Easwaran giving a talk at a BMCM Retreat.
In last weekend’s Online Workshop, we thought about a routine time in our daily lives during which we could experiment with Spiritual Reading. We also thought about a way to remember our chosen time during the day, so that we set ourselves up for success over the next couple of months! Here are a few sample strategies:
Keep your book in an obvious place so you can substitute Spiritual Reading for less desirable entertainment choices? or activities.
Invite a satsang member to join you in reading a spiritual book so you keep at it.
Set a specific goal for a chosen number of paragraphs or pages being read for a number of days in a week that will work for you. For example, “I’ll read one stanza and commentary from The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week.”
We’d love to hear from you about what you are trying out this month. Please feel free to share any part of your experiment – the part of your week or day you’ll explore your reading opportunities, or ways in which you’ll help yourself remember to incorporate spiritual reading.
Even if you didn’t have a chance to join the Online Workshop, please feel free to consider trying a simple exercise to emphasize your use of Spiritual Reading this month.
This is an excerpt from the Blue Mountain Journal, Spring/Summer 2016 by Easwaran:
I have said many times that Saint Francis lives in the words of his prayer. Gandhi may be said to live in the second chapter of the Gita, on which he based his life. Similarly, you can say that I live in my eight-point program, and I can assure you that I live in my audio and video recordings for those who are practicing my method of meditation to the best of their ability and following the instructions faithfully with an open heart.
You have to remember that when I started to meditate, my own spiritual teacher, my grandmother, had already passed away. At first I felt very much on my own, but at every stage, when I turned to her for guidance, I found answers to my questions.
In spite of our best efforts, however, there will be times in meditation when we find ourselves in a difficult predicament – times when the senses defy us, when self-will goes on a rampage. Then it is that an experienced, skillful spiritual teacher can come to our rescue.
Once, on a drive in the country, my wife and I somehow managed to back our car into a particularly awkward position with the axle over a rock, so that we could neither go forward nor backward. Three strong young fellows who happened to be walking by stopped and tried to help, but they only succeeded in getting the car more completely wedged in. Finally a friend called a nearby service station to bring a tow truck, and in less than fifteen minutes we were able to drive away. That is the kind of service a spiritual teacher performs. A good spiritual teacher is like a tow truck driver who is on call twenty-four hours a day, and one of the hooks in his vast assortment is just the right size for us. When we get ourselves stuck in meditation and find we can’t go forward or back, he pulls us forward just enough to get us free. Then, the moment we can move again, he removes the tow chain and lets us go forward again on our own.
If you are prepared to undertake the long journey, the teacher will give you the map and all necessary instructions, but you have got to do the traveling yourself. That the teacher cannot provide. The purpose of visiting a spiritual teacher is to be reminded that there is a destination, there is a supreme goal in life, and we all have the innate capacity to undertake the journey.
It is good for us to remember that the guru, the spiritual teacher, is in every one of us. All that another person can do is to make us aware of the teacher within ourselves. The outer teacher makes us aware of the teacher within, and to the extent we can be loyal to the outer teacher, we are being loyal to ourselves, to our Atman.
When people used to sit in the presence of Sri Ramana Maharshi and praise him, he would just smile as if to say, “There is no Sri Ramana Maharshi. I am just a little keyhole through which, when you fix your eye with complete concentration, you can see the beckoning, irresistible vision of the Lord.”