Save the Date: Sunday, December 31, 2023
A Day of Mantrams for Peace and Healing
Sunday, December 31 will be our traditional BMCM day of Mantrams for Peace and Healing in the World. Throughout the day of December 31, right up until ringing in the New Year, let’s keep our mantrams going as much as we can.
When the first part of our satsang has ended, we will all turn to the Easwaran Digital Library to watch a never-before-seen video of Easwaran. It is his last recorded class given in 1998.
Let’s all participate together in the BMCM Satsang Live on December 31st. We will start writing the mantram at 9:40 before the program begins at 10 am. We will make BMCM Satsang Live the centerpiece of our mantram day, and we invite you to join us.
Our reading this week is pages 187–196 in The Constant Companion.* Commenting on the Sanskrit name Sakshi, The Witness, Easwaran tells the story of his granny’s response when she suspected he and his friends had stolen mangoes from the tree of a village neighbor:
“‘Even if none of you tells anybody else,’ she said, ‘there was somebody who saw. Someone inside you is watching everything, someone who never misses a thing.’”
Easwaran points out that messages from this inner witness are part of our familiar daily experience: “After we have done something selfish, when we hear a little voice inside saying, ‘Shabby, shabby, shabby,’ that is the voice of the Lord within. And when we feel warm inside because we have helped someone, it is the Lord who is making us feel warm.” Discovering the source of these messages, he explains, will transform our lives.
Is there some tip from Easwaran in this reading that you tend to skim over because you have already heard it many times before? Try focusing on it this week.
We are working to strengthen our practice of Spiritual Reading. Can you find ways to share parts of these stories with the children in your life?
Let’s turn again to The Thousand Names Talks** in the Easwaran Digital Library for our spiritual treat, this time with Talk 6. The full talk is 54 minutes, but you can listen to part of it now and when you return the player will resume where you left off. If time is short, consider starting with the first five minutes, where Easwaran begins his commentary on the name Sarva, All, by explaining that everyone is sanctified by the presence of the Lord, whether they are aware of it or forget it.
* For those using electronic versions of The Constant Companion with different page numbering: this week’s reading is Easwaran’s commentary on the names Sustainer of Life through The Witness. (Please note that the latest edition of our ebook is titled Names of the Lord.)
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