Passage Meditation - A Complete Spiritual Practice: Train Your Mind and Find a Life that Fulfills (Essential Easwaran Library Book 1)

We are not mere victims of our environment, and we don’t have to go fast just because everybody else does and urges us to do it too.

though your employer may expect only eight hours from you, life is capricious and requires many more; we must be prepared to serve. Do you see how vulnerable we become if we insist on having everything just the way we want it when we return home? Every time things fall short of our desires, which may happen frequently, we will be frustrated and ang

am sometimes asked if I think a woman’s place is in the home. I reply, “Of course. And a man’s place is in the home, too.”

When I say we need to be selective in our company, however, I am not talking about withdrawing into a little group and refusing to have any contact with people who do not do as we do. We should be courteous and friendly with everyone, aware of their feelings and points of view, and avoid being judgmental.

All of us begin meditating in less than ideal circumstances. But if we are giving our best to these eight basic disciplines, we can be sure we will get all the opportunity we need for spiritual development.

I don’t go in for demonstrations, but according to the Buddha, the real activists are those who banish anger and greed and hatred and violence from the human heart.

The deliberate person acts promptly in the emergencies that demand it and acts in a more measured fashion at other times. In every case the response will be appropriate and freely chosen, not dictated by compulsion.

Say with perfect courtesy, “This is a poor time to go browsing for a best-seller. Won’t you kindly rejoin me in the room where we’re meditating on the Prayer of Saint Francis?”

If you ever feel such restlessness — or the mental kind that leads to compulsive talking, reading, and TV-watching — take a mantram walk or write your mantram a fixed number of times, say, a hundred or more.