The Magic of Meditating with Others

Posted on July 20, 2011 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

For spir­i­tual liv­ing you need spir­i­tual friends – Easwaran stresses this over and over. Some­times it’s hard to find spir­i­tual com­pan­ion­ship in the mod­ern world, par­tic­u­larly if you’re young. We were very moved by this mes­sage from a young Indian friend, who had been miss­ing spir­i­tual com­pan­ion­ship until she came to the States and found her­self liv­ing near one of our sat­sangs. Here’s how she describes her sat­sang experience:

“It was for the first time I felt at home. I was over­whelmed to find peo­ple with sim­i­lar thoughts who were so very warm to wel­come me to their spir­i­tual fam­ily. This was only about meet­ing them, but the real magic hap­pened when I med­i­tated with them for the first time. I have been med­i­tat­ing since June 2007, but this was the first time when I felt my con­cen­tra­tion deep­en­ing. I felt the words seep­ing in the depth of my soul as if it was not I but my soul itself repeat­ing them for me. The peace, the aura and the energy of med­i­tat­ing together is unimag­in­able. Though we meet only once a week, it is enough to cher­ish it for the entire week.”

Look here for more infor­ma­tion on our spir­i­tual fel­low­ship groups. And do please write in to us via the com­ment box, or email us at info@easwaran.org with the sub­ject line “Time­less Wis­dom blog” if you’d like to share your reflec­tions on spir­i­tual companionship!

Mantram Dancing

Posted on March 9, 2011 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

Need some sug­ges­tions for lift­ing your spir­its? The BMCM has two email fel­low­ship groups (eSat­sangs) that offer lively cor­re­spon­dence and prac­ti­cal tips on apply­ing Easwaran’s eight-point pro­gram of pas­sage med­i­ta­tion, espe­cially if you’re hav­ing a bad day.

Esat­sangs are open to any­one who has been med­i­tat­ing for at least 30 days using Easwaran’s method and who is com­mit­ted to estab­lish­ing a daily prac­tice of pas­sage meditation.

Our inter­na­tional eSat­sang uses a BMCM cur­ricu­lum and caters to pas­sage med­i­ta­tors of any age.

The mes­sage below, repro­duced with per­mis­sion, comes from a young woman who is a long­time mem­ber of our YA, or Young Adult eSat­sang, open to pas­sage med­i­ta­tors aged between 18 and 35. This YA eSat­sang is more infor­mal than the inter­na­tional eSat­sang, but equally ded­i­cated to Easwaran’s teach­ings. Danc­ing is strictly optional, but we very much appre­ci­ated the com­ments on the mantram, and on love.

“It’s been a try­ing cou­ple of months. Besides the stress of a job hunt and where to move, I lost a dear friend unex­pect­edly in the fall and it was the first time I had to con­front Death in a sit­u­a­tion when I felt so sure that Death was unjust and wrong. And then, this has been a dif­fi­cult week.

“I was feel­ing over­whelmed by events out of my con­trol (what else is new) and was feel­ing kinda bummed out. I looked over my med­i­ta­tion pas­sage for the morn­ing, and wrote some mantrams, but couldn’t shake that bummed out feeling. Then I lis­tened to a fan­tas­tic song about how love is timeless.

“I have a weak­ness for pop music and love a good dance song with a ‘throw your hands up in the air’ and was imme­di­ately un-bummed-out by a good mantram dance in my room. It reminded me that ‘love is time­less’ (see point 2 below) which made me feel like a big bur­den had been lifted. So, in case any of you feel bur­dened, I rec­om­mend some mantrams, and maybe a lit­tle dance party. I leave you with two facts in which I put great faith when I feel in need of a pick-me-up:

“1.) My friends, the mantram is awe­some, pow­er­ful, and com­fort­ing to both your­self and others.

“2.) Love is time­less. There is a lot of empha­sis put on God’s love being time­less, but I’ve been struck deeply in the last months by the state­ment that the love in all our rela­tion­ships is time­less. Say what!?!!?!? Log­i­cally, I think I can make sense of it: God is in each of us –> God’s love is time­less –> Our love for each other is time­less. Phew. I find this so com­fort­ing. You can’t really argue with logic.

“With lots of time­less love . . . ”

Slowing Down to Find My Real Self

Posted on September 22, 2010 by  | Add Comment

Recently, a friend from one of our Sat­sangs (fel­low­ship groups) wrote us about how they made a sig­nif­i­cant break­through in real­iz­ing how “slow­ing down” affected their most basic relationships:

“I took my dad to the doc­tor this week, and had to push him in a wheel­chair. I was tired, work­ing too many hours, and felt speeded up. As I pushed him into the doctor’s office, my inside, neg­a­tive thoughts screamed, ‘Run away! Run away! I don’t want to be here.’ But thank­fully, I didn’t run away, and out­wardly I appeared calm and kind.

“It took a lot of energy to act with com­pas­sion. When I got home, I spoke on the phone to han­dle a small per­sonal prob­lem, but my agi­ta­tion spilled out on the per­son on the other end of the phone line; I was very unkind and impa­tient. I lost it!

“At sat­sang later that week, a friend spoke of how she found her­self speak­ing neg­a­tively about the help she was giv­ing an elderly friend. It was affect­ing how oth­ers saw the elderly friend. She vowed not to speak neg­a­tively. I knew I had to do the same.

“The next week, I slowed down to avoid agi­ta­tion, got more sleep, said my mantram more, and stopped the neg­a­tive thoughts by remem­ber­ing my sat­sang friend’s vow. I now knew I was blessed to be able to help my father.”

Deepening Your Practice: Extending Fellowship Activities

Posted on June 29, 2010 by  | Add Comment

Some­times on a retreat you set an intent to deepen your spir­i­tual prac­tice – to add an evening med­i­ta­tion, for instance, or to write the mantram more – but once you’re back home things keep get­ting in the way.

One solu­tion is to extend your reg­u­lar fel­low­ship activ­i­ties, to deepen your prac­tice with the help of oth­ers. Here are a few ideas sent in from one BMCM Sat­sang, all in addi­tion to the usual weekly fel­low­ship meeting:

“Two of our friends wanted to add an evening med­i­ta­tion on the week­end, but found it hard to do on their own. So every Sat­ur­day evening, their door is open to local med­i­ta­tors, and once a month they have a big pot of soup for din­ner afterwards.

“Also, once a year we have sat­sang week­ends at a state park, with group med­i­ta­tions in the morn­ing, noon, and evening, mantram walks, and addi­tional activ­i­ties. These week­ends are get­ting increas­ingly pop­u­lar, so we are now think­ing about orga­niz­ing two a year.”

On a much smaller scale, just meet­ing up with one sat­sang friend occa­sion­ally to med­i­tate, or to watch an Easwaran video together, can offer a big boost!

One Person Meditating Can Change a Community

Posted on June 25, 2010 by  | Comments Off

We often get ques­tions from BMCM Sat­sang (fel­low­ship group) coor­di­na­tors ask­ing how they can attract more mem­bers. Our answer is always that we should each deepen our own med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, and not worry about the num­ber of peo­ple attend­ing the group. But every­thing we do sows seeds, as this lit­tle story shows.

“We’ve been hold­ing a sat­sang at our local church, for years. Our min­is­ter is very sup­port­ive, and we’ve run the BMCM four-week intro­duc­tory course for new peo­ple reg­u­larly. Only a hand­ful of those attend­ing it have set­tled to the prac­tice and attended our sat­sang – but all these have told us, months, years later, how much pas­sage med­i­ta­tion has helped them through dif­fi­cult times. So we don’t get discouraged.

“Just recently we received an unex­pected com­pli­ment. Our church min­is­ter told us that the church has greatly ben­e­fited from the sat­sang — that it has added a new con­tem­pla­tive dimen­sion, and brought many pos­i­tive changes for the whole congregation.”

As Easwaran says, “just one per­son med­i­tat­ing can change a fam­ily, just one fam­ily can change a com­mu­nity, and just one com­mu­nity can change the country.”

A Great Gift

Posted on June 9, 2010 by  | Add Comment

Some­times we get the ques­tion, “Why do you think sat­sang (spir­i­tual fel­low­ship) is so impor­tant that you talk about it all the time?” Here’s a recent mes­sage from a pas­sage med­i­ta­tor extolling the ben­e­fits of a new BMCM Sat­sang start­ing up in the area.

“A great gift this year was the form­ing of a new Sat­sang here. Group med­i­ta­tion and watch­ing videos of Sri Easwaran, hear­ing his dear laugh and see­ing his face, with both the smile that cap­tures the heart and the thought­ful­ness in his eyes as he so elo­quently brings home a point, has been a great lift to my prac­tice and spreads out­ward to life in general.”

If you have been using pas­sage med­i­ta­tion daily for at least six months (as your only form of med­i­ta­tion) and have attended at least one BMCM pas­sage med­i­ta­tion retreat, you too can start a BMCM Sat­sang in your area. We have lots of resources to help you get started. Send us an email and remem­ber — it’s a “great gift.”

Being Patient with Ourselves

Posted on May 28, 2010 by  | Add Comment

From one of our fel­low­ship groups:

“In a recent sat­sang dis­cus­sion, we noticed how we have a ten­dency to be down on our­selves. If we’re asked in our dis­cus­sion ques­tions where we’re mak­ing progress, and where we encounter chal­lenges, all our con­ver­sa­tion seems to focus on our failures.

“One of us had a copy of your new lit­tle book, Patience, and she showed us a sec­tion near the begin­ning, aptly titled ‘Being patient with our­selves.’ Hav­ing read it out loud, we were duly cheered! And ready to con­tinue the spir­i­tual struggle.”

Many Paths, One Goal

Posted on April 27, 2010 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

Always a “man of the Bha­gavad Gita,” Easwaran drew on the scrip­tures and the mys­ti­cal tra­di­tions of all the world’s great reli­gions. From the begin­ning, he pre­sented pas­sage med­i­ta­tion as uni­ver­sal – open to all. He often quoted Sri Ramakr­ishna, the great 19th cen­tury Ben­gali saint, “there are many paths, all lead to self-realization.”

The BMCM fel­low­ship group in Deer­field, Illi­nois recently relayed to us this spe­cial time they expe­ri­enced together:

“Last night we had a Sat­sang Seder of sorts, since it was the first night of Passover. The group loved using the Hag­gadah. . . singing ‘Dayyenu’ (which is Hebrew for ‘good enough’) and eat­ing matzah. . . . We’ve been study­ing Con­quest of Mind at Sat­sang, look­ing espe­cially at ways to trans­form neg­a­tive think­ing into pos­i­tive ideation. We were able to see the con­nec­tion between the wis­dom in this quin­tes­sen­tial Jew­ish hol­i­day and the wis­dom of Easwaran’s teach­ings. The Dayyenu con­cept is par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant in that it encour­ages us to see how the present moment (while it may appear lack­ing) is good enough as it is, for it con­tains the promise of the next moment and the next, par­tic­u­larly when we can respond to it with hope and faith.”

Easwaran would be pleased for us to wish you all “Dayyenu” – today is good enough.


  • A few times a week we’ll post some­thing here to show­case the time­less wis­dom of Eknath Easwaran.

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