The Great Transformer

Posted on January 30, 2012  | 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





 

     



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