In Yoke

Thou art my glory and the exultation of my heart: thou art my hope and refuge in the day of my trouble.-----Thomas a Kempis again--Sri Easwaran expresses my heart's intent-- Sometimes in our spiritual life, we will find we have come to a point where our progress seems to be stopped cold. Sometimes these dry periods are just that, a boring stretch of ground that we must get over by walking step by step. But sometimes we find before us a chasm, and at that time no amount of plodding at our usual humble pace will get us across. At those times, devotion to a divine ideal – whether as a personal  incarnation of God, or simply complete faith in the Self within us – can enable us to make a leap. We will close our eyes and say, “I do not have the capacity to go farther without help. Now it is up to You.” We’ll go forward, secure in the faith that the Self, the Lord within, will never let us fall but will carry us safely to the other side. Help me Lord Christ, indwelling, sustai...

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to us.------------------------------------Leon Trotsky Sri Easwaran succinctly puts some of my current thoughts about getting older into a very well worded context: "When the first grey hair appears on our head, it is a critical juncture in life. We go to the mirror with a sinking feeling of dread and try to pluck out the evidence – one here, two there. But the more we pull out, the more seem to come in.  I tease my friends by asking which of them would like to relive their adolescence. It always brings a groan. Youth has a lot to offer, but so does the experience of age. In India we have a joke about a man going to a barber and asking, “Do you have anything for grey hair?” “Yes,” the barber says, “respect.” Just because we don’t have wrinkles or a grey hair, we are not necessarily alive in the fullest sense of the word. Real living comes from making a contribution to life.  This is the paradox of life: whe...

"You are quaffing drink from a hundred fountains: whenever any of these hundred yields less, your pleasure is diminished. But when the sublime fountain gushes from within you, no longer need you steal from the other fountains"... -Jalaluddin Rumi Often we are most vulnerable during moments of transition. For example, you have wrapped up one assignment and it is time to look over the next. Or you’ve turned the last page of your novel and it is time to go to bed. Whatever the transition, for a pivotal moment the mind has nothing to hold on to, and in its insecurity it may suggest all kinds of things: a cigarette, an extra piece of pie, a magazine promising the lowdown on your favorite actor’s private life. Suddenly any of these can seem fraught with urgency.  Here the mantram can rescue you. If you start repeating it the moment you complete one activity, and do not drop it until the time comes for you to give complete attention to the next job at hand, your will gets a need...

Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? I am a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of my head are easier by far to count than my feelings, the movements of my heart. -Saint Augustine Most of us never really see the people we live with. Our boyfriend may be right before our eyes, but we do not see him. We see our idea of him, a little model we have made in our mind, and on that we pronounce our judgments.  That is why, when we quarrel with someone, the worst thing we can do is to avoid him or her. We are trying to avoid an image in our own mind, which cannot be done. The mind takes some exaggerated impressions, memories, hopes, and insecurities, draws a quick caricature like one of those sidewalk cartoonists, and then turns up its nose. The person in question should retort, "That's not me; that's your caricature of me. If you don't like it, you don't like your own mind."  To heal our relationships, we have to move closer to people ...

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013 “Are you an Atheist?” I’m often asked this question during lectures despite the fact that I use the word “God” regularly. My usual response is to take cover in cleverness: “My atheism depends on your theism. If you believe in Zeus or Apollo, then, yes, I’m an atheist. If you believe in a god who chooses one people over another and privileges one strip of real estate over another, then, yes I’m an atheist. If you believe in a god who has children, or who dictates books on mountaintops or in caves, or who saves some and damns others, then, yes, I’m an atheist. But if you believe in the God of Einstein and Spinoza, the God who is Reality itself—the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, then I’m not an atheist.” Most of the time this works, but sometimes being clever just falls on deaf ears: “But, are you an atheist? Do you believe in a God we can pray to? YHVH, Allah, the First Person of the Trinity, or even Krishna? Yes or no?” No. But…. “There is no ‘...

A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.   – Meher Baba ….from Sri Easwaran ~ “Somehow, in our modern civilization, we have acquired the idea that the mind is working best when it runs at top speed. Yet a racing mind lacks time even to finish a thought, let alone to check on its quality. When we slow down the mind, we work better at everything we do. Not only is the quality of our work better, we are actually able to get more done. A calm, smooth-running flow of thought saves a lot of wear and tear on the nervous system, which means we have more vitality and resilience in the face of stress.” Multi tasking is really, then, not such a great thing. Being able to focus and to give one’s attention fully to a subject matter, better still, to a person, is what is most divine of all the mind’s capabilities. We are drawn to those who are intent on what we are telling them. Likewise, others are drawn to us when we give them our full at...

And then there crept a little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.-John KeatsEaswaran's recollections: "Today I was walking with some friends in Armstrong Redwoods Park and I was astonished at those trees. The more I looked at them, the more I came to appreciate them. It was completely still, unlike our tropical forests in India, where elephants trumpet, tigers roar, and there is a constant symphony of sound.Here everything was still, and I enjoyed the silence so much that I remembered these lines of John Keats. It is a perfect simile for the silence of the mind, when all personal conflicts are resolved, when all selfish desires come to rest. All of us are looking for this absolute peace, this inward, healing silence in the redwood forest of the mind. When we find it, we will become small forces for peace wherever we go.I'm interested in experiencing this more & more.Being, meditating, contemplating, musing, gleanings morsels for...