Here is one of our meditation passages by Saint Teresa of Avila:
Her heart is full of joy with love
For in the Lord her mind is stilled.
She has renounced every selfish attachment
And draws abiding joy and strength
From the One within.
She lives not for herself, but lives
To serve the Lord of Love in all,
And swims across the sea of life
Breasting its rough waves joyfully.
Imagine if each of us passage meditators could become what this passage describes. What a great contribution we could make to our families and communities – by sharpening up our meditation practice!
This week, we have that opportunity. In our reading selection, Easwaran shares the subtle art of withdrawing attention from distractions and putting more attention on the passage during meditation.
In a world that can be healed by the power of love and peace, every time you sit down to meditate, you give a precious gift: you are slowing your mind. Easwaran explains, “When its desperate whirrings slow down, intentionality and good judgment appear, then love, and finally what the Bible calls ‘the peace that passes understanding.’ ” We are continuing to take a close look at specific factors of our meditation practice.
In this selection, Easwaran shares insights into what it really means to go through your passage “word by word, as slowly as you can.” He also points out that you need to find your own best pace through experience.
In these unprecedented times of climate crisis, many of us find that turning directly to Easwaran through the Easwaran Digital Library gives us strength, courage, and light. This Library offers previously unavailable video and audio talks covering Easwaran’s signature themes across the various decades of his teaching.
As the sun rises around the world each morning, passage meditators are seating themselves in meditation with a collective yearning to become instruments of peace. This month, we’ll study several subtle factors that influence our passage meditation practice, and can make it even more effective. Over the next four weeks, we’ll look at place, posture, pace, and distractions using Easwaran’s book Passage Meditation as a guide. We’re eager to share this great opportunity for looking at ways to sharpen up our practice. What better way than to do it together?
Thank you all for sharing your insights and encouraging messages throughout January. We began the month with the question: How can we contribute to a sense of hope in ourselves and others? In the following article Easwaran writes that “spiritual practices like meditation and repetition of the mantram can unite people for all time.” We hope that our in-depth study of the articles from the Special Issue of the Blue Mountain Journal has given you a well of pure waters to draw on when you feel oppressed by difficulty.
Thank you again for your insightful comments about Easwaran’s message for hope in difficult times. This week, Easwaran imparts a precious insight into how we can use our suffering for the good of all through our meditation practice. He guides us as we ponder our central question this month: How can we contribute to a sense of hope in ourselves and others? Let’s hold on to the tremendous prayer Easwaran offered in the previous week’s reading: “May the Lord of Love grant us all that faith which can never be put out by any storm that blows.”
Thank you for your inspiring reflections and for highlighting the messages of hope in Easwaran’s article. We’re continuing to explore the question: How can we contribute to a sense of hope for ourselves and others? While contemplating this question keep in mind Easwaran’s statement from last week’s reading: “My approach to the scriptures is entirely on this basis: that they are practical manuals to the art of living, and the truths in them can be verified by anyone prepared to undergo the necessary disciplines.” This week we’re diving into Part 2 of Easwaran’s “The Candle of the Lord”.
We’re devoting January once again to a study of the 2018 Special Issue of the Blue Mountain Journal, with its message of applying the mantram to prayers for peace. This journal arrived at the close of 2018 as a response to many friends who were asking the BMCM for guidance during these difficult times. It offers practical spiritual guidance from Eknath Easwaran and Christine Easwaran, and we think we would all benefit from revisiting the inspiration, encouragement, and hope that they can give us as we start 2020.
Easwaran writes: “People look around with fear and suspicion in their hearts, and they see a world to be afraid of, a world of danger. I see a world of choices, a world of hope.” The question we’d like to discuss this month is: How can we contribute to a sense of hope at a time when so many people are facing such major challenges?
Join us for the Mantram Relay on January 1, 2020! Help our worldwide BMCM community to keep the mantram going collectively for all 24 hours of January 1 and start the New Year with a positive force to deepen our practice and spread peace to the world. You can sign up for a time slot using the button below.
Here’s how it works:
Go to the Mantram Relay spreadsheet.
Find a half-hour time slot that works well for you and sign your name.
Choose a time when you can really focus on mantram repetition in a concentrated and sustained way, e.g. a mantram walk, mantram writing, or even some hard physical work or exercise with the mantram.
When January 1 arrives, give fervor and gusto to your mantram repetition.
Don’t stop there; use the Mantram Relay as a springboard for concentrated mantram repetition each and every day of the coming year.
For a real New Year’s treat please enjoy a 30-minute talk from Easwaran titled “A New Year’s Message.”
This week, we are continuing to apply Slowing Down and One-Pointed Attention to our daily lives, which for many of us are extra full in the month of December.
We would like to remind you of our invitation to join the Mantram Relay. Here is what Easwaran has to say about prayer from the heart:
“Prayer from the heart really means prayer from the depths of the unconscious – not oral prayer, but prayer without words. When prayer arises from the depths of the unconscious like this, tremendous forces – life forces that operate beneath our fragmented, superficial, egocentric awareness – are touched and moved and brought into action. These eternal laws, which are as operative as the law of gravity, open their doors to those who have no personal irons in the fire, who don’t seek any profit or prestige but depend entirely upon the Lord.”
(Easwaran in the Blue Mountain Journal Winter 2018, page 15)
Since the 1980s Easwaran has been calling on his students to take care of the earth, because he could see a crisis ahead. This climate and environmental emergency is now confronting us both at our front door and around the world. Here at the BMCM, we’ve experienced three years of devastating fire seasons in our area. We know that many of Easwaran’s students around the world are also seeing unprecedented changes. Sensitive people everywhere feel deep sorrow at what our Mother Earth, our children, and our children’s children will be facing now and in the future.
In times of great crisis throughout the ages, great mystics have appealed to their students to call out to the Lord for help with all their heart – by constant repetition of the mantram.
Surely Easwaran is calling his students to join together to give our hearts and souls to this prayer from the depths of the unconscious. What better way to start the New Year of 2020 than in a concerted effort to keep our mantrams going throughout that day, and then to keep increasing our mantram repetition even more as the year proceeds?
Join us for the Mantram Relay on January 1, 2020! Help our worldwide BMCM community to keep the mantram going collectively for all 24 hours of January 1 and start the New Year with a positive force to deepen our practice and spread peace to the world.
This month, we’ll focus on giving the gifts of time and attention through the points of Slowing Down and One-Pointed Attention. In our first reading for December Easwaran sets the tone with the following statement: “If we want freedom of action, good relations with others, health and vitality, calmness of mind, and the ability to grow, we have to learn to slow down.”
As this holiday period begins around the world, many of us will be thinking about the gifts we can offer to our families, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. In the eSatsang, we’ll also consider the generosity that is expressed through the gift of our time and one-pointed attention. This is a gift we can give every day, in any season. We’ll sharpen our focus on how we can slow down and give gifts of time and attention more often.
In this week’s reading excerpt Easwaran gives us some fundamental instruction in the repetition of the mantram. These instructions are well worth absorbing no matter how many times you have encountered them. He finishes this excerpt by assuring us that “you… are repeating the name of the Self, who is waiting to be discovered in the depths of your consciousness.”
In our fourth week together we explore with Easwaran a world that offers a treasure trove for spiritual aspirants: the world of night and sleep. Easwaran often tells us that nighttime gives us the opportunity to go forward on the spiritual path.
This week we have the opportunity of viewing a video from an Easwaran talk on this topic.
Each week Easwaran gently but firmly nudges us along in our great journey with the mantram. Can we discover, as he suggests, that “The mantram soon becomes a familiar friend of whom we never grow tired.”
To make friends with anyone you typically spend more time with them. What’s more, a true, very loyal friend will stick with you through thick and thin.
This past week we worked with the mantram in routine times. There is no end to the possibilities, and hopefully you found this task quite approachable. This week we will feature the mantram in challenging situations.
In the reading excerpt for this coming month, Easwaran makes a big claim: “The mantram is the living symbol of the profoundest reality that the human being can conceive of, the highest power that we can respond to and love.” And yet, he assures us, “It is absolutely practical, and it can appeal to our common sense.” It might well take the rest of our lives to explore the synthesis of these two statements.
Let’s continue savoring the joy and inspiration which emerged out of the past month’s celebration of Easwaran’s life and teachings. We can make use of the unified effort and energy of that time and shift our focus to Easwaran’s very practical presentation of Repetition of a Mantram.
Easwaran states in the preface to The Mantram Handbook, “You can begin using and benefiting from this simple spiritual practice, called a mantram, right now.”
Let’s get started and see what he means!
Thank you all for such a rich month of celebration and re-dedication to our eight-point program practice and our Teacher. It’s so wonderful to hear from our worldwide BMCM community! This is a special time to absorb yourself in Easwaran’s talks and writings, as our worldwide passage meditator community joins together in reflection and re-dedication. We have a number of suggestions for you to choose from during this weekend of celebration, honoring Easwaran’s life and teachings. Please check them out and share your reflections with us! We always love hearing from you.
On Saturday, October 26, a local group in Tomales will gather at Ramagiri Ashram with Christine Easwaran to share readings, watch a video, and meditate together. We invite you to set aside time for your own celebration – whether that be a special dedication of your morning meditation, taking a day for a personal retreat, or organizing an event with passage meditator friends. You could do it on October 26 or find another day and time that works better for you.
How would you like to take part in the worldwide celebration of Easwaran’s life and teachings? Create a plan! Check out this week’s post for some ideas, and ways to connect with your fellow eSatsang community around this event.
Thank you all for your wonderful engagement and sharing about our Life Celebration curriculum. We’re so pleased to be together in spirit around this special month. This week, we’re encouraging you to read the passage "The One Appearing as Many” from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad which you can also find on p.192 of God Makes the Rivers to Flow. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad is dedicated to Lord Shiva as the bestower of immortality. We’re pleased to also share this seven-minute video of Easwaran explaining what it means to experience “the One appearing as many.”
How does Easwaran’s commentary add to your understanding of the passage? You might continue last week’s experiment, keeping your eye out for the divine core in people, creatures and nature throughout your daily spiritual schedule. Can you glimpse the divine even in those who rub you the wrong way? We look forward to hearing from you in the comments section.
Throughout the month of October, the worldwide BMCM community is celebrating Easwaran’s life and teachings by reflecting on the theme of “Seeing the Divine Everywhere.” We’ve created a special curriculum, and are sharing it here on the eSatsang.
We will be spending four weeks working through four modules of the Celebration curriculum. Anyone who wants to participate and discuss the material will be welcome to join in the eSatsang conversation. This will be the online hub for meditators and others who are following Easwaran’s teachings around the world to come together for sharing and satsang. We’re hoping that, collectively, we can all take some time to dive deep and reflect on the impact that Easwaran and his teachings have had on our lives.
Be sure to set aside some time on Saturday, October 26 to join our worldwide celebration of Easwaran’s life. More details later, but for now, please save the date! For this week’s reading study, please read and savor the article below, “Seeing God Everywhere” from the Fall 2019 Blue Mountain Journal. Choose one or two sentences or paragraphs that speak to your heart. You might capture them in a way that makes sense to you. Please share your thoughts with us!
