A little over a year ago, we launched the current interactive format for the eSatsang. It’s enabled us to communicate with each other more directly and in a timely manner on Easwaran’s teachings. As a one-year celebration, we’d like to re-visit the seventh point in the eight-point program: Spiritual Fellowship!
In the spirit of fellowship, please feel free to include a short introduction of yourself as part of a comment you make this month, or as a stand-alone contribution to this satsang. We’d love to be reminded of all the wonderful people who are a part of this special online community! You’re always welcome to write in without sharing your name or location, and you can just share what passage meditation or Easwaran’s teachings mean to you.
Throughout this month, we’ll look at how Easwaran encourages us to seek spiritual fellowship, or satsang, in different ways in our daily lives. We’ll explore this topic through a reading study of Chapter Seven in Easwaran’s book, Passage Meditation.
This month’s theme will culminate with the next Returnee Online Workshop on Saturday, June 23, at 2:00p.m. – 3:15 p.m. San Francisco Time. Many members of the eSatsang will be taking part, so it’s a chance for some real-time satsang and to extend our discussions. Please join us!
Reading Study
In the excerpt below, Easwaran lovingly reminds us that gathering together as a satsang is essential for the spiritual life and for reaching the Supreme Goal. Can you think of the benefits you’ve received as a result of your engagement with other passage meditators on the spiritual path?
We’d love to hear any examples of the ways you may have experienced how, as Easwaran says, “the burdens are shared, easing them; the joys are shared too, multiplying them.”
This is an excerpt by Easwaran from Passage Meditation.
In Sanskrit there is a pithy saying that was on the tip of my grandmother’s tongue every year when school began. At the end of the day I would run home to tell her who I had been with and what we had done that day. “You don’t have to tell me who you have been with,” she would say. “I can tell.”
“All right, Granny, who?”
She would proceed to name every one of them…and she was always right.
“Granny,” I would ask in amazement, “how did you know?”
And she would reply, “Samsargad doshaguna bhavanti” — which means, roughly, “We become like those we hang out with.”
Granny wasn’t one to waste words, so it was only when I learned to meditate that I began to understand what she was trying to tell me. Much more than words or behavior, she was talking about character — the influences on the mind that shape the kind of person we are becoming, for better and for worse.
According to this ancient Sanskrit saying, what is good in us and what is bad, our strong points and our weak points alike, develop because of constant association. When we associate with calm people, we become calm; when we associate with agitated people, we become agitated. When we frequent the company of people who are wise, we become wiser; when our company is otherwise, we become otherwise too. It should be no surprise, then, that an essential part of the spiritual life is joining together with those who are spiritually minded, those who want to promote our growth and who want us to promote theirs.
This should not be considered a luxury or an indulgence. The Buddha would say that most people throw themselves into the river of life and float downstream, moved here and there by the current. But the spiritual aspirant must swim upstream, against the current of habit, familiarity, and ease. It is an apt image. We know how the salmon fights its way along, returning at last to its original home. Those who set out to change themselves are salmon swimming against the relentless flow of the selfish life. Truly, we need every bit of support we can get; we need friends, loyal companions on the journey. We have to do the swimming, of course; nobody else can do it for us. But there will be an easier and swifter passage if we can swim with those who encourage us, who set a strong pace and will not stop until they reach their destination. The burdens are shared, easing them; the joys are shared too, multiplying them.
In Sanskrit, this sharing is called satsang. The word derives from two smaller words: sat, meaning “the good” or “truth” or “reality,” and sanga, meaning “group” or “association.” Thus it signifies the seekers of the highest, banded together.
Every day devout Buddhists chant three phrases, one of which touches upon this fellowship of seekers. “I take refuge in the Buddha” — he who shows the way, the perfect reminder that nirvana, or liberation, is indeed possible here on this earth in our lifetime. “I take refuge in the dharma” — in the deepest law of our being, that all of us are one. “I take refuge in the sangha” — in the company of those who have come together for the supreme purpose of attaining liberation.