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 This day and this night,
                        may I know O God
            The deep peace
                        of the running wave
            The deep peace
                        of the flowing air
            The deep peace
                        of the quiet earth
            The deep peace
                        of the shining stars
            The deep peace of the Son of Peace.

God before me, God behind me,
God above me, God beneath me.
I on your path O God
You, O God on my way.
In the twistings of the road
In the currents of the river
Be with me by day
Be with me by night
Be with me by day and by night.                              

O Christ of the least and the homeless
O Christ of the lost and betrayed
Come close to me this night
That I may come close to you.
As you watched me with care at my soul’s shaping
Look on me now with grace.
As you blessed me with light at the sun’s rising
Shine on me now with love.

                                                Philip Newell from Each Day and Each Night

I’m an Indian

I think about common things like this pot.
The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud.
It represents the sky.
The fire comes from the sun
which warms us all, men, (sic) animals, trees.
The meat stands for the four-legged creatures,
our animal brothers,
who gave of themselves so that we should live.
The steam is living breath.
It was water, now it goes up to the sky,
becomes a cloud again.
These things are sacred.
Looking at that pot full of good soup,
I am thinking how, in this simple manner,
The great Spirit takes care of me.

Every prophet sought out companions.
A wall standing alone is useless,
but put three or four walls together,
and they’ll support a roof and keep
the grain dry and safe.

When ink joins with a pen, then the blank paper
can say something.  Rushes and reeds must be woven
to be useful as a mat.  If they weren’t interlaced,
the wind would blow them away.

                                                  Like that, God paired up
creatures and gave them friendship.

                                    Rumi  from “On Being Woven”

A Song of Christ’s Goodness

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you;
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying, we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labor we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;
through your gentleness, we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead,
your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy, heal us;
 in your love and tenderness, remake us.

In your compassion, bring grace and forgiveness,
for the beauty of heaven, may your love prepare us.

                        Anselm of Canterbury , Canticle Q from Enriching our Worship

Blessed be the Creator
and all creative hands
which plant and harvest,
pack and haul and hand
over sustenance—
Blessed be carrot and cow,
potato and mushroom,
tomato and bean,
parsley and peas,
onion and thyme,
garlic and baby leaf,
pepper and water,
marjoram and oil,
and blessed be fire—
and blessed be the enjoyment
of nose and eye,
and blessed be color—
and blessed be the Creator
for the miracle of red potato,
for the miracle of green bean,
for the miracle of fawn mushrooms,
and blessed be God
for the miracle of earth:
ancestors, grass, bird,
deer and all gone,
wild creatures
whose bodies become
carrots, peas, and wild
flowers, who
give sustenance
to human hands, whose
agile dance of music
nourishes the ear
and  soul of the dog
resting under the stove
and the woman working over
the stove and the geese
out the open window
strolling in the backyard.
And blessed be God
for all, all, all.

A shade are you in the heat O God
A shelter are you in the cold.
Eyes are you to the blind O God
A staff are you to the weak.
An island are you at sea O God
A rock are you on land.
O my soul’s healer
Keep me at evening
Keep me at morning
Keep me at noon .
I am tired, astray and stumbling
Shield me from sin.
O my soul’s healer
Shield me from sin.

            A prayer in the Celtic tradition  Philip Newell in Each Day and Each Night

Watching gardeners label their plants
I vow with all beings
to practice the old horticulture
and let the plants identify me.

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.

O Christ you are a bright flame before me
You are a guiding star above me
You are the light and love
I see in other’s eyes.
Keep me O Christ
in a love that is tender
Keep me O Christ
in a love that is true
Keep me O Christ
in a love that is strong
Tonight, tomorrow and always.    

I claim to be an average man of less than average ability….I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.                                                   Mahatma Gandhi

While most of us think of ordinariness as a fault or limitation, Gandhi had discovered in it the very meaning of life—and of history.  For him, it was not the famous or the rich or the powerful who would change the course of history.  If the future is to differ from the past, he taught, if we are to leave a peaceful and healthy earth for our children, it will be the ordinary man and woman who do it: not by becoming extraordinary, but by discovering that our greatest strength lies not in how much we differ from each other but in how much—how very much—we are the same.

This faith in the power of the individual formed the foundation for Gandhi’s extremely compassionate view of the industrial era’s large-scale problems, as well as of the smaller but no less urgent troubles we find in our own lives.  One person can make a difference.

                                    Eknath Easwaran  in Words to Live By

Elegy

Listen, my friend, shuttered in
your small room, winter is gone.
I tell you spring now wakens
furred buds on the boughs of pussy
willows, at the field’s edge a lark
nests among weed stalks harsh with
the wind’s whistle.  Maples unfold
new leaves, oaks wait for the warm
May sun, violets rise from the curled
clusters and wild plums cover thorns
with white blossoms, even watercress
shows color at the spring’s mouth.
You have seen blocks of geese print
their flight on the wide innocent sky
over Iowa , and bundled farmers on bright
red tractors smooth the fields for sowing. 
Listen, you can hear the cock pheasant’s
cry while April rain sends up shooting
stars and jack-in-the-pulpits.  Fill your
mind’s eye with the hill beyond the big
barn where she last watched an autumn sunset.

                        James Hearst   (Thanks to Susan Hansen for introducing me to him.)

“Love, and do what you like.”  
           St. Augustine

Instead of telling friends you are leading the spiritual life, which sometimes makes people raise their eyebrows, you can say, “I am learning to love.”  It is the same thing.  Learning to love in the way Saint Augustine is talking about is the most difficult, the most demanding, the most delightful, and the most daring of disciplines.  It does not mean loving only two or three members of your family; that can often amount to building a kind of ego-annex.  It does not mean loving only those who share your views, read the same newspapers, or play the same sports.  Love, as Jesus puts it, means blessing those that curse you, doing good to those that hate you.

Most of us do not begin by blessing those that curse us.  That is graduate school.  We start with first grade—being kind to people in our family when they get resentful.  Eventually comes high school, where we learn to move closer to those who are trying to shut themselves off from us.  College means returning good will for ill will.  Finally we enter graduate school “ Return love for hatred.”  There we learn to give our love to all—to people of different races countries, and religions, different outlooks and strata of society, without any sense of distinction or difference.

A Celtic style prayer for evening

Safeguard your faithful people in the sanctuary of your love O God.
Shelter them this night in the shelter of the saints.
God to enfold them
God to surround them
God in their watching
God in their hoping
God in their sleeping
God in their ever-living souls.

“What a man (sic) takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.”

                                                                        Meister Echkhart

The old dispute about the relative virtues of the active way to spiritual awareness versus the contemplative way is a spurious one.  We require both.  They are phase of a single rhythm, like the pulsing of the heart, the in-drawing and letting go of breath, the ebb and flow of the tides.  So we go deep, turned inwards in meditation to consolidate our vital energy, and then with greater love and wisdom we come out into the family, the community, the world.  Without action we lack opportunities for changing our old ways, and we increase our self-will rather than lessen it; without contemplation we lack the strength of change and are blown about by our conditioning.  When we meditate every day and also do our best in every situation, we walk both worthy roads, the via contemplativa and the via activa.

Trust says the crumpled green license plate that hangs in my office. Trust what?  Trust that it is worth scratching on the wall that God Is Love and Life because, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, it may just be true. Trust that if God is anywhere, God is here, which means that there is no telling where God may turn up next—around what sudden bend of the path if you happen to have your eyes and ears open, your wits about you, in what odd, small moments almost too foolish to tell. If God is ever, God is now, in the in and out of breathing, the sound of the footstep on the stair, the smell of the rain, the touch of a hand on your bare shoulder where you kneel at the door. If God lives and loves, as the hay shed proclaimed, it is in ourselves no less than everywhere else, in the godless no less than the godliest, in the dead no less than the living, because the end of a life is no more likely to be the end of God’s love that keeps it alive than it is of our love that keeps it a living part of ourselves….

            Frederick Buechner in The Eyes of the Heart
A reflection on  words scratched into the wall of a hut in Switzerland

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours.”

                        William Wordsworth

Our modern way of life seems to be making us busier and busier about less and less.  It is only after we begin to taste the joy of simple living that we realize all this frantic activity can stand between us and our fulfillment.  The more we divide our interests, our allegiances, our activities, the less time we have for living.

Loving, loyal personal relationships take time. We cannot get to know someone intimately in a day or establish a lasting relationship during a weekend conference. If we spend eight hours a day at our job and the evening watching television, where is the time for cultivating close relationships?

If we simplify our lives, we shall find the time and energy to be together with our family and friends, or to give our time to a worthy cause that needs our contribution.  The simple life doesn’t mean bearing with a drab routine; it means giving time and attention to what is most important.

It is not so much work that tires us, but ego-driven work. When we are selfishly involved, we cannot help worrying; we cannot help getting overly concerned about our success of failure. It is the preoccupation with results that makes us tense. Our very anxiety exhausts us.
           For the majority of us, uncertainty is worse than disaster: disaster comes to us only rarely; worry depletes us often. We never know whether we are going to get a brick or a bouquet. If we knew for certain a brick was on its way, there would be no anxiety. We would just say, “Throw it and be done with it.”
         We should learn how to handle both bricks and bouquets, praise and censure, success and defeat. When we can say, “Whatever disasters come, we will not be afraid because the Lord is within us,” this resoluteness and faith will enable us to work free from tension, agitation and fear of defeat. The person who works with this attitude is always at pace, because eh or she is not anxious about the results.

When you agree to be the mother of God
you make no conditions, no stipulations.
You flinch before neither cruel thorn nor rod.
You accept the tears; you endure the tribulations.

But, my God, I didn’t know it would be like this.
I didn’t ask for a child so different from others.
I wanted only the ordinary bliss,
to be the most mundane of mothers.

Most of the tree of life is not physical. The whole phenomenal universe-matter, energy, and mind-is only the canopy of countless little leaves. This is all we can see. But each leaf grows from a twig, which grows from a branch, which in turn grows from a vast trunk. And supporting the trunk and all its leaves and twigs and branches—completely hidden-is the taproot, extending deep into pure being. The taproot of this tree is the Lord, the eternal, changeless Self.

The image is more than poetry: it is personal and practical. As long as we live on the surface of life, we believe we are separate, individual leaves. We lead private lives that bear little relation to the rest of the tree, even though when we are cut off from that tree we have no life. Driven by self-will, we cannot imagine we are forfeiting the whole of life for the little leaf we call our individual personality. So when you get up in the morning, remind yourself of this magnificent simile, which asks us to claim the whole Tree of Life and not be content with being one seasonal leaf.

            Eknath Easwaran

Today’s mania for speed strikes right at the root of our capacity for an even mind.  How often we find ourselves locked into behavior and situations that force us to hurry, hurry, hurry!  By now, most of us are aware that compulsive speed—“hurry sickness”—can be a direct threat to our physical health.  But hurry has another alarming repercussion: it cripples patience. 

            When we lack patience, even a few moments’ delay, a trivial disappointment, an unexpected obstacle, makes us explode in anger.  We are not hostile people; we are just in such a hurry that keeping the mind calm is impossible.  Without peace of mind, how can we enjoy anything, from a movie to good health?

            When we go slower, we are more patient, and when we are more patient, we are capable of enjoying life more.  All these benefits can come from just learning to slow down.

                        Eknath Easwaran

The man or woman of God is not misled by cosmologies that place hell in the bowels of the earth or heaven at the farthest reaches of the galaxies. Heaven does exist, they maintain, and hell is as real as Paris or Cincinnati . Both heaven and hell are right at hand. From one moment to the next we can choose in which one we will dwell, because they are not geographical locations—they are states of consciousness. Two people may be next-door neighbors: to one, their little condominium may be paradise; to the other it may be a teeming web of emotional intrigue, suspicion, and envy—in short, hell.

For anyone who has realized the unity of life, awareness of that unity is heaven. The keenest anguish such a person can imagine would be to plunge back for even a moment into narrower vision.

Loving someone does not mean automatically acquiescing to their every whim. Sometimes love shows itself in saying no to an attitude or desire that is harmful. But your opposing must be done tenderly, without anger or condescension. This is a difficult art.

Go slowly. Remember that it is better not to react in the heat of the moment. Whenever time allows, don’t respond immediately. Speak and act when you can do so with patience and kindness. Remember, too, that the very best way to change someone is to embody that change with your own example.

Great lovers of God, like Saint Teresa of Avila or Mahatma Gandhi, see the Lord in the heart of every person around them. This is the vision that enables them to treat others with love and respect even in the heat of opposition. It may take time, but no one is immune to this kind of love.

                        Eknath Easwaren

The Lord is extending the gift of immortality to each of us, but we do not reach out to take it because we are holding a few pennies in our hands. I don’t know if you have seen infants in this dilemma; it happens at a particular stage of development, when they have learned to grasp but not quite mastered letting go. They have a rattle in one hand; you offer them a toothbrush, and for a while they just look back and forth at the toothbrush, then the rattle, then the toothbrush again. You can almost see the gray matter working: “I want that toothbrush, but how can I take it? My hand is already full.”
         Similarly, all of look at the Lord’s gift for a long while, asking, “What is this? How do I know it’s real? Give it to me first; then I’ll let the pennies go.” The Lord smiles and waits.  He can offer the gift, but for us to take it, we have to open our hands. And there comes a time when we want something more than pennies so passionately that we no longer care what it costs. Then we open our hands, and discover that for the pennies we have dropped, we have received an incomparable treasure.

“All human evil comes from this: a man’s being unable to sit still in a room.”
            Blaise Pascall

            Unless we train it, the very nature of the mind is to keep on hopping from one thing to another, almost at random.
            The mind can be very usefully employed, but it has to be trained for its job. Too much of the time the mind is engaged in negative thinking, either about others or about ourselves—a destructive occupation. Training the mind means establishing and maintaining sound shop standards: good creative, consistently kind thinking, and no around-the-clock activity, either. When the mind has nothing productive to do, we need to learn how to close up shop and let it rest.
            Eknath Easwaran

Where there is so little love that the “carriage of the Lord,” our essential unity, is torn asunder, we must love more. The less love there is around us, the more we need to make up the lack.
            A man once came to Rabbi Israel , the Ba’al Shem Tov, and said, “My son is estranged from God; what shall I do?” The rabbi replied simply, “Love him more.
            “Love him more. Make his happiness more important than your own. This was my grandmother’s approach to every problem, and I know of no more effective or artistic or satisfying way to realize the unity of life in the world today. It is an approach to life in which everything blossoms, everything comes to fruition. Where there is love, everything follows. To love is to know, is to act; all other paths to the Lord are united in the way of love.

            Eknath Easwaran

“Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.”  St. Francis

Millions of people today suffer from loneliness. Here Saint Francis is saying, ”I know the cause of the malady and I know the secret of its complete cure.”  No matter what the relationship may be, when you look on another person as someone who can give you love, you are really faking love. That is the simplest word for it. If you are interested in making love, in making it grow without end, try looking on that person as someone you can give your love to—someone to whom you can go on giving always.

Learning to love is like swimming against the current of a powerful river; most of our conditioning is pushing us in the other direction. So it is a question of developing your muscles: the more you use them, the stronger they get. When you put the other person’s welfare foremost every day, no matter how strong the opposing tide inside, you discover after a while that you can love a little more today than you did yesterday. Tomorrow you will be able to love a little more.

                        Eknath Easwaran

We have been conditioned to look to food for some kind of deeper fulfillment. Food can entertain us, we are told. It is exciting, romantic, adventurous, exotic. Vast sums of money are spent trying to get us to buy a certain brand of potato chip or to prefer one brand of frozen pizza over another. In the midst of this carnival atmosphere, it is easy to forget that the real purpose of food is to nourish our bodies.

            Eating together with those we love, eating nutritious food that has been prepared with love—this can nourish our inner needs, as well as our bodies. Taking time at meals to talk to each other and enjoy the meal as a shared sacrament, this is rare today. People are so busy that even meals have become something to be got through as quickly as possible. We need to slow down, take the time to prepare our meals, and rearrange our schedules so that we can be together.

            Eknath Easwaren

When we get tense, it is easiest to vent our frustration by making cracks at our children, our wife or our husband—it is a simple matter of geographic proximity. When we attack other people, when we become a source of trouble to others, it is not because we want to add to their trouble; we have just become an object of trouble to ourselves. When we are agitated, when we are ready to burst our anger upon others, the immediate solution is to go for a long walk, or run, repeating the Holy Name.

            In the ultimate analysis, our resentments and hostilities are not against others. They are against our own alienation from our native state, which is cosmic consciousness, Christ-consciousness, Krishna-consciousness. All the time we are being nudged by some latent force within us, trying to remind us what our native state is. Our senses are turned outwards and we are adept at personal profit and pleasure, so we do not like to hear these little reminders; but the needling goes on.

            Eknath Easwaran

The Supreme, radiant Being that dwells in our own consciousness cannot be attained by any amount of reasoning, for this Being is one and indivisible, beyond all duality. But by loving Him “with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our strength,” we can come to live in Him completely. When we learn to love Her more than we love ourselves, our consciousness is unified.

It is all very well to talk about the Ultimate Reality, the Great Void, but we cannot love a Void. Here it is that we need the Lord in an aspect we can love and understand—the Supreme Poet, the sustainer and protector of all, from whom we came into existence and to whom we shall return. We need a divine ideal like Sri Krishna, Jesus the Christ, the Compassionate Buddha, or the Divine Mother.

There is nothing abstract about this kind of love, nothing philosophical. Loving the Lord means loving the innermost Self in all those around us. We need only somehow to increase our capacity to love—because we do not live in what we think; we live in what we love.

            Eknath Easwaren

The great Hindu scriptures say that God is absolute truth, absolute joy, absolute beauty. Any scientist who is seeking the absolute truth, as Einstein did, is seeking God. Anyone seeking absolute joy, whether in a tavern or in the shopping mall or in Monte Carlo , is seeking God. And anyone who is seeking absolute beauty—on a canvas or a stag or a mountaintop—is seeking God. What lovers of beauty seek in paintings, in sculpture, in dance, in music is just a reflection of the absolute beauty that is God. The real source of all beauty is God, the Beloved.

So, there is nobody who is not seeking God. The scientist in his lab, the pleasure seeker at the casino, the artist in her studio; all are seeking God. We are all lovers, restlessly searching for the Beloved, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Face behind the veil.

            Eknath Easwaran

Though becoming a monk or a nun is indeed one way of practicing generosity, most people can let go in the midst of busy, family-centered lives. What we need to reject is not the things we have, or our family and friends, but rather our mistaken sense that these are our possessions. We need to let go of our habit of clinging to the people and the material things in our lives and to our ideas, beliefs, and opinions.

            Bhante Henepola Gunaratana in Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness

Ahimsa is usually translated as “non violence,” but this is misleading and falls far short of the real significance of the word. When all violence has subsided in my heart, my native state is love. I would add that even avoiding a person we dislike can be a subtle form of himsa or violence. Therefore, in everyday terms, ahimsa often means bearing with difficult people.

In Kerala we have a giant fierce-looking plant called elephant nettle. You have only to walk by for it to stretch out and sting you. By the time you get home, you have a blister that won’t let you think about anything else. My grandmother used to say, “A self-willed person is like an elephant nettle.”

That is why the moment we see somebody who is given to saying unkind things, we make a detour. We pretend we have suddenly remembered something that takes us in another direction, but the fact is that we just don’t want to be stung. Whenever I complained of a classmate I did not like, my granny would say, “Here, you have to learn to grow. Go near him. Let yourself slowly get comfortable around him; then give him your sympathy and help take the sting out of his nettles.”

            Eknath Easwaran

“Ahimsa is not a policy for the seizure of power. It is a way of transforming relationships so as to bring about a peaceful transfer of power, effected freely and without compulsion by all concerned, because all have come to recognize it as right.”  Thomas Merton

Bearing with people is the essence of non-violence. To do this with a feeling of martyrdom, however, is not very helpful; we need to bear with people cheerfully. But this does not mean making ourselves into a doormat. Many people suffer from the misguided notion that the spiritual life means saying, “Yes, honey, whatever you want is okay with me. You say; I do.” Letting people take undue advantage of us is not helpful for them any more than it is for us.

We all know that with a selfish person if we yield an inch he will ask for a yard. With the selfish person, therefore, it is often necessary quietly to say no. Don’t accept a situation in which you are exploited, discriminated against, or manipulated. This is the great art of nonviolent resistance, where you love the person, you respect him, but you will not allow him to exploit you, because it is bad for him just as it is bad for you.

            Eknath Easwaran

We have been ruthlessly conditioned to think we can find fulfillment in possessions, to love things rather than people—so much so, that when we feel an emptiness in our hearts, we go to shopping centers to fill it up.

I am all for living in reasonable comfort, but when I go to shopping centers, I cannot help getting alarmed. Not at the money that is being wasted—there is enough money in this country to waste. But there isn’t enough energy to waste. When we hear of the energy crisis, this is it. All our vitality, energy, drive, is sapped and undermined by the ridiculous propaganda: go after this, go after that, and you’ll be happy.

Things are not meant to be loved. They are meant only to be used. People are lovable and loving

          Eknath Easwaren

All language has taken an oath to fail to describe Him; any attempt to do sois the height of arrogance and will always declare some kind of war:  the inner ones that undermine our strength,and the outer conflicts that maim red.

            Meister Eckhart

He Told Me A Joke

My Lord told me a joke.
And seeing Him laugh has done more for me
            than any scripture I will
                        ever read.

When selfish desire is removed from a relationship, there is no hankering to get anything from the other person. We are free to give, which means we are free to love. Then we can give and support and strengthen without reservation.

Interestingly enough, it is only then that we really see each other clearly. The infatuated mind cannot help caricaturing; it sees only what it wants; then, when the desire passes, it sees only what it does not want. Two people who are really in love do not close their eyes to each other’s weaknesses. They support each other in overcoming those weaknesses, so that each helps the other to grow.

            Eknath Easwaren

Try putting the welfare of those around you first, especially when you are feeling discouraged and depressed. I would like to rewrite the old song to say “Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day!  Everything’s going your way. "

Some doctors are telling us now that this kind of attitude may be a shield against illness. A recent article went so far as to say, “Amiability—plain old good-naturedness—seems to have a protective effect on health.”  In the same article one of the recommended cures for chronic hostility was “Try to be more forgiving.”  This advice is as old as the hills.

Most of us do not understand that when we live in a world of ill will, as millions of people do, nursing grievances so anger can’t die a natural death, we are creating an internal environment that surrounds us with a poison worse than smog twenty-four hours a day. When we reduce our hostility, we’re cleaning up the inner air, and we will find unsuspected benefits not only for the mind, but for the body as well.

Eknath Easwaren

How Then Can we Argue?

Having lunch in a field one day, I troubled an ant with some
            questions.  I asked of him humbly,

            “Have you ever been to Paris ?”
And he replied, No, but I wouldn’t mind going.” And then he asked me
if I had ever been to a famous ant city.  And I regretted that I
     hadn’t, and was quick to add, “I wouldn’t mind, too!

This led to a conclusion:  There is life that we do not know of.
            How aware are we of all consciousness
 in this universe?

What percent of space is this earth in the infinite realm?
            What percent of time is one second
in eternity?
                 Less than that is our
 knowledge of
       God.

              How then can we ever

 argue about

                             Him?

Meister Eckhart

Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. St. Matthew

This is a strange paradox, a little-known secret. Jesus isn’t speaking of worldly goods. He is speaking of a very rare kind of treasure: the more you drawn on it, the more you will have. The more patient you are with people, the more patience you will have. The more generous you are today, the more generosity you will have tomorrow. The more love you give, the more loving you become.

The principle can be stated in the plainest of terms: if you are selfish with your love, the scant security you cling to will be battered to pieces by life. But if you give of yourself freely, your security will be unshakable. Your joy will be limitless. You will always have more to give.

Eknath Easwaren

A teacher of meditation in ancient India, Patanjali, wrote that in the presence of a man or woman in whom all hostility has died, others cannot be hostile. In the presence of a man or woman in whom all fear has died, no one can be afraid. This is the power released in true nonviolence, as we can see in the life of Mahatma Ghandi. Because all hostility had died in his heart, he was a profound force for peace.

Eknath Easwaren

AN IMAGE THAT MAKES THEM SAD

How long will grown men and women in this world
keep drawing in their coloring books
an image of God that
makes them
sad?

IT IS A LIE

It is a lie—any talk of God
that does not
comfort
you.

Meister Eckhart

“In vain our labors are, whatso’er they be,
Unless God gives the Benedicte” — Robert Herrick

The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to selfless action, that is action without any selfish attachment to the results. It is not action or effort that we must surrender; it is self-will, and this is terribly difficult. You must do your best constantly, yet never allow yourself to become involved in whether things work out the way you want.

It takes many years of practice to learn this skill, but once you have it, you will never lose your nerve. The sense of inadequacy goes. You are able to assess your capacities with detachment. You choose a worthwhile goal; then you can throw yourself into self-less action without conflict or diffidence or fatigue. When we learn simply to do our best and leave the question of success or failure to the Lord, the results can really be spectacular.

            Eknath Easwaren

“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that taketh a city.”  Proverbs

In the interest of good health, in the interest of a long life, in the interest of loving relationships, it is essential to learn how to deal with our anger creatively and constructively. If we do not, in time it will no longer be isolated outbursts of anger; we will become the victims of an unending stream of rage, seething just below the surface of life with which no human being can cope.

Through meditation and the mantram or Holy Name, however, every one of us can learn to reduce the speed of our thinking and install a reliable speedometer in our mind. Then whenever the speed of thinking goes over, say, fifty-five, one of those recorded voices will automatically whisper, “Be careful. You may not be able to keep your car on the road.”

Positive thoughts travel slowly, leisurely. The slow mind is clear, kind and efficient; in the beautiful phrase of the Bible, it is “slow to wrath.” Patience means thoughts puttering along like Sunday drivers, taking the trouble to notice the needs of people around.

            Eknath Easwaren

Every Foot a Shrine

Every creature has a religion. Every
           foot is a shrine where
                  a secret candle
                      burns.

Every cell in us worships
                 God.

Every arrow in the bow of desire
         has rushed out in hope
               of nearing
                  Him.

            Thomas Aquinas

Every gun that is made,
every warship launched,
    every rocket fired signifies,
    in the final sense,
    a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
    the genius of its scientists,
    the hopes of its children.

            Dwight D. Eisenhower

Encompassing

The compassing of God be on thee,
The compassing of the God of life.

The compassing of Christ be on thee,
The compassing of the Christ of love.

The compassing of Spirit be on thee,
The compassing of the Spirit of Grace.

The compassing of the Three be on thee,
The compassing of the Three preserve thee,
The compassing of the Three preserve thee.

            The Carmina Gadelica

This spring I watched six baby swallows learn how to fly. They were huddled on the telephone wires observing their mother, who came flying slowly by in front of them, doing the easier turns and showing them the basics of flying. There was no need for these baby swallows to read books or attend lectures on how to fly. They have an inborn instinct for it. Learning to fly may not be easy, but this is what birds are born to do.

The Lord sees us sitting on a perch made of pleasure, profit, power, or prestige, quaking with every variation in our bank account and every critical comment that comes our way; and he asks us if we would not rather forget our failings, weaknesses, and insecurities and become united with him.

This is what we are born to do: to leave our perch of selfish interests and soar aloft. To soar to union with God means to give all our love to the Lord, so that the faculties and resources which have been hidden in us can come into our lives to the great benefit of those around us.

            Eknath Easwaren

Eternal Spirit

Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever, Amen.

           Alternative Lord’s Prayer , New Zealand Book of Common Prayer

To love completely, it is not enough if I care deeply; I must also be detached from myself. To know what is best for someone, I have to be able to step aside from my own prejudices and preconceptions, slip into that person’s shoes, and become one with him temporarily, looking at life through his eyes rather than my own. When I step back again, I will have seen his needs from the inside; only then can I see clearly how to serve those needs with detachment and compassion.

Why, then, do we find it so desperately difficult to get ourselves out of the way? The reason, the mystics reply, is that we live rather superficially, on the surface of life. On the surface we feel that it is natural for people to quarrel, for nations to go to war. “It’s only human,” we say. Only in the depths of the soul can we realize that quarreling and fighting are not natural at all. What is natural is loving everybody, seeing everybody as one.

            Eknath Easwaren

For some reason it is very difficult for us to accept our divine nature. This has always puzzled me. We pay money for books about how destructive we are. We stand in line to see movies that emphasize our capacity for making trouble. We dog to encounter groups where we agitate each other over our weaknesses. Then, when Jesus comes to tell us that the kingdom of heaven is within us, we say, “There must be some mistake.”

It is to convince us that our real Self is always pure and eternal, that men and women of God keep arising among us. More than anything, we need to hear their good news that the source of all joy and security is right within. In the Hindu scriptures there is a precise term for our real nature: the Atman. All it means is “the Self” — not the little self, the changing personality with which most of us identify, but the higher Self, our real, changeless personality, which we discover in the depths of meditation.

            Eknath Easwaren

The grace of God sometimes comes in the form of sorrow. If we are not prepared to realize the unity of life, the Lord in his infinite love will let us suffer until we are forced to change our ways. Of course, it isn’t at all easy to change; often it is quite painful. It’s very much like learning to use a stiff arm again. If your arm has been injured, and twisted into a rigid position, even the slightest movement becomes painful. Yet you have to learn to move it in order to regain the use of your arm. There is suffering in this, as there often is in any kind of growth.

We should never conclude that our lives are hopeless, that we can never improve, that we are being condemned by God or fate or chemistry or conditioning to repeat the same mistakes. We always have a choice. That is the glory of our human nature: not only that we can always choose a better path, but that someday we will. We can never alienate ourselves from our divine Self, and the whole force of evolution is pushing us towards the divine vision in which we see ourselves as we really are: united with the Lord of Love within our hearts.

            Eknath Easwaren

Our Father and Mother who are in Heaven, let Your will and not mine be done.  Hallowed be your Name and not mine on earth and in Heaven. Give me this day my daily bread and help me not to worry about tomorrow. Forgive me my sins and give me a spirit of forgiveness for the sins of others. Lead me away from temptation and trouble and deliver me from my own evil and that of others.  And keep my eyes not on the world’s fleeting power and glory today but on Your kingdom, Your power,
and Your glory forever.

            Marion Wright Edelman

O God, let fear die and conviction be born in our lives.
Let your light dawn in our minds as the day dawns on the earth.
Let us not be so busy hurrying into the future and worrying about the past that we lose today—the only one we have.
God, help us do what we know we have to do today, and leave tomorrow to you.

            Marion Wright Edelman

O God, help me to feel Your presence everywhere I go today.
To see You in everyone I meet today.
To sense You in all I hear today.
To reflect You in all I do today.
To pray to and trust You in all I experience today.
To struggle to be like You in all I am today.
To speak of and for You in all I say today.
To thank You for everything every day.

            Marion Wright Edelman

Lord, think Your thoughts in me
do your work through me
build Your peace in me
share Your love through me.

            Marion Wright Edelman

Lord, help me to sort out what I should do first, second, and third today and to not try to do everything at once and nothing well. Give me the wisdom to delegate what I can and to order the things I can’t delegate, to say no when I need to, and the sense to know when to go home. 

            Marion Wright Edelman

O God, help me today to be happy and helpful rather than irritable and critical, to get myself out of the way so that others can sense You and not me.

Help me not to waste time worrying about the bad world we have but to use the time I have working for the better world our children need.

            Marion Wright Edelman

Lord, unwrinkle my tired soul
         unsnarl my garbled thoughts and words
                  unwind my gnarled nerves
                           and let me relax in Thee.

            Marion Wright Edelman

The pure in spirit, who see God, see him here and now; in his handiwork, his hidden purpose, the wry humor of his creation. The Lord has left us love notes scattered extravagantly across creation. Hidden in the eye of the tiger, the wet muzzle of a calf, the delicacy of the violet, and the perfect curve of the elephant’s tusk is a very personal, priceless message. 

Watch the lamb in awkward play, butting against its mother’s side. See the spider putting the final shimmering touches on an architectural wonder. And absorb a truth that is wordless. The grace of a deer, the soaring freedom of a sparrow hawk in flight, the utter self-possession of an elephant crashing through the woods—in every one of these there is something of ourselves. From the great whales to the tiniest of tree frogs in the Amazon basin, unity embraces us all. Lose sight of this unity, allow these creatures to be exploited or destroyed, and we are diminished, too.

            Eknath Easwaren

To deepen our love, to unify our desires, the Lord on occasion gives us a fleeting taste of the joy of union. Once we taste this joy, all we want is to be permanently aware of him in everyone, everywhere, every minute. This intense longing is the mark of any genuine spiritual experience.

At the same time we experience the joy of union, we see clearly the great mass of self-will that weighs us down and keeps us from our most cherished goal. Yet none of us need feel disheartened. Remember how even great mystics like Saint Augustine almost despaired when they saw how powerful was the pull of selfish satisfaction. That is our human conditioning, and it is no reason to give up. All of us can learn to reduce our excess baggage.

            Eknath Easwaren

As your meditation deepens, there will be occasions when you get upset, but you will be able to watch what goes on in the lab of your mind. It’s like getting into a glass-bottomed boat, where you venture out into the ocean and watch all the deep-sea creatures lurking beneath the surface: resentment sharks, stingrays of greed, scurrying schools of fear. You slowly gain a certain amount of detachment from your mind, by which you can observe what is going on, collect data, and then set things right.

Some of the chronic problems that millions of people suffer from today might be solved by gaining a little detachment from their minds and emotions, so they can stand back a little when the mind is agitated and see the ways in which it makes mountains out of molehills. Many problems simply are not real; they start to seem real only when we dwell on them. The thorniest problems to solve are those that are not real; yet most of us go on giving them our best efforts.

Eknath Esawaren

So often we wallow in our children’s problems rather than exult in their strengths and possibilities. So often we dwell on the things that seem impossible rather than on the things that are possible. So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.

Forgive us God.

            Marian Wright Edelman

Oh I am who I am
The God who protected and guided
Abraham
Isaac
Jacob and
Moses

Who sent Joshua to fight the battle of Jericho , rescued Jonah from the belly of the whale to take Your message to Nineveh , dispatched Ezra (whose name means “help” to proclaim Your word of law and to revive Your people:

Protect and guide my beloved children by these names to seek and do You will today. Let them always feel Your faithful presence wherever they go and in all their undertakings.

When they are confused, I pray that they will wait for Your clarity.

When they are afraid, I pray they will seek Your soothing calm.

When they are alone, I pray they will feel Your loving presence.

When they are sick, I pray You will lay Your healing hand upon them.

When they are tired and overwrought, please lead them to Your still waters of calm and restore their spirits.

When they face disappointments and dashed hopes and friends and foe alike abandon them, let them find refuge in Your never-changing faithfulness and love.

Oh I am who I am, I have done the best I know how for my children. I leave the rest to you.

            Marian Wright Edelman

As a parent, it is so hard but so necessary to let go. Our instinct is to protect even when we know we cannot.

I worry about my children every day they go about their lives of study and work and play in our unpredictable world. I alleviate my anxieties by committing their safety and guidance to God. I recall times of great danger when I believe only a mother’s primal plea to God for help rescued my children: when one dashed across a busy street with an unseen car speeding around the corner; when two of my grown children, heedless of warning signs all along the beach, were nearly washed out to sea in a dangerous ocean’s undertow. And I am reminded of how good God is and how dependent on Him I am and they are.

And so each day I recommit my children daily to his care. A prayer from the Hebridean Altars is one I use—inserting my children’s names and those of other special people in my life in place of “me.”

God be with me in this, Thy day, every day and every way, with me and for me in this, Thy day.

Marion Wright Edelman

The sky is the daily bread of the eye.

            Ralph Waldo Emerson

Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.

Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God.

Every creature is a word of God.

If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature—even a caterpillar—
I would never have to prepare a sermon.
So full of God is every creature.

            Meister Eckhart

If I were alone in a desert and feeling afraid,
I would want a child to be with me.
For then my fear would disappear
and I would be made strong.
This is what life in itself can do
because it is so noble, so full of pleasure
and so powerful.
But if I could not have a child with me
I would like to have at least a living animal
at my side to comfort me.

Therefore,
let those who bring about wonderful things
in their big, dark books
take an animal
to help them.
The life within the animal will give them strength in turn.
For equality
gives strength, in all things
and at all times.

            Meister Eckhart

This is a prayer of a Negro boy running a race:

            Lord, You pick’em up and I’ll put them down,
            You pick’em up and I’ll put them down.

            Marian Wright Edelman

Lord, I’m completely lost and have gone to look for myself.
Please help me to wait until I can find me—and Thee—again.

            Marian Wright Edelman

COMMITMENT

Help me to dedicate each hour of each day to You—
my constant, never-failing companion and guide.

God, please give me the courage of my conviction this day.
Help me not to waver.
Help me not to procrastinate.
Help me not to rationalize.
Help me not to play games with myself.
Help me to stand strong with Thee.

Lord, help me not just to give what I have but to give what I am.

            Marian Wright Edelman

Lord, help me to persist although I want to give up.
Lord, help me to keep trying although I can’t see what good it does.
Lord, help me to keep praying although I’m not sure You hear me.
Lord, help me to keep living in ways that seek to please You.
Lord, help me to know when to lead and when to follow.
Lord, help me to know when to speak and when to remain silent.
Lord, help me to know when to act and when to wait.

            Marian Wright Edelman

God, I am scurrying around like a chicken with her head cut off, making a mess everywhere I light.

Why, God, when I know if I wait quietly and listen for Your guidance, I do better and work more efficiently, do I rush about—driven by time, rather than by You?

Help me, God, to slow down, to be silent, so I can hear You and do Your will and not mine.

            Marian Wright Edelman

O God, help me to be real and not pretend to be what I’m not or to know what I don’t.  Help me not to be despairing or prideful in comparing myself to others when I cannot measure up or think they don’t. You did not teach us to compete but to cooperate and love.

            Marian Wright Edelman

Lord, I am running on empty and need You to fill me up so I can keep going.

My weary spirit needs to lie fallow and wait for You to prepare its soil for planting again.
My overtaxed mind is tired of racing to keep up with the speeding treadmill of     purposeless politics going nowhere.

I need to rest and withdraw, to think, and to resist the presumptuous temptation of thinking that it is I and not You who must build the national house of decency for our children.

Lord, I thank You for this time of rest.

            Marian Wright Edelman

Holder of My Fears

Blessed be thou, Jesus Christ, holder of my fears.

They tremble like small birds in your hands, desperately struggling to get free.

Am I losing my sight? Will my child be safe?
Can I do my job? Will I be loved?
Am I good enough? There’s no time!

You hold each securely in warm, strong hands.
You stroke them tenderly until they relax.
They fall asleep in the nest of your embrace.

And when all my fears are calmed, you hold only me.
Beloved be thou, Jesus Christ.
Beloved!

            Carol K. Everson

O God, I thank You for this day of life
    for eyes to see the sky
    for ears to hear the birds
for feet to walk amidst the trees
    for hands to pick the flowers from the earth
    for a sense of smell to breathe in the sweet perfumes of nature
    for a mind to think about and appreciate the magic of everyday miracles
for a spirit to swell in joy at Your mighty presence everywhere.

            Marion Wright Edelman

Dear Lord
Be good to me
The sea is so wide and
My boat is so small.

Lord, we have pushed so many of our children into the tumultuous sea of life in leaky boats without survival gear.

Forgive us and help them to forgive us. Help us now to give all or children the anchor of faith, the rudder of hope, the sails of education, and the paddles of family to keep them going when life’s sea gets rough.

Marian Wright Edelman

…if we can open ourselves to the mystery of it all, if we can glimpse the Whole, affirm the Whole, commit to leaning into life until it drops us beneath our surface maps of reality, we may discover that, though we pray to the many faces of God, each is a changing wave in a sea of divine being in which we are tiny fish. And anything in our experience that causes us to trip below our preferences and smaller ways of seeing—any circumstance that awakes us to that divine sea—is a holy gift.

Mark Nepo in The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic Life
(which I highly recommend)

A Prayer for All Children, the day after Mother’s Day

We pray/accept responsibility for children
who sneak Popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never “counted potatoes,”
who were born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who can’t find any bread to steal,
who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,
and whose monsters are real.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories,
who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.

And we pray/accept responsibility for children