Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the track in which God may be found. – Meister Eckhart
With this epigraph Easwaran begins his essay “The Hound of Heaven,” in Climbing the Blue Mountain. The Hound cannot be evaded, and its chase may manifest as insistent questions about the meaning of life.
“It is a sure measure of the Lord’s love,” Easwaran tells us, “that whether or not we want to think about it, he will find ways to go on asking until finally we do hear. Many of the tragedies and reversals of life are special delivery letters sent straight from the Lord to our door, reminding us that other activities will bring us very little satisfaction until we discover why we are here.”
This week, let’s read the first half of this essay, from page 117 to the top of 121, ending with “…fulfillment right within yourself?”
Read this article as if you and Easwaran are having a conversation. What advice does he give you, and how can you apply it this week?
Here’s this week’s Putting Others First challenge, direct from Easwaran.
He writes: “I am all ears when somebody says, ‘I don’t know how to be kind. I don’t know how to release deeper resources to make my life count.’ I say, ‘I can teach you!’ That is what meditation is for. Memorize a passage on kindness, memorize a passage on goodness, and then drive it inwards. You will become kind; you will become good.”
Try his advice this week and tell us how it goes!
Let’s return to Easwaran’s Patanjali talks* for our spiritual treat, this time with Talk 14. The full talk is almost an hour, 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 eight minutes, in which Easwaran introduces aphorism 9 on the law of karma and builds to a simple secret of progress in spiritual development from the Buddha: “you are what your deep driving desire is.”
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