Easwaran: Thomas à Kempis Talk 2

In February we shared the first in a series of talks by Eknath Easwaran on Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. This week we’re pleased to share the second talk, which was given in 1970.

In this talk Easwaran comments on the second and third chapters of The Imitation of Christ and continues translating 15th century language into modern concepts that we can apply in our daily lives.

In the second half of the talk Easwaran draws connections between The Imitation and Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita, highlighting the universal nature of truth.

 We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please share in the comments below!

The Power of the Mantram

This week we have a post from Myron, a passage meditator living in Northern California. Myron shares how he has come to understand the mantram and meditation as truly powerful aids to overcoming unwanted habits. (Visit our website to read instructions in how to choose and use a mantram.)

Many of us have a family member, sometimes it is the whole family, that cause us serious agitation and all that goes with it—ill will, resentment, hostility, jealousy—and all of that coming from self-will (the desire to have one’s own way). I had been practicing and meditating some time, but this agitation at family gatherings was not going away and was quite frankly, a plague that I wanted to be rid of. Through meditation and practice of the eight point program my awareness of this problem had come into sharper focus; so I really wanted it to disappear.

Myron, volunteering in the garden at BMCM headquarters in Tomales, California.

My early tries at this were not successful. I would use my intellect to tell myself not to be agitated when my family gathered together for holidays; it took me some time to figure out the truth of Easwaran’s words, that a bad self-willed habit (a samskara, he calls it) cannot be controlled very well with the intellect; the intellect just gets steam rolled by the power of the habit. It was a lesson that I had to experience to really believe.

First Turning Point

One evening after the Tuesday night satsang in Petaluma, as we were closing the church, my friend Diana and I were discussing the video talk of Easwaran where he been exhorting us to practice, practice, practice. We both agreed: “we don’t practice enough.” So I set about changing this, and started spending hours with the mantram in the week or so before a family gathering. Standing at the kitchen sink, I would think about being at the gathering and repeat the mantram, 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there, and every time the mind went to thinking about family, throughout the day, more mantram. I also interspersed that with repeating the passage of Jesus that Easwaran liked, three to four verses, “judge not that you be not judged…” Day after day, as I sat down for meditation, I would remind myself of the desire to be rid of this self-willed problem, but nothing overt occurred during meditation, no distractions or insights of any sort ever came up. It was a matter of relying on Easwaran’s assurance that when we meditate, there are effects occurring deep in the unconscious that we are not aware of.

Moving Along to Succeeding

More family gatherings went on, sometimes minor agitation, sometimes major, but I was learning to use lots of mantram repetition the days before, and found that repetition was especially critical in the morning before we gathered—if I wanted to have it with me that day. This was an improvement, but not the thing I really wanted, to be free of this plague of self-will with family forever.

Myron, writing his mantram

A Thanksgiving came; once again family was gathering. That week, that morning, I spent a lot of time with the mantram, and on the drive to the gathering, realized I was early, and stopped at a park, quiet and secluded, and did another half hour of meditation. When I got to the gathering, there were the usual greetings, a half dozen people were there, and nothing much else was happening, so I sat down on a chair and proceeded to take in the scene. Suddenly I heard a loud noise, and looked around quickly to see what that was; it took me a moment to realize it was the mantram going on by itself in my mind, and it was (so it seemed to me) really loud. I knew then that this thing, this self-will I had been fighting for a long while was gone, would be gone.

After Lessons

In the days after that there was no elation, no high emotion; rather, it was what EE calls “a deep sense of wellness to mind and body alike.” I also realized it was incorrect to say it was a victory, which would only feed my ego and let me think “I am the doer.” It was the grace of our teacher that this happened to me, but Easwaran is quick to point out that grace is received only after strenuous effort on our part. In this struggle of mine, against self-will, the power of the mantram had become 51%, just a little more power than the power of the self-willed habit. It is like chopping down a weed patch, the weeds have been beaten, but not pulled up by the roots, meaning they can, with a little forgetfulness by us, regrow, and become a vibrant weed patch once more. That has meant more work, and continuous work with meditation and the mantram to stay there; I never take it for granted I cannot slip back into old resentments at any family gathering. But now I know the power of meditation and the mantram.

Eknath Easwaran: Simple is Beautiful

This week we’re pleased to share an excerpt from our Blue Mountain Journal archive, in which Easwaran describes how meditation can help you create an uncluttered life and an uncluttered mind.

There is a close relationship between a house full of possessions and a heart full of desires, between a cluttered closet and a crowded schedule, between too much activity inside and too much outside, between having no place to put possessions and having no priorities for our life. These are precious clues.

They remind us to slow down, to live in the present, to reduce the desires that drain our vitality, to clarify priorities so we can give our time and attention to what matters most. Tragically, in the press of modern life, we have managed to get backwards one of life’s most vital truths: people are to be loved; things are to be used.

If all you want is to love, your mind can be quite clear. Life becomes simple; decisions are unencumbered. There is no asking: “Should I like him or dislike him? Should I help her or hinder her? Should I move closer to him or move away?” Such questions do not arise. You're not interested in whether someone is for you or against you; you always want to help, always want to love.

When she wants an umbrella, the ideal shopper goes into the store, picks up the item she wants, pays for it, and leaves, all in a couple of minutes. There are no distractions, no impulse buying along the way. That is how the ideal thinker is too. When it is necessary to think about a problem, the process is clear, direct, and practical. Decisions are taken without any emotional entanglement, without any sense of personal conflict at all.

Most of us think like this rarely, if at all. What we call thinking is usually worry. The uncluttered mind thinks only when necessary – and a good part of the time, believe me, it’s not necessary. Just as junk breeds junk, thoughts breed thoughts. Most thinking is about thinking. Most thoughts are about thoughts about thoughts about thoughts. Am I distracted now, or am I thinking about distractions? And now am I thinking about thinking about distractions? It goes on and on. You can spend a lifetime and never reach the end of the vagaries of the mind.

Statements like these are not even understood in the modern world, but I can give a simple illustration of an uncluttered mind. When you return from a drive, don’t you park the car, turn the engine off, and put the key in your pocket? Through many years of meditation, mantram repetition, and the other skills in my eight-point program for spiritual growth, this is what I have learned to do with my mind. When there’s no need to think, I turn it off and put the key in my pocket. When I need to think, I turn it on again. There is always plenty of petrol in the tank because it hasn't been idling all night with vain worries and regrets.

If you sustain your enthusiasm and practice these spiritual disciplines with the same kind of determined dedication I brought to them in the midst of a very busy life, I can promise you that you will be able to remake yourself from the inside out. You will be able to tell your mind, “You may rest now. I'll call you when I need you.”

This is not an unconscious state; it is fully wakeful. We can still think when we choose to. But if it serves no purpose, we simply let the mind rest.

This healing stillness, as it is called in Christian mysticism, is what the Buddha means by nirvana. In the language of the Bhagavad Gita, your mind will be as “motionless as the flame of a lamp in a windless place” – without a flicker of fear, anxiety, selfishness, or greed.

The richness of this state of pure awareness cannot be described. It brings limitless joy, for you know then that you are neither mind nor body but the divine core of personality which is in every creature – and which can never die.