This month, we’re launching into a timely topic of training the senses. As the holiday season approaches for many of us in November and December, we have found it helpful to focus on the role of training the senses in the eight-point program.
To get us started on this topic, we have a reading study below. This reading will also prepare us for next week’s (optional) opportunity for real-time satsang.
Online Workshop Invitation
We warmly invite you to join us for an online workshop, on Saturday November 11 at 2 p.m. San Francisco time. This is a 75-minute workshop and many members of the eSatsang will be taking part, so it’s a chance for some real-time satsang on our theme of training the senses.
Reading Study
We’ll be studying a reading from Easwaran’s book, Love Never Faileth in the online workshop, which we’ll also be looking at here on the eSatsang!
In this excerpt, Easwaran reminds us that the role of training the senses in daily life is directly tied to being free to choose our actions consciously.
Please share your reflections below. We are always eager to hear from you!
Have you recently been motivated to work on your likes and dislikes? What benefits do you see of working on this challenge?
Do you have questions about the connection between juggling with likes and dislikes and how this strengthens your will?
What have you experienced regarding the role of the will in learning to act in freedom and loosening conditioned habits?
The excerpt below is from Love Never Faileth, by Eknath Easwaran.
Popular psychology and the mass media insist that we indulge our whims and desires – often, in the case of the media, for somebody else’s financial gain. This is not a moral issue to me; it is a thoroughly practical one, and Augustine states the reasons concisely. Every time we give in to a whim, especially a whim that benefits nobody, our will is weakened a little. Gradually, giving in becomes a habit; habit becomes conditioning; and conditioning binds our responses hand and foot.
Giving in to a whim comes down to likes and dislikes again – “I like this, so I’ll do it”; “I don’t like that, so I’ll avoid it.” To me this is a rather unchallenging pastime. Enjoying meaningless little pleasures and avoiding unpleasant chores is all a matter of coasting downhill; no effort or will is required. Working through a monolithic habit of likes and dislikes, by contrast, is a tremendous challenge that draws out all kinds of hidden resources. When you try it, you feel very much as if you were tunneling through a mountain of solid rock.
In the hills of Sausalito just north of the Golden Gate Bridge is a tunnel, called the Rainbow Tunnel ever since someone painted a rainbow over the arched entrance, through which Highway 101 snakes on its way north. To get a highway for two-way traffic, we have to cut tunnels like this through our likes and dislikes. Each tunnel can take months of hard labor; sometimes we have to endure long periods of frustration. You keep on trying to tunnel through the mass of habit, defying old desires, and for a long time you find no evidence that anything is happening. Here an experienced guide can be of enormous support. “Just keep on tunneling,” he or she assures you again and again. “If you don’t give up, you’re sure to break through eventually.” And after months – sometimes, for a really big compulsion, even years – you finally see a ray of light coming through from the other side.
Most of us have grown so used to giving in to little desires that we forget the role of the will. When we neglect the will, as Augustine says, and allow a desire to get stronger and stronger, we may find that opportunities for satisfying that desire come our way with increasing frequency. If we look closely, however, we generally find that we have been going out of our way to find opportunities. If we could interview a strong desire, it would have a fascinating story to tell: “He’s been chasing me! I don’t have to do a thing.” We may not think we have made a conscious decision to pursue a particular object of desire, but on the unconscious level, a desire is a decision. One very effective way to strengthen the will, therefore, is to be extremely vigilant about not letting ourselves be put into situations where we are likely to be swept away by our desire. “Lead us not into temptation” means precisely this: don’t put yourself into situations where your will is in over its head.
As a young man, Augustine had all the desires any normal person has. That is why he can understand and sympathize with our difficulties and conflicts. His advice is practical. “I do not blame you, I do not criticize you,” he once told his congregation, “if worldly life is what you love. You can love this life all you want, as long as you know what to choose.” And, I would add, as long as you have the will with which to choose it. We need both: the discrimination to see what is best in the long run, and the will to make wise decisions when the pleasures of the moment present a more attractive alternative. When we have both these capabilities, all the innocent pleasures of life can be ours to enjoy. In other words, this is neither license nor a plea for asceticism; it is a plea for building up our will.