Reflection time in the garden at the BMCM Retreat House, Gokulam.
It’s been wonderful sharing a taste of “bringing the retreat home” with you over the past two months! We’ve enjoyed hearing from you, and appreciate all the ways you have been taking part from a distance.
As we wrap up this home-retreat experience, we invite you to join in an activity that we do at the close of all Tomales retreats: reading aloud a passage you’ve chosen on the retreat theme of “Building the Will.”
Next Weekend: Virtual Satsang Opportunity
Throughout the month, we’d asked you to select a passage that illustrates to you the ideals you strive for in building the will. We’d love to know which passage you’ve chosen! Feel free to share your passage with us in the comments below, but we also encourage you to join us for a special virtual satsang on Saturday, September 1 from 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (San Francisco time.) During the virtual satsang we’ll meditate together and read our passages aloud in order to round out our home-retreat experience of the past two months.
If you usually shy away from technology, don’t worry! We’ll use a very user-friendly software called Zoom which allows us to video conference live with each other. Please feel free to read this step-by-step guide, or watch this how-to video to help understand Zoom in advance of the virtual Satsang.
RSVP below, and you’ll get all of the details you’ll need to join.
Over the last two months we’ve spent time studying and practicing building the will while getting a taste of a Tomales Weeklong Retreat. As this study comes to a close, what is one piece of wisdom that you are taking away? Is there one practical experiment that you had success with and would like to keep up into the future?
Reading Study
We’d love to hear about how the following reading resonates with you. Easwaran gives a number of very practical instances we can put others first – did one stand out for you? Please feel free to share your reflections.
This is an excerpt from The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume 1 by Easwaran.
32. When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.
In this verse Sri Krishna sums up the entire art of living in one simple, practical suggestion: to understand how to behave towards others, all we have to do is understand that what gives us pain gives others pain also. Jesus uses similar language when he tells us, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
We can apply this wise advice even to the smallest trifles of daily living. When we are waiting for a friend who is a few minutes late, for example, we look at our watch, shake it, and get more agitated as the seconds go by. But when we are half an hour late, we expect our friend to be patient and understanding. We expect others to overlook our few foibles because of our many virtues, yet at the same time we consider it our prerogative to point out everyone else’s weaknesses and mistakes. To understand others, to be considerate towards others, we have only to recognize how much we appreciate consideration ourselves.
The person with real spiritual consideration will help others forget about their failings. Learning to make others comfortable, even when they have made a mistake, is another way of going beyond our petty little selves and becoming aware of everyone else’s needs. The more we can forget ourselves by being sensitive and aware of everyone else, the more the Lord comes to life in us. The Compassionate Buddha was good at driving this point home to his disciples. He would tell them there was nothing to discourse or debate about in understanding other people: what offends you, offends others. It is that simple. When someone makes a sarcastic remark about us, we are not exactly delighted; therefore, we cannot afford to make sarcastic remarks to others.
Harsh thoughts, resentful thoughts, can wound others more deeply than knives. We are not used to thinking of thoughts as things; our idea of a thing is something we can put in a cup and rattle. We are unaware of the cacophony of the thoughts that rattle in our consciousness. If we could open our inner ear, we would be surprised to hear these hateful thoughts making such horrible noises in our consciousness: “I hate you, I hate you,” or “Drop dead, drop dead.” Such hateful thoughts injure others like a knife we throw at them over and over, and injure us too because each thought rankles and digs further into our consciousness as the days go by. Yet thoughts can be curative also. When a person bursts out in anger against us, if we can remain friendly, not hold his mistake against him, and move closer to him, we will bring him continual relief from his anger. This is true of even the roughest character; everyone responds to forbearance and forgiveness, which bless not only the one who gives them and the one who receives them, but everyone who associates with the man or woman who forgives.