This week we’ll wrap up our month-long video study with Part Four of Easwaran’s video talk. Easwaran concludes that the glory of the goal helps us take all difficulties in stride. He promises that the Supreme Goal of life allows us to be at home everywhere, and at home with everyone, all the time.
Is there at least one idea you will be taking away from this month of video study and reflection? Do you have something new you can continue to explore? Have you noticed an impact on your meditation practice?
In this week’s video study, Easwaran vividly describes the beauty of the moon, using a number of phrases in English and Sanskrit. He tells us that we all have the moon in our consciousness, and that there are ways to see the beauty of the moon by making our hearts pure.
In this week’s video study, Easwaran shares an anecdote from the Bhagavad Gita in which Arjuna is caught in the world of duality. Easwaran gives us a number of suggestions to help us understand how we can be equal in pleasure and pain, overcoming our own selfishness.
In March, we tried out a Video Study for the first time on the eSatsang, and many of you told us that you wanted to do again. We are happy to oblige!
This month, we’re shifting our focus to Easwaran’s videotaped talk on the Dhammapada, in a talk in which he describes how living for others brings permanent joy and harmony to our lives. He’ll give a number of practical and realistic suggestions to help us catch a glimpse of this joy.
This has been such a rich and productive month of reflecting on the Self in our hearts and in recognizing the Self in the hearts of those around us. At the beginning of this year, we shared a message of hopefulness and a call to deepening our meditation practice. As we come to the end of the first quarter, is there something meaningful you took away from this shared Vishu celebration to help fuel your deeper practice?
Please enjoy this 3 minute video clip of Easwaran sharing Vishu’s truest meaning: learning to see the divine in ourselves and others – what the mystics call the Face behind all faces.
In this final week, Easwaran reminds us of the supreme goal of all our spiritual striving and efforts. He also shares the faith and confidence that Gandhiji has for all of us. Is there at least one idea you will be taking away from this month of video study and reflection? Do you have something new you can continue to explore? Have you noticed an impact on your meditation practice?
This week, Easwaran addresses breaking free from guilt, and reminds us that his God is an ocean of mercy. With this background, Easwaran’s key lesson is using our meditation and the eight points to learn to forgive ourselves and others. To watch this week’s video excerpt, we suggest you start the video where we left off last week at 17:54 and end at 25:03. After watching, please share your thoughts in the comments section below. What resonated with you? What thoughts or questions do you have about forgiving yourself and others?
This week we’ll move on to part 2 of our study of Easwaran’s video talk “Gandhi, Man of God”. Easwaran continues sharing writings that reveal the restless striving for growth that marked Gandhi’s inner life, and relates it to our own lives and spiritual practice. In particular, Easwaran refers to Gandhi and his own approach to making mistakes, and how to learn from them.
To watch this week’s video excerpt, we suggest you start the video where we left off last week at 8:30 and end at 17:54. We look forward to hearing from you!
This month, we’re continuing our focus on meditation, with a special emphasis on effort during meditation. We’ll also enjoy inspiration and hopefulness for ourselves and others through a video study of Easwaran’s commentary on Gandhi and his spiritual teachings. This video talk is called “Gandhi, Man of God”, and is just over 30 minutes long. We’ve divided it into four sections so that we can review each part together over the next four weeks.
Thank you for sharing your ideas on simple ways to deepen meditation and to strengthen evenness of mind. We’re also very grateful to everyone who joined us for last week’s online workshop. It’s a great boost to our practice to strive together as a worldwide community as we put our meditation first, more of the time.
We are very interested to hear how your experiments went this past week. What did you try and did you learn something new? What impact did you notice on your meditation? Feel free to share any reflections as they always inspire us.
Please enjoy this six-minute video clip from the online workshop during which Easwaran shares stories and anecdotes about how the Lord is always closest to us in our time of need.
Join us for the mantram relay on January 1! Help our world-wide BMCM community collectively to keep the mantram going for all 24 hours of January 1, 2019, and start the new year off with a positive force to deepen our practice and spread peace to the world.
On this final post for 2018, we’d like to invite you to reflect on the past year of your practice of the eight-point program. What was something you learned that had an impact on your practice, or that contributed to a success you had? Also, feel free to share any words about your gratitude for your eSatsang friends!
If you are relatively new to the eSatsang, or joined in the last several months, we’d love for you to take this opportunity to introduce yourself. You could tell us how you found out about passage meditation, and about a recent success or challenge you’ve experienced.
Have you decided to set a positive intention for 2019? If so, share it with others below to help solidify it.
Thank you all for such a rich period of immersion in the eight-point program. Each of your contributions and endeavors at home has helped us to get a better taste of “bringing the retreat home”. It’s been a wonderful time for reflecting individually and as a community of passage meditators.
To close, we’ll have an opportunity to hear from Easwaran. In this 18-minute video he reminds us about all the opportunities that our numerous desires offer to us for gaining a firmer, fitter will. He will also discuss the practical ways in which we can make great strides towards realizing our real Self within. We hope you have been deeply inspired by this satsang together. At the same time, we know that attending a weeklong retreat can take your practice and your dedication to a new level. For that reason, we offer sliding scale fees as well as financial aid for our Tomales retreats. If this is your hope, even if it feels like a wild dream today, don’t lose sight of that dream. As Gandhiji says, “What is impossible for man is child’s play for God.”
This week we encourage you to try your chosen activity again or to try a new one. Remember, Easwaran suggests many small activities from the reading last week. What other suggestions do you have? And please let us know what challenges and successes you’ve experienced.
For inspiration, please enjoy this three-minute clip of Easwaran commenting on a poem by Kabir, in which he draws parallels between the rainforest and the mind, and reminds us how all of the activity within it can be quietened.
For next month's theme, we'd like to have your help in selecting a passage to study. Follow the link to cast your vote! Thanks to each of you for contributing your experiments, and for contributing to last week’s online workshop. It was a great boost to continue striving towards Putting Others First.
As promised, we are very interested to hear how your experiments went this past week. What did you learn? Did you try something new? Feel free to share any reflections.
To keep us inspired, we’ll leave Easwaran with the last word. In this six-minute clip, he comments upon how we are all looking for love, and can find it in our own communities, by joining the sea of love that is the Lord.
Would you like to meditate with others? Get an extra boost with this month’s theme, and join our passage meditation community for a virtual meditation on Saturday mornings at 6:30 a.m. San Francisco time. We'll start the virtual meditation with a volunteer reading a passage from God Makes the Rivers To Flow aloud. Then we'll silently meditate together for 30 minutes. We’ll ring a bell to signal the end of meditation, and ask for another volunteer to read aloud Easwaran's "Thought for the Day". This week, we’re sharing a video which begins with Easwaran citing Shakespeare’s sonnet 116, and continues with him sharing its similarities to the Bhagavad Gita and the Dhammapada. Easwaran is underscoring Shakepseare’s definition of love, which is something that is unchanging, immutable: “Love is a continuing state.” He also reminds us that love is a skill that each of us can learn. What does lasting love mean to you?
This month, we’ll focus on the subtle point of Slowing Down. When we’re more slowed down during the day, we’re more likely to be aware of our conditioned habits. It can include prioritizing effectively on those inevitable days when not everything can get finished or the unexpected emerges. If you haven’t yet seen the New Year’s Day Mantram Relay, please check out the Facebook Group, and help us collectively keep the mantram going for all 24 hours of January 1, 2018. Is there something you have done in your life to help you slow down effectively? Please share your tips with us.
We’d love to hear more about how your experiment with training the senses is going. Have you encountered challenges and/or successes? How has your strategy to help you remember the experiment during the day been working? If you don’t have time to comment, feel free to share through this brief check-in below. Finally, for inspiration from Easwaran, we’d like to offer a short clip (five minutes) that was shown in the November 11 Online Workshop. What are your thoughts on Easwaran’s commentary?
To conclude this study of our meditation practice, we’d like to draw on some inspiration from Easwaran in this 22-minute video entitled “Tips for Deepening Meditation”. In the video, Easwaran reminds us that we have a choice at all times to ask: “Shall I do what is pleasing, appealing only to me, or shall I choose to do what will benefit all?” (Click the title for more...)
