Top 97 Eknath Easwaran Quotes
#1. Excitement and depression, fortune and misfortune, pleasure and pain are storms in a tiny private, shell-bound realm - which we take to be the whole of existence. Yet we can break out of this shell and enter a new world.
Eknath Easwaran
#2. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#3. When we truly are putting others first, we cannot but feel at peace with ourselves.
Eknath Easwaran
#4. 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?
Eknath Easwaran
#5. When we meditate every morning we are putting on armor for the day's battle against our own impatience, inadequacy, resentment, and hostility.
Eknath Easwaran
#6. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#7. 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 ...
Eknath Easwaran
#8. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#9. Concentration breeds efficiency while division brings inefficiency, error, and tension.
Eknath Easwaran
#10. By removing that which is petty and self-seeking, we bring forth all that is glorious and mindful of the whole.
Eknath Easwaran
#11. Those who indulge themselves in sense stimulation throughout their lives often end up exhausted, with an enfeebled will and little capacity to love others.
Eknath Easwaran
#12. ... .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 ...
Eknath Easwaran
#13. 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?
Eknath Easwaran
#14. Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.
Eknath Easwaran
#15. The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ourselves, 'Are these words true?' If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, 'Are the necessary?' At the last gate, we ask, 'Are they kind?'
Eknath Easwaran
#16. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#17. When the mind is still, we can become an instrument of peace.
Eknath Easwaran
#18. Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.
Eknath Easwaran
#19. 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
Eknath Easwaran
#20. Like Gandhi, like the Buddha, like all great spiritual teachers, Easwaran had no use for beliefs unless they generated actions. Doing, not saying, is what counts.
Eknath Easwaran
#21. Activity is not achievement. It is not enough to rush about beginning a lot of things and keeping busy. A well-spent life is one that rounds out what it has begun.
Eknath Easwaran
#22. I like to remind my friends frequently how short life is. This is the important message of death: not a day to waste, not a day to quarrel, not a day to brood upon yourself. This is not losing the joy of life; this is gaining the joy of life.
Eknath Easwaran
#23. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#24. I am time, the destroyer of all; I have come to consume the world.
Eknath Easwaran
#25. The things we think about, brood on, dwell on, and exult over influence our life in a thousand ways. When we can actually choose the direction of our thoughts instead of just letting them run along the grooves of conditioned thinking, we become the masters of our own lives.
Eknath Easwaran
#26. I have tremendous respect for anyone who can control his palate enough to learn not only to drink beer but to enjoy it too.
Eknath Easwaran
#27. The eye cannot see it; the mind cannot grasp it. The deathless Self (the Supreme Soul or God) has neither caste nor race, Neither eyes, nor ears, nor hands, nor feet, Sages, this Self is infinite, present in the great and in the small, Everlasting and changeless, the source of life.
Eknath Easwaran
#28. Peace would always be less compelling than war. Perhaps that was why there was so little of it in the world. (p. 160)
Eknath Easwaran
#29. Whatever we have done, we can always make amends for it without ever looking back in guilt or sorrow.
Eknath Easwaran
#30. When we go slower, we are more patient and when we are more patient we have a choice in how we respond.
Eknath Easwaran
#31. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#32. It takes a lot of experience of life 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 the future of a particular relationship. Our behavior in little every incidents tells us a great deal.
Eknath Easwaran
#33. Mastery does not come from dabbling. We have to be prepared to pay the price. We need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best.
Eknath Easwaran
#34. God made the senses turn outwards, man therefore looks outwards, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.
Eknath Easwaran
#35. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#36. In the spiritual lore of India there is a story that the Lord whispered only one word in our ears when he sent us into the world: 'Give.' Give freely of your time, your talent, your resources; give without asking for anything in return. This is the secret of living in joy and security.
Eknath Easwaran
#37. At the beginning of every winter people are careful to install storm windows. These extra panes of glass protect their houses against the bitter winds. We do something very similar to protect our minds through the practice of meditation.
Eknath Easwaran
#38. The ancestor of every destructive action, every destructive decision, is a negative thought.
Eknath Easwaran
#39. Don't think the purpose of meditation is to go deep into consciousness, wrap a blanket around yourself, and say, 'How cozy! I'm going to curl up in here by myself; let the world burn.' Not at all. We go deep into meditation so that we can reach out further and further to the world outside.
Eknath Easwaran
#40. When we try to get ourselves out of the way, we can understand much better the needs of the people closest to us.
Eknath Easwaran
#41. Wisdom may be perennial, but to see its relevance we must see it lived out.
Eknath Easwaran
#42. The real essentials of life - compassion, kindness, good will, forgiveness - are what is fundamental to living as a true human being.
Eknath Easwaran
#43. We have no need to teach pure motives to the mind. All that is necessary to make the mind pure is to undo the negative conditioning to which it has been subjected; then we will be left with Pure, Unconditioned Awareness.
Eknath Easwaran
#44. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#45. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#46. We can all learn to conquer hatred through love -drawing on the power released through the practice of meditation to throw all our weight, all our energy, and all our will on the side of what is patient, forgiving, and selfless in ourselves and others.
Eknath Easwaran
#47. People who have strong likes and dislikes find life very difficult; they are as rigid as if they had only one bone.
Eknath Easwaran
#48. The mind is powerful, but it needs something to hold on to so it doesn't wander.
Eknath Easwaran
#49. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#50. There are three kinds of violence: one, through our deeds; two, through our words; and three, through our thoughts. ... The root of all violence is in the world of thoughts, and that is why training the mind is so important.
Eknath Easwaran
#51. Whenever you are angry or afraid, nervous or worried or resentful, repeat the mantram until the agitation subsides. The mantram works to steady the mind, and all these emotions are power running against you, which the mantram can harness and put to work for you.
Eknath Easwaran
#52. We have to have a purpose greater than the endless struggle to satisfy personal desires.
Eknath Easwaran
#53. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#54. Judged by the normal standards of human affairs, the lives of men and women of God may look overburdened with suffering, and even inconclusive.
Eknath Easwaran
#55. The Lord is a good psychologist: he knows the way our minds run. Turmoil can be the Lord's way of tapping us on the shoulder and saying, 'Don't forget me.'
Eknath Easwaran
#56. Instead of looking at difficulties as deprivations, we can learn to recognize them as opportunities for deepening and widening our love.
Eknath Easwaran
#57. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#58. Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.
Eknath Easwaran
#59. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#60. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#61. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#62. The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone.
Eknath Easwaran
#63. Meditation is warm-up exercise for the mind, so that you can jog through the rest of the day without getting agitated or spraining your patience.
Eknath Easwaran
#64. The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results.
Eknath Easwaran
#65. When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.
Eknath Easwaran
#67. Eventually, meditation will make our mind calm, clear, and as concentrated as a laser which we can focus at will. This capacity of one-pointed attention is the essence of genius. When we have this mastery over attention in everything we do, we have a genius for life.
Eknath Easwaran
#68. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#70. The earth was our home, she would have said, but no less was it home to the oxen that pulled our plows or the elephants that roamed in the forest and worked for us. They lived with us as partners whose well-being was inseparable from our own.
Eknath Easwaran
#71. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#72. A calm mind releases the most precious capacity a human being can have: the capacity to turn anger into compassion, fear into fearlessness, and hatred into love.
Eknath Easwaran
#73. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#74. Human relationships are the perfect tool for sanding away our rough edges and getting at the core of divinity within us.
Eknath Easwaran
#76. As the web issues out of the spider, As plants sprout from the earth, As hair grows from the body, even so, The sages say, this universe springs from, The deathless Self (the Supreme Soul), the source of life.
Eknath Easwaran
#77. 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
Eknath Easwaran
#78. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#79. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#80. Having come to realize in the first stage of meditation that we are not our bodies, in the second stage we make an even more astounding discovery; we are not our minds either.
Eknath Easwaran
#81. 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.
Eknath Easwaran
#82. Two forces pervade human life, the Gita says: the upward thrust of evolution and the downward pull of our evolutionary past.
Eknath Easwaran
#83. Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.
Eknath Easwaran
#84. We look at the world through our likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, opinions and judgments. We want everyone to behave as we think they should; otherwise we get agitated. But we are here to accept the world as it is, even as we work to make it better.
Eknath Easwaran
#85. Don't try to control the future," he would say. "Work on the one thing you can learn to control: your own responses.
Eknath Easwaran
#86. As we get deeper, we move closer and closer to other people; we feel closer to life as a whole.
Eknath Easwaran
#87. International war is the sum total of millions of individual wars, raging in the minds of the people, between what is selfish and what is selfless. To the extent that you and I develop selflessness in our own hearts, to that extent we contribute to peace in our family, community, country, and world.
Eknath Easwaran
#88. Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.
Eknath Easwaran
#89. Today, everything I do from morning meditation on - eating breakfast, going for a walk, writing, reading, even recreation - is governed by one purpose only: how to give the very best account of my life that I can in the service of all.
Eknath Easwaran
#90. The Buddha said, When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit. Don't wobble.
Eknath Easwaran
#91. Do not feed your ego and your problems, with your attention ... Slowly, surely, the ego will lose weight, until one fine day it will be nothing but a thin ghost of its former self. You will be able to see right through it, to the divine presence that shines in each of us.
Eknath Easwaran
#92. This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.
Eknath Easwaran
#93. 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?
Eknath Easwaran
#94. Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.
Eknath Easwaran
#95. Imagine a hot tub for the mind. That is what meditation is; it can bathe your mind in relaxing thoughts.
Eknath Easwaran
#96. When we are at home with ourselves, we are at home everywhere in the world. When we have found peace within ourselves, peace and love follow us wherever we go.
Eknath Easwaran
#97. Anything that tends to make us elated is inevitably going to throw us into depression.
Eknath Easwaran
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