Blue Mountain Center of Meditation Information about Satsangsbmcmsatsang.pbworks.com/f/Handouts - A Four-Week Course in Pas… · I have a mantram that is not on your list. Can I

Blue Mountain Center of Meditation

Information about Satsangs

W e l c o m e to our Blue Mountain Center of Meditation (BMCM) Satsang. Our Satsang provides regular spiritual fellowship for people who share a commitment to Eknath Easwaran’s eight-point program of passage meditation.

We meet regularly for mutual support and inspiration. Our approach is nondenominational, nonsectarian, and free from dogma and ritual. It can be used within each person’s cultural and religious background to relieve stress, heal relationships, release deeper resources, and realize one’s highest potential.

Eknath Easwaran has been called one of the foremost teachers of meditation in our times. From his arrival in the United States in 1959 on the Fulbright exchange program until his passing in 1999, he taught to modern men and women his eight-point program, based on his unique method of meditation on memorized inspirational passages from the world’s great religions. Many thousands of people representing the full range of cultural and religious backgrounds attest to the benefits of his teaching. He continues to teach through his thirty books on spiritual living – over 1.5 million copies in print in twenty-seven languages – and through the ongoing programs and publications of the organization he founded in 1961 to carry on his work: the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation and its publishing arm, Nilgiri Press.

Pa s s a g e M e d i tat i o n : A n E i g h t - P o i n t P r o g r a m1. Meditation on a passage

Silent repetition in the mind of memorized inspirational passages from the world’s great religions. Practiced for one-half hour each morning.

2. Repetition of a mantramSilent repetition in the mind of a Holy Name or a hallowed phrase from one of the world’s great religions. Practiced whenever possible throughout the day or night.

3. Slowing downSetting priorities and reducing the stress and friction caused by hurry.

4. One-pointed attentionGiving full concentration to the matter at hand.

5. Training the sensesOvercoming conditioned habits and learning to enjoy what is beneficial.

6. Putting others firstGaining freedom from selfishness and separateness; finding joy in helping others.

7. Spiritual fellowshipSpending time regularly with others who are practicing passage meditation for mutual inspiration and support.

8. Spiritual readingDrawing inspiration from writings by and about the world’s great spiritual figures and from the scriptures of all religions. Studying Eawwaran’s works for general inspiration and for specific instruction in passage meditation.

© 2002 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. All rights reserved. www.easwaran.org

Begin by devoting half an hour every morning as early as convenient to the practice of

passage meditation. Do not increase this half-hour period, but if you want to meditate

more, have half an hour in the evening also.

Have a room in your home for meditation, or a special corner, and keep it as austere as

possible. A quiet, cool, well-ventilated room is best. If you like, you may want to have a

picture or image of a spiritual figure who inspires you.

If you want to sit in a straight-back chair, one with arms is best; or sit cross-legged on the

carpet. Sit with spinal column erect and eyes gently closed. As concentration deepens you

may begin to relax and fall asleep; if so, draw yourself up and move away from your back

support so that you can keep the spine, neck, and head in a straight line.

Have an inspirational passage memorized, such as the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, the

second or twelfth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, the Twenty-third Psalm, the first chapter

of the Dhammapada of the Buddha, or the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount.

Go through the words of the passage in your mind as slowly as you can, letting the words

slip one after another into your consciousness. Do not follow any association of ideas, but

keep to the words of the inspirational passage.

When distractions come, do not resist them, but try to give more and more attention to

the words of the prayer. If you find your mind has wandered away completely, go back to

the first word of the stanza and begin again.

Keep adding to your repertoire of inspirational passages from the scriptures of all

religions to prevent dryness in meditation.

The secret of passage meditation is that you become what you meditate on. When you use

the second chapter of the Gita in meditation, for instance, you are driving the words

deeper and deeper into your consciousness, so that one day perhaps after many years –

they will become an integral part of your consciousness and will manifest themselves in

your daily life.

Meditation on an inspirational passage is part of an eight-point program that helps you to

stay calm, kind and focused throughout the day.

Please do not copy or distribute | © Blue Mountain Center of Meditation | 800 475 2369 | www.easwaran.org

T H E P R A Y E R O F S A I N T F R A N C I S

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

P S A L M 2 3

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

T H E U P A N I S H A D S : I N V O C AT I O N

Lead me from the unreal to the real. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality.


Passages for Meditation



Frequently Asked Questions

Why meditate for thirty minutes?

Easwaran recommends half an hour of passage meditation in the morning. Less than half an hour doesn’t let you “get your teeth into it.”

If you want more meditation, have half an hour in the evening as well. To deepen your meditation, don’t increase the half-hour period of meditation but rather extend your practice of the other seven points throughout the day. The other seven points of passage meditation help you carry the benefits of your half-hour meditation session into your outer life. This balances inner growth with outer ability to face life’s challenges.

Why do we meditate on a passage, rather than on a mantram or breathing or on “emptiness”?

Easwaran honored all traditional forms of meditation. However, the method he developed for his own spiritual practice was meditation on a passage, which he felt was especially well-suited for our modern word-oriented and intellectual society.

Easwaran’s recommended inspirational passages are positive, practical, and drawn from inspired mystics and scriptures from all the world’s great wisdom traditions. Look at the books God Makes the Rivers to Flow or Timeless Wisdom or our Web site www.easwaran.org/passages for a large selection of suitable passages.

Is it acceptable to coordinate my breathing with the inspirational passage?

During meditation all our attention should be on the words of the passage. If we are also trying to coordinate our breath, our attention will be divided. As we concentrate more and more on the passage, the breath will naturally become slow and steady without our attending to it.

I don’t understand how you can repeat the words of the passage without thinking about their meaning.

During meditation, we should try not to reflect or speculate on the meaning of the passage. In other words, don’t try to think about what “an instrument of peace” means while meditating on the Prayer of St. Francis. Simply repeat the words with as much concentration as possible. You will get better at this with practice.

In the book, Passage Meditation, Easwaran explains:“As you attend to each word dropping singly, significantly, into your consciousness, you will realize that there is no discrepancy between sound and meaning. When you concentrate on the sound of each word, you will also be concentrating on the meaning of the passage. Sound and sense are one.”

I have a mantram that is not on your list. Can I use it?

Easwaran recommends mantrams that have been used by generations of earnest seekers in a living spiritual tradition. His selected list of these time-honored mantrams or Holy Names can be found in his books Passage Meditation and The Mantram Handbook, and on our Web site, www.easwaran.org. If you have chosen passage meditation as your meditation method, please


select one of the mantrams Easwaran recommended. (The only exception is when you are using a mantram that has been passed down in your family for generations through your own religious tradition.) For explanation, please read the chapter “Choosing a Mantram” in The Mantram Handbook, especially the section, “A Few Cautions.” Here is a pertinent excerpt:

“Use a mantram recommended by a spiritual teacher; you can be sure that it will be charged with the teacher’s own personal experience of the mantram’s power. All of the mantrams which I recommend are mantrams of proven power, bequeathed to us by the great spiritual teachers of many traditions…”

How do I know when a half hour has passed? Shall I use an alarm to signal the end of my meditation?

The best way to judge the time is to develop a feel for how long each passage takes. It is also fine to glance at your watch or clock when you feel thirty minutes have passed. If your schedule is tight and using an alarm makes you less concerned about time, then it is fine to use it, though a loud alarm can be a jarring way to end meditation. You could try setting the alarm for five minutes after your meditation period is over, so you don’t worry about running late and you are still developing the skill of learning when your 30-minute session is complete.

May I add prayer at the beginning or end of my meditation?

Yes, but keep your full 30 minutes of passage meditation.

May I meditate on the mantram?

No. In Easwaran’s eight-point program of passage meditation, repetition of the mantram is a separate discipline outside of meditation. Before you start or after you end your 30-minute session of meditation, you may want to repeat the mantram for a few minutes. Also, if disturbing emotions arise during meditation, you can briefly repeat the mantram and then return to the inspirational passage.

Why is morning the best time for meditation?

The mind is not yet stirred up with the thoughts and activities of the day and so is fresh and receptive to the ideals contained in the passages. The beneficial effects of morning meditation will follow you throughout the day.

Is it all right to visualize during meditation?

We silently repeat the words of the passage as slowly as possible, with complete concentration. All other thoughts are a distraction, including visualizations. While some visual images, such as a mental image of the words on a page, can be helpful in memorizing a passage, your goal should be to concentrate on the words themselves. Simply give more and more attention to the passage, and the images will fade into the background or disappear altogether.

I have further questions. How shall I get them answered?

Read Passage Meditation; join the BMCM e-satsang; and attend a BMCM retreat. You can get information about all of these at www.easwaran.org.

Frequently Asked Questions page 2



Mantrams Recommended by Eknath Easwaran

c h r i s t i a n Jesus

AveMariaorHailMary

DeusmeusetomniaorMyGodandmyall (ThiswasthephraseusedbySaintFrancisinhisprayers.Easwaranrecom- mendsusingeithertheLatinorEnglishversion,whicheverappealstoyou.)

LordJesusChrist,SonofGod,havemercyonme(theJesusPrayer)

KyrieeleisonorGospodipomilui (“Lord,havemercy”:shortformoftheJesusPrayerinGreek&Russian)

OmYesuChristu

b u d d h i s t Ommanipadmehum(“Thejewelinthelotusoftheheart”)

NamuAmidabutsu(“IputmyfaithintheBuddhaofinfinitelight”)

h i n d u Rama

HaréRama,HaréRama, RamaRama,HaréHaré, HaréKrishna,HaréKrishna, KrishnaKrishna,HaréHaré

OmSriRam,jaiRam,jaijaiRam

OmnamahShivaya

OmBhavani(AmantraminhonoroftheDivineMother)

j e w i s h BarukhattahAdonai(“Blessedartthou,OLord”)

Ribonoshelolam(“Lordoftheuniverse”)

m u s l i m Allah

Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim (“InthenameofAllah,themerciful,thecompassionate”)

© 2002 Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. All rights reserved. www.easwaran.org


Basic Satsang Guidelines

We meet in spiritual fellowship to support each other in realizing our full potential, each within his or her own spiritual or religious context, or without any particular context.

Our approach is non-sectarian, non-denominational and free from ritual and dogma.

* Following in Easwaran’s footsteps, we emphasize the unity and universality of the spiritual life as it is lived by sincere spiritual aspirants in every tradition.

* When the discussion touches on any particular religious tradition, we speak with respect and appreciation about the positive aspects of that tradition, and pass over in silence any negative aspects.

* We refrain from all discussion about the relative merits of one religion over another.

We share a commitment to establishing a daily practice of the eight-point program of passage meditation developed by Eknath Easwaran.

To affirm and deepen our commitment, we meditate every day for at least 30 days before becoming a regular member of the Satsang. After joining the Satsang, we give our best effort to maintain and renew that commitment every day.

We follow the format established by the BMCM by which we prepare ourselves for meditation by calming our minds and concentrating our attention on spiritual ideals.

* We follow a format established by the BMCM that draws directly on Easwaran’s and the BMCM’s long experience in teaching passage meditation.

* We consider it vital to go into meditation directly after inspiration from Easwaran, so we precede the meditation period with at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted listening to his words.

* We always conclude our Satsang meeting with meditation.

Our goal in Fellowship is to support each other’s passage meditation practice and to gain a deeper understanding of Easwaran’s teachings. To pursue this goal, we focus only on passage meditation and our experiences with it.

* Throughout the discussion, our common touchstone is passage meditation.

* We all share the responsibility to maintain gently but clearly the group’s focus on passage meditation.

For spiritual instruction we look to Easwaran, and for additional inspiration we look to the great mystics and traditions he recommends.

* This time of Satsang is an opportunity to deepen our practice of the teachings and methods of Easwaran. When we mention other mystics and traditions, it is for the purpose of sharing inspiration, not spiritual instruction.


* We prefer that group discussions focus on mystics referred to by Easwaran.

* Out of respect for the religious sensibilities of all participants who come fromdifferent backgrounds, and who may have no other interest in common than Easwaran’s teachings, we read only Easwaran’s books and play only his videos during Satsang sessions.

Since each of us grasps the teachings in our own way, at our own pace, we seek to absorb them together, not to interpret them.

* When there is a question about how to practice passage meditation, we read a relevant passage from one of Easwaran’s books, or consult the BMCM.

* We avoid imposing our understanding on others.

When we offer our personal experience in Fellowship it is as a way to support others and deepen our passage meditation practice, not to ask for or offer personal advice.

* We are not here to “workshop” a solution to personal problems.

* We refrain from giving each other advice during the discussion, and the Coordinator is especially careful not to use his or her position to give spiritual instruction or personal advice.

* When we bring up examples from our personal lives, we focus our attention on how the eight points can be practiced within that context.

Everyone has something of value to bring to Fellowship, including the gift of our presence, so everyone should have the opportunity to speak and should also feel comfortable to listen in silence.

*The Coordinator facilitates the session. Every member of the Satsang, including the Coordinator, is present to learn, not to teach.

* We use Fellowship as an opportunity to cultivate mutual respect, attentive listening, and gentle, thoughtful speech.

Basic Satsang Guidelines page 2


P a g e h e a d i n g

1

The Company We Keepby Eknath Easwaran

In Sanskrit there is a pithy saying that was on the tip of my grandmother’s tongue every year when school began. At the end of the day I would run

home to tell her who I had been with and what we had done that day. “You don’t have to tell me who you have been with,” she would say. “I can tell.”

“All right, Granny, who?”She would proceed to name every

one of them. And she was always right. “Granny,” I would ask in amazement, “how did you know?”

And she would reply, “Samsargad dosha-guna bhavanti” – which means, roughly, “We become like those we hang out with.”

Granny wasn’t one to waste words, so it was only when I learned to meditate that I began to understand what she was trying to tell me. Doshaguna is a word pair: “good and bad,” “right and wrong,” “good and evil.” Much more than words or behavior, Granny was talking about character – the influences on the mind that shape the kind of person we are becoming, for better and for worse.

According to this ancient Sanskrit say-ing, what is good in us and what is bad, our strong points and our weak points alike, develop because of constant associa-tion. When we associate with calm people, we become calm; when we associate with

E K NAT H E AS WA R A N has been called one of the foremost teachers of medita-tion in our times. From his arrival in the United States in 959 on the Fulbright exchange program until his passing in the fall of 999, he taught to modern men and women his Eight Point Program, based on his unique method of meditation on memorized inspirational pas-sages from the world’s great religions. Many thousands of people representing the full range of cultural and religious backgrounds attest to the benefits of his teaching. He continues to teach through his twenty-six books on spiri-tual living – over a million copies in print in twenty-two languages – and through the ongoing programs and publi-cations of the organization he founded in 96 to carry on his work: the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation and its publishing arm, Nilgiri Press.

A J O U R N A L F O R S P I R I T U A L L I V I N G B A S E D O N

E K N AT H E A S W A R A N ’ S E I G H T P O I N T P R O G R A M

agitated people, we become agitated. When we frequent the company of people who are wise, we become wiser; when our company is otherwise, we become otherwise too.

All of us have experienced this. When we have spent an evening with someone who is wrought up over some political issue or some gross injustice that has been done to him personally, we come home so agitated ourselves that we cannot sit and enjoy our dinner; we cannot sleep in peace. There may be no apparent connection with the other person’s grievances; our mind is sim-ply stirred up, racing at top speed. And we just can’t understand: in the afternoon we were feeling so calm, so composed; what happened to get us so agitated? Then we remember: “Oh, yeah, we had dinner with Uncle Bob!”

The more intimate the relationship, of course, the more susceptible to this we are. “When you go out with your boyfriend and come back agitated,” I used to tell my students, “I wouldn’t say that

Eknath Easwaran’s commentaries for Blue Mountain are drawn from the thousands of previously unpublished talks and writ-ings in the Blue Mountain Center archives – part of an ongoing effort to make his teaching freely available around the world.

A Journal for

Spiritual Living

Published by the

Blue Mountain

Center of Meditation

& Nilgiri Press

www.nilgiri.org

Winter 2002

Volume 13, Number 4

BlueMountainE S T A B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 0 B Y E K N A T H E A S W A R A N

F O R P R E S E N T I N G H I S E I G H T P O I N T P R O G R A M

Continuedon next page

Below, from our archives: Sri Eknath Easwaran in the BMCM office in 994.

P a g e h e a d i n gC O M M E N TA R Y

person is a ‘boyfriend.’ The correct word is ‘boyfoe.’ When you go out with a girl who makes you agitated, it is not good English to call her a girlfriend. It’s more accurate to say she’s a girlfoe.”Longterm Effects

Over the longer term, these effects can work deep into our own personal-ity. If we spend much time with people who talk negatively about themselves or others, for example, we may begin to absorb these qualities and attitudes ourselves – no matter how immune we feel.

There is an old story about a Cockney boy from Billingsgate who knew all the bad words in the English language and used them frequently. When his parents came into some big money, the first thing they wanted to do was to teach him to speak correctly and grammatically so that he might escape his past; so they sent him to stay for a year with a well-known pro-fessor from Oxford. When the father came to reclaim the boy, he told the professor how much he was looking forward to hearing his son speak like a “paffick Hinglish genlmn.” The pro-fessor replied, “Garn! Didger hexpect thet o im?” He is speaking just like the boy.

This kind of influence can take place easily, especially when we are vague about our own standards and values. If we could observe ourselves objectively over a long period, we would find it striking how much we become like the people we associate with. The Mental Atmosphere

The spiritual psychology of India has a penetrating explanation for the power of association. According to this theory, we participate in other people’s states of mind. Being physi-cally oriented, we think states of mind must be separate just as our bodies are. But thoughts have no containers. They are more like a field of forces, and like physical forces they act and react on each other in a larger field.

In this sense, we can think of con-sciousness as a kind of mental atmo-sphere. Mental states commingle like the air we breathe. In a room, if one person has the flu, others are likely to catch it in the air; similarly, if one per-

son is angry, fearful, or depressed, that state of mind is likely to spread.

This contagion is so common today that mental agitation – anger, nega-tivity, hostility, greed – has become epidemic. Agitated people will always make a beeline for each other; and where two agitated people come together, two and two make twenty-two. One agitated person is enough to disturb the whole home, the whole office, even the whole community.Right Speech

Speech is an important part of this mental atmosphere. The way we speak communicates our state of mind. For that reason, we need to be vigilant about the kind of conversation we par-ticipate in.

In India, it’s not at all uncommon for people to repeat anything they hear. “Of course, I wouldn’t say this myself, but my neighbor says that the schoolteacher’s sister . . .” I think it was from Mahatma Gandhi that I learned never to listen to this kind of conver-sation and never to repeat anything at another person’s expense.

Whenever we find ourselves in agi-tated or degrading conversation – par-ticularly backbiting, gossip, or dep-recation of other people, races, sexes, or religions – we can teach our mind to be offended and our ears not to lis-ten. The least that all of us can do on such occasions is to walk out. This is a healthy reminder to everybody that we don’t have to listen to everything that is going on about us, particularly when it is in deprecation of others.

If we could see the mental states involved, we would see that most gos-sip is malicious. For some reason, peo-ple who are insecure feel bigger when they diminish others; people who are not particularly good themselves feel better when they run down others who are. The Buddha, a master of psy-chology, would warn that all of us bear responsibility not only for what we say but for what and whom we listen to. Sooner or later, the kind of talk we indulge in will come around to us.The Mass Media

I would apply this not only to people but to books, magazines, papers, movies, TV shows, everything con-nected with the mass media. All this

is part of the mental atmosphere we live in.

The other day I went to see a movie which I expected to be mildly amusing. It turned out to be wildly violent. What amazed me was that half the audience were children. One little fellow about five was wandering about like a lost angel. We wonder where his parents were, but all of us, despite our sophisti-cation, take this kind of tawdry stuff in as readily as that child.

This has been hailed as a great film, and because millions of people have been told it is a great film, they will go to see it and recommend it to others. Most people get so overwhelmed by reviewers and so-called experts that the will to differ is simply not present.

Even in choosing to go to a movie where vulgarity is put forth as art and disruption of human relationships is presented as shining examples of com-munication, we are not only immers-ing ourselves in those values; we are accepting and supporting them to the extent of our participation.

We have to ask ourselves whether we really want to absorb such values, whether this is the kind of atmosphere we want to breathe. In the language of the Compassionate Buddha, these are powerful influences that shape us – influences that are going to have their say in the kind of person we are becoming every day.

It is particularly sobering to realize that our own thoughts, too, are part of the company we keep. Negative thoughts are the worst kind of com-pany because it is so difficult to throw them out. That is why I advise that whenever you find yourself caught in negative thinking, start repeating the mantram or Holy Name. When the mind gets absorbed in the mantram, it has no room for other thoughts; it is alert, calm, and focused always.Spiritual Companionship

Desire for the company of spiritu-ally oriented people comes naturally once we take to meditation. We are beginning to change inside, often dra-matically; it is natural that our tastes and desires should be changing too. As the desire to know ourselves becomes stronger and stronger, we’ll be looking in the paper not to find a good movie

2

P a g e h e a d i n gC O M M E N TA R Y

Continuedon page 6

but to find a talk on meditation. When we go to a bookstore, we’ll pass by the best-seller tables to get to the religion or self-help sections. And we will be looking everywhere for the company of others who are dedicated to the spiritual life – not intellectually inter-ested, but actually practicing disci-plines like our Eight Point Program.

This is the positive side of the power of association: we absorb good quali-ties, too, by spending time with people who embody them. If you want to be secure and selfless, the Buddha says, associate with people who are reasonably secure and selfless, and learn to be like them in their daily living example. By association we can become good, by association we can become selfless, by associa-tion we can elevate ourselves to a nobler way of life.

This, too, we may have already experienced. When we are agitated about something and want to express our agitation by agitat-ing a few more people around us, we go by mistake to the house of someone who is calm and secure. He comes to the door, sees the agi-tation in our eyes, and says, “You want to agitate me too? Come on in! You can put your mind in overdrive and race along however you like.” You start recapitulating what wrongs the world has done you, how you have always been innocent, and your friend just sits and listens. Halfway you began to say, “Maybe sometimes I do make mistakes. Maybe sometimes I do provoke people myself.”

Your friend is still not saying any-thing. He is just looking with shining eyes of love and understanding. But by the time your visit ends, you have become calm. And you just don’t know what has happened to your agitation. It takes most of us a long, long time to understand that whenever we associ-ate with people, we participate in their mental states – in this case for the better.Satsang – Spiritual Association

Finding suitable companionship can be difficult on the spiritual path. Without it, however, we may turn into a lone wolf. For those who are practic-

ing meditation and seeking to change their lives, it is helpful, if possible, to make time for regular association with others with similar goals and values.

This kind of association is called satsang in Sanskrit, and it is so impor-tant that I have made it one of the points of my Eight Point Program. Satsang is not just uplifting compan-ionship; it means regular association, as often as possible, with others who are practicing the same disciplines. When such people gather together,

even though every one may have drawbacks, we absorb what is the best in all.

This kind of support is vital as meditation deepens. There will be gulfs where you have to leap across, precipices you have to climb just like a mountaineer. Climbers protect them-selves by tying ropes to one another so that even if one person slips, the others can provide support. That is just what satsang means.

If you are following my Eight Point Program, my practical suggestion would be to make time to meditate as often as possible with people who are on the same path.You may read together for a short while or watch one of our videos, but the most important part is meditation. Wherever people meditate together, a healing force is

released that deepens the experience for all.

Satsang means literally “the com-pany of the holy, the company of the good.” The principle is embedded in all the world’s great mystical traditions, but nowhere, I think, so systematically as in India. There, since time imme-morial, it has been a fundamental part of the spiritual life for sincere aspirants to spend as much time as possible in the ashram, or spiritual community, of their teacher. Even after

a great saint like Sri Ramakrishna or Saint Therese of Lisieux is no longer present in the body, he or she is a living presence from which all of us can gradually absorb a little of their own spiritual awareness. By this association we take on a little part of their peace, a little part of their equanimity, a little part of their undivided devotion to God.

In India, satsang is said to be the secret of all spiritual endeavor. That is why many people like to spend their vacation in an ashram where they can spend a week or two asso-ciating with people who talk about God, meditate regularly, and are trying their best to come face to face with the Lord who lives within them.

One of the important reasons for our Blue Mountain Center retreats is to provide a rendezvous where

people who are spiritually yearning, who are searching for the supreme purpose of life, can come together to support one another and provide companionship for one another on this demanding journey. I am always pleased to hear from friends that our retreats are like an oasis for them, where they can find living waters and return home refreshed.Heading

On the spiritual path, we all need the human companionship of others following the same disciplines. But we also need transcendent companion-ship. The highest form of spiritual association is love for someone who embodies our highest ideals and aspi-rations, someone we want to be like in every possible way. It might be Jesus or the Compassionate Buddha; it might be a great saint like Sri Ramakrishna,

Eknath Easwaran

3

Lord, “I love you so much, I meditate upon you so passionately, that one day I am going to become you.” And Sri Krishna replies delightfully, “Radha, I love you so much and think about you so much that the day you become Krishna, I am going to become Radha.”

This happens to all of us: we become like those we love. This is the real principle of satsang. If I can in any way account for the small measure of spiritual awareness that has come to me, the only explanation I can offer is that because I loved my spiritual teacher, my mother’s mother, so deeply that I made it possible for her to con-vey to me a small part of her own spiritual awareness. Today, in a very small way, I have become like her – not because of any special virtues of mine

or any good qualities I might have, but because I loved her so passionately that little by little I absorbed some of her consciousness.

In this sense, spiritual awareness is not taught; it is caught. When your mind is absorbed in love for a great lover of God, then little by little, day by day, that love begins to seep into your consciousness through a kind of spiri-tual osmosis.

This transcendent love is awakened whenever people gather together and meditate on the Lord with all their heart. In the inspiring words of Jesus the Christ, “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am present there.” d

Saint Francis, or Saint Therese. Reading the scriptures and the lives of great saints and mystics can be a powerful kind of association that is accessible to all. I have known many people to whom Jesus, the Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, Saint Francis of Assisi, or Saint Therese of Lisieux were living companions in every sense of the word – more real, often, than associates and co-workers whose lives threw no light on the lives they were trying to lead.

In the Indian tradition, the human soul in its search for God is repre-sented as a breathtakingly beautiful woman named Radha, who is always meditating on Sri Krishna. When Krishna appears to her one day, Radha is so overwhelmed that she tells the

C O M M E N TA R Y

From B LU E MO U N TA I N , the newsletter of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, Winter 2002© 2002 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, Inc.

Please address all correspondence to Post Office Box 256,Tomales, CA 9497Telephone 707 878 2369 E-mail [email protected] Web www.easwaran.org

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Blue Mountain Center of Meditation Information about Satsangsbmcmsatsang.pbworks.com/f/Handouts - A Four-Week Course in Pas… · I have a mantram that is not on your list. Can I