In Yoke

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind.   – Mahatma Gandhi “We should be able to make all sorts of graceful concessions on things that do not matter in life and yet stand unshakable on essentials”, says Sri Easwaran. He warned that to do this, we have to be detached from our opinions. This does not mean we are to be wishy-washy, or lack strength in our convictions, but that we cultivate the forbearance not to force our opinions on others. It is like the adage I have heard recently: “is it more important to be loving, or to be right?” —perhaps one can be both! When we have strength of conviction we will not get rattled when people question or contradict us. It does us absolutely no good at all to reply to questioning or contradiction in a defensive manner. This connotes weakness in ourselves. Easwaran continues,”Mahatma Gandhi, for example, was not in favor of tea or coffee, but...

Got no checkbooks, got no banks, Still I’d like to express my thanks; I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.   – Irving Berlin Even people (like the recent tragic story of Whitney Houston)—who have money, power, prestige, and everything they have been seeking in their careers - can have emotional problems, can be taken away from the blessings they have already, by the world’s allures. Hasn’t it become painfully obvious that no amount of money and prestige can prevent profound dissatisfaction and boredom, as well as psychosomatic disorders and drug addiction for millions of people? Even those who have been raised right, and been given all the proper “church upbringing” and an immense talent / giftedness—like Whitney Houston –can be lured away from the Way to the deception –and destruction - of the accuser. To me, this is proof that money and power are not our need, that the human being cannot be satisfied by them. Time after time it comes to the public’s awareness ...

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.   – The Buddha When the mind is at rest, we are lifted out of time into the eternal present. The body, of course, is still subject to the passage of time. But in a sense, the flickering of the mind is our internal clock. When the mind does not flicker, what is there to measure change? It’s as if time simply comes to a stop for us, as we live completely in the present moment. Past and future, after all, exist only in the mind. When the mind is at rest, there is no past or future. We cannot be resentful, we cannot be guilt-ridden, we cannot build future hopes and desires; no energy flows to past or future at all. Past and future are both contained in every present moment. Whatever we are today is the result of what we have thought, spoken, and done in all the present moments before now – just a...

Faults and virtues arise from our companions. – Sanskrit proverb According to this ancient saying, what is good in us and what is bad, our strong points and our weak points alike, develop because of constant association. When we associate with calm people, we become calm; when we associate with 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. We’ve all experienced this. When we have spent an evening with someone who is overwrought, we come home so agitated ourselves that we can’t get to sleep. But there is a positive side of the power of association: we absorb good qualities too, by spending time with people who embody them. Whenever we associate with people, we participate in their mental states. I know this to be true, especially because I seem to be calmer and more centered when I am regualrly meeting with a spiritual formation group. As it being with those who ag...

Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.   – Miguel de Cervantes In Kerala, a state in South India where Easwaran grew up, along the roadside there are stone parapets the height of a person’s head. When people need to rest from carrying heavy loads of rice or fruit on their heads, they stand next to the parapet and shift their load onto it. The Lord  who dwells in the hearts of all is the perennial parapet, standing at exactly the right height for each one of us. For those who are very selfish, he stands very tall to support an awesome load; for those who are average in selfishness, he stands about six feet high; and for the selfless, the parapet can hardly be seen because the burden is so light that almost no support is needed. Through the practice of meditation and contemplative prayer, we can gradually learn to shift our load into the Lord’s mighty arms. We like to think that we make big decisions and...

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around, it comes to you. When it comes to you, stretch out your hand gently, take a portion of it politely, but pass it on. Or, it has not come to you yet. Do not project your desire to meet it. So act always in life.   – Epictetus from Sri Easwaran -"This is the nature of desire: it jumps out from the present to the future. When you have a very pleasant event planned, the desire has jumped out already to meet it. Even though this particular event will take place on Saturday, and today is Monday, half of you is already living in Saturday. And next Monday morning, you will be at your desk, remembering the great day you had Saturday. Epictetus says, don’t ever let your desire jump out to the future, and don’t let your mind wander to the past, because you will never be present in the here and now. If, for example, you are going to the theater to see Anthony and Cleopatra, it i...

Romans 8:25-30 (ESV) - But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. My devotional life really does dynamically move into deep contemplation as I read and reread the words of Richard Rohr* , one of my favorite authors. “The contemplative or non-dual mind, which for me is the essential self, is a tree of life , and brings about continual fruitfulness for the soul. Rohr reminds me of this in the discussion of how we usually make judgments based on our binary, or “either/or” false self/or/ego”. “A binary system of either/or choices is good and necessary in the lofty worlds of logic, mechanics, math and science…and in the everyday worlds of getting from po...