Special Announcement
Our beloved Christine’s birthday falls at the end of June. In former times, during this whole month, your cards and letters poured in, and Christine read each one with great joy.
Last year, instead of sending cards and letters, you poured your hearts into the mantram for her as she was preparing to shed her body. Doesn’t it feel right to continue this tradition in her honor?
So let’s make special effort with our mantrams throughout the month of June. Sunday, June 25 will be our actual celebration of her birthday with a special program on Satsang Live and a day of mantrams for peace and healing in the world.
“Most of the world’s major religions have a tradition celebrating the Holy Names of God,” Easwaran begins his introduction to The Constant Companion, also titled The Thousand Names of Vishnu. Along with this global context, Easwaran shares his intimate family context: “My grandmother, my spiritual teacher, would place a lighted oil lamp in front of the image of Sri Krishna. Then an uncle who was a Sanskrit scholar would chant the names of the Lord one by one, with the sacred word Om before each name and the word namah after it.” Easwaran says he must have heard these thousand names a thousand times while growing up, recited at dawn for an hour.
He also shares the practical purpose of this ritual: “Even for a child, then, the Thousand Names were a constant reminder that there is a spark of divinity in everyone.”
As we embark together on this book study, may we too fill our minds with the thought of God, and know that “what we think of constantly, we see wherever we look.” Our reading this week is the start of the introduction on page 11 to the bottom of page 15, ending “…light and peace.”
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?
As we take up The Constant Companion, let’s give special attention to our practice of Spiritual Reading. What do you find most helpful or nourishing about the ways you already practice Spiritual Reading?
