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Reading Study
We will close this study with Part 2 of Easwaran’s article “The Secret of Selfless Action” in the Spring 2019 Blue Mountain Journal. In the comments below, we’d love if you’d share a line or two that really stood out to you, or a practical step you’d like to emphasize for yourself and others.
Is there one thing you will be taking away from this month of reflection and practice? Do you have something new you can add to your practice of the eight points?
This week, we’re starting a new article on work and sadhana, in which Easwaran emphasizes the importance of selfless work. He places before us the promise of learning to work hard without any ego involvement at all. He reminds us that a quieter ego means a stiller mind.
Thank you for your inspiring reflections on last week’s reading from the Spring 2019 Blue Mountain Journal “The Purpose of Work”! We’re continuing our conversation as a community on cultivating a new understanding of work as an opportunity to attain wisdom and deepen our practice by reducing self-will.
This week we’re diving into Part 2 of Easwaran’s article “Work: A Chance to Grow” to continue our exploration of the profundity hidden in the routines of daily working life, in the home or outside of it. After reviewing the article, please share your reflections in the comments section below. Is there one practical thing you can experiment with this week while you work?
This month, we’re shifting to a series of reading studies from the Spring 2019 Blue Mountain Journal “The Purpose of Work”. We always like to share journals through the eSatsang because it’s a great opportunity to deepen our understanding of Easwaran’s teachings together, and gain new insights. What reflections do you have on Easwaran’s statement that the purpose of work is the attainment of wisdom? Does it inspire any reflections on the tremendous opportunity for growth in our daily lives?
Below is a story from Easwaran to illustrate how these lofty ideals look in an everyday context. As always, please share what stands out to you in the comments section. Feel free to summarize what you noted and/or share implications for your meditation practice. We look forward to hearing from you!
Friends at Ramagiri Ashram will celebrate Vishu on Sunday, April 14 and invite us to join them from wherever we are in the world in a day of shared contemplative practice. There are suggested activities throughout the day providing us with many opportunities to connect with each other virtually.
Let’s continue preparing ourselves for Vishu by finishing Easwaran’s article from last week. This week Easwaran shares the symbolism of looking at one’s reflection in a mirror on Vishu. We’re reminded that to see our true beauty, we must clean the dust from past conditioning a little each day to break free from self-will.
We’re really thrilled to share our focus for the month of April because it is anchored in an invitation to participate in a special shared practice day for our worldwide community.
In honor of Easwaran’s grandmother, Ramagiri celebrates the yearly Kerala Spring holiday called Vishu. The significance of Vishu is to mirror the pure spark of divinity within each of us, making this ancient ritual a very modern remedy for our times.
Friends at Ramagiri Ashram will celebrate Vishu on Sunday, April 14 and welcome us to join them in a day of shared contemplative practice. Would you like to participate?
In the reading below, Easwaran reminds us that there is a divine source of love, wisdom, beauty and compassion in all of us. Please share what stands out to you in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you!
We began the month with the question: How can we contribute to a sense of hopefulness in ourselves and others? We hope that our in-depth study of the articles from the Special Issue of the Blue Mountain Journal has given you a well of pure waters to draw on when you feel oppressed by difficulty.
Is there one thing you will be taking away from this month of reflection and practice? Do you have something new you can take away from this exploration?
We will close this study with a final article by Easwaran. We ask you to take this opportunity to contribute to Easwaran’s message of hope together as a satsang. In the comments below, we’d love if you’d share a line or two that really stood out for you, or a practical step you’d like to emphasize for yourself and others.
Thank you again for your insightful comments about Easwaran’s message for hope in difficult times. This week, Easwaran imparts a precious insight into how we can transform our suffering for the good of all through our meditation practice. He guides us as we ponder our central question this month: How can we contribute to a sense of hopefulness in ourselves and others?
Let’s absorb Easwaran’s message of hope together by sharing in the comment section below:
Type a line or two that really stood out for you.
Share an overall message from Easwaran that resonates with you in some way.
Write any thoughts or questions that come up for you as you read Easwaran’s words.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this timely conversation. Your contributions are very encouraging!
This message from Easwaran can be found on page 3 in the Special Issue Blue Mountain Journal, Winter 2018.
We’re thrilled to devote January to a study of the special issue of the Blue Mountain Journal, with a focus on applying the mantram to prayers for peace. This Journal arrived at the close of 2018 as a response to many friends asking the BMCM for guidance during these difficult times. In this Journal, we find practical spiritual guidance from Eknath Easwaran and Christine Easwaran, who offer us inspiration, encouragement, and hope.
Two decades ago, Easwaran told us, “People look around with fear and suspicion in their hearts, and they see a world to be afraid of, a world of danger. I see a world of choices, a world of hope.” A big question we’d like to discuss this month is: How can we contribute to a sense of hopefulness during these trying times for ourselves and others?
Our goal is to brainstorm this question as a community, and to encourage each other to keep focusing our minds the long list of reasons Easwaran gives us for being hopeful, even in the hardest of times. This week we’ll begin to try and answer this question by sharing our thoughts on Easwaran’s message for hope in the article shared on the eSatsang site.
We are beginning a special month of celebration. Each October, a local group gathers at Ramagiri Ashram in Tomales, California, to honor Eawaran’s life and teachings. We invite our worldwide community of passage meditators to join in and to look upon the whole month of October as a time of re-dedication to our spiritual life through Easwaran’s eight-point program.
Please read the excerpt from Easwaran’s article, “Our Real Identity” below. What speaks to you in this reading?
Try an experiment. Over the next few days, look for a small instance of when you feel an inner tension between your yearning to be a spiritual being and your past conditioning as a separate, physical creature, “like a ball batted back and forth.” For example, you could be trying to put someone else first, or resist a small selfish desire. In that moment, recall Easwaran’s story about the two forces within, and try putting more effort into one of the eight points. What do you notice?
Thank you all for your ongoing engagement with this month’s topic of transformation. In our final week exploring this deep topic, we will offer both a reading and a video from Easwaran in which he touches on the radiant end goal of transformation through samadhi – union with reality. This is how Easwaran describes that supreme goal of meditation in The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume 2, “Like a Thousand Suns.”
We invite you to allow this reading and the video below to just wash over you as inspiration to give your best to your practice of the eight-point program. See if you can capture the desire for transformation this week.
This week, we will continue our conversation on opportunities for transforming our personalities to reflect our divine Self. Easwaran invites us to learn to live in freedom with a playful approach to our likes and dislikes that come up constantly in our everyday lives.
In the following reading study excerpt, Easwaran gives a number of practical suggestions for learning flexibility and true enjoyment through the senses.
Is there a line or two from the reading below that motivates you to play with your likes and dislikes? Is there a small “juggling” experiment that you’d like to try this week? We’d love to hear your perspective another angle of transformation.
Below is an excerpt from Conquest of Mind by Easwaran.
Easwaran often highlights the opportunities for transformation in strong emotions like fear, anger and greed. The reading excerpt below from Easwaran in The Mantram Handbook goes into detail about the ways we can apply the mantram to the tremendous forces within us for the benefit of others and ourselves, and why it can help.
We invite you to read the following excerpt from Easwaran and to consider these questions:
Have you experienced a taste of this kind of transformation of personality through the mantram?
Do you have a current situation that you’d like to apply the mantram to?
Questions about how it can work?
We’d love to hear from you! Please share in the comments below.
After our rich, lively experience of “bringing a retreat home” over the past two months, we’re now inviting you to explore the concept of transformation throughout the month of September. When Easwaran writes about transformation, he emphasizes the power of the inspirational passage.
The big and small changes we experience in life provide us with opportunities for going deeper in our meditation and experiencing our own spiritual transformation. Over the next month, through a series of reading and video studies, we’ll strive to absorb Easwaran’s teachings on the overriding goal of spiritual transformation, and find ways we can take our own small steps each day using the eight points.
What are some ways you’ve used the eight-point program to help you during times of change, big or small? Do you have particular go-to passages that you use when you’re facing a difficult internal or external change? We’d love to hear from you! Please share in the comments below.
In the following 3-minute video, Easwaran reminds us of the true goal of our striving for transformation: “You have a loving relationship with everybody, and you express it every day in your life.”
It’s been wonderful sharing a taste of “bringing the retreat home” with you over the past two months! We’ve enjoyed hearing from you, and appreciate all the ways you have been taking part from a distance.
Throughout the month, we’d asked you to select a passage that illustrates to you the ideals you strive for in building the will. We’d love to know which passage you’ve chosen! Feel free to share your passage with us in the comments below, but we also encourage you to join us for a special virtual satsang on Saturday, September 1 from 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (San Francisco time.) During the virtual satsang we’ll meditate together and read our passages aloud in order to round out our home-retreat experience of the past two months.
As this study comes to a close, what is one piece of wisdom that you are taking away? Is there one practical experiment that you had success with and would like to keep up into the future?
Join us for a bonus virtual satsang! Please choose a passage from God Makes the Rivers to Flow or from our website that speaks to you about building your will. We’ll have a virtual satsang session to share these passages aloud, followed by 30 minutes of passage meditation on Saturday, September 1 at 11:00 a.m.-12:15p.m., San Francisco time.
This week, we’ll look at Putting Others First, one of the more nuanced of the eight points. How you put one person first is not necessarily how you will put the next person first – and it will even vary with the same person from situation to situation.
You may already be Putting Others First in many ways. This week, see if you can take the opportunity to do one focused selfless act. Perhaps you can help a friend or family member with a physical project in the yard or garden. Or maybe, you’ll take some time to write the mantram for someone going through a difficult time. Decide what is right for you. Give it a try, reflect on the experience, and let us know how it went! Easwaran reminds us that our true nature is selfless, and that meditation can free us from self-will to use our inner resources for the benefit of others. Have you tasted the benefits of setting aside your self-will by Putting Others First in the context of your personal relationships?
This week, we will explore how Easwaran links simple sense-training activities to grand qualities like freedom, joy, and loyalty in relationships. We’ll also have an opportunity to try some of these activities.
Is there an area of sense training that you do well, or that comes to you naturally? Please share this with us for inspiration! Suggested Activity: Think of a specific situation in your daily life where you would like to practice sense training. For example, you might try getting free from a sensory craving for a type of food or entertainment. You could list a few healthy substitutions for your craving and try one the next time a craving sneaks up on you. We’d love to hear about your experience with this activity. Please share in the comments section.
As a bonus activity, feel free to enjoy this audio recording of Easwaran and Christine reading aloud passages. This is a practical opportunity to enjoy spiritual inspiration as uplifting entertainment.
This month we will continue our experiment of bringing a Tomales retreat experience home, by focusing on this year’s BMCM Weeklong Retreat theme of “Building the Will.” We’ll suggest ways in which you can get a taste of a Weeklong Retreat from wherever you are. As a practical way to approach this week’s focus, think of an instance in your daily life where you’d like to apply One-Pointed Attention more. Please share this with us! Hearing about your efforts helps us all to develop our skills.
Consider how you might make the most of this opportunity for applying more One-Pointed Attention during the week. You might choose an idea from the list below, adapted from a worksheet in the Weeklong Retreat, or choose an idea of your own. You may decide to extend an instance where you already have success with One-Pointed Attention. Choose something that will work for you!
This week, our reading from Easwaran discusses how practicing One-Pointed Attention, or ekagrata in Sanskrit, helps us to build our will and deepen our love and loyalty to everyone around us. Please feel free to highlight particular lines or sections from the reading that resonate with you.
This week, we will explore how slowing down the mind can provide a critical inroad to building the will. Slowing down can be challenging, but we have many opportunities throughout the day to keep trying. Remember that slowing down isn’t only about pacing, but also about setting priorities.
During retreats we often work together in small groups to reflect on an Easwaran reading or video talk and to brainstorm practical suggestions to try. Regarding the current topic of Slowing Down, what are some successes you have had? How has Slowing Down helped you to build your will?
Do you have a specific challenge that you’d like tips with? Review the reading below for ideas, or ask your eSatsang friends!
This week, we’ll continue to look at the retreat theme of building the will, and this time through the lens of the mantram.
In light of that, you might carve out some dedicated mantram time this week in a way that works for you. Is there one activity you can do to focus on the mantram? During retreats there are many opportunities for repeating the mantram such as just before eating a meal, or while taking a walk, lying down for a nap, writing mantrams at the beginning of a workshop, or creating mantram art for someone… you choose!
In the spirit of bringing the retreat experience home, you could consider sitting down to write the mantram for a period of time, dedicating your mantrams to someone who needs them. You could do this in unison with Christine Easwaran and friends at Ramagiri Ashram on Sunday.
This week, our reading from Easwaran emphasizes using the mantram to build the will so we can be kind in challenging situations. Please feel free to share particular lines or sections from the reading that stand out to you, and tell us how they might apply to your own life.
