Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 44

Posted on February 20, 2012 by  | Add Comment

This is the 44th 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 12, “Of the growth of patience in the soul, and of striv­ing against concupiscence.”

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the begin­ning of this talk.

“One of the home­li­est qual­i­ties on the face of the earth, which is sel­dom appre­ci­ated, is patience. It’s good to long for purity and per­fec­tion, but it’s even bet­ter to be patient, because with­out patience it is not pos­si­ble to dis­cover the purity and per­fec­tion that is in us all the time.

“If we look at many of our prob­lems in daily liv­ing, they can be ame­lio­rated to a great extent by increas­ing patience. Unfor­tu­nately patience can­not be learned in the grad­u­ate school or even by writ­ing a the­sis on it. Patience can be learned only by one unique way, try­ing to be patient.

“The Com­pas­sion­ate Bud­dha will sim­plify some of the most com­pli­cated prob­lems of life by say­ing to his dis­ci­ples when they would ask, ‘Blessed One, how do we become patient, like you?’ He will say, ‘By try­ing to be patient.’”

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 Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 43

Posted on February 6, 2012 by  | Add Comment

This is the 43rd in a long series of talks Eknath Easwaran gave on The Imi­ta­tion of Christ by Thomas a Kem­pis. In this talk Easwaran con­tin­ues to reads and dis­cusses book 3, chap­ter 11, “That the long­ings and desires of our hearts are to be exam­ined and moderated.”

Here is an excerpt from the begin­ning of the talk:

“Almost all of us believe that when a desire comes up in our mind, for any­thing, it has to be sat­is­fied, and par­tic­u­larly in the early days of our life, we are not even aware that it is often the desire pick­ing us up, hold­ing us aloft, and throw­ing us away.

“I feel a great sense of affec­tion and sym­pa­thy for the teenager, who is very often in this con­di­tion of being picked up, held aloft, and thrown away, and he is in a sense at the mercy of his glands, and it’s good there­fore, par­tic­u­larly in deal­ing with teenagers, never to ridicule them, look upon them as undesirable.

“If we can remem­ber that it takes a long, long time of stren­u­ous, heroic endeavor to be able to gov­ern our desires to such an extent that now you pick up your desire, hold it aloft, and throw it away if it is unde­sir­able. It can be done by con­stant prac­tice, draw­ing upon the power released in med­i­ta­tion. This very exhil­a­rat­ing achieve­ment can be reached by every one of us, how­ever ordi­nary we may be.

“As we draw upon the power of our med­i­ta­tion and begin slowly to resist small desires, which often come to us as a crav­ing of the palate, or as a desire to acquire some need­less arti­cle, we can slowly start resist­ing these desires in our daily life on a small level.”

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 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

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 41

Posted on January 9, 2012 by  | Add Comment

This is the 41st 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 9, “That All Things are to be Referred unto God as Their Last End.”

Here is a brief excerpt:

“I take great delight in talk­ing about my spir­i­tual teacher, my grand­mother, who could not read, who could not write, who did not know any­thing about edu­ca­tional psy­chol­ogy. Very often, when liv­ing in an ortho­dox Hindu soci­ety, I would some­times ques­tion some of its assump­tions, and try to go against them. My grand­mother often would sup­port me, even though she was observ­ing them her­self. I had all the mak­ings of a suc­cess­ful rebel, but I never got an opportunity.

“It’s rather frus­trat­ing, you know, when you are just grow­ing up and ready to rebel and actu­ally know thir­teen dif­fer­ent ways of rebelling... and the per­son against whom you want to rebel qui­etly comes and says, ‘The capac­ity to rebel is part of our human wealth, and what we have to rebel against is our own self­ish­ness, our own self-will, our own separateness.’

“It is for this pur­pose that the Lord, when he is mak­ing the human being, he puts in a good quota of the rebel­lious stuff.... So, I would say over and over again, in our own fam­ily, in our own com­mu­nity, to be able to rebel against our lim­i­ta­tions and our foibles and our sep­a­rate­ness is rightly using the capac­ity to rebel, which is also a God-given one.”

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 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 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

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

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

Easwaran on Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 36

Posted on October 31, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 36th 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 5, “Of the Won­der­ful Effects of Divine Love.”

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 Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ: Talk 35

Posted on October 17, 2011 by  | Add Comment

This is the 35th 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 4, “That We Ought to Live in Truth and Humility.”

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


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