The Great Transformer

Posted on January 30, 2012 by  | Add Comment

This excerpt from Eknath Easwaran appeared in the Win­ter 2008 issue of our quar­terly Blue Moun­tain journal.

“In my col­lege days in India I was on the debat­ing team, and I enjoyed debat­ing very much. I enjoyed prepar­ing ahead of time to present both sides of the issues that the debat­ing mas­ters pro­posed. And when fac­ing a well-spoken and well-prepared oppo­nent, I enjoyed the inten­sity of debate itself. For me it had all the drama of an ath­letic event, with its pos­si­bil­i­ties for mas­tery of a dif­fi­cult skill and for grace under pressure.

“What I didn’t like, how­ever, was the feel­ing of intense stage fright that I felt for about an hour before each debate was to begin. Dur­ing that hour, I suf­fered all the well-known symp­toms of this com­mon mal­ady: sweaty palms, irreg­u­lar breath­ing, a pound­ing heart, and, worst of all, the ques­tion that would go through my mind over and over: Why did I ever join the debat­ing soci­ety? And the anguished answer: I wish I never had! I can’t go through with this; I can’t go through with this. 


“I was a young Hindu boy, from a small vil­lage in Ker­ala State, South India, and it was my first year at a Catholic col­lege where Eng­lish was the medium of instruc­tion. All debat­ing was, of course, done in Eng­lish. I had stud­ied Eng­lish in my high school, but it was not my native lan­guage. Need­less to say, I felt inse­cure about my abil­i­ties to speak Eng­lish on the debat­ing platform. 


“There I was, just start­ing my col­lege career, with a love for pub­lic speak­ing and espe­cially for debat­ing, about to give it all up because I couldn’t bear that hour of ter­ror before step­ping up onto the plat­form. Yes, it was unrea­son­able; but it seemed an obsta­cle I just couldn’t overcome. 


“Then I went to my grand­mother, my spir­i­tual teacher, and asked her what to do about the anx­i­ety that gripped me when­ever I had to stand and speak before an audi­ence. She told me not to dwell on the anx­i­ety, but just to keep repeat­ing in my mind the words Rama, Rama, Rama. I knew this was a mantram that my granny used. When I was a child, I used to wake up every morn­ing in our spa­cious ances­tral home to the sweet sound of her singing her mantram as she swept the court­yard with her coconut fiber broom. At that time I didn’t give the mantram much thought; it was just some­thing I heard every morn­ing from the lips of some­one I loved very deeply. 


“So I knew that Rama was used as a prayer or mantram, but I wasn’t a par­tic­u­larly devout young man, and my unspo­ken reac­tion to my granny’s advice was, ‘That’s too easy, too sim­ple, too mirac­u­lous.’ I was skep­ti­cal, but such was my love for my grand­mother that I tried it any­way. ‘I hope it works,’ I said, and the next time I sat on the plat­form wait­ing my turn to speak, I kept repeat­ing the mantram in my mind. It seemed to help. 


“After that, when­ever I was called upon to debate, I would silently repeat the mantram before­hand, and after a while I said, ‘I think it works.’ I would still get a few but­ter­flies in my stom­ach, but I no longer suf­fered from a pound­ing heart and irreg­u­lar breathing. 


“Then I began to use it on any occa­sion that I found stress­ful. Today, after many years of using the mantram, I can say, on the strength of my own per­sonal expe­ri­ence, ‘I know it works.’


“Thanks to the wis­dom of my grand­mother, I enjoyed debat­ing through­out my col­lege career, which was crowned by the day our team won the inter­col­le­giate debat­ing cham­pi­onship. Later in life, also due to her bless­ings, I have enjoyed two careers involv­ing pub­lic speak­ing: one as a col­lege pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish and one as a teacher of med­i­ta­tion. And I have never been par­a­lyzed by stage fright, all because I fol­lowed her sim­ple advice to ‘just repeat Rama, Rama, Rama.’”

Read the entire arti­cle here

Passage Meditation now in Chinese

Posted on January 28, 2012 by  | Add Comment

We were delighted to open our copies of a new for­eign edi­tion of Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion in sim­pli­fied Chi­nese, with a smart jacket design and a beau­ti­ful photo of Easwaran, as you can see below. The pub­lisher is Bei­jing Zhengqing Cul­ture and Art, brought to us by our agent, Big Apple Tut­tle Mori, and the book has already sold 3,000 copies over the last twelve months.

Retreats in Phoenix (Jan 28th) and Los Angeles, Encino (Feb 11th)

Posted on January 27, 2012 by  | Add Comment

From our Pro­grams staff: Pas­sage med­i­ta­tion is meant for peo­ple who live in the midst of the world, inter­act­ing with fraz­zled rel­a­tives and grumpy gro­cery clerks. It’s meant for peo­ple who yearn to dwell in peace and com­pas­sion while still get­ting the dog to the vet and the kids to school on time.

Does that sound like you? If it does, then you also know how hard it is to put Easwaran’s teach­ings into prac­tice dur­ing daily hec­tic activ­i­ties, and to access his wis­dom when you really need it.

We invite you to join us at a pas­sage med­i­ta­tion retreat to learn and prac­tice this great art. If you are com­ing to your first retreat, you will dis­cover the power of pas­sage med­i­ta­tion and how you can start prac­tic­ing to see the ben­e­fits in your own life. If you are return­ing, you will spend your retreat qui­etly weav­ing the eight points through­out your day or week­end, bring­ing calm and replen­ish­ment. It will also be a time of engag­ing actively with Easwaran’s teach­ings, per­haps bring­ing us to a new level of con­nec­tion with his teachings.

The retreat pre­sen­ters, life-long stu­dents of Eknath Easwaran, span a range of back­grounds, careers, and ages. Our com­mon­al­ity is our prac­tice of pas­sage med­i­ta­tion – it’s cen­tral to our lives and we’re pas­sion­ate about this practice.

For more infor­ma­tion about pas­sage med­i­ta­tion retreats, includ­ing pre­req­ui­sites and dates, please call us at 800.475.2369 or visit www.easwaran.org/retreats.

A Practice for Today: Training the Senses

Posted on January 25, 2012 by  | Add Comment

“In the food we eat, the books and mag­a­zines we read, the movies we see, the tele­vi­sion shows we watch, all of us are sub­ject to the dic­ta­tor­ship of rigid per­sonal likes and dis­likes. To free your­self from this con­di­tion­ing, prac­tice jug­gling with your likes and dis­likes cheer­fully when it is in the inter­ests of those around you — or yourself.”

- Eknath Easwaran

Train­ing the senses means over­com­ing con­di­tioned habits and learn­ing to enjoy what is ben­e­fi­cial. Click here for instruc­tions on this point.

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 42

Posted on January 23, 2012 by  | Add Comment

This is the 42nd 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 10, “That to Despise the World and Serve God is a Sweet Life.”

Here is an excerpt from the begin­ning of the talk:

“Some of the words that we come across in Thomas a Kem­pis do not exactly mean what they mean in a mod­ern short story. The word ‘despise’ for exam­ple: despis­ing the world means not being self­ishly attached to the things of the world, not going after what promises to bring us ulti­mate sat­is­fac­tion, and usu­ally brings us more and more frustration.

“In order to lead the spir­i­tual life, we are told that any kind of self­ish attach­ment, whether it is to money or mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions or to peo­ple, will bring higher and higher obsta­cles in the way of our liv­ing in abid­ing joy and unas­sail­able secu­rity. This is not some­thing we read about in books. This is some­thing that we expe­ri­ence in every­day life. If you want to ver­ify the words of Jesus the Christ, or the Com­pas­sion­ate Bud­dha, we can ask any­body who is often in great tur­moil, per­haps even in great dis­tress, how much of his time or her time is spent on brood­ing on him­self or herself.

“On the con­trary, if you come across any­one who is an unas­sail­able state of joy and secu­rity, you can con­clude and ver­ify it by observ­ing him or her that they hardly think about them­selves. Despis­ing the world in this sense means turn­ing our back upon what dri­ves us to pur­sue money, mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions, plea­sure, power, or pres­tige in the belief that they will bring last­ing joy to all of us. What brings last­ing joy to every­one is right within ourselves.

“My spir­i­tual teacher, my grand­mother, used to nar­rate a very homely story of a young woman get­ting mar­ried. On the occa­sion of the Hindu mar­riage in many parts of India, they tie what is called a man­gala sutra around the neck of the bride. This is usu­ally of black thread, and nowa­days, the black thread is encased in gold, but I still think right inside there is the black thread. Sutra means thread, man­gala means ‘of joy.’ In mar­riage, what brings joy is remem­ber­ing the joy of the part­ner first and last. This is the man­gala sutra that sym­bol­izes our find­ing our com­plete joy in con­tribut­ing to the joy of our partner.

“My grand­mother would tell a story that a young girl who had been mar­ried sud­denly lost her man­gala sutra and got com­pletely pan­icky. She went search­ing all over the place, pulling out every drawer that she could find, and when she was almost on the point of break­ing down, her mother said, ‘What’s the mat­ter, why are you so panic stricken?’ The girl said, ‘I have lost my man­gala sutra.’ The mother said, ‘Just look around your neck.’ She went and looked in the mir­ror, there it was. And she said, ‘I have been look­ing for it all over the place.’ Just as you and I — we are look­ing for our man­gala sutra — look­ing to our safe deposits, you know. When you go into a bank, the cer­e­mony of going into a safe deposit is really impres­sive. Those doors, which even ele­phants can’t tackle, and you must have two keys, one in your pos­ses­sion, the other in the pos­ses­sion of the keeper of the seal.

“It’s a big cer­e­mony because this is where peo­ple keep their valu­able deposits, and in our case the vault is right within, bur­glar proof, moth proof, rust proof, depre­ci­a­tion proof. I some­times see an adver­tise­ment about, ‘Don’t you want to join the biggest bank?’ We have. We are already mem­bers, the bank of the King­dom of Heaven within where there is abid­ing joy and unas­sail­able secu­rity ready for all of us who are pre­pared to take the trou­ble of just going in, putting our elbow on the counter and say­ing, ‘Can I see my account?’ This is all we have to ask, but we are so busy, wan­der­ing out­side, that none of us ever try to remem­ber that the source of all joy and the source of all secu­rity is within us, under every circumstance.”

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

“Any new videos?” Another chance to see how Easwaran turned to meditation

Posted on January 20, 2012 by  | Add Comment

Our friend Christy was ask­ing us over break­fast in the retreat house if the BMCM has pro­duced any new videos of Easwaran. We asked her if she’d seen the short video from Novem­ber fea­tured on our web­site – the one in which Easwaran describes very mov­ingly how he turned to med­i­ta­tion. Christy had been trav­el­ing, so she’d missed it. She sug­gested we should pub­lish another post about it: “It’s a great start to the year, in any case.” We agreed, so here it is again:

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

A Practice for Today: Increasing One-Pointed Attention

Posted on January 18, 2012 by  | Read Comment | Add Comment

“When you do more than one thing at a time, you are teach­ing your mind to be scat­tered. That is just the oppo­site of con­cen­tra­tion, which is essen­tial for a good per­for­mance in any field.”

- Eknath Easwaran

One-pointed atten­tion means giv­ing full con­cen­tra­tion to the mat­ter at hand. Click here for instruc­tions on one-pointed attention.

The Thousand Names of God

Posted on January 16, 2012 by  | Add Comment

This excerpt is drawn from a series of talks that Easwaran gave on the Thou­sand Names, an Indian devo­tional text which lists one thou­sand names for God. Over the course of sev­eral years he com­mented on every one of those names, reveal­ing their prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions for daily living.

He returned often to the theme of the repeat­ing a mantram, or name of God, silently in the mind through­out the day as a way to keep the mind peace­ful and secure, even dur­ing dif­fi­cult periods.

The first col­lec­tion of excerpts, enti­tled “The Thou­sand Names of God,” starts by iden­ti­fy­ing the cause of much anger: inflated self-will. It goes on to offer var­i­ous means to rise above angry behav­ior, all of which draw upon the spir­i­tual power released by med­i­ta­tion and the use of the mantram.

The com­plete talk, DVD 12: Using the Mantram to Trans­form Anger is avail­able here.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow

Are you on Facebook? Please visit Easwaran’s new Essence of the Bhagavad Gita page

Posted on January 13, 2012 by  | Add Comment

We’ve recently launched a new page for Easwaran’s new book, Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita, on Face­book – you’ll rec­og­nize the cover. We’ve already posted some of our favorite quotes from the book, and look for­ward to read­ing com­ments from Easwaran’s read­ers. Please visit the page, and let us know what you think of it!

Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita on Facebook

Petaluma Meditation Retreat: January 21, 2012

Posted on January 13, 2012 by  | Add Comment

If you’re inter­ested in learn­ing to med­i­tate and you live near Petaluma in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia, here’s some infor­ma­tion about our upcom­ing retreat with sto­ries from two of our friends.

Rear-ended, suf­fer­ing from whiplash, and on oxy­gen from the para­medics, all Melanie could think of was “I’m miss­ing my med­i­ta­tion class!” She’s been med­i­tat­ing for a year and declares, “Med­i­ta­tion has been mon­u­men­tal — in terms of my health, my peace of mind, under­stand­ing life in a dif­fer­ent way. Now I have tools to use to bring har­mony into my fam­ily life. Before I started med­i­tat­ing I was floundering.”

On Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 21, 2012, the First Pres­by­ter­ian Church of Petaluma, 939 B Street, will host a Blue Moun­tain Cen­ter of Med­i­ta­tion retreat from 9 am to 5:30 pm. Peo­ple will learn to med­i­tate on inspi­ra­tional pas­sages from the world’s great wis­dom traditions.

“I love that we use many dif­fer­ent sources,” Melanie said. “This pro­gram is Chris­t­ian, Hindu, Bud­dhist, and more. We use the pearls of all traditions.”

For years, Kathy was dri­ven to try to do every­thing, not real­iz­ing the pres­sure she was putting on her­self. “I was so caught up in every­thing that I thought I had to do,” Kathy said. “I was dri­ving myself nuts, with­out even know­ing it.” Some­times she would snap at her fam­ily and co-workers. “I would find myself not want­ing to be grouchy, but still being grouchy,” she said.

Med­i­ta­tion was the answer.

Kathy’s hus­band had been med­i­tat­ing for a few months, and she saw improve­ments in him. “I could see how it was help­ing him. The meth­ods are very prac­ti­cal,” she said. “It fits people’s lifestyles whether they’re reli­gious or not.”

For more infor­ma­tion, or to enroll, call the Blue Moun­tain Cen­ter of Med­i­ta­tion at 800 – 475-2369, or visit www.easwaran.org/retreats. The fee is $65 – 140 (slid­ing scale) and includes lunch.


  • 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.

    RSS FeedSub­scribe with RSS

  • Subscribe by email

    Subscribe below to receive a notification via email every Friday with links to our posts of the previous week.

    We will not share your email address with anyone. To change your email address or to unsubscribe, fill in the information for your subscription above and click Unsubscribe

  • Administration

    •