Announcement
A Day of Mantrams for Peace and Healing: Sunday, June 28
Our 99th Birthday Gift for Christine Easwaran
We invite you to join us in a day dedicated to peace and healing in the world by keeping our mantrams going as much of the day as possible and if you care to even as you fall asleep. This will be our best possible gift to Christine for her 99th birthday.
On June 28, let’s all participate together in the BMCM Satsang Live. We will start writing the mantram at 9:40 before the program begins at 10 a.m. You can find your time zone here. We will make BMCM Satsang Live the centerpiece of our mantram day, and we invite you to join us.
On June 29, Christine’s actual birthday, feel free to write in here on the eSatsang if you would like to share reflections about your mantram day. We’ll share your impressions with her!
In our reading from Passage Meditation this week, Easwaran says about the books he has written, “They are based entirely on personal experience, and their sole purpose is to help readers make their highest ideals a part of their daily lives.”
This week, continue your effort to imitate Easwaran’s evening routine by turning off other media, reading one of his books for a few minutes, and then going to bed repeating the mantram.
Look for ways in which this reading of Easwaran’s books helps you to make your highest ideals a part of your daily life.
Feel free to share your discoveries!
From the chapter “Spiritual Reading” in the Passage Meditation book:
Read Widely
The treasures of mysticism can be found in all religions, and we should not confine ourselves to the tradition most familiar to us. No one age, no one people, no one persuasion has any monopoly on spiritual wisdom; the prize is there, and always has been, for any man or woman who cares and dares to look for it.
Of course, whichever mystic we turn to, we will meet the same truths, because the mystical experience is everywhere the same. There is only one supreme reality, and there can be only one union with it. But the language, tradition, mode of expression, and cultural flavor will differ. One writes in French, another in Pali. One writes in poetry, another in prose. One speaks of the Mother, another of His Majesty, still another of the Beloved. In this lies the beauty of spiritual literature: on the one hand it reflects the fascinating diversity of life; on the other, the unchanging principles that stand behind that diversity, irrespective of time and place.
Here, however, it is helpful to draw a practical distinction. On the one hand, there are books we read primarily for inspiration. They can be glorious, we need them, but taken together they encompass diverse ideas, disciplines, and methods of meditation. If we try to follow the exact letter of what we read — say, this week the Hasidic masters, next week Saint Anthony — we will be dancing and singing for seven days and living on bread and water for the next seven. So the other kind of spiritual reading I call instructional — the works which actually bring us the detailed advice of our spiritual teacher. We should draw freely on the classics of all great mystical traditions for inspiration, but this should never take the place of reading and rereading the instructions we are trying to follow in our daily lives.
Sometimes, when I look back over the books I have written, I think how much easier it would have been for me if such books had been available when I was learning to meditate. And that is why I have written them: to support those who are trying to put this eight-point program into practice. They are based entirely on personal experience, and their sole purpose is to help readers make their highest ideals a part of their daily lives.
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. So if you are following this method of meditation, I would encourage you to read my books over and over and follow the instructions on meditation very carefully.
As an additional treat, we’re pleased to share a short video of Easwaran reading directly from Gandhi’s writings regarding the value of his own spiritual reading from the Bhagavad Gita.