A Practice for Today: Slowing Down

Posted on November 30, 2011 by  | Read 3 Comments | Add Comment

“To guard against hur­ry­ing through the day, start the day early. That is how you set the pace for the day.”

“Don’t let your­self get pres­sured into hur­ry­ing. When­ever you find your­self begin­ning to speed up dur­ing the day, repeat your mantram to help you slow down.”

- Eknath Easwaran

Slow­ing down means set­ting pri­or­i­ties and reduc­ing the stress and fric­tion caused by hurry. Click here for instruc­tions on slow­ing down.

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 38

Posted on November 28, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 38th 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 3, Chap­ter 6, “Of the Proof of a True Lover of Christ.”

“The salient fea­ture of all love is that it never changes, and Shake­speare will go to the extent of say­ing, ‘Call it not love that changes,’ under any cir­cum­stances. And it is for this rea­son that I often point out that when we use the word love by say­ing we love this per­son or that per­son, we should be care­ful to under­stand that such love should not undergo any change what­ever the cir­cum­stances in which we find our­selves or our part­ner to be.

“Sim­i­larly, the love of God has also to with­stand the test of time, place, and cir­cum­stance. All of us need joy in life, and all of us do get fre­quent oppor­tu­ni­ties for tast­ing the joy that comes out of love, but sor­row too, unfor­tu­nately, seems to be nec­es­sary for our growth and our edu­ca­tion. It’s very dif­fi­cult for us there­fore to appre­ci­ate that one of the ways in which the Lord shows his love for us is by con­fronting us with sor­row when that is the only way in which we can change the direc­tion of our life.”

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 Great Teacher Remembered: Second video clip on Easwaran’s enthusiasm for meditation

Posted on November 26, 2011 by  | Read 4 Comments | Add Comment

In the sec­ond of our two video clips drawn from pre­vi­ously unpub­lished archive mate­r­ial, Easwaran shares sto­ries of his early expe­ri­ences on the spir­i­tual path and describes the role of divine grace in uni­fy­ing his desire for the supreme goal. “Even before I took to med­i­ta­tion,” he says, “I had the capac­ity for flam­ing enthusiasm...the more obsta­cles you put in my way, the more enthu­si­as­tic I will become....”

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

A Great Teacher Remembered: New video clip on how Easwaran turned to meditation

Posted on November 25, 2011 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

For our obser­vance of Easwaran’s Memo­r­ial this year at Ram­a­giri Ashram we pre­pared two short video clips, both from pre­vi­ously unpub­lished mate­r­ial. We’ll share one today and the other tomorrow.

In this first clip, Easwaran tells the mov­ing story of how, at a time of cri­sis, he turned inwards and started med­i­tat­ing. “I put the Gita by my side. And to con­sole myself, I closed my eyes and started repeat­ing these verses. I don’t know how long I must have sat there.... Once I got this inner win­dow to my con­scious­ness, I began to find time for med­i­ta­tion and grad­u­ally I made it reg­u­lar in the morn­ing, in the evening...”

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

A Practice for Today: Choosing and Using a Mantram

Posted on November 23, 2011 by  | Add Comment

“A mantram is a pow­er­ful spir­i­tual for­mula which has the capac­ity to trans­form con­scious­ness when it is repeated silently in the mind. There is noth­ing mag­i­cal about this. It is sim­ply a mat­ter of prac­tice, as you can ver­ify for yourself.”

- Eknath Easwaran

Rep­e­ti­tion of a mantram is the silent rep­e­ti­tion in the mind of a hal­lowed name or phrase from one of the world’s great reli­gions. It can be prac­ticed when­ever pos­si­ble through­out the day or night. Click here for instruc­tions on repeat­ing the mantram.

True Strength in Kindness

Posted on November 21, 2011 by  | Add Comment

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

“Strength is often equated with the capac­ity to attack, but to me it means the inter­nal tough­ness to take what­ever life deals out with­out los­ing your human­ity. It is those who never stoop to retal­i­a­tion, never demand an eye for an eye, who are truly strong. They have the tough­ness to be ten­der, even sweet, while resist­ing vio­lence with all their heart. By con­trast, those who are ready to strike back at the slight­est provo­ca­tion are not strong but frag­ile. They may espouse a higher view of human nature, but almost any­thing can break them and make them lash back at those they oppose.

“When some­one is being sar­cas­tic or cruel to you, the nat­ural response is to retal­i­ate. If you want to be unshake­able, you have to train your mind in patience and endurance, the most gru­el­ing train­ing that life offers. Life shows no mercy to those who lack this inner strength. Every virtue requires the tough­ness never to retreat in the face of challenge.

“My grand­mother had a very pun­gent phrase for dif­fi­cult peo­ple: ‘A lash in the eye.’ We all know from expe­ri­ence how an eye­lash in the eye can be so irri­tat­ing that we just can­not think about any­thing else. That is exactly how dif­fi­cult peo­ple affect those around them. But for the mys­tics, this lash in the eye is an oppor­tu­nity for learn­ing the skills in life that mat­ter most:patience, for­give­ness, and free­dom from likes and dis­likes. When they think of some­one who has been a thorn in their flesh, they will say to them­selves, ‘With­out you, how could I ever have learned to be patient? How could I ever have learned to forgive?’

“It is a very poor eval­u­a­tion of human beings to think that impa­tience and vio­lent reac­tions are part of human nature. We have to look to peo­ple like Mahatma Gandhi, who was kind under any provo­ca­tion, to see what human nature is really like. Gandhi’s life showed over and over that even avi­o­lent per­son will respond if exposed to some­one who, by always being kind, focuses con­sis­tently on the high­est in our nature.”

Patience, the book

Easwaran’s Essence of the Bhagavad Gita now available on Kindle as an e-book

Posted on November 18, 2011 by  | Add Comment

We were delighted to see that Ama­zon has already made Easwaran’s new book avail­able as a Kin­dle e-book on its web­site. If you are a Kin­dle reader and you down­load Easwaran’s book, we’d be very inter­ested in your feed­back! We expect the e-book to be avail­able on the other e-bookstores very soon.

Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita is also avail­able as an e-book on the Apple iStore in the UK, Aus­tralia, and much of Europe.

The print edi­tion is avail­able for pre-order, but the books won’t be shipped for a week or two. The num­ber of pre-orders of Easwaran’s book is unusu­ally high, so if you have placed a pre-order, thank you, and we very much hope you enjoy the book when you receive it. And we will con­tinue to pub­lish short excerpts on this blog, as you’ll see below.


Click the image link to go to the paper­back page on Amazon.

Click the link below for the Kin­dle e-book edi­tion:
Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita: A Con­tem­po­rary Guide to Yoga, Med­i­ta­tion, and Indian Phi­los­o­phy (Wis­dom of India)

Here’s the Pro­logue from Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita:

“Close your eyes. You have been blind like this from birth, ruler of a king­dom you can­not see, depen­dent on the advice of those around you, some wise, most oth­er­wise. Your choices of whom to lis­ten to and whom to ignore have led to a war that will end in ruin for both sides. Unable to watch the pend­ing cat­a­stro­phe with your own eyes, you appeal to your char­i­o­teer, who pos­sesses extrasen­sory vision:

Tell me, San­jaya, what is hap­pen­ing on the field of bat­tle, the field of dharma, where my army and my ene­mies have gath­ered for war. (1:1)

“So the Bha­gavad Gita begins, with the words of the blind king Dhri­tarash­tra, whose crip­pling attach­ment to his self­ish sons has split his dynasty in two.

“This is also the last we shall hear from him, for the Gita has very lit­tle to do with his story or his war. Yet this open­ing verse makes a haunt­ing intro­duc­tion to the theme of a war within, and Dhritarashtra’s plight is a sober­ing reminder that each of us, too, has prob­a­bly made blind deci­sions that have left us per­plexed about how we got here and how to face a future that we our­selves have helped to create.

“Clear­ing up this con­fu­sion is the pur­pose of the Gita, so we shall spend no more time with blind kings and their sto­ries. It is not Dhri­tarash­tra who stands for us but Arjuna, a war­rior who seeks under­stand­ing of life, death, and duty from his char­i­o­teer, Sri Krishna, a divine incar­na­tion who has cho­sen him as his dis­ci­ple and friend. Like Dhri­tarash­tra, we too are about to lis­ten in on a hid­den dia­logue, not one far away but deep within the heart. And while we too are unable to watch, the Gita will let us hear – and, more impor­tant, help us to understand.”

Easwaran’s Books in Japanese: “Things are developing wonderfully”

Posted on November 17, 2011 by  | Add Comment

We’ve just heard from a trans­la­tor friend in Japan that there is now a Japan­ese edi­tion of Easwaran’s The Undis­cov­ered Coun­try.

She writes: “The Japan­ese title is Eter­nal Life: To the Undis­cov­ered Coun­try
 beyond Death. It has a very beau­ti­ful cover. I began to read my trans­la­tion imme­di­ately as if it were another’s, 
and couldn’t stop until the last page. What an excel­lent mes­sage! 
It has been my dream to have a sec­ond Sri Easwaran book pub­lished in Japan. It took ten years to make this a real­ity after Take Your Time came out in 2001.”

Both these edi­tions are the result of our friend’s ded­i­cated efforts – a pro­fes­sional trans­la­tor, she is also a long­time med­i­ta­tor and stu­dent of Easwaran. We asked her to tell us more about the Japan­ese edi­tion of Take Your Time. She replied: “Take Your Time has been very well received here. It has had seven print­ings so far, a total of 42,000 copies pub­lished dur­ing the last ten years. It appeals to us Japan­ese liv­ing in our high-paced soci­ety. Accord­ing to Amazon’s cus­tomer reviews, quite an impres­sive num­ber of peo­ple showed their appre­ci­a­tion to Sri Easwaran’s inspir­ing mes­sages and wish to read more of his works. It is very encour­ag­ing to know that so many are wait­ing for this to hap­pen. I feel extremely hon­ored to have this priv­i­lege of trans­lat­ing his thoughts and words.”

Our friend is now work­ing with a pub­lisher on trans­lat­ing our new edi­tion of Gandhi the Man. As she says, “Things are devel­op­ing won­der­fully in this country.”

A Practice for Today: Putting Others First

Posted on November 15, 2011 by  | Add Comment

“When you find your­self dwelling on your own needs, your own wants, your own plans, your own ideas, repeat your mantram. And then turn your atten­tion to the needs of others.”

– Eknath Easwaran

Putting oth­ers first means gain­ing free­dom from self­ish­ness and sep­a­rate­ness, and find­ing joy in help­ing oth­ers. Click here for instruc­tions on putting oth­ers first.

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 37

Posted on November 14, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 37th in a long series of talks Eknath Easwaran gave on The Imi­ta­tion of Christ by Thomas a Kempis.

In this talk, Easwaran reviews the pur­pose of lead­ing a spir­i­tual life based on the prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion, in our cur­rent con­text. “In order to lead the spir­i­tual life, which means to live in abid­ing joy, unas­sail­able secu­rity, and con­tin­u­ous ser­vice for the wel­fare of all those around us, it is nei­ther nec­es­sary to leave our fam­ily, nor turn our back on society.”

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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