“[W]e can learn to deepen our will, to strengthen it immeasurably,” Easwaran assures us in this week’s reading, pages 151–155, to close chapter 10 of The Mantram Handbook. And our desire to achieve this is itself a sign of grace:
“The desire to go beyond desire is the longing for freedom rising from deep within us. In the language of Sri Ramakrishna, the Divine Mother has looked upon us from the corner of her beautiful eyes, filled with love for us. When that glance falls on us, there comes the desire to be free, and the will to practice the disciplines which will set us free.”
Easwaran explains that in the early days grace may come as restlessness and dissatisfaction. “If any of this kind of dissatisfaction leads us to turn inward and take up the practice of the spiritual life, that is a sure sign of grace.” Indeed, we feel sure that practicing together with you and this strong community is testimony to that grace.
Note that next week we’ll pause our book study and begin a special curriculum in preparation for our annual Celebration of Easwaran’s Life and Teachings.
Welcome back after our pause to celebrate the life of Christine Easwaran. If you haven’t seen it yet, you might take a look at this special message honoring Christine Easwaran to learn more about Christine and her contribution to Easwaran’s work.
Here on the eSatsang, this week Easwaran highlights the necessary role of detachment for attaining the goal of life, as we continue chapter 10 of The Mantram Handbook, reading pages 144 to the top of 151.
The topic of detachment continues a theme from earlier in this chapter, titled The Goal of Life: “When we overcome our identification with the body, the mind, and the ego, we are living in freedom.” Now Easwaran describes those stages of detachment from body, mind, and ego as a progression, and gives fascinating details of the tasks and rewards at each stage.
Here is one clue that inspired us: “[W]hen we turn our will against the ego, taking advantage of the innumerable little opportunities throughout the day to reduce self-will, then the will is helping us to grow to our full stature.” May we each learn to turn our will against the ego!
Dear eSatsang members,
In honor of Christine Easwaran’s recent passing on Sunday, August 28th, the BMCM will be holding an hour-long special Satsang Live at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on September 4th. We are temporarily pausing our eSatsang curriculum until September 10th when we will return to our normal schedule and format.
We look forward to seeing you on September 4th.
Warmly,
The eSatsang team
Easwaran addresses some of our biggest questions in this week’s reading, pages 139–144 of The Mantram Handbook.
What does spiritual experience of the ultimate reality mean in practical terms? Easwaran gives an infallible test:
“You may have a bumper sticker that says All Life Is One, but if you do not have some measure of control over your thinking process, if you cannot drop a job at will or juggle with your likes and dislikes, if you cannot bear patiently with those who oppose you, then you have not yet realized the unity of life for yourself.”
What is the goal of life, and what is its realization?
“What we are all looking for, even though we may be searching in the most improbable places, is infinite wisdom, infinite joy, infinite love. And this is our real nature. At the very core of our being is a spark of purity, of perfection, of divinity, because the Lord is enshrined in the heart of each of us. When we learn to identify less and less with that which is subject to change and more and more with this core of perfection, we are gradually waking up to our true nature.”
We are so happy to be studying Easwaran and his lofty message with you.
The mantram at the time of death is our focus this week, with implications immediate and profound. Last chapter Easwaran instructed us to conserve our energies and harness the power underlying our desires, to realize the indivisible unity of life. Now he elucidates how that realization can enable us to go beyond death.
“[A]s long as the mind has not been stilled through the practice of meditation and the repetition of the mantram, consciousness will remain in the mind at the moment of death. We will still be identified with the ego, and our last thought will be I, I, I. To repeat the mantram at this stage is impossible if we have only been saying it on the surface level of consciousness, for there is no surface level any longer. To be able to repeat the mantram at the actual moment of death, the mantram must have sunk very, very deep into the mind – so deep that instead of our last thought being I, I, I, the last thought will be of God, whose symbol is the mantram.”
We look forward to hearing your comments on this week’s eSatsang reading, chapter nine of The Mantram Handbook, pages 129–138.
Over the past several weeks as we’ve studied chapter 8 of The Mantram Handbook, “Harnessing Fear, Anger, & Greed,” we’ve seen Easwaran move from detailing the specifics of transforming those negative emotions, to the nature of desire itself, which underlies them.
Now he leads us to a forceful conclusion:
“Desire is power which we can harness or let go to waste. We have all been given this power for one purpose: to realize the indivisible unity of life; as the Buddha would put it, to cross from this shore of separateness to the far shore of unity.”
Easwaran tells us, “Begin conserving your energies to undertake the really big adventure we were all born for. Don’t postpone a day.”
As we read pages 125–128, let’s draw on the support of our teacher and the strength of this group to renew our enthusiasm for this adventure.
“Burgundy Cherry Ice Cream” is the heading of Easwaran’s section on the dynamics of desire in this week’s reading, pages 121–124 in The Mantram Handbook. And he uses that delicacy to show why satisfying the desire for something physical cannot lead to lasting happiness.
“It is the nature of a desire to exhaust itself, the mystics say. Even if eating that burgundy cherry cone gives you satisfaction – and no one is denying that – how long does this satisfaction last? More than that, if you keep on eating ice cream, cone after cone, satisfaction soon turns to satiation, and then eventually to revulsion. But this hasn’t helped to get rid of the desire: when you are hungry again, the desire will be back, and no amount of indulgence on the physical level can root it out, because desire is in the mind.”
We look forward to hearing about the insights you gain from this week’s reading, and how you put them into action.
“The simple solution I would suggest to the problem of anger is repetition of the mantram,” Easwaran affirms in this week’s reading, pages 117–121 from The Mantram Handbook. “This is how we can become slow to anger and quick to forgive.”
As usual, along with this simple solution, this section is replete with specific suggestions for how to put the mantram into action. And Easwaran gives us the quiet assurance that we can do it.
“Here it is that I value Gandhi’s example very much, because it shows that we all have the choice to undertake this transformation ourselves. This was pointed out with keen insight by the Compassionate Buddha. When people used to go to him complaining that they were upset, telling him, ‘Our children upset us; our partner agitates us,’ his simple reply would be, ‘You are not upset because of your children or your partner; you are upset because you are upsettable.’ The choice is ours to make ourselves unupsettable.”
So let’s keep our mantram on our lips, and keep building our determination to become unupsettable.
In this week’s reading, pages 113–117 of The Mantram Handbook,* Easwaran describes how the mantram can help with our litany of worries and anxieties, as well as our bigger fears. Here’s an anecdote he shares that inspired us:
“A friend of mine works as a doctor in the intensive care unit of a local hospital, and she had as a patient an elderly woman who was seriously ill, so ill that she wasn’t even able to breathe except with the aid of one of those breathing machines, a respirator. The patient was a Catholic, so my friend suggested that she repeat Hail Mary. She began doing it and her condition improved considerably. In this case, the mantram helped more than anything else that had been tried, because it helped the patient deal with her fear.”
Let’s continue working together to transform these negative emotions and drive the mantram deeper into our consciousness.
“[T]he key to intentional living is in gaining mastery over the mind,” Easwaran advises at the start of chapter 8 of The Mantram Handbook. And yet:
“Most of the time, the vast majority of us live on the surface level of consciousness, not suspecting the storms that rage in our unconscious. We get some hint of the tremendous power of these storms when they break through to the surface in the form of fear, anger, and greed. When these get out of control, they can pick us up and hurl us about as they like, exactly as if some force takes us over and makes us do things, say things, that we would not ordinarily do.”
It is a fearsome reality. Yet, once again, “[h]ere is where the mantram is an invaluable ally.”
“It can harness all this destructive power that is going to waste and transform it: fear into fearlessness, anger into compassion, and greed into the desire to be of service to those around us.”
We look forward to hearing your comments on this week’s eSatsang reading, pages 109–113.
Chapter seven of The Mantram Handbook has focused on excitement and depression, and as it ends, Easwaran makes a fascinating connection to spontaneity. The very same qualities that lead to the pendulum swings of excitement and depression – a racing mind, compelled by likes and dislikes – make spontaneous living impossible. Surprisingly, “[t]he secret of spontaneity is training; this is how we undo our conditioning.”
Happily, all the training we’ve been doing is taking us toward the goal:
“Any effort we make to keep the mind steady helps on all fronts. … Even if we do nothing more than try to keep the mind steady during the ups and downs of the day, we are deepening our awareness of life far more than we know.”
This week’s eSatsang reading is pages 105–108 in The Mantram Handbook.
In this week’s reading, pages 100–104 from The Mantram Handbook, Easwaran starts by distinguishing between clinical depression, which may need the help of an experienced physician, and what he calls “garden-variety lows.” He lays out a systematic strategy for when we find ourselves feeling mildly depressed.. For his third tactic, he writes: “Another bit of advice for coping with depression is simple, difficult, and extremely powerful: always act as if you were not depressed. … Before you know it, you will find that you are not pretending to be cheerful any longer; you really are cheerful, because you have forgotten yourself.”
The description “simple, difficult, and extremely powerful” applies well to the skills we have been practicing in our book study.
Last week Easwaran showed us how a racing mind underlies both excitement and depression. This week he continues exposing the mental dynamics behind those states and leads us to a solution: “[U]nder no circumstances should you let praise or blame throw you into agitation. This is where the mantram comes to your rescue.”
As this skill develops, the wild pendulum swings of the mind will be dampened, consolidating our joy, and enabling access to discernment.
This week’s eSatsang reading is pages 97–100 in The Mantram Handbook.
Easwaran begins chapter seven of The Mantram Handbook, titled “Excitement & Depression,” by explaining the mental dynamics behind those states, tracing them both to a racing mind. And he advises that to avoid feeling depression, “[w]e need to learn to keep our mind on an even keel.”
“Our culture places such a premium on excitement that this advice is most unwelcome. ‘Don’t let yourself get excited’ has an unpleasant, puritanical ring. But that is simply because we believe the only alternative to excitement is a flat, monotonous life. In fact, there is a third state which is neither excitement nor depression, but far, far above both: a quiet sense of abiding joy which is our real nature.”
This week’s eSatsang reading is pages 93–97, and as usual we look forward to your comments.
To close our current chapter on overcoming likes and dislikes, Easwaran emphasizes a fascinating connection with freedom in personal relationships. In our modern age of loneliness, he writes, “Being able to go beyond your own likes and dislikes helps immensely in restoring the personal relationships that make life worth living, for it enables us to be patient, cheerful, and loving with those around us.”
Again the mantram can come to our rescue: “If we can repeat the mantram when we find ourselves falling into competitiveness and invidious comparison, it will help greatly to keep our minds calm and our relationships secure.”
Our reading this week is pages 87–91 as we finish chapter 6 of The Mantram Handbook.
“My grandmother sometimes used to ask me to do something important, but I had so many unimportant things of my own to attend to that the task she had entrusted to me didn’t always get done,” Easwaran relates in this week’s reading, pages 83–87 of The Mantram Handbook:
“When she would ask, ‘When are you going to do it?’ I would answer, ‘One of these days, Granny.’ She wasn’t impressed. ‘One of these days is none of these days.’ When you hear someone say, ‘I’m going to get around to it one of these days,’ you can be sure that it isn’t going to get done. The mark of the mature person is the capacity to take up a job immediately – ‘forthwith,’ as Jesus says – and do it cheerfully and with concentration.”
We can all relate to the tendency to postpone jobs we dislike, and we are eager to hear how you apply these tips from Easwaran and his granny in your own unique context.
Last week we began chapter 6 of The Mantram Handbook, where Easwaran focuses on the connection between the mantram and overcoming likes and dislikes. His theme in our reading this week, from page 78 to the top of 83, is closely related: overcoming rigidity. To illustrate this marvelous ability, he shares a favorite story – his granny’s response when his village doctor put him on a salt-free diet for a year:
“[A]s I sat down dejectedly to my first saltless breakfast, my grandmother seated herself by my side and said quietly, ‘I have gone off salt for a year too.’ And she didn’t merely tolerate that saltless food; she ate it with real gusto, because she knew that her example was supporting me. As for me, I don’t think I ever tasted a better meal than that saltless breakfast my grandmother shared with me.”
By repeating the mantram and learning to exercise our will, we can be like Granny and cultivate the mastery over our thinking process that will allow us to support those around us through any ordeal.
We are reading The Mantram Handbook, this week from pages 75–78, as we continue making progress in our eSatsang’s second-ever full-length book study. Here Easwaran advises that when we are caught in elation or depression, it is not enough just to remember the mantram, although this helps greatly. “You must also be able to strengthen your will,” he explains, “and train it to help you make the wise choices which in the long run will free the mind from these vacillations.”
We can learn to go beyond our likes and dislikes, Easwaran assures us, through repetition of the mantram and exercising the will.
Stilling the mind, Easwaran explains in this week’s reading, “means bringing every mental process under our complete control – not just on the conscious level, but in the unconscious too.” And we can achieve this formidable feat gradually by taking advantage of all the opportunities for repeating the mantram.
The results are stupendous: “Mahatma Gandhi assures us that we can come to have such effortless mastery over our mind that even in our dreams a selfish thought will not arise. This is what stilling the mind means: laying to rest permanently every negative and selfish force in consciousness.”
This week let’s read from page 72 to the end of page 74 in The Mantram Handbook, and continue working to still our minds.
This week’s eSatsang reading is pages 69–72 of The Mantram Handbook. Here Easwaran begins describing the nature of the mind using the metaphor of the sea:
“Below the surface level of consciousness, what storms rage! Here are our deep-seated fears and hostilities, our cravings and conflicts. These are the deep divisions in our consciousness which make it difficult for us to concentrate, difficult to be loyal and steadfast. Often these divisions are at the root of serious physical ailments. They come to us in our sleep as nightmares, and all too often they plunge us into depression. Such storms sap our will and our vitality.”
The mantram, Easwaran explains, is that which enables us to cross the sea of the mind. With this tremendous support, he assures us, we can control the mind and access the immense reserves of will, loyalty, patience, compassion, and love we have deep within us.
