Announcement
In June the BMCM launched the Easwaran Digital Library. This library offers previously unavailable video and audio talks covering Easwaran’s signature themes across the various decades of his teaching.
This month, we’ll study several subtle factors that influence our passage meditation practice. Over the next four weeks, we’ll look at place, posture, pace, and distractions using Easwaran’s book Passage Meditation as a guide. We’re eager to share this great opportunity to look at ways to sharpen up our practice. What better way than to do it together?
In the excerpt below, Easwaran describes the ideal place for meditation, and helpful reminders about our posture.
Consider sharing details about the place you have for meditation. How have you set it up to be calm, clean, and cool?
Do you have opportunities to meditate with others? What are the benefits of this?
We’d love to hear about how you keep meditation fresh by adjusting your external surroundings to support you, and how that may have changed over time.
The excerpt below is from Passage Meditation, by Eknath Easwaran.
Place
It is helpful if you can set aside a room in your home just for meditation and nothing else, a room that will begin to have strong spiritual associations for you. Hearing that, people sometimes object, “A separate room for meditation? I only have one room . . . where will I sleep? Where will I keep my clothes?” Well, if you cannot have an entire room, reserve at least one corner. But whatever you use, keep it only for meditation. Don’t talk about money or possessions or frivolous things there; don’t give vent to angry words. Gradually, your room or corner will become holy. The scriptures say that the place of meditation should be calm, clean, and cool. I would add, well-ventilated – and, if possible, quiet. If there are spiritual figures who appeal to you deeply – Jesus, the Buddha, Saint Teresa, Sri Ramakrishna – have a picture of one or two. But otherwise the place should be very simple, even austere, not cluttered with furniture and other things. Let the graceful economy of the traditional Japanese home be your guide.
I sometimes receive catalogs advertising special paraphernalia required for meditation. I must have a cosmic mandala cushion, sit in a pyramid, and inhale only Astral Vision brand Illumination Incense. In meditation, the only equipment you really need is the will, and you can’t buy that through the mail.
It is good to meditate with others. Ideally, the whole family can use the same room and meditate together; it strengthens their relationships. Similarly, even if they don’t live in the same house, two or three friends can gather together in one home for morning and evening meditation. You will remember that Jesus said, “Where two or three come together in my name, I am present among them.”
Posture
The correct posture for meditation is to sit erect with the spinal column, the nape of the neck, and the head in a straight line: not like a ramrod, rigid and tense, but easily upright. Your hands may be placed any way they feel comfortable. You will find it a very natural position.
If you want to sit in a straight-back chair, use one with arms. Should you become a bit forgetful of your body, you won’t tip over in such a chair. Or you can sit cross-legged on a cushion on the floor. You needn’t try to assume the classic “full lotus” posture, which most people find quite demanding. Your body should be comfortable – but not so comfortable that you cannot remain alert.
I want to emphasize this matter of posture because it is so easy to become careless. In meditation, people can be quite unaware of what their bodies are doing. Some twist around in the most amazing manner. Once, on the Berkeley campus – where strange events have been known to occur – I opened my eyes and saw someone meditating without a head. For a moment, I was stunned. Then I realized that somehow this fellow had managed to drop his head back over his chair, an advanced acrobatic feat. After meditation he came up to me and said, “I have a problem. I am hung up in time.”
“My dear friend,” I thought to myself, “you are hung up in space.” So without dwelling on it, check yourself occasionally in meditation to see that your head is in place – that you are not twisting around, leaning over, drooping like a question mark, or swaying back and forth. Particularly when your mind wanders away from the passage, or you become drowsy or enter a deeper state of consciousness, verify once in a while that your posture is still correct.
The appropriate dress for meditation has nothing to do with fashion. Simply wear loose-fitting garments, things that keep you from becoming too warm or too cool. Basically, clothes you feel comfortable in will do nicely.