Eknath Easwaran Quotes

Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart.

Be aware of me always, adore me, make every act an offering to me, and you shall come to me; this I promise; for you are dear to me.

mind that is fast is sick, a mind that is slow is sound, and a mind that is still is divine. This is what the Bible means when it says, “Be still and know that I am God.

Place this salt in water and bring it here tomorrow morning". The boy did. "Where is that salt?" his father asked? "I do not see it." "Sip here. How does it taste?" "Salty, father." "And here? And there?" "I taste salt everywhere." "It is everywhere, though we see it not. Just so, dear one, the Self is everywhere, within all things, although we see it not. There is nothing that does not come from it. It is the truth; it is the Self supreme. You are that, Shvetaketu. You Are That.

Why do you want a new truth when you do not practice what you already know? Far better to read a few books and make them your own than to read many books quickly and superficially.

One learns a good deal in the school of suffering. I wonder what would have happened to me if I had had an easy life, and had not had the privilege of tasting the joys of jail and all it means." ~ Badsha Khan, quote in Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, p. 87

Around the world–even in some of the countries most troubled by poverty or civil war or pollution–many thoughtful people are making a deep, concerted search for a way to live in harmony with each other and the earth. Their efforts, which rarely reach the headlines, are among the most important events occurring today. Sometimes these people call themselves peace workers, at other times environmentalists, but most of the time they work in humble anonymity. They are simply quiet people changing the world by changing themselves.

As by knowing one tool of iron, dear one, We come to know all things made out of iron - That they differ only in name and form, While the stuff of which all are made is iron - So through spiritual wisdom, dear one, We come to know that all of life is one.

As long as we lean on anything outside ourselves for support, we are going to be insecure. Most of us try to find support by leaning on all sorts of things - gold, books, learning, sensory stimulation - and if these things are taken away, we fall over. To the extent that we are dependent on these external supports, we grow weaker and more liable to upsets and misfortune.

Live only for yourself and you will never grow; live for the welfare of all those around you and you will grow to your full stature.

As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings, and fits of emotions begin to lose their power to dictate our behavior. We see clearly that choices are possible: we can say yes, or we can say no. ... "All we are is the result of what we have thought." By changing our mode of thinking, we can remake ourselves completely.

A mind that is racing over worries about the future or recycling resentments from the past is ill equipped to handle the challenges of the moment. By slowing down, we can train the mind to focus completely in the present. Then we will find that we can function well whatever the difficulties. That is what it means to be stress-proof: not avoiding stress but being at our best under pressure, calm, cool, and creative in the midst of the storm.

When people used to complain to the Buddha that they were upset, telling him, "Our children upset us; our partner agitates us," his simple reply would be, "You are not upset because of your children or your partner; you are upset because you are upsettable.

All negative thoughts – anger, fear, passion, compulsive craving -- tend to be fast. If we could see the mind when it is caught in such thoughts, we would really see it racing. But positive thoughts like love, patience, tenderness, compassion, and understanding are slow - not turbulent, rushing brooks of thinking, so to speak but broad rivers that are calm, clear, and deep.

People who have strong likes and dislikes find life very difficult; they are as rigid as if they had only one bone.

People say that modern life has grown so complicated, so busy, so crowded that we have to hurry even to survive. We need not accept that idea. It is quite possible to live in the midst of a highly developed technological society and keep an easy, relaxed pace while doing a lot of hard work. We have a choice.

….You are an exalted creature, with a spark of the divine within you that nothing you do can extinguish; and you have been granted life in order to give, because it is in giving that we receive....

Attention can be trained very naturally, with affection, just as you train a puppy. When something distracts your attention, you say “Come back” and bring it back again. With a lot of training, you can teach your mind to come running back to you when you call, just like a friendly pup.

Peace would always be less compelling than war. Perhaps that was why there was so little of it in the world. (p. 160)

IT TAKES A LOT OF LIFE EXPERIENCE TO SEE WHY SOME RELATIONSHIPS LAST AND OTHERS DO NOT. BUT WE DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT FOR A CRISIS TO GET AN IDEA OF A PARTICULAR RELATIONSHIP. OUR BEHAVIOR IN LITTLE EVERYDAY INCIDENTS TELLS US A GREAT DEAL.” —Eknath Easwaran

We can all avoid travel that is unnecessary; we do not need to travel around the world when the source of all joy and all beauty is right within us.

Anything that tends to make us elated is inevitably going to throw us into depression.

Make wise choices about what you read. Read only what is necessary or worthwhile. And then take the time to read carefully. One book read with concentration and reflected upon is worth a hundred flashed through without any absorption at all.

If someone who is agitated comes to visit you, wanting to discuss their agitation and weigh the pros and cons of what action he should take, my suggestion is to give him the mantram album and say, "why don't you just write Rama, Rama, Rama a thousand times?

Full concentration brings relaxation and joy. It is the struggle of divided attention that brings a great deal of the misery that we associate with jobs we don’t like.

The law of karma says that no matter what context I find myself in, it is neither my parents, nor my science teacher, nor the mailman, but I alone who have brought myself into this state because of my past actions. Instead of trapping me in a fatalistic snare, this gives me freedom. Because I alone have brought myself into my present condition, I myself, by working hard and striving earnestly, can reach the supreme state which is nirvana.

We expect professional and financial success to require time and effort. Why do we take success in our relationships for granted? Why should we expect harmony to come naturally just because we are in love?

Let nothing upset you; Let nothing frighten you. Everything is changing; God alone is changeless. Patience attains the goal. Who has God lacks nothing; God alone fills every need. – Teresa of Avila Radiant

To love, we need to be sensitive to those around us, which is impossible if we are racing through life engrossed in all the things we need to do before sunset. In fact, I would go to the extent of saying that a person who is always late will find it difficult to love; he will be in too much of a hurry.

Meditation is the basis of a life of splendid health, untiring energy, unfailing love, and abiding wisdom. It is the very foundation of that deep inner peace for which every one of us longs. No human being can ever be satisfied by money or success or prestige or anything else the world can offer. What we are really searching for is not something that satisfies us temporarily, but a permanent state of joy.

As by knowing one tool of iron, dear one, we come to know all things made out of iron: that they differ only in name and form, while the stuff of which all are made is iron- so through that spiritual wisdom, dear one, we come to know that ll of life is one.

Judged by the normal standards of human affairs, the lives of men and women of God may look overburdened with suffering, and even inconclusive.

Don’t try to control the future,” he would say. “Work on the one thing you can learn to control: your own responses.

I am time, the destroyer of all; I have come to consume the world.

The Buddha said, “When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit. Don’t wobble.

nothing finite will ever satisfy us. We can go to the moon; it is a great achievement, but after a while our eyes turn beyond to Neptune. Wherever we go in space, wherever we go in time, we find limitations. Our need is for infinite joy, infinite love, infinite wisdom and infinite capacity for service, and until this need is met, we can never, never rest peacefully.

In themselves, most of these thoughts are not actually harmful; a few of them may even be rather elevating. The trouble is that we have very little control over them. If you ask the thoughts, they would say, “This poor fellow thinks he is thinking us, but we are thinking him.

There is a tale of a man who found on the road a large stone bearing the words, "Under me lies a great truth." The man strained to turn the stone over and finally succeeded. On the bottom was written, "Why do you want a new truth when you do not practice what you already know?

At the first gate, the gatekeeper asks, “Is this true?” At the second gate, he asks, “Is it kind?” And at the third gate, “Is it necessary?” If we applied this proverb strictly, most of us would have very little to say. I am not recommending silence, however, but control over our speech.

Children naturally ask all kinds of questions and take a long time to tell their stories, and in millions of homes the parents are doing something else as they reply, “Yes, yes, I see.” And in millions of homes, the parents are surprised when their children don’t listen to them. Those little bright eyes know when your attention is wandering. When they are telling you the news from school, give your full attention. Everything else can be set aside for the moment. You are teaching your children to listen to you.

We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands.

Fasting may not be as easy as feasting, but after a while it is not too different. Both are extremes. It is not hard to go the extreme way, but what is really difficult is neither to fast nor to feast, but to be moderate in everything we do.

It is a very difficult secret to understand that when we do not want to possess another selfishly, he or she will always love us. It is when we do not want to possess, when we do not make demand after demand, that the relationship will last.

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.

When we are caught up in likes and dislikes, in strong opinions and rigid habits, we cannot work at our best, and we cannot know real security either. We live at the mercy of external circumstances: if things go our way, we get elated; if things do not go our way, we get depressed. It is only the mature person – the man or woman who is not conditioned by compulsive likes and dislikes, habits and opinions – who is really free in life. Such people are truly spontaneous. They can see issues clearly rather than through the distorting medium of strong opinions, and they can respond to people as they are and not as they imagine them to be.

Often, it is this anguish of parting - the death of a loved one, the breaking apart of a deep relationship, even the growing up of our children - that propels us into the search for a reality that will never let us down; so this opening passage illustrates, through the experience of Maitreyi, the state of seriousness, of being shocked into alertness, that makes one ready to absorb spiritual insight.

To be secure everywhere is the mark of sophistication. To be unshakeable is the mark of courage. To be permanently in love with every person is the mark of masculinity or femininity. To forgive is the mark of strength. To govern our senses and passions is the mark of freedom.

Each time a divine incarnation comes to us, it is not to bring new truths or to establish a new religion but to remind us of what we have forgotten: that we are all one, and that we must live in harmony with this unity by learning to contribute to the joy and fulfillment of all.

When we do things with only a part of the mind, we are just skimming the surface of life. Nothing sinks in; nothing has real impact. It leads to an empty feeling inside. Unfortunately, it is this very emptiness that drives us to pack in even more, seeking desperately to fill the void in our hearts. What we need to do is just the opposite: to slow down and live completely in the present. Then every moment will be full.

To get angry with oneself and reject oneself is not helpful and is not what the Buddha teaches. The best thing is not to say either “I’m all good” or “I’m worthless; I’m no good.” The best thing is not to think about oneself, not talk about oneself, not dwell upon oneself at all – to be neither overconfident nor self-deprecating.

I still remember a dying seal looking at me in mute appeal as if to say, “You people are supposed to protect us. You are the trustees of our world. Why aren’t you doing your job?

Just as a seed can grow into only one kind of tree, thoughts can produce effects only of the same nature.

Mind, energy, and matter are a continuum, and the universe is not described as it might be in itself, but as it presents itself to the human mind.

A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.

Those who indulge themselves in sense stimulation throughout their lives often end up exhausted, with an enfeebled will and little capacity to love others.

The goal of meditation is awareness, not relaxation.

concentration breeds efficiency while division brings inefficiency, error, and tension.

We never really encounter the world; all we experience is our own nervous system.

The Lord is present in every one of us, and when we love those around us, we are loving him.

As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense-world into the sea of peace that is the sage.

Those who violate these laws, criticizing and complaining, are utterly deluded, and are the cause of their own suffering.

One who has merely heard of fire has ajnana, ignorance. One who has seen fire has jnana. But one who has actually built a fire and cooked on it has vijnana.

The popular etymology of the word mantram gives us some clue what it means to have the holy name at work in our consciousness. It is said that mantram comes from the roots man, “the mind,” and tri, “to cross.” The mantram is that which enables us to cross the sea of the mind. The sea is a perfect symbol for the mind. It is in constant motion; there is calm one day and storm the next.

As long as there are poor people in the world, as long as there are people who are deprived and handicapped in the world, if we are sensitive, we will not load ourselves with unnecessary adornment.

The law of karma states unequivocally that though we cannot see the connections, we can be sure that everything that happens to us, good and bad, originated once in something we did or thought. We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands.

Let Nothing Upset You Let nothing upset you; Let nothing frighten you. Everything is changing; God alone is changeless. Patience attains the goal. Who has God lacks nothing; God alone fills every need. – Teresa of Avila

The effect of the mantram is cumulative: constant repetition, constant practice, is required for the mantram to take root in our consciousness and gradually transform it, just as constant repetition makes the advertiser’s jingle stick in our minds.

To get angry with oneself and reject oneself is not helpful and is not what the Buddha teaches. The best thing is not to say either “I’m all good” or “I’m worthless; I’m no good.” The best thing is not to think about oneself, not talk about oneself, not dwell upon

Patience is an unfailing remedy for friction in personal relations. Even if a person has never won a beauty contest, has no money in the bank, can't even change a flat tire, if he or she has inexhaustible patience, then we will find that life with such a person will never grow stale.

Reason tells the soul how mistaken it is in thinking that all these earthly things are of the slightest value by comparison with what it is seeking. A little recollection reminds it that all these things come to an end. And faith instructs it in what the soul must do to find satisfaction. . . .

Undivided singleness of mind” is what the Gita means by yoga. It is the complete opposite of the incessant civil warfare among intellect, senses, emotions, and instincts which is our usual state of mind. Yoga is the complete reintegration of all these fragments on every level of the personality. It is the process of becoming whole.

Affectionately, Krishna assures Arjuna that no attempt to improve his spiritual condition could be a wasted effort. Even looking ahead to the next life, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. He will be reborn in a household suitable for taking up his quest where he left off. In his next life, he will feel drawn to the spiritual goal once again, and he will have a head start.

Place this salt in water and bring it here tomorrow morning." The boy did. "Where is the salt?" his father asked. "I do not see it." "Sip here. How does it taste?" "Salty, Father." "And here? And there?" "I taste salt everywhere." "It is everywhere, though we see it not. Just so dear one, the Self is everywhere, within all things, although we see it not. There is nothing that does not come from it. It is truth; it is the Self supreme. You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.

When Nureyev appeared in San Francisco not long ago there were quite a few ballet fans who flew all the way from New York to see him. The mystics would point out how fruitless it is to go to see important people when our first priority is to see ourselves. We think we know Tom, Dick and Harry, but we really know everyone, including ourselves, only on the surface level. If we could see our real Self coming down the street, we would wonder who this beautiful, radiant, magnificent creature could be. We would not be able to take our eyes off him.

How can this minuscule, fragile body whose size in the Universe is beyond ludicrous be, or contain, such importance? Because, the Upanishads and all the world s great mystics insist, we are not that fragile body but that which causes it to move, breathe, and be alive: consciousness. In this Upanishad we have one of the four mahavakyas or “great utterances” that later tradition teased out as the sum and substance of their teaching: prajham brahma, “All reality is consciousness.” And the same consciousness is the life of all: thus we have the explanation for both the sanctity and the unity of life.

Very few of us see life as it really is. Most of us see things only as we are, looking at others through our own likes and dislikes, prejudices and prepossessions, desires, interests, and fears. It is this separatist outlook that fragments life for us – person against person, community against community, nation against nation. In order to see life as it is, one undivided whole, we have to shed all attachment to personal profit, power, pleasure, or prestige. Otherwise we cannot help looking at life through our individual conditioning, and we will see the world not as it is, but as conditioned by our desires.

Good books are rare, and to have a really good library, a few shelves are all we need. When I was still on my campus in India, I was convinced, like many professors, that if the Lord was to be found anywhere, it was in the lower stacks of the library. But now - just as when I go into a big department store, I can say, "How many things I don't need! How many expensive suits I don't want!" - when I enter a big library I say, "What tomes I don't have to read again! What folios I will never open!" This feeling of freedom will come to all of us when we realise, in the depths of our meditation, that all wisdom lies within.

Lovers of God possess intense concentration. In prayer their attention rivets itself so completely onto God that nothing can tear it away. Even a suggestion of the divine may draw them into a higher state of consciousness. Occasionally this can be somewhat inconvenient. Sri Ramakrishna once went to see a religious drama produced by his disciple. The curtain went up and a character started singing the praises of the Lord. Sri Ramakrishna immediately began to enter the supreme state of consciousness. The stage faded; the actors and actresses faded. As only a great mystic can, he uttered a protest: "I come here, Lord, to see a play staged by my disciple, and you send me into ecstasy. I won't let it happen!" And he started saying over and over, "Money... money...money," so as to keep some awareness of the temporal world.

today as I was reading an article about a recent convention of psychologists in San Francisco. One of the major concerns of the psychologists and medical doctors attending the conference is the increase in the use of “legal psychoactive” drugs, such as tranquilizers. Many patients who do not have an organic illness go to their doctors because of emotional problems and are given drugs which will calm them, help them sleep better, or stimulate them. As these psychologists point out, this chemical therapy is based partly on the assumption that we should all be in a state of continuous pleasure, untroubled by stress. The consequences of taking these drugs are far-reaching, and dependence upon them actually takes away from the capacity to deal with the problems of life. Also, dependence upon drugs by the older generation can influence their children to seek instant happiness through the more powerful mind-altering drugs.

O Krishna, what satisfaction could we find in killing Dhritarashtra's sons? We would become sinners by slaying these men, even though they are evil. The sons of Dhritarashtra are related to us: therefore, we should not kill them. How can we gain happiness by kiling members of our own family? Though they are overpowered by greed and see no evil in destroying families or injuring friends, we see these evils. Why shouldn't we turn away from this sin? When a family declines, ancient traditions are destroyed. With them are lost the spiritual foundations for life, and the family loses its sense of unity. Where there is no sense of unity, the women of the family become corrupt; and with the corruption of its women, society is plunged into chaos. Social chaos is hell for the family and for those who have destroyed the family as well. It disrupts the process of spiritual evolution begun by our ancestors. The timeless spiritual foundations of family and society would be destroyed by these terrible deeds, which violate the unity of life.

The great mystics of all religions agree that in the very depths of the unconscious, in every one of us, there is a living presence that is not touched by time, place or circumstance. Life has only one purpose, they add, and that is to discover this presence. The men and women who have done this – Francis of Assisi, for example, Mahatma Gandhi, Teresa of Avila, the Compassionate Buddha – are living proof of the words of Jesus Christ, ‘The kingdom of heaven is within.' But they are quick to tell us — every one of them – that no one can enter that kingdom, and discover the Ruler who lives there, who has not brought the movement of the mind under control. And they do not pretend that our own efforts to tame the mind will suffice in themselves. Grace, they remind us, is all-important. ‘Increase in my grace,’ Thomas Kempis prays, ‘that I may be able to fulfill thy words, and to work out mine own salvation.’ “The hallmark of the man or woman of God is gratitude – endless, passionate gratitude for the previous gift of spiritual awareness…. it surrounds us always. Like a wind that is always blowing," said Francis de Sales; "like fire," said Catherine of Genoa, "that never stops burning...

When Gandhi was observing his day of silence, someone once asked him for a message. He just wrote, “My life is my message.

One advertisement proclaims, A flat stomach is beautiful! For me, a flat ego is beautiful.

To be secure everywhere is the mark of sophistication, to be unshakable is the mark of courage, to be permanently in love with every person is the mark of masculinity or femininity, to forgive is the mark of strength, to govern our senses and passions is the mark of freedom.

One good way to listen is to listen with a sacred text: a psalm or a prayer, for instance. The Hindu spiritual writer Eknath Easwaran showed me the great value of learning a sacred text by heart and repeating it slowly in the mind, word by word, sentence by sentence. In this way, listening to the voice of love becomes not just a passive waiting, but an active attentiveness to the voice that speaks to us through the words of the Scriptures.

Whatever they desire, the object of that desire arises from the power of their own thoughts; they have it and are happy.

The Self is hidden in the lotus of the heart. Those who see themselves in all creatures go day by day into the world of Brahman hidden in the heart.

loving, creative, resourceful, and full of vitality.

As Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century English anchoress and mystic, wrote, “We wot that our parents do but bear us into death. A strange thing, that.” Birth is but the beginning of a trajectory to death; for all their love, parents cannot halt it and in a sense have “given us to death” merely by giving us birth.

The ability to accommodate rather than reject older beliefs has a very practical outcome. India has had its share of religious intolerance, but thanks to its paradigm of unity-in-diversity and its cumulative strategy for preserving culture, those individuals and communities who respond to outward forms of worship have kept their place and dignity in the system, while at the other extreme individuals who have really had mystical experience have been unusually free to transcend all religious forms and not only follow their own path but become beacons for the culture as a whole. “As men approach me, so I receive them,” Sri Krishna says in the Gita. “All paths, Arjuna, lead to me” (Gita 4.11). This too helps explain the mixtures, or more properly layers, of religious consciousness displayed in the Upanishads.

There is only one failure in meditation: the failure to meditate faithfully. ... Put your meditation first and everything else second; you will find, for one thing, that it enriches everything else. ... If you are harassed by personal anxieties, it is all the more important to have your meditation; it will release the resources you need to solve the problems at hand. To make progress in meditation, we have to be not only systematic but sincere too.

Eknath Easwaran. Gandhi the Man. Nilgiri Press: Novales, California, 1997,

I have tremendous respect for anyone who can control his palate enough to learn not only to drink beer but to enjoy it too.

But when we train the senses we conserve our vital energy, the very stuff of life. Patient and secure within, we do not have to look to externals for satisfaction. No matter what happens outside--whether events are for or against us, however people behave towards us, whether we get what pleases us or do not--we are in no way dependent. Then it is that we can give freely to others; then it is that we can love.

You occasionally hear it said that spiritual aspirants should drop everything and set off for the woods, or go to India and wander about on the slopes of the Himalayas. But only through daily contact with people--not trees or brooks or deer--can we train ourselves to be selfless in personal relationships.

The mind is powerful, but it needs something to hold on to so it doesn't wander.

Every human heart has a deep need to love - to be in love, really, with all of life. This is the kind of love that comes when the mind is still. . . . Be still and know that we are all God’s children; then you will be in love with all.

violence only makes a situation worse. It cannot help but provoke a violent response. Strictly speaking, satyagraha is not “nonviolence.” It is a means, a method. The word we translate as “nonviolence” is a Sanskrit word central in Buddhism as well: ahimsa, the complete absence of violence in word and even thought as well as action. This sounds negative, just as “nonviolence” sounds passive. But like the English word “flawless,” ahimsa denotes perfection. Ahimsa is unconditional love; satyagraha is love in action. Gandhi’s message

Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world.

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.