Friends at a weeklong retreat.
Announcement: Virtual Satsang Opportunity
Please choose a passage from God Makes the Rivers to Flow or from our website that speaks to you about building your will. We invite you to share these passages during a virtual satsang session on Saturday, September 1. This will be lovely way for us to interact live!
This month we will continue our experiment of bringing a Tomales retreat experience home, by focusing on this year’s BMCM Weeklong Retreat theme of “Building the Will.” We’ll suggest ways in which you can get a taste of a Weeklong Retreat from wherever you are.
Our focus this week is to apply one-pointed attention strategies to building the will in order to become increasingly aware of our real Self. Easwaran reminds us that
“By seeking the Self through meditation, we will come to live in awareness of the unity of life expressed in everyone, everywhere, every minute.”
As a practical way to approach this week’s focus, think of an instance in your daily life where you’d like to apply One-Pointed Attention more. Please share this with us! Hearing about your efforts helps us all to develop our skills.
Consider how you might make the most of this opportunity for applying more One-Pointed Attention during the week. You might choose an idea from the list below, adapted from a worksheet in the Weeklong Retreat, or choose an idea of your own. You may decide to extend an instance where you already have success with One-Pointed Attention. Choose something that will work for you!
When interacting with others, I give my full attention – especially when it’s a challenging or difficult situation.
I’m developing detachment by practicing dropping tasks when needed.
I’m working on noticing when I find myself doing two or more things at once, and choosing to do one thing.
At work or school, I’m working on extending the length of time I am in complete concentr ation. It may mean trying to stick with something just a little bit longer than usual.
Example: I’m working on One-Pointed Attention during breakfast by noticing when I’m drawn to checking my phone while eating, and seeing if I can make a change.
We’d love to hear from you and what you’d like to try out this week. Feel free to share your reflections as you go!
Reading Study
This week, our reading from Easwaran discusses how practicing One-Pointed Attention, or ekagrata in Sanskrit, helps us to build our will and deepen our love and loyalty to everyone around us. Please feel free to highlight particular lines or sections from the reading that resonate with you.
This is an excerpt from The End of Sorrow, volume 1 of The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living by Easwaran.
10. The aspirant should constantly seek the Self within him through the practice of meditation. Controlling his body and his mind he should practice one-pointedness, free from expectations and attachments to material possessions.
Meditation is a dynamic discipline by which we learn to focus our complete concentration at will. Every spiritual aspirant should try to practice ekagrata, or one-pointedness of mind, at all times. In order to become one-pointed, it is necessary to do only one thing at a time, giving full attention to the job at hand. This is a discipline which can deepen our love and loyalty to everyone around us. There is a close connection between deep concentration and loyalty, and with the practice of meditation, we can greatly increase this precious capacity to remain loving and loyal no matter what the vicissitudes or circumstances.
One-pointed attention is something we have to train our minds to achieve, and a good place to begin is with our senses. Often the agitation of the mind is reflected in the restlessness of the eyes. We have only to look at people for a little while to see how tempestuous their minds are; their eyes are like the pendulum of a clock, swinging from one side to the other. As the eyes have never been trained, however, we cannot blame them for thinking their dharma is to be a pendulum. We should train them instead to stop when they get to one side, and keep all their attention there rather than swing immediately somewhere else. Finally, when the mind becomes still, the eyes will become still also. Sri Ramana Maharshi’s eyes were extremely beautiful, for they were so still that to look into them was to fall fathoms deep into infinite love.
We can begin practicing one-pointed concentration today by giving our complete attention to whatever we are doing. While eating, for example, we can give our complete attention to our food and not to the newspaper or book we have brought with us. On one occasion in San Francisco we saw a businessman eating the Wall Street Journal for lunch. He wasn’t paying any attention to his food, so only a few morsels went into his mouth; but he was gorging himself on the newspaper. The same principle of training applies to all the other senses too. Personal conversations give us a splendid opportunity to train our ears. If we are listening to a friend, even if a parrot flies down and perches on his head we should not get excited, point to the parrot, and break out, “Excuse me for interrupting, but there’s a parrot on your head.” We should be able to concentrate so hard on what our friend is saying that we can tell this urge, “Keep quiet and don’t distract me. Afterwards I’ll tell him about the bird.”
Finally we come to the concept of nonattachment. This is where most of us are vulnerable, for just about everyone is caught and entangled in all sorts of selfish attachments to people and material objects. As long as we are susceptible to these attachments we are not aware that they are ropes tying us down. It is good to remember the picture of Gulliver lying on the ground, tied by innumerable little ropes to innumerable little pegs by innumerable little men that seem almost like hobgoblins. We, too, are prostrate when we are tied down by countless little selfish, self-willed, and separating attachments to people and to things. It is only when we have broken loose from these ties through the practice of meditation that we find freedom.