Blue Mountain Articles

Getting Ourselves Out Of the Way

After centuries of civilization, you would think we would have discovered that there is only one way to be completely happy, and that is to forget ourselves in working for the welfare of others. It’s a perplexing paradox: so long as we try to make ourselves happy, life places obstacles in our path. But the moment we turn away from ourselves to make others happy, our troubles begin to melt away. Then we don’t have to go looking for joy; joy comes looking for us.

In any age you will find a few men and women who have this marvelous gift of self-forgetfulness. In the 2oth century there is the luminous figure of Gandhi, whom I met and walked with as a college student when I visited his ashram at Sevagram. The experience had a tremendous impact on my life.

It was in the evening prayer meeting that I began to understand his secret. Gandhi was seated in his usual place beneath a tree, and as the tropical sun disappeared, men and women around him took turns reciting prayers or singing hymns from different religious faiths. The atmosphere was charged. Although he neither spoke nor moved, I could not take my eyes off him as his secretary, Mahadev Desai, began to recite his favorite verses from the Bhagavad Gita, which begin:

They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.

Gandhi’s eyes closed in meditation, and he slipped into such deep absorption that he scarcely seemed to breathe. Suddenly I understood what I was seeing: he had forgotten himself completely in those words, which embodied the ideals of his life, and in that absorption all the personal burdens a person might carry in such work were lifted from his shoulders. It was a complete renewal.

Gandhi did not conceal his secret. “I am trying to reduce myself to zero,” he said again and again; and in making himself zero, his love expanded to embrace the world. “My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love of mankind.”

It is from this kind of giving that joy comes: not from having a lot of desires that must be satisfied, but from reducing personal desires to free time and energy for helping those around us. In the end, the goal of all spiritual seeking is to live in this state of self-forgetfulness permanently. That is what brings heaven to earth.

One of the most effective ways in which this can be done is by learning to think of other people’s needs before our own. This is perhaps the most important, the most difficult, and the most rewarding challenge on the spiritual path. Tender, truly loving relationships are the essence of serving the Lord in all.

The longer you go on meditating, the more you will see that whenever there is a problem in personal relationships, the cause is usually not differences of opinion or lifestyle; it is self-will. A large ego – mammoth self-will – is like one of those mobile homes you sometimes see under tow on the freeway, with red flags sticking out on both sides. I try to move into the lane farthest away from them, even before I get close enough to see the sign that warns, “Wide Load.” They can suddenly invade your space, drifting into your lane.

Unfortunately, some people are like that too. With so much emphasis on being aggressive and competitive, on “doing your own thing” and “looking out for number one,” millions of people have developed such rampant self-will that they too ought to carry little red flags in their belts, so that others can give them plenty of room to maneuver.

On the other hand, there are a few rare people who will give you their lane if necessary and say, “We’ll pull over; you go ahead.” These are people who live in heaven here on earth. They don’t just drive off onto the shoulder and give up the road; they have a destination too, and it is important for them to get there. But they know how to yield gracefully, how to look far ahead and undo a dangerous situation when they see an accident coming. Such people not only are safe drivers, they make the road safer for the rest of us as well.

If just one person in the family does this, a home becomes heaven. Even an office can become heaven! Putting others first is an infectious example that affects everybody around. In Berkeley in the sixties, an institution sprang up called the Free University. All of us maintain a free university of our own, where we teach by what we are. Especially where children are concerned, the home is a seven-day-a-week school of education for living.

Putting others first does not mean telling them yes all the time. Love often shows itself in the inward toughness that is required to say no to an attitude or desire that we think will bring harm. Parents have to do this often, for children who grow up without hearing no from their parents will be terribly brittle when they have to take no from life itself – and, worse, they will have a hard time saying no to themselves.

But loving opposition, whether to children or to adults you live or work with, has to be done tenderly and without any anger or condescension. Otherwise you are likely only to be adding more self-will to the flames. This is a difficult art. Go slowly, and remember that it is always better not to act in the heat of the moment. Whenever time allows, instead of responding immediately to an unwise demand, take a mantram walk first, meditate, and then speak when you can do so with kindness and patience. Remember, too, that the very best way to change someone is to begin with your own example.

Today, after many, many years of experience, I can look at a romantic relationship and make a fairly accurate guess as to whether it will last. I don’t even have to observe the couple during a crisis; their behavior in little everyday incidents tells me a great deal. All I have to do is ask myself, “Is each person ready to put the other first?” If the answer is yes, that relationship is likely to grow deeper and more rewarding with the passage of time, whatever problems may come. But if the answer is no, that relationship may not be able to withstand even a little of the testing that life is bound to bring. Sooner or later, self-will may rebel when things don’t go its way.

I have heard the most cultured people, in the most affectionate of relationships, saying hurtful things, simply because they have not learned to train the mind never to indulge in any kind of harm. That is the purpose of meditation.

Putting others first is an area in which the mind can often play tricks on us. Interestingly enough, often when we think we are thinking of others, putting their needs first, we are really just trying to please – which means we are really thinking about ourselves. You can see how slippery self-will can be.

An outburst of self-will may seem justified at the time, but for those who are sensitive, a stab of remorse follows all too soon. This is a good sign. It is much better to be sensitive, suffer from our mistakes, and learn not to repeat them than to go through life leaving a trail of broken relationships and wondering why we hurt inside.

This way of learning is terribly painful, but almost all of us should expect it. I, for one, did not manage to avoid it. My mother must have been born kind; in seventy years I don’t remember her uttering a hurtful word to anyone. But I was like everyone else. As children do, I sometimes said hurtful things that I was ashamed of afterward, and when I did it would torment me. I would toss and turn throughout the night, and the next morning I would go straight to my cousin or whoever it was and say, “I hope what I said yesterday didn’t hurt you.” To make it worse, he would look at me blankly and ask, “What was it?”

I used to complain to my grandmother, “This isn’t fair! He is the one who should feel hurt, and he doesn’t even remember it. Why should I be the one who can’t sleep?”

“That is the makings of what is in store for you,” she would say mysteriously. “That is the way you learn.” I didn’t understand, and I could never get her to explain.

But she was right: my motivation grew. If somebody said something rude to me, I learned to hold back a rude response and think, “Oh, no. I don’t want to lie awake at night!” That is how it began. Today that reversal of conditioning has gone so far that if someone says or does something unkind to me, I feel sorry for that person, not for myself.

Self-will, the mystics say, will always cause us pain. The least we can do is learn from it. When you make a mistake and cannot sleep at night because of it, use the power of your pain to drive your mantram deep into your consciousness, where it can heal the wound and help bring the desire not to act on self-will again. The purpose of suffering is for us to learn one of life’s most important lessons: as Jesus patiently points out again and again, it is much better to suffer and learn than to cause suffering to those around us. That is why you will never hear a good spiritual teacher asking anybody, “Are you having fun?” The real question is, are you growing? If you are, well and good, even if it hurts. If we could grow up by having fun, I would be all for it. Unfortunately, however, a diet of fun often stunts human growth.

Lessons like these are learned partly at night, when the past may not let us rest, and that is where the mantram is invaluable. Most of us suffer in our sleep more than we know, when hurtful things we have done and said follow us into deeper consciousness. Recently I came across a haunting passage from the Greek tragedian Aeschylus:

Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

This happens much more often than we are aware of, particularly when we become more sensitive to our own self-will as meditation deepens. Sleep then becomes an important part of spiritual growth.

Here a little preparation can go a long, long way. When you are ready for bed, there are a few simple things you can do to make your night better.

First, have your meditation again in the evening for half an hour. As Gandhi said, we should make prayer the key of our morning and the bolt of our evening.

Then do a little spiritual reading, even if only for fifteen minutes. Choose something that is completely positive and inspiring, either a passage from the scriptures or the direct words of a great mystic who has realized God. There is great poetry in the mystics, delicious humor, profound insight, words with life and power of their own to seal your day with a lofty image of what the human being can become.

Then, after you put your book aside and tuck yourself in, close your eyes and start repeating your mantram until you fall asleep in it.

This is not as easy as it may sound. Other thoughts will try to push the mantram away. But through sheer persistence you can achieve a minor miracle. Between the last waking moment and the first sleeping moment, there is an arrow’s entry into deepest consciousness. If you can send your mantram in through that narrow gate, it will go on repeating itself throughout the night, healing old wounds and restoring your soul for the next day. Those who have learned to do this, in Brother Lawrence’s phrase, go forward even in their sleep.

Today, after many years of practice, my mantram stands at the entrance to my mind throughout the night. If negative thoughts come, it just says, “Sorry, you need a pass.” Don’t bouncers work as long as the bar is open? The mantram too is quite happy to work all night, and when you fall asleep in it, the name of the Lord will run through your mind until you wake up, healing body and mind with its quiet harmony.

This is a harsh world we live in. People have grown used to using rough, unkind language and to doing harmful things. If you can remember not to retaliate in words and actions, eventually you will find it impossible even to think hurtful thoughts. Then your self-will is nearly zero, and instead of causing others pain, your very presence will help and heal. This is the extraordinary light that mysticism throws on the human mind: as self-will is reduced, what shines forth is love. You don’t have to borrow it from the saints and stuff it into your consciousness. It is there in all of us, if only we are willing to get ourselves out of the way.

Ahimsa

In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King in the spring of 1968, Easwaran wrote this stirring call to follow the “unalterable law of love” to solve all conflicts nonviolently. From the beginning of his teaching career until his final days, Easwaran continued to plead for nonviolence, and this piece from 1968 is a milestone article.

It is nine years since I had the great privilege of listening to Martin Luther King delivering in the American idiom at the University of Minnesota the same message that the Compassionate Buddha declared over twenty-five hundred years ago in India: “Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time. Hatred ceases by love. This is an un-alterable law.” Though the voice of King is hushed, his inspired words continue to ring in my consciousness demanding urgent expression in this great crisis in human evolution.

On receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964 Martin Luther King said:

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life which surrounds him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into a hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

This is the timeless message given to the world by the sacred scriptures of all religions, which is expounded from pulpits and exhibited on billboards, but seldom used to resolve conflicts in daily living. It was Mahatma Gandhi who demonstrated for the first time in history that nonviolence can be applied in all areas of life, from the individual to the international.

I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law – to the strength of the spirit.

When all violence subsides in the human breast, we shall find that our natural condition is love. Thus non-violence or ahimsa, to give it the Sanskrit name, is not a negative or passive state but a positive, dynamic, and irresistible force. Just as the law of gravity holds the phenomenal world together, the law of love holds all creatures together in indivisible unity. The proof is that when I hate you, I fall ill: physically, mentally, spiritually. When I love you, I become whole. Hatred kills. Love cures.

It is impossible to perceive this indivisible unity as long as we are skimming on the surface of life, conditioned as we are to believe that we are separate fragments. Isn’t it strange that most of the time most of us focus our eyes on the one percent that divides and are blind to the ninety-nine percent which unites? Meditation gradually corrects this distortion in vision by concentrating our attention on the ninety-nine percent which unites. Only then do we have the freedom to enjoy the one percent difference: the divine diversity called maya in Sanskrit, in which the One appears as many, as you and me wearing black jackets, white jackets, brown jackets, and yellow jackets. The one percent is the physical, which is finite. The ninety-nine percent is the spiritual and infinite.

Einstein has shown us mathematically in his theory of relativity that the speed of light is the only constant of a universe in flux. With this gigantic discovery the old materialistic view of a solid, substantial, permanent universe has become obsolete. This table, which appears solid and square, is a dance of electrons, and my right hand, brown and warm, is just another dance of electrons in a different rhythm.

Nonviolence is based upon this indivisible unity governing all existence, while violence violates this law of unity. Every day we read in the paper of individuals, communities, and countries exploiting one another for selfish profit, prestige, and power. These violent acts can only aggravate the situation, can only widen the gulf, because they militate against the law of life’s unity. Whatever harmonizes with the law of unity is right and abiding. Whatever violates it is wrong and transient. Every religion states that wrong means can never bring about right ends. War can never bring about peace, but only leads to further wars.

As long as I look upon myself as a separate fragment, I am likely to find or make opportunities for imposing my will on others. “I don’t like your long hair. I don’t like your beard. I don’t like your ‘mod’ fashions,” says Dad when his image of proper decorum is violated. He is prepared to fight these surface symbols but fails to provide spiritual values which his son needs direly in his relationship with others. All his life Dad has heard from the pulpit, “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you”; yet he has not been able to convey by precept or example this precious secret for harmonious human relationships given us by Jesus the Christ two thousand years ago.

Just as individuals suffer from excessive self-will, nations, too, suffer from excessive self-will. Just as a self-willed member upsets his family, like- wise a self-willed nation upsets the world family. “I don’t like your political institutions. I don’t like your economic system. I don’t like your social order,” says one nation to another and is prepared to wage war to impose its ideologies on another in the interest of “world peace.” To eradicate war, private and public, we have to extinguish our self-will. To go a step farther, to establish peace on earth and good will among men on an abiding basis we have to renounce war for all time. When differences arise, as they are bound to, each nation must strive for the best interest of the whole world family, giving up temporary national gains, if necessary. This is not a sign of weakness, but of strength. Thus what appears as a temporary loss is a lasting contribution to the welfare of the world. The concessions that governments are making today are strategic moves to gain the vantage point in this balance-of-terror game. John Kennedy warned us, If we do not put an end to war, war will put an end to us. Nikita Khrushchev added, If another war breaks out, the living will envy the dead. We have no choice today. Even as nations we must love to live.

Listen to the wise words of the early American William Penn:

O come, let us follow Him, the most unwearied, the most victorious Captain of our Salvation! To whom all the great Alexanders and mighty Caesars of this world are less than the poorest soldier of their camps could be to them . . . For Christ made himself of no reputation to save mankind, but these plentifully ruined people to augment theirs. They vanquished others, not themselves; Christ conquered self, that ever vanquished them, of merit therefore the most excellent prince and conqueror. Besides, they advanced their empire by rapine and blood, but He by suffering and persuasion. He never by compulsion, they always by force, prevailed. Misery and slavery followed all their victories; His brought greater freedom and felicity to those He overcame. In all they did they sought to please themselves; in all He did He aimed to please His Father.

It must be pointed out here that ahimsa does not mean that we should submit to exploitation by others. According to Mahatma Gandhi,

every nation and every individual have the right, and it is their duty, to rise against an intolerable wrong. I do not believe in armed risings. They are a remedy worse than the disease sought to be cured . . . We have a better method. Unlike that of violence it certainly involves the exercise of restraint and patience; but it requires also resoluteness of will. This method is to refuse to be party to the wrong. No tyrant has ever yet succeeded in his purpose without carrying the victim with him, it may be, as it often is, by force. Most people choose rather to yield to the will of the tyrant than to suffer for the consequence of resistance.

When Gandhiji was asked how he, weighing less than one hundred pounds, worth only two dollars in material possessions, was able to free India from centuries of domination by the greatest empire the world has seen without firing a shot, with nothing but love in his heart, his memorable answer was that he emptied himself of his self-will, and the Lord then used him as a humble instrument to bring about the political emancipation of his country.

Through human endeavor alone it is not possible to break away from the conditioning of a lifetime, to empty ourselves of ourselves, but we must call upon the Lord from the very depths of our being to fill us with himself. This is what we do when we repeat the mantram. It is not a vain repetition, but a purification of the heart. Gandhiji told us, “To take Ramanama from the heart means deriving help from an incomparable power. The atom bomb is as nothing compared with it . . . It is the biggest thing that man can possess.”

International war is the sum total of millions of individual wars, raging in the minds of the people, between what is selfish and what is selfless. To the extent that you and I develop selflessness in our own hearts, to that extent we contribute to peace in our family, community, country, and world. When my kingdom goes, His Kingdom comes, His Will is done on earth as it is in Heaven.