Finding the Common Ground

Posted on December 30, 2011 by  | Add Comment

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

“For Gandhi, love and self­less action were one. ‘I don’t want to be at home only with my friends,’ he said, ‘I want to be at home with my ene­mies too.’ It wasn’t a mat­ter of speak­ing; he lived it out through forty years of solid opposition.

“The other day I saw some doc­u­men­tary footage of Gandhi with a promi­nent polit­i­cal fig­ure who opposed him so relent­lessly that peo­ple said he had a prob­lem for every solu­tion Gandhi offered. These scenes were shot in 1944, when the two lead­ers met for a series of talks in which lit­er­ally mil­lions of lives were hang­ing in the bal­ance. It took my breath away to see Gandhi treat­ing his oppo­nent with the affec­tion one shows an inti­mate friend. At the begin­ning of each day’s dis­cus­sions, the man’s face would be a mask of hos­til­ity; at the end of the day, both men would come out smil­ing and jok­ing. Then, by the next morn­ing, the man would have frozen over again, and Gandhi would start all over with the same cheer­ful patience, try­ing to find some com­mon ground.

“That is how the mys­tic approaches con­flict, and it pulls the rug out from under all the tra­di­tional the­o­ries. There is a lot being writ­ten these days about con­flict res­o­lu­tion, which I am glad to see. But no mat­ter what you read, they will always say in effect, ‘This is how you deal with your oppo­nent.’ Gandhi, Saint Fran­cis, Saint Teresa would all say, ‘No. The moment you start think­ing about the other per­son as an oppo­nent, you make it impos­si­ble to find a solu­tion.’ There are no oppo­nents in a dis­agree­ment; there are sim­ply two peo­ple fac­ing a com­mon prob­lem. In other words, they are not in oppo­site camps. They are in the same camp: the real oppo­nent is the problem.

“To apply this, you have to set aside the ques­tion of who is to blame. We have a say­ing in my mother tongue: ‘It takes two to get mar­ried and two to quar­rel.’ No mat­ter what the cir­cum­stances, nei­ther per­son bears sole respon­si­bil­ity for a quar­rel. It is an encour­ag­ing out­look, because if both are respon­si­ble, both together can find a solu­tion – not merely a com­pro­mise, but a way to resolve the quar­rel peacefully.

“To do this, it is nec­es­sary to lis­ten – and lis­ten with respect. For how can you end a quar­rel if you do not even hear what the quar­rel is about? How can you solve a prob­lem with two sides if you never hear what the other side is? More than that, if you can’t lis­ten to the other per­son with detach­ment, you will not have the detach­ment to under­stand your own posi­tion objec­tively, either. It’s not just one side of the prob­lem you can’t see; it’s both. So lis­ten with respect: it may hurt you, it may irri­tate you, but it is a heal­ing process.

“Grad­u­ally, if you can bear with this, you will find that you are no longer think­ing about ‘my point of view’ and ‘your point of view.’ Instead you say, ‘There is a point of view that is com­mon to you and me, which we can dis­cover together.’ Once you can do this, the quar­rel is over. You may not have reached a solu­tion – usu­ally, in fact, there is a lot of hard work left to do. But the quar­rel itself is over, because now you know that there are two of you play­ing on the same side against the problem.”

Read more from the book Patience

A Practice for Today: Choosing and Using a Mantram

Posted on December 28, 2011 by  | Add Comment

“Choose a mantram that appeals to you deeply from the list of those I rec­om­mend. (If you are in doubt, I rec­om­mend Mahatma Gandhi’s mantram, Rama, Rama.) Once you have cho­sen, do not change it.”

- 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.

Click here for a list of mantrams rec­om­mended by Easwaran.

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 40

Posted on December 26, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 40th in a long series of talks Eknath Easwaran gave on The Imi­ta­tion of Christ by Thomas a Kem­pis. In this talk Easwaran con­tin­ues to read and dis­cuss Book 3, Chap­ter 8, “Of a Mean Con­ceit of Our­selves in the Sight of God.”

“By our­selves, in our own right, we are such fee­ble crea­tures that Thomas a Kem­pis reminds us that it is because of the love of God, who is present in our hearts, that we can do great things, achieve great things, and con­tribute great things to the human family.

“In other words, as long as I am inter­ested in my own petty, per­sonal pur­suits, I do not have access to the vast reser­voir of love, wis­dom, and cre­ative capac­ity for ser­vice that is ready to be given to me if only I would turn my back upon myself and live for the indi­vis­i­ble whole that is divine.

“There is a cen­tral con­tra­dic­tion here which often can be exas­per­at­ing, because we can­not eas­ily see that it is by deny­ing myself that I ful­fill myself, that it is by for­get­ting myself that I find myself. This is the law gov­ern­ing life, that it is in for­get­ting myself com­pletely that I remem­ber my true per­son­al­ity, which is divine.”

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

Easwaran on Christmas

Posted on December 23, 2011 by  | Add Comment

Christ­mas shop­ping, even when it’s sim­pli­fied, can feel drain­ing. Easwaran helps us get back in bal­ance in this excerpt from a talk on the Prayer of Saint Francis.

“The great excite­ment at Christ­mas has become look­ing in your stock­ing and open­ing presents,” he writes. “But our needs are much too big to be sat­is­fied with things, no mat­ter how many we can man­age to get. It often seems that the more we try, the more acutely we feel those needs. What I would say is, ‘Don’t you want to find your stock­ing filled with good things every morning?’

“We can, every morn­ing right after our med­i­ta­tion, only we can­not expect to find our stock­ing filled if we leave it hang­ing there full of stuff. Just as with Krishna’s flute, there will be no room for the Lord to put any­thing in unless we empty our­selves every day by giv­ing all we can in the way of kind­ness and lov­ing help. Then every morn­ing we will find our­selves full again: of love, of under­stand­ing, of for­give­ness, and of energy with which to carry these to others.

“Every day we can receive these gifts and every day we can share them with all, whether peo­ple are par­tic­u­larly friendly with us or not. The more we share, the more we will win the love and respect of all — and the more we win their love and respect, the less our tur­moil and trou­bles. Bur­dens will lie very lightly on us.

“For every­body who has prob­lems or who wants to go for­ward steadily on the spir­i­tual path, my recipe would be, ‘Hang up an empty stock­ing and every day you will find your life fill­ing more and more with joy.’”

A Strategy for Staying Kind: Using the Director’s Cut

Posted on December 23, 2011 by  | Read Comment | Add Comment

A friend shared this story: “A few days back, some­one I barely know gave me a big speech on how I have made incor­rect choices in life and what I should be doing instead. Unfor­tu­nately, I got very agi­tated and blew up.

“I felt quite bad about using harsh words and went for a mantram walk as a way to for­give myself and move on. Then after a phone sat­sang with dear friends and watch­ing one of Sri Easwaran’s DVD talks titled ‘Break­ing chains,’ I came up with a sim­ple strategy.

“The next time when I was in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion I tried to look at the whole sit­u­a­tion as a skit (lots of poten­tial to make it funny). When the mind started paint­ing agi­tated sto­ries, I applied the director’s cut, shouted “Rama” in my head and reminded myself that the skit is a com­edy so there is no room for tragedy. :)

“I was able to lis­ten to the other per­son with more detach­ment and humor. It enabled me to be com­pas­sion­ate with oth­ers and with myself as no one is per­fect. There is no point in beat­ing one­self up about any­thing or hold­ing a grudge against oth­ers. Life is too short not to be kind and lov­ing to all.”

Our friend was using his mantram, Rama, to help him­self stay calm and cheer­ful under pres­sure. We thought there were some good tips here for main­tain­ing har­mony in the hol­i­day season.

A Practice for Today: Putting Others First

Posted on December 21, 2011 by  | Read Comment | Add Comment

“Prac­tice putting the wel­fare of other peo­ple first, before your own. You can begin within the cir­cle of your fam­ily and friends, where there is already a basis of love and respect on which to build.”

– 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.

The Face Behind All Faces

Posted on December 19, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This excerpt is from a talk given by Eknath Easwaran in April, 1987, on the evening before Vishu, a South Indian spring fes­ti­val. The tra­di­tional cer­e­mony to cel­e­brate Vishu, which is focused on an altar dec­o­rated with a holy image and a small mir­ror adorned with Spring flow­ers, pro­vides Easwaran with his theme: learn­ing to see the divine in our­selves and oth­ers – what the mys­tics call the Face behind all faces.

Accord­ing to Easwaran, when we gain this vision of the Self we achieve the pur­pose of life. We see the divine “In all of us, in our home, in our school, in our clinic, in our com­mu­nity, in our coun­try and our world. This is not just a prophetic vision. It’s a prac­ti­cal real­iza­tion, attested to by all the great mys­tics of all the great religions.”

The com­plete talk, DVD 8: What Is Life For? is avail­able here.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

New Easwaran E-books: Deep inspiration for 99 cents

Posted on December 16, 2011 by  | Add Comment

What can we do to help new read­ers to find Easwaran, now that so many of the tra­di­tional book­stores have dis­ap­peared? One answer is to take some of Easwaran’s finest pub­lished writ­ings and repack­age them ele­gantly into short e-books, Easwaran sam­plers, avail­able on all the lead­ing e-bookstores for a very low price. So, for any­one unwrap­ping a Kin­dle, a Nook, an iPad, or a Kobo reader on Christ­mas Day, we have two e-book essays that we’re call­ing Easwaran Inspirations.

The first of these is How to Med­i­tate. It con­tains chap­ter 1, “Med­i­ta­tion on a Pas­sage,” from Easwaran’s clas­sic Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion, together with the After­word from the same book, “Invi­ta­tion to a Jour­ney.” This lit­tle e-book has been avail­able for sev­eral months now and has been sell­ing quite well.

How to Med­i­tate from Ama­zon — for the Kin­dle e-reader

How to Med­i­tate from Ama­zon UK — for the Kin­dle e-reader

How to Med­i­tate from Barnes & Noble — for the Nook

How to Med­i­tate from the Apple iBook­store — for iPad, iPhone, or computer

How to Med­i­tate from the UK Apple iBook­store — for iPad, iPhone, or computer

The sec­ond is How to Under­stand Death, at this point avail­able only at Ama­zon. The con­tent for this short e-book is the lead arti­cle, “The Les­son of the Lilac,” from the Sum­mer 2011 Blue Moun­tain jour­nal. This arti­cle has been highly acclaimed by our jour­nal readers.

How to Under­stand Death from Ama­zon — for the Kin­dle e-reader

How to Under­stand Death from Ama­zon UK — for the Kin­dle e-reader

We’re plan­ning to issue more titles in this series, includ­ing a new one for Jan­u­ary 1st, 2012.

Do please spread the word about these short e-books, and let us know what you think of them. We hope they will encour­age new read­ers to explore Easwaran’s wisdom!

A Practice for Today: Learning to Meditate

Posted on December 14, 2011 by  | Add Comment

“This is the heart of my pro­gram: med­i­ta­tion for half an hour every morn­ing, as
early as is con­ve­nient. Early morn­ing is best, before the activ­i­ties of the day begin.”

- Eknath Easwaran

Pas­sage med­i­ta­tion is the silent rep­e­ti­tion in the mind of mem­o­rized inspi­ra­tional pas­sages from the world’s great reli­gions. Click here for instruc­tions on pas­sage meditation.

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 39

Posted on December 12, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 39th in a long series of talks Eknath Easwaran gave on The Imi­ta­tion of Christ by Thomas a Kem­pis. In this talk Easwaran con­tin­ues to read and dis­cuss Book 3, Chap­ter 7, “Con­ceal­ing Grace Under the Guard of Humility.”

“This word grace is very dif­fi­cult to under­stand until we have expe­ri­enced a lit­tle of it in our own life. In one of the beau­ti­ful Sufi sto­ries a great devo­tee of the Lord, called Allah, gets very frus­trated and almost thrown into despair when he finds that there has been no response to his many years of devo­tion to the Lord by call­ing upon him all the time. So one day, in his dark despair he com­plains to the Lord, like a for­lorn lover, by say­ing, ‘How long have I been call­ing you, Lord, and you have never answered.’ And there comes a whis­per from the Lord within him say­ing, ‘Who do you think has been mak­ing you call me?’ In other words, even to turn our heart to God, to be able to be inter­ested in the spir­i­tual life and to have even a desire to love him, to know him, and to be united with him, this itself is proof of divine grace. And to me, look­ing at it in the light of my own small spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence, the very fact that all of us gather here so earnestly and so reg­u­larly is itself proof pos­i­tive that in a small way we have received the grace of the Lord, who is within all of us.”

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.

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