“In my book of life, love can be learned by anybody,” Easwaran writes, introducing one of his perennial themes. “If someone is not able to love, all I say is, ‘Come and learn.’ That is the purpose of meditation.”
Our reading this week is pages 118–127 in The Constant Companion.* Throughout we see how learning to love enriches our life, our immune system, and the lives of those around us.
And as usual Easwaran makes clear that the world stands badly in need of our learning to make this contribution. “Einstein once wrote that only ‘by widening our circle of compassion’ will we find a way out of the violence, mistrust, and exploitation that we see all around us today.” Chapter by chapter, through this book study our steady efforts together are making a difference.
Note that next week we’ll pause our book study and begin a special curriculum in preparation for our annual Celebration of Easwaran’s Life and Teachings.
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’ve been giving special attention to our practice of Spiritual Reading. This week notice how reading Easwaran supports your relationships with difficult people 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 4. The full talk is 21 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 again we get to enjoy Easwaran’s sonorous Sanskrit chanting. As he chants, he translates, beginning with this unsettling question meant “to shake our identification with the body”: “Why is there so much merriment in the world, why is there so much jubilation, when there is darkness all around, when violence stalks the land, when death follows like a shadow?”
* For those using electronic versions of The Constant Companion with different page numbering: this week’s reading is Easwaran’s commentary on the names The Energy of Life through Who Enjoys the Nectar of Immortality. (Please note that the latest edition of our ebook is titled Names of the Lord.)
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