Gratitude to all for sharing insights and encouraging messages throughout September. We spent the month exploring spiritual transformation through the impact of Gandhi’s example on Easwaran. We hope that our in-depth reading study of the Summer 2019 Blue Mountain Journal has given you new ways to envision and strive to transform anger into compassion.
Is there one thing you’ll be taking away from this month of reflection and practice? Do you have something new you can incorporate into your practice of the eight points?
This week, through Gandhi, Easwaran imparts a precious reminder about the uniqueness of our practice of passage meditation: “we become what we meditate on.” Can you see this aphorism illustrated in the story on the eSatsang site? We’re also thrilled to share four passages read aloud by Easwaran and Christine. The first three are passages by Gandhi, and the fourth is “The Way of Love” from the Bhagavad Gita which Easwaran saw embodied in Gandhi. They are all recommended for meditation and we hope you enjoy them.
We’re continuing to learn from Gandhi’s example of transformation seen through Easwaran’s eyes. This week, Easwaran highlights the mantram as a tool for transformation – and one that became Gandhi’s greatest support.
We’d also like to suggest a practical exercise for this week. Try giving extra effort to applying the mantram to negative thoughts or feelings as they arise. You might consider ways to catch the negativity with the mantram – before it grows. Perhaps you might do some mantram walking , or notice new opportunities for mantram moments throughout your day. You might look at this as another pathway into understanding how you can contribute to your own spiritual transformation.
Thank you for your inspiring reflections on last week’s reading from the Summer 2019 Blue Mountain Journal! We’re continuing our conversation as a community on cultivating an understanding of Gandhi’s transformation, through Easwaran’s eyes.
This week, we’ll delve into exploring his transformation in South Africa by reading further in the journal. After reading the next excerpt, please share your reflections on our eSatsang site (link below). We’d love to hear from you, and by offering your ideas you’ll inspire others to do so, too! You might try:
Typing a line or two that really stood out for you – one you’d like to remember
Typing an overall message from Easwaran that resonates with you in some way
Sharing how this story from Gandhi’s life applies to your own context.
In the month of September, we’ll reflect on the Summer 2019 Blue Mountain Journal, “Gandhi & Nonviolence: Love In Action, Transforming Anger.” This special issue was published in honor of the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth and the 20th anniversary of Easwaran’s passing. Its focus is Easwaran’s unique message on the significance of Gandhi’s example: that even ordinary people like us can transform anger into compassion, through the practice of meditation. Over the course of this month, we’ll explore a series of excerpts from the journal through a reading study. We encourage our eSatsang community to share reflections with each other every week so that we can deepen our understanding of Easwaran’s teachings, and gain insights together that we might not have become aware of just from reading these excerpts on our own.
Thank you all for such a rich period of immersion in the eight-point program these past two months. Each of your contributions and endeavors at home has helped us get a better collective taste of “bringing a Tomales retreat home”. We hope you have been deeply inspired by this satsang together. At the same time, we know that attending a weeklong retreat can take your practice and your dedication to a new level. For that reason, we offer sliding scale fees as well as financial aid for our Tomales retreats. If this is your hope, even if it feels like a wild dream today, don’t lose sight of that dream. As Gandhiji says, “What is impossible for man is child’s play for God.”
To close, we’ll have an opportunity to hear from Easwaran. In the 6-minute video below, Easwaran summarizes the insights of the sages of ancient India, and discusses how these insights can transform our daily life and our world.
This week, we’ll focus on the last of the eight points: Spiritual Fellowship and Spiritual Reading. These are topics that are typically experienced in person during a weeklong retreat in Tomales. For us here on the eSatsang, we have the following opportunities to experience these virtually as a community. You might consider joining fellow meditators for a virtual meditation next Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m. Pacific Time. you might join Thomas à Kempis and your fellow eSatsang friends, by spending time with “The Wonderful Effects of Divine Love”. Feel free to just enjoy being with this passage. Is there something you would like to you try? Let us know if there’s already something you do to familiarize yourself with passages in an enjoyable way, and then share your ideas with us!
This week, we’ll look at Putting Others First, one of the more nuanced of the eight points. How you put one person first is not necessarily how you will put the next person first – and it will even vary with the same person from situation to situation. Putting others first is a direct way to reduce our self-will. You may already be putting others first in many ways. This week, see if you can take the opportunity to do one focused selfless act. Perhaps you can help a friend or family member with a physical project in the yard or garden. Or maybe, you’ll take some time to write the mantram for someone going through a difficult time. Decide what is right for you. Give it a try, reflect on the experience, and let us know how it went!
This month we will continue “bringing a Tomales retreat experience home”, by focusing on this year’s BMCM Weeklong Retreat theme of “Deepening Our Meditation.” We’ll suggest ways in which you can get a taste of a weeklong retreat from wherever you are.
This week, we will explore some of Easwaran’s teachings on sense training in a reading study and a practical activity. He shows how we can use simple sense training activities as a means for gathering and focusing our energy so we can direct it towards life’s bigger challenges. In this way, he links sense training to grand qualities like freedom, joy, and loyalty.
Easwaran reminds us that
“By seeking the Self through meditation, we will come to live in awareness of the unity of life expressed in everyone, everywhere, every minute.”
As a practical way to approach this week’s focus, think of an instance in your daily life where you’d like to apply One-Pointed Attention more. Please share this with us! Hearing about your efforts helps us all to develop our skills.
Consider how you might make the most of this opportunity for applying more One-Pointed Attention during the week. To start your experiment, here’s some inspiration from Easwaran in this three-minute video clip about the purpose of training attention.
This week, we will explore how slowing down the mind can increase concentration on the passage, thus deepening meditation. Slowing down can be challenging, but we have many opportunities throughout the day to keep trying. Remember that slowing down isn’t only about pacing, but also about setting priorities. Regarding the current topic of Slowing Down, what are some successes you have had?
Do you have a specific challenge that you’d like tips for? Review the Easwaran reading for ideas, or ask your eSatsang friends!
As we continue our theme of “bringing a BMCM retreat home” we’ll discuss deepening our meditation through the lens of the mantram.
You might carve out some dedicated mantram time this week in a way that works for you. Is there an activity you can do to focus on the mantram? During retreats there are many opportunities for repeating the mantram, such as just before eating a meal, or while taking a walk, lying down for a nap, writing mantrams at the beginning of a workshop, or creating mantram art for someone… you choose! Our reading from Easwaran emphasizes using the mantram to build the will so we can be kind in challenging situations.
Thanks to all of you for sharing your introductions and joining as you can in our exercise of “bringing a BMCM retreat home”. Your reflections are always inspiring because they remind us that Easwaran speaks to each of us in just the way we need. This week, we’ll revisit Easwaran’s teachings about deepening our meditation.
As another way to bring the retreat experience home, you might like to meditate with others this week. Perhaps you have an in-person satsang to facilitate this, or another place to meditate with others. We’ll share a way you can do that! This week, we’ll also continue our reading study in which Easwaran discusses how deepened meditation brings wisdom to every aspect of our lives.
we would like to explore the idea of how you might bring a BMCM retreat experience to wherever you are in the world.
Easwaran felt that our BMCM retreats here in Tomales are essential to his students and to the world. Here are his words when he inaugurated our retreat house, which he named Gokulam, in 1997:
“Come here often, as often as you can. Renew your commitment. Come together to support each other and rededicate your lives to this supreme ambition. This is a waystation on your pilgrimage. This is your second home.”
With this in mind, over the next two months we’ll offer a taste of the retreat experience by focusing on this year’s weeklong retreat theme and providing suggestions so you can experience elements of this retreat from wherever you are. We’ll start with a reading study that emphasizes the theme of this year’s weeklong retreat: Deepening Our Meditation. We’ll be referring to Easwaran’s book Seeing With the Eyes of Love. Feel free to read along if you have a copy of the book, or use the excerpts provided on this site.
This week we’ll wrap up our month-long video study with Part Four of Easwaran’s video talk. Easwaran concludes that the glory of the goal helps us take all difficulties in stride. He promises that the Supreme Goal of life allows us to be at home everywhere, and at home with everyone, all the time.
Is there at least one idea you will be taking away from this month of video study and reflection? Do you have something new you can continue to explore? Have you noticed an impact on your meditation practice?
In this week’s video study, Easwaran vividly describes the beauty of the moon, using a number of phrases in English and Sanskrit. He tells us that we all have the moon in our consciousness, and that there are ways to see the beauty of the moon by making our hearts pure.
In this week’s video study, Easwaran shares an anecdote from the Bhagavad Gita in which Arjuna is caught in the world of duality. Easwaran gives us a number of suggestions to help us understand how we can be equal in pleasure and pain, overcoming our own selfishness.
In March, we tried out a Video Study for the first time on the eSatsang, and many of you told us that you wanted to do again. We are happy to oblige!
This month, we’re shifting our focus to Easwaran’s videotaped talk on the Dhammapada, in a talk in which he describes how living for others brings permanent joy and harmony to our lives. He’ll give a number of practical and realistic suggestions to help us catch a glimpse of this joy.
We will close this study with Part 2 of Easwaran’s article “The Secret of Selfless Action” in the Spring 2019 Blue Mountain Journal. In the comments below, we’d love if you’d share a line or two that really stood out to you, or a practical step you’d like to emphasize for yourself and others.
Is there one thing you will be taking away from this month of reflection and practice? Do you have something new you can add to your practice of the eight points?
This week, we’re starting a new article on work and sadhana, in which Easwaran emphasizes the importance of selfless work. He places before us the promise of learning to work hard without any ego involvement at all. He reminds us that a quieter ego means a stiller mind.
