“As long as we look upon joy as something outside us, we shall never be able to find it. Wherever we go it will still be beyond our reach, because ‘out there’ can never be ‘in here.’” – Eknath Easwaran
This week let’s finish Easwaran’s essay “Chasing Rainbows” in Climbing the Blue Mountain, reading pages 67–71.* Drawing on Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita, he helps us see the temporary nature of desire, and the lasting joy found in freedom from the sense of I, me, and mine.
Is there some tip from Easwaran in this reading that you tend to skim over because you have already heard it many times before? Try focusing on it this week.
We have experimented with many different putting others first exercises over the past two months. Let’s repeat those exercises and see if we can each find a way to deepen them, for example by practicing more consistently or via a bit of extra effort or preparation. Here’s our putting others first exercise this week:
As a challenge, try focusing this week on treating others – and speaking about them – with respect. Do this for those you love, those you dislike, and those you tend to ignore. What do you learn by trying this?
Let’s return to Easwaran’s Patanjali talks** for our spiritual treat, this time with Talk 12. The full talk is 70 minutes, but you can listen to part of it now and when you return the player will resume where you left off. If time is short, consider starting with just the first five minutes, in which Easwaran emphasizes that to practice meditation, it is not necessary to understand the philosophical background of meditation.
* For those using electronic versions of Climbing the Blue Mountain with different page numbering: this week’s reading is the remainder of the chapter “Chasing Rainbows,” beginning with “The vast majority of human beings….”
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