We’re devoting January once again to a study of the 2018 Special Issue of the Blue Mountain Journal, with its message of applying the mantram to prayers for peace. This journal arrived at the close of 2018 as a response to many friends who were asking the BMCM for guidance during these difficult times. It offers practical spiritual guidance from Eknath Easwaran and Christine Easwaran, and we think we would all benefit from revisiting the inspiration, encouragement, and hope that they can give us as we start 2020.
Easwaran writes: “People look around with fear and suspicion in their hearts, and they see a world to be afraid of, a world of danger. I see a world of choices, a world of hope.” The question we’d like to discuss this month is: How can we contribute to a sense of hope at a time when so many people are facing such major challenges?
Our goal is to turn to Easwaran’s teaching and our practice, and to encourage each other to keep focusing on the long list of reasons Easwaran gives us for being hopeful, even in the hardest of times. This week we’ll begin to answer our question for this month by sharing our thoughts on Easwaran’s message for hope in the article below.
After reviewing the article, please share your reflections in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you, and by offering your ideas you’ll inspire others to do so, too! You might try:
Typing a line or two that really stood out for you – one you’d like to remember – in the comments below.
Typing an overall message from Easwaran that resonates with you in some way.
This is Part 1 of the article “The Candle of the Lord” by Easwaran from the Special Issue Blue Mountain Journal, Winter 2018.
In India the times we live in are called Kali Yuga, the “Age of Darkness” — or, as I translate it, the Age of Anger. With the world torn asunder by war and violence invading our cities and even our homes and schools, uncontrolled anger has become the hallmark of daily life. It saturates our media, our entertainment, our personal relationships, even our speech.
Since 1961, when I began this work, I have witnessed a steady decline in the quality of life throughout the modern world as anger and violence become taken for granted as part of life. This is a trend that threatens everyone, for anger in one corner of the globe now can find expression thousands of miles away. With the technology of destruction within easy reach, one person full of hatred can wreak havoc and terror anywhere.
All of us harbor a good deal of anger, if not on the surface, then deep in consciousness. That is our human condition. But an angry person can never help lead an angry world from darkness into light — a responsibility that each of us needs to assume now if we want a safer world.
Lighting the Candle
In my first weeks in this country I was taken to the Truman Museum in Independence, Missouri. There I saw an ancient clay lamp that had been presented to President Truman by the Jewish community of Boston. At its base was an inscription that is often translated, “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.”
How this candle is to be lit has been described by lovers of God in every major religion. The principles they agree on are very simple. The entire phenomenal world has as its basis a changeless reality which is present in the depths of consciousness in every one of us. It follows that each of us — not only saints — can discover this changeless reality through spiritual disciplines, the foremost of which is meditation or interior prayer.
I have to confess I have very little interest in theology, metaphysics, or philosophy. I consider myself a very ordinary, down-to-earth man who likes what Americans call “do it yourself.” My approach to the scriptures is entirely on this basis: that they are practical manuals to the art of living, and the truths in them can be verified by anyone prepared to undergo the necessary disciplines.
Still Your Mind
These disciplines need to be able to take us far beyond the senses, the intellect, and the mind, which are but finite instruments. Even logic tells us that a finite instrument cannot be used for fathoming the infinite. We need a higher mode of knowing. As a psalm in the Book of Common Prayer says beautifully, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
The Bhagavad Gita describes how this higher mode of knowing can be developed. “Still your mind completely,” the Lord tells us, “and you will be united with me here and now.” His disciple Arjuna, who represents you and me, objects, “It’s easier to control the wind than the mind!” And the Lord replies, “There is a simple secret: regular, systematic, steadfast daily practice.”
The clay lamps used in ancient Jerusalem are still common in village India. People pour in a little coconut oil, insert a wick, light it, and keep the lamp on the window sill on festive days. When the lamp is placed outside, the flame flickers wildly and may even go out whenever a breeze blows. But when the lamp is inside the home, in an alcove or shrine, the tongue of flame is absolutely still; it does not flicker at all.
Like a Steady Flame
In deep meditation, the Gita says, when you are concentrating on the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi, your mind should be like the flame of a lamp in a windless place — it should not even flicker. It should be completely on the words of the prayer — which means, in practical terms, that you are slowly becoming like Saint Francis in your daily character and conduct.
When the mind does not flicker, there can be no fear. When the mind does not flicker, there can be no anger. All negative emotions are wild movements in the mind that vanish when the mind is still. This is a state that all of us can reach through the grace of the Lord by using the great prayer of Saint Francis: “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”
Meditation develops the most precious capacity a human being can have: the capacity to turn anger into compassion, fear into fearlessness, and hatred into love. This is the greatest miracle of meditation — not seeing visions, not hearing voices, but the capacity to purify the heart of all that is selfish, violent, and degrading. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”