s hard to find spir­i­tual com­pan­ion­ship in the mod­ern world, par­tic­u­larly if you’re young. We were very moved by this mes­sage from a young Indian friend, who had been miss­ing spir­i­tual com­pan­ion­ship until she came to the States and found her­self liv­ing near one of our sat­sangs. Here’s how she describes her sat­sang experience:

“It was for the first time I felt at home. I was over­whelmed to find peo­ple with sim­i­lar thoughts who were so very warm to wel­come me to their spir­i­tual fam­ily. This was only about meet­ing them, but the real magic hap­pened when I med­i­tated with them for the first time. I have been med­i­tat­ing since June 2007, but this was the first time when I felt my con­cen­tra­tion deep­en­ing. I felt the words seep­ing in the depth of my soul as if it was not I but my soul itself repeat­ing them for me. The peace, the aura and the energy of med­i­tat­ing together is unimag­in­able. Though we meet only once a week, it is enough to cher­ish it for the entire week.”

Look here for more infor­ma­tion on our spir­i­tual fel­low­ship groups. And do please write in to us via the com­ment box, or email us at info@easwaran.org with the sub­ject line “Time­less Wis­dom blog” if you’d like to share your reflec­tions on spir­i­tual companionship!

Leaving All Doubts Behind

Posted on July 18, 2011 by  | Add Comment

In this video, Easwaran talks about how, in samadhi, all doubts and reser­va­tions leave us.

“What takes place in samadhi is all these files of doubts that we have accu­mu­lated are all shred­ded and thrown into the fire...you have such com­plete secu­rity that it is beyond being shaken or being challenged.”

The com­plete talk, “The Stages of Life,” can be found on DVD 21: The Bud­dha on Life and Nir­vana.

Easwaran on the Gita: Being Equal to All

Posted on July 14, 2011 by  | Add Comment

In the fol­low­ing excerpt, Eknath Easwaran com­ments on chap­ter 6, verse 9 of the Bha­gavad Gita from the book The End of Sor­row:

Verse 9:
They are equally kind to rel­a­tive, enemy, and a friend; to some­one who sup­ports them, some­one who is indif­fer­ent or neu­tral, and even some­one hate­ful. Through the abil­ity to give love and respect to all, they rise to great heights.

“One of the secrets of vic­to­ri­ous liv­ing is found in the word sam­abud­dhi, ‘hav­ing an equal atti­tude towards all,’ which tells us to live in har­mony with the law of life, to real­ize that all of us come from God, exist in God, and return to God. In the supreme cli­max of med­i­ta­tion called samādhi, we see the Lord in every­one, because we see the indi­vis­i­ble unity which is the divine prin­ci­ple of existence.

“To every­one, it is nec­es­sary to behave with respect: to those who help us, to those who hin­der us, to those who talk nicely to us, to those who do not talk to us at all. This is the secret of per­fect human rela­tions. Show­ing respect to our par­ents, to our friends, and to our ene­mies not only helps us; it helps them as well. Even if oth­ers are not entirely wor­thy of our respect, when we show respect to them, they begin to rise up to it.

“If we can keep faith in even the most self-willed per­son, if we can put our trust in him and expect him to grow, grad­u­ally he will try to deserve our respect. We do not have to worry about how the other per­son will behave towards us, and we do not need to think con­stantly in terms of reci­procity: ‘You take the first step; let me see how long it is, and then I’ll take the next – not one inch shorter or longer.’ Here my actions are depen­dent on the other per­son, and when we act in this way, our steps get smaller and smaller until we do not move at all.

“In all our rela­tion­ships, our pri­mary con­cern should be how best to give our love and respect. When we try in this way to give every pos­si­ble ser­vice with­out any thought of return or remu­ner­a­tion, oth­ers respond deeply and reveal what is divine within them also.

“The code of behav­ior that many so-called civ­i­lized peo­ple observe is stim­u­lus and response: you love me, I’ll love you; you hate me, I’ll hate you in return. But through the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion, when we begin to mold our­selves in the image of an inspir­ing incar­na­tion like Sri Krishna, Jesus the Christ, or the Com­pas­sion­ate Bud­dha, we will find, to our great delight, that we are no longer depen­dent on how oth­ers con­duct them­selves towards us. This is real freedom.

“Now we are far from free; we are always won­der­ing how the other per­son is going to react. We have all kinds of defenses – moats, draw­bridges, walls, and then sev­eral trap­doors – which pre­vent us from act­ing with nat­ural grace. But when we find the exhil­a­rat­ing free­dom in which we are able to give our very best with­out get­ting caught up in oth­ers’ reac­tions, oth­ers’ atti­tudes, we find that those around us begin to ben­e­fit from our free­dom. Those who come into close con­tact with us will start to lower their defenses, lit­tle by lit­tle, cen­time­ter by cen­time­ter, and slowly they too will learn to give their very best with­out worry or fear.

“If there is just one per­son in the fam­ily who is self-willed and always on guard, every­one else will auto­mat­i­cally raise their defenses a lit­tle when they are around that per­son. It is almost like a reflex; as soon as we see peo­ple who are on guard we say, ‘He makes me feel uncom­fort­able.’ When we become com­fort­able with our­selves, we make every­one else com­fort­able too. The way to be per­ma­nently free from these ten­sions in per­sonal rela­tion­ships is to put the wel­fare of those around us first.

“Where we live, some of our young men have become mas­ter car­pen­ters. One of them is mak­ing an oddly shaped table which is full of angles and cor­ners, but all the pieces fit so well that when they are together there are no angles or cor­ners at all. When we try to manip­u­late some­one else to fit into our angles and cor­ners, we are actu­ally mak­ing the cor­ners sharper, and the sharper they get the more dif­fi­cult it is to fit the pieces of our own life together into an har­mo­nious whole.

“How much hap­pier we would be if we could think less about every­one else’s angles and cor­ners and more about how we can dove­tail into their lives: if we could con­cen­trate less on oth­ers’ reac­tions and more on how best to con­duct our­selves. Even if oth­ers are irri­ta­ble, we can be more gen­er­ous. This is the atti­tude that comes from learn­ing to see the Lord of Love in everyone.

“Yes­ter­day when I was tak­ing our dog Muka for a walk I saw a jackrab­bit in front of us seated on the road, full of con­fi­dence that none of us at Ram­a­giri would harm him. But see­ing Muka, he became unsure and gave a cou­ple of leaps, get­ting out of our way. Muka looked up at me as if to say, ‘Why does he have such abnor­mal legs? Why are the back two so much longer than the front ones?’ Muka looks upon his four legs of equal length as nor­mal, and he mea­sures the world from this point of view; any­thing not con­form­ing to his dimen­sions is abnor­mal. The jackrab­bit is no dif­fer­ent. Look­ing at the world from his van­tage point, he would have said, ‘What strange legs your dog has – all equal length. How does he man­age to hop?’ Of course, from our point of view the rabbit’s legs are just right for a rab­bit and Muka’s are just right for a dog.

“Sim­i­larly, most of us live with peo­ple who have dif­fer­ent opin­ions than ours. Every­one has dif­fer­ent dimen­sions, and each walks or jumps for­ward in his own way; yet there is a com­mon core in all of us. Twelve years ago, when I had just arrived in Amer­ica, every­one asked me, “How do you like it here?” I always replied, “Just as I liked it there.” There are no dif­fer­ences between peo­ple, no mat­ter whether they are in India, Africa, Amer­ica, or Europe. All our great­ness comes from this com­mon human­ity, and when we con­stantly keep our eyes fixed on it, we dis­cover the unity of life which is divine.”

Read more from chap­ter 6 of The End of Sor­row: The Bha­gavad Gita for Daily Liv­ing, Vol­ume 1: The Prac­tice of Med­i­ta­tion.


  • 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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