Eknath Easwaran famous quotes

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

#Thinking #World #Want

When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Peace #Rooms #Calming

Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Yoga #Giving #Meditation

When mystics use the word love, they use it very carefully - in the deeply spiritual sense, where to love is to know; to love is to act. If you really love, from the depths of your Consciousness, that love gives you a native wisdom. You perceive the needs of others intuitively and clearly, with detachment from any personal desires; and you know how to act creatively to meet those needs, dexterously surmounting any obstacle that comes in the way. Such is the immense, driving power of love.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Spiritual #Love Is #Giving

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

#Grateful #Compassion #Hatred

Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Motivational #Doubt #Grows

When we go slower, we are more patient and when we are more patient we have a choice in how we respond.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Choices #Patient

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

#People #Trying #Needs

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

#Life #Heart #Love Is

Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Inspirational #People #Way

Human relationships are the perfect tool for sanding away our rough edges and getting at the core of divinity within us.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Relationship #Perfect #Tools

I have never been able to understand the compelling phrase, 'keeping up with the Joneses.' It does not matter very much whether I keep up with Tom Jones or anybody else; what is important is to keep up with myself by making my today a little better than my yesterday.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Yesterday #Important #Doe

Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Patience #Needs #Building

The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Spiritual #Selfish #Attachment

When we truly are putting others first, we cannot but feel at peace with ourselves.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Firsts #Feels

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

#Exercise #Meditation #Mind

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

#Running #Mind #Agitation

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

#Practice #Drawing #Hatred

As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings and fits of emotion 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. It is profoundly liberating.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Choices #Meditation #Emotion

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

#Mind #Negative #Needs

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

#Self #Shining #Ego

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

#Winter #Practice #Glasses

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

#Achievement #Life Is #Busy

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

#Passion #Forgiving #Unshakable

Imagine a hot tub for the mind. That is what meditation is; it can bathe your mind in relaxing thoughts.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Meditation #Mind #Hot

Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Knowing #Joy #Needs

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

#Spiritual #Giving #Joy

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

#Life #Running #Thinking

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. In this lies the power and the meaning of spiritual companionship.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Spiritual #Lying #Moving

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

#Morning #Reading #Writing

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

#Home #And Love #World

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

#Children #Heart #Mind

It may sound paradoxical, but however tight our schedule, however many things clamor to be done, we don't need to hurry. If we can keep our mind calm and go about our business with undivided attention, we will not only accomplish more but we'll do a better job - and find ourselves more patient, more at peace.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Jobs #Mind #Needs

We become in part what our senses take in.
-- Eknath Easwaran

By removing that which is petty and self-seeking, we bring forth all that is glorious and mindful of the whole.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Self #Mindfulness #Glorious

My grandmother lived in a universe filled with life. It was impossible for her to conceive of any creature - even the smallest insect, let alone a human being - as insignificant. In every leaf, flower, animal, and star she saw an expression of a compassionate universe, whose laws were not competition and survival of the fittest but cooperation, artistry and thrift. . . .
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Stars #Flower #Grandmother

In memorizing the prayer, it may be helpful to remind yourself that you are not addressing some extraterrestrial being outside you. The kingdom of heaven is within us, and the Lord is enshrined in the depths of our own consciousness. In this prayer we are calling deep into ourselves, appealing to the spark of the divine that is our real nature.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Prayer #Real #Heaven

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

#Home #Compassion #Elephants

The ancestor of every destructive action, every destructive decision, is a negative thought.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Decision #Negative #Action

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

#Self #Work Out #Effort

Wisdom may be perennial, but to see its relevance we must see it lived out.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Wisdom #May #Relevance

Whatever we have done, we can always make amends for it without ever looking back in guilt or sorrow.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Sorrow #Guilt #Done

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

#Running #Mind #Way

Meditation may require a lifetime to master, but it will have been a lifetime well spent. ... If you want to judge your progress, ask yourself these questions: Am I more loving? Is my judgment sounder? Do I have more energy? Can my mind remain calm under provocation? Am I free from the conditioning of anger, fear, and greed? Spiritual awareness reveals itself as eloquently in character development and selfless action as in mystical states.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Spiritual #Character #Judging

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

#Giving #Doe #Needs

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

#Spiritual #Teacher #Use

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

#Essence #Focus #Meditation

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

#Two #Roots #Training

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

#Inspiration #Discovery #Practice

Instead of looking at difficulties as deprivations, we can learn to recognize them as opportunities for deepening and widening our love.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Opportunity #Our Love #Deprivation

Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Littles #Next #Emotion

To enjoy anything, we cannot be attached to it. What we usually try to do is capture any joy that comes our way before it can escape. We try to cling to pleasure, but all we succeed in doing is making ourselves frustrated because, whatever it promises, pleasure simply cannot last. But if I am willing to kiss the joy as it flies, I say, Yes, this moment is beautiful. I won't grab it. I'll let it go.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Beautiful #Acceptance #Kissing

Everything beautiful has to be worked for.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Beautiful

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

#Men #Soul #Looks

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

#Thinking #Meditation #Mindfulness

This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Meditation #Principles

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

#Spiritual #Three #Our Words

As we get deeper, we move closer and closer to other people; we feel closer to life as a whole.
-- Eknath Easwaran

#Moving #People #Diversity

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

#Pain #Storm #Tiny