This week’s reading from Take Your Time includes a fascinating analysis of the interval between one thought and another. “This gap of stillness between one thought and another is our safety,” Easwaran writes. When something upsetting happens, “you have only to enter that interval where there is no thought and rest there.” Thus “extending that gap is the secret of an unhurried mind.”
Let’s read pages 177–184 and see what tips we can glean for extending that gap and moving toward a mind at peace.
We have reached the final chapter of Take Your Time. We’ve systematically read a whole volume from Easwaran – which is a great habit to practice together.
This week let’s read from the start of chapter 8 at page 171 to the top of page 177. As this final chapter begins, Easwaran gives lofty descriptions of the goal toward which he is leading us. For example, “To have a still mind means there is a healing silence everywhere. In this supreme state, you are absolutely fulfilled.” And as always, he is utterly practical regarding the path to get there. Here he shares a colorful anecdote from a favorite mystic:
“Sri Ramakrishna, a great nineteenth-century Bengali mystic, used to say similarly, ‘When you go to a mango tree, you don’t go to count the leaves. Get up into the tree, pluck a mango, and eat it; then you will know about mangoes.’ When it comes to the benefits of stilling the mind, there is no substitute for giving it a try and tasting the fruits of it ourselves.”
May we each enjoy some fruits of healing silence this week!
In chapter 7 of Take Your Time Easwaran has been guiding us to realize a higher image of ourselves. “Precious treasures lie within our consciousness,” he writes, boundless joy, and freedom from anger, fear, and greed. And the stillness of mind gained through practice of meditation is the key to this treasury.
This week as we finish the chapter, reading pages 164–168, let’s each take a step toward stilling our minds through the practice of meditation. “And when this state is achieved,” Easwaran relates, “a great teacher of meditation in ancient India makes this quiet statement: ‘Now you see yourself as you really are.’”
Our physical orientation and the pulsating speed of our minds are terrible obstacles to realizing a higher image of ourselves, Easwaran explains in this week’s reading, from page 158 to the top of 164 of Take Your Time. And the mantram, he assures us, can help on both counts. “The mantram has immense power to slow down the speed of the mind,” Easwaran writes. “At the same time, it helps to fill our consciousness with a higher image of who we are.”
This week let’s pour energy into the mantram, and thus “remind ourselves of our true nature and hold before our mind’s eye this highest image of ourselves.”
“Only rarely does someone arise to remind us that we are not incomplete but whole – not imperfect physical creatures, but essentially spiritual beings whose greatest need is simply to discover our real nature.”
In Chapter 6 Easwaran urged us to use the spiritual skills we’ve been building throughout our book study to cultivate beautiful personal relationships with others. Now in Chapter 7 he asks us to look inside. Only by discovering who we truly are, he explains, can we find abiding joy and be of lasting service. This week let’s start this chapter by reading pages 153–157.
As we end “Time for Relationships,” chapter 6 of Take Your Time, Easwaran continues to help us understand the connections between slowing down and fulfilling relationships – and between developing patience and learning to love. He is showing us the way to a more fulfilling life. And he says the destination is not totally unfamiliar:
“…in those rare moments of self-forgetfulness that come to all of us, when you forget your petty, personal desires in helping your family or community or country, you pay a brief visit to heaven right here on earth.”
May we each take time for relationships this week and experience a little visit to heaven on earth.
Cultivating beautiful personal relationships is the focus of Chapter 6 in Easwaran’s Take Your Time. And this theme runs throughout the book. In every chapter Easwaran is helping us make our lives more fulfilling by nurturing personal relationships.
This week let’s read pages 135–142. Here Easwaran gives inspiring stories of how his granny taught this precious skill. And he helps us understand the obstacles that stand in the way of beautiful relationships:
“In most disagreements, it is really not ideological differences that divide people. It is often self-will, lack of respect, putting ourselves first instead of the other person. Sometimes all that is required is listening with respect and attention to the other person’s point of view.”
Love, trust, and respect, he explains, come naturally when self-will subsides.
We set aside our book study of Take Your Time the past two months as we joined together in celebration of Easwaran’s life and teachings and then focused on absorption in meditation by studying the new issue of the Blue Mountain Journal. Now let’s return to Take Your Time, picking right back up with the start of chapter 6 on pages 127–135. Here Easwaran warns us not to take for granted the notions of modern progress, speed, and efficiency. He calls us instead to take time for relationships and to cultivate what is essential: “the timeless values and fundamental virtues that make us human.” And Easwaran makes clear that this effort builds on the skills we’ve been training throughout our book study:
“If we have been slowing down the pace of our life, practicing one-pointed attention, and loosening our likes and dislikes, we should begin to see the benefit of these new patterns in all our relationships. For these are some of the tools that can help us make for ourselves a personal world rich in companionship.”
Meditation: From Distraction to Absorption, the new Fall 2021 issue of the Blue Mountain Journal, has been our focus the past several weeks. As we now conclude our study, Easwaran gives us a glimpse of the almost indescribable goal of meditation and its final approach as we read “In the Final Stages” on pages 49–59, and “A Summons from the Depths of the Heart” which urges us toward that goal, on page 61.
The destination is exalted, but the path to get there involves familiar effort: “In these last stages of sadhana, we are trying to keep consciousness in a continuous, unbroken channel. The morning and evening periods of meditation set the standard; then we try to extend these periods of one-pointed attention through the rest of the day. While we are working at something, we give the job our complete attention. And the minute the job is over, we start the mantram.”
And with that effort, we have Easwaran’s assurance of the result: “In this way, with meditation and daily living supporting each other, your spiritual growth will be swift and sure.”
“To re-ignite enthusiasm when it is slowly fading, the best thing you can do is to spend time with a passionately enthusiastic teacher,” Easwaran advises in this week’s reading. How fortunate we are to have a teacher with endless enthusiasm, penetrating insight, and steadfast practicality! The new Fall 2021 issue of the Blue Mountain Journal focuses on Easwaran’s clarion call to give full effort to deepening our meditation. Let’s enjoy his company as we read Easwaran’s “Tips for Tightening Up the Ship” on pages 25–42 and try to answer his call for depth by studying the finer points that he says together determine the quality of our meditation.
“Understanding how meditation works can help a good deal in understanding all the little ways in which it can be improved,” Easwaran begins in this week’s article, “Stages in Meditation,” on pages 21–23 of the new Fall 2021 issue of the Blue Mountain Journal. Let’s read that short article along with two other short pieces: the opening comments from Easwaran on page 3, and the passage “A Prayer for Meditation” on page 43.
Thanks to all who joined in this year’s Celebration of Easwaran’s Life and Teachings, including last Sunday’s culmination! Taking part in that six-week program with you was such a joyful and inspiring experience. Let us each continue our united effort to infuse the spiritual renaissance with a little more life, a little more love. We have Easwaran’s support in this. Our daily meditation and our mantram are healing forces in the world.
And now we have another resource to help us deepen our efforts: a new issue of the Blue Mountain Journal has arrived, Meditation: From Distraction to Absorption. Here on the eSatsang let’s start by reading Easwaran’s article “Spiritual Growth That Is Swift and Sure,” on pages 5–18. Easwaran dives right into the subject of how we can deepen meditation, with a penetrating analysis of the connections with our habits of mind:
“I would go so far as to say that dwelling on oneself is the root cause of most personal problems. The more preoccupied we become with our private fears, resentments, memories, and cravings, the more power they have over our attention. When we sit down to meditate, we cannot get our mind off ourselves. With practice, however, we can learn to pay more and more attention to the needs of others–and this carries over directly into meditation. Less self-centered thinking means fewer distractions, a clearer mind, fewer outgoing thoughts to impede our gathering absorption as meditation deepens.”
We have arrived at the week of our Celebration of Easwaran’s Life and Teachings! You can read details of how to participate this Sunday, October 24 at www.bmcm.org/celebration.
Here in the eSatsang, for the final week of our study of the 2018 Blue Mountain Journal Do You Know Who You Really Are?, let’s read Easwaran’s article “The Goal of Evolution” on pages 52–59, along with his closing statement titled “Going Home” on page 61. There in simple language Easwaran sums up the journal’s theme: “That is exactly what meditation means: going home to the realm of infinite joy, infinite love, and infinite peace that we call God.”
We are now one week away from our worldwide celebration of Easwaran’s life on Sunday, October 24 – we hope you will join us! You can read details of how to participate at www.bmcm.org/celebration.
Here in the eSatsang we have been preparing by studying the 2018 Blue Mountain Journal Do You Know Who You Really Are? This week we will read Easwaran’s article “A Higher Image through the Eight-Point Program” on pages 46–49. Here’s how Easwaran introduces it: “Spiritual growth is a lifelong dialogue between our everyday personality and our innermost Self, between the daily and the divine in the depths of the heart, when the superficial self we are aware of speaks to the deeper wisdom in us all.”
You may also enjoy returning to the meditation passages presented earlier in the journal, on pages 25 and 44.
We are continuing our preparation for Easwaran’s life celebration on Sunday, October 24. In the meantime, there isn’t time to waste. Every day, we each need to infuse the spiritual renaissance with a little more life, a little more love. Let’s all focus on what we are certain of, what we can do from day to day, and how we can join together to strengthen our unity. This six-week program is a time we can all join hands and build intimacy with our teacher to respond to these compelling times. In all the ways you participate, you are strengthening your own practice as well as supporting our beloved community. Your daily meditation and your mantram are healing forces in the world.
This week in the eSatsang, let’s finish Easwaran’s article “The Three Stages of Meditation,” reading pages 38–44 of the 2018 Blue Mountain Journal Do You Know Who You Really Are? In this astounding section, Easwaran describes what happens in the climax of meditation, when we travel deep into our real nature: “In this profound state all petty personal longings, all hungering and thirsting, all sense of incompleteness vanish. We discover, almost in every cell of our being, that deep within us we lack nothing. Our inner reserves of love and wisdom are infinite; we can draw on them endlessly and never diminish them.”
With our worldwide celebration of Easwaran’s life coming Sunday, October 24, we continue to enjoy the 2018 Blue Mountain Journal Do You Know Who You Really Are? You can read details of how to participate in the Life Celebration at www.bmcm.org/celebration.
This week in the eSatsang, we’ll read pages 31–37, which is the first half of Easwaran’s article “The Three Stages of Meditation.” Here he describes the first two stages, where we discover first that we are not our body and then that we are not our minds either. With these discoveries, Easwaran explains, a great deal of power comes into our hands: “You can tune the engine of your mind very much the way you choose—in fact, you can come to have such mastery that even in your sleep, negative thoughts like resentment, hostility, and greed will not arise. You take full responsibility for your mental states as well as for your behavior.”
In this week’s reading, pages 14–23 of the Blue Mountain Journal Do You Know Who You Really Are?, Easwaran explains, “The inner beauty which shows itself in the capacity to give and to cherish grows with the passage of time. It transcends the senses, transcends even mind and intellect. We can grow in beauty until the last day of our life, and the desire to look on everyone as kith and kin will draw people to us for the beauty of our lives.” We are studying this journal in support of our annual Celebration of Easwaran’s Life and Teachings. Let us each be inspired to follow his example, realizing this truth in our lives!
You can read details of how to participate in the Life Celebration at www.bmcm.org/celebration.
As we do each Autumn, we are now entering into our annual Celebration of Easwaran’s Life and Teachings. You can read details of how to participate at www.bmcm.org/celebration.
Here in the eSatsang, to deepen our connection with Easwaran, we will be studying the Blue Mountain Journal Do You Know Who You Really Are? issued in Fall/Winter 2018. We’ll thus pause our book study of Take Your Time, and resume after the Life Celebration. Let’s start the journal by reading pages 5–13. As usual, Easwaran masterfully weaves together story and metaphor. And he draws us into a theme of intimate importance to each of us: our real identity. “Like everybody else,” he writes, “I grew up believing that I was purely physical, a collection of biochemical constituents. What has changed for me since then? Everything. Not two or three things but everything. Through meditation, with the help of the demanding disciplines I followed every day in the midst of a busy life, that belief in myself as a purely physical creature has fallen away completely. Today I do not look upon myself or anyone else as physical. I identify with the Self, pure spirit, the same in all.”
Easwaran ends chapter 5 of Take Your Time with a tantalizing glimpse of freedom and the permanent joy it brings. And he notes that our inexperience with this rarefied state is part of what makes the path there so challenging.
“One of the main difficulties in grasping this is that we don’t have anything lofty to compare with the humdrum pleasures of sensory experience. Until we have tasted something higher and longer lasting, it’s hard to understand what spiritual figures in all ages keep trying to tell us: ‘Permanent joy is far, far higher than pleasure that comes and goes.’”
Let’s read this section, pages 118–124, and savor the taste of freedom.
In this week’s reading, pages 110–118 of Take Your Time, Easwaran continues illuminating the dynamics of likes and dislikes by focusing on a connection “unsuspected today” between food and the mind.
“When your mind is under control, your taste buds will ask politely for food that is good for you. But when you are speeded up, your palate is likely to clamor for its old favorites – and you are going to be much more vulnerable to its demands. In this way, by observing how the mind responds to food, you can get a precious early warning when your mind is starting to get speeded up or out of control.”
Let’s take a fresh look at training the senses through Easwaran’s eyes and continue moving toward living in freedom.
