Last week in our new Mantram Handbook book study, Easwaran put before us the lofty goal of establishing the mantram in our consciousness with the result that “you are delivered from the turmoil of the mind.”
This week let’s continue by reading pages 22–27 where he sets to work detailing the path to that goal, beginning with choosing a mantram. The approach to which he responds, Easwaran explains, “is one which the Buddha would call ‘the way of the open hand.’ The spiritual teacher says, ‘I don’t have a closed fist; my hand is open. Everything I know that can help you cross the sea of life is yours for the asking.’”
We are working together as a satsang community to make the most of this great gift.
Last week we began our book study of The Mantram Handbook. Systematically reading a whole volume from Easwaran is a great habit, and we’re pleased to be practicing it together.
This week let’s read from page 18 to the top of page 22, where Easwaran illustrates the power of the mantram using his personal experience with it. He writes, “Many years ago, after I took to meditation, I started treasuring every moment that I could repeat the mantram.” What a desirable state of affairs!
He describes how his whole frame of reference changed, and all his worldly success ceased to satisfy. “The ground shifted under my feet, and I turned inward,” Easwaran relates. “It was then that I began to repeat the mantram in earnest, using it everywhere during the day and at night.”
Together, let’s take another step this week to follow our teacher’s vivid example and kindle this earnest desire to repeat the mantram so long and so often that it will become established in our consciousness.
We are now ready to dive into our eSatsang’s second-ever full-length book study! We’ll be reading Easwaran’s Mantram Handbook, starting this week from page 11 to the top of page 18. In his preface, Easwaran outlines some of the essentials:
“The mantram is a short, powerful spiritual formula for the highest power that we can conceive of – whether we call it God, or the ultimate reality, or the Self within. Whatever name we use, with the mantram we are calling up what is best and deepest in ourselves. The mantram has appeared in every major spiritual tradition, West and East, because it fills a deep, universal need in the human heart.”
“But,” Easwaran ends the preface, “nothing I can tell you will have as much meaning as using the mantram for yourself. If you use it, you will know its power.”
We are supporting each other to deepen our mantram practice and know this power together, and we believe the potential effect on our satsang and our communities is tremendous.
An End to Loneliness is the inspiring title and promise of our current reading study, the Spring 2016 issue of the Blue Mountain Journal. In its introduction, Christine Easwaran writes:
In this issue we broaden spiritual support to include what Easwaran calls “the company of saints and sages”: the great mystics of all religions, whom we discover in our practice of the last point in his program, spiritual reading – and, of course, in the inspired words of the passages we use in meditation every day.
In this week’s reading, pages 14–21, Easwaran describes how we need both the human companionship of others following the same disciplines and the transcendent companionship of those who embody our highest ideals and aspirations.
As we study this message from our teacher together on the eSatsang, we continue to be grateful for the protection and nourishment we receive from this community and our collective effort.
Having finished our book study of Take Your Time, let’s return to the rich back issues of the Blue Mountain Journal. In An End to Loneliness, the Spring 2016 issue, Easwaran describes the power of satsang:
“If you are following my eight-point program, my practical suggestion would be to make time to meditate as often as possible with others on the same path. You may read together for a short while or watch one of our videos, but the most important part is meditation. Wherever people meditate together, a healing force is released that deepens the experience for all. As Jesus says, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am present in the midst of them.’”
This week let’s read pages 3–10.
This is also an excellent opportunity to pause and appreciate the power of this dear satsang. As Christine Easwaran notes in the issue’s introduction, the internet has helped enormously for serious meditators seeking fellowship, and this eSatsang is an excellent example. We are grateful for each of you in this wonderful community of devoted meditators from all over the world.
“When the mind is still, you see everybody as your own Self,” Easwaran explains in this week’s final selection from Take Your Time, pages 184–189. As we complete our book study – a first for our eSatsang! – we can appreciate our accomplishment and reflect on how we’ve grown.
Let’s give Easwaran the final word:
“You and I, when the mind is still, see that the mountains and the seas, the forests and the rivers, the animals and the birds, the trees and the plants, all nations, all races, all men and women and children, are one. Once you see this in the silence of your heart, you will never be the same person again. You will return from this summit of spiritual awareness full of practical wisdom, passionate love, and untiring energy which you will want to use for the benefit of all.”
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.”
