Passage Meditation
Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart into Daily Life
This book could have been called “The Eight-Point Program for Daily Living” as Eknath Easwaran walks us through not just his approach to “passage meditation” but also the other key tenets of spiritual living. Big Ideas we explore include deciding whether you *really* want to get over your problems, how to tame your mind (and why it’s like an elephant’s unruly trunk!), making your mind one-pointed, swimming upstream and doing the work (vs. just attending lectures).
Big Ideas
- An Eight Point ProgramFor spiritual living.
- Your ProblemsDo you *really* want to get over ‘em?
- Your MindIs like an elephant’s trunk.
- One-Pointedvs. Many-pointed.
- Swim UpstreamWith your sanga.
- Doing the Workvs. Attending lectures.
“In 1959, I had the opportunity to go to the United States as a Fulbright scholar, part of an exchange program aimed at international understanding. That proved to be the beginning of a new career, a shift from education for degrees to education for living. In the US, I lectured widely on the spiritual heritage of India. Often, people would come up after the talks to ask questions, and some were eager to learn how to meditate. I have always enjoyed teaching; sharing what I love comes naturally. I studied everything I had learned from my own practice and worked on a way to present it simply, practically, and systematically. In this way I distilled from those years of effort an eight-point program for daily living based on passage meditation. …
I am still surprised to see the immense potential in this simple program. Without intending it, I had found a path that anyone can follow — a path with all the richness and depth of traditional wisdom, regardless of one’s culture or belief, together with a practical method for bringing that wisdom into daily life. By the time I was asked to teach meditation on the Berkeley campus, I had worked out a systematic presentation that, like a good professor, I could sketch on the board and fill out week by week on a semester of talks.
Out of those classes, tested further over the next ten years, came this book. …
In India, meditation is called ‘the end of sorrow’ and ‘mastery of the art of living.’ It is my deepest prayer that through this book you will find these promises fulfilled in your own life.”
~ Eknath Easwaran from Passage Meditation
This is Note #6 on Eknath Easwaran—officially making him the teacher I have profiled the most in these Notes. (We also shared his translations of The Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita along with Conquest of Mind, Your Life Is Your Message and Take Your Time.)
Easwaran came to the States as a Fulbright scholar in 1959—at 49 years old when he was a prominent professor of English Literature in India. He went from education “for degrees” to education “for living.”
(In fact, at UC Berkeley in the 60’s he taught what was probably the first course on meditation ever offered for credit at a major American university.)
He is a dedicated, humble guide and I love this line from his mini-bio as it’s so obviously true: “Easwaran lived what he taught, giving him enduring appeal as a teacher of deep insight and warmth.”
As you’d expect, this book (get a copy here) is packed with Big Ideas. I’m excited to share a few of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFAs systematically as a professional athlete, I worked on my daily life, building it around the regular daily practice of meditation.
Get the BookAn Eight Point Program
“So far I have spoken only of meditation, but you will find this book presents a complete program for leading the spiritual life. Please understand that while this program has been adapted to the modern world, its disciplines are really universal. They come recommended to us by men and women down the centuries who experimented with them and discovered their potency in the crucibles of their own lives. That is their guarantee. To the limit of my capacity, I too have practiced these disciplines and taught them to thousands of people, so I can testify to their inestimable value on the basis of personal experience.
Here are the eight steps of this program:
- Meditation on a Passage (Easwaran’s recommended approach to meditation is to identify a brief, meaningful, inspiring spiritual passage and silently repeat it to yourself for thirty minutes every day.)
- Repetition of a Mantram (The mantram is a spiritual word or phrase we repeat in spare moments to focus our mind.)
- Slowing Down (Just because life moves fast doesn’t mean we need to. A calm mind cannot exist in a frenzied life; slow down, focus on what is essential.)
- One-Pointed Attention (Our attention tends to be many-pointed rather than one-pointed. Cultivating this ability to focus is huge.)
- Training the Senses (We need to discipline ourselves so we’re not constantly pulled by our sensory desires.)
- Putting Others First (We are here to serve. We need to make a practice of putting other people first.)
- Spiritual Fellowship (Living a spiritual life is like swimming upstream against society. Connecting with others who are also on the path is wise.)
- Spiritual Reading (Reading spiritual texts is empowering (particularly before sleep) and then we need to go live those truths!)
It is essential that all eight of these be practiced daily. Though they may at first seem unrelated, they are closely linked.”
This book could have been called “The Eight-Point Program for Daily Living.”
Passage meditation is the first point, but Easwaran shares 7 other critical facets of his approach. Each of the eight points gets it own chapter.
Let’s take a quick look at some of my favorite practical Ideas.
Do you really want to get over your problems?
“To make progress in meditation, you must be regular in your practice of it. Some people catch fire at the beginning, but when the novelty wears off in a few days and the hard work sets in, their fires dampen and go out. They cut back, postpone, make excuses, perhaps feel guilty and apologetic. This is precisely where our determination is tested, where we can ask ourselves, ‘Do I really want to get over my problems? Do I want to claim my birthright of joy, love, and peace of mind? Do I want to discover the meaning of life and of my own life?’
There is only one failure in meditation: the failure to meditate faithfully. A Hindu proverb says, ‘Miss one morning, and you need seven to make it up.’ Or as John of the Cross expressed it, ‘He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.’”
I love all of that.
First, let’s remind ourselves of the fact that there’s actually a Sanskrit word for those who catch fire in the beginning and then sneak out the back door when it gets a little tough x days in: Arambhashura. As I’ve shared many times, the word means “to be a hero in the beginning.”
2,500+ years ago people were doing what you and I do today.
And, they were doing it so often that they came up with a name to describe it. Hah.
That’s the definition of common humanity. We ALL do that.
And…
At some point, we’ve gotta see the tendency and choose to overcome it—KNOWING that the buzz will wear off and that we need to push through the discomfort and ESTABLISH THE HABIT.
We talk about the importance of never missing a day in HABITS 101.
Remember these reminders of just how important it is to keep our streak alive:
Hindu proverb: “Miss one morning, and you need seven to make it up.”
John of the Cross: “He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.”
Here’s to making a 100% commitment to our meditation (and other keystone habits we build one by one) and rockin’ it CONSISTENTLY!
P.S. Easwaran also tells us: “It helps to know at the outset that you will be running a marathon in this program, not simply jogging once or twice around a track. It is good to be enthusiastic when you sit down for meditation the first morning; but it is essential to be equally enthusiastic, equally sincere, at the end of the first week, and the end of the first month, and for all the months to come.”
Plus: “We need to renew our enthusiasm and commitment every day and give our best all the time. Success comes to those who keep at it — walking when they cannot run, crawling when they cannot walk, never saying ‘No, I can’t do this,’ but always ‘I’ll keep trying.’”
Your mind is like the trunk of an elephant
“The human mind is rather like the trunk of an elephant. It never rests . . . it goes here, there, ceaselessly moving through sensations, images, thoughts, hopes, regrets, impulses. Occasionally it does solve a problem or make necessary plans, but most of the time it wanders at large, simply because we do not know how to keep it quiet or profitably engaged.
But what should we give it to hold on to? For this purpose, I recommend the systematic repetition of the mantram, which can steady the mind at any time and in any place.”
That’s from Chapter 2: “Repetition of a Mantram.”
Easwaran tells us about elephants. Bring one through a market and they’ll grab everything in site with their trunks—throwing coconuts, bananas, and mangoes into their mouths as they cruise along.
The simple trick to make them stop that? Have them hold a piece of bamboo in their trunks. Occupied with that bamboo, they leave everything alone.
Our minds are just like that elephant.
You might have noticed our minds CONSTANTLY spin from one thought to another “ceaselessly moving through sensations, images, thoughts, hopes, regrets, impulses.”
That’s ENERVATING. It drains us of vital energy.
We need to tame the elephant that is our mind.
One really powerful way to do that is to give ourselves a mantram.
We talked about the same Idea in Stephen Cope’s The Great Work of Your Life. Check out this +1 on it along with the Note.
Cope tells us: “When done systematically, mantra has a powerful effect on the brain. It gathers and focuses the energy of the mind. It teaches the mind to focus on one point, and it cultivates a steadiness that over time becomes an unshakable evenness of temper.”
Easwaran gives us a number of examples of mantrams we can use. If we’re Christian, Jesus, Jesus or Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us may be a perfect mantram—reminding us of the love and compassion with which we aspire to live. If we’re Muslim, we may want to choose Allahu akbar (“God is great”) while Jews may want to go with Barukh attah Adonai (“Blessed art thou, O Lord”).
His #1 rec for people who may not have one that fits is Rama. This was his and Gandhi’s mantram and comes from the Sanskrit root meaning “to rejoice.”
(For curious souls: I’m personally practicing nam-myoho-renge-kyo from Nichiren Buddhism (inspired by The Undefeated Mind + The Buddha in Your Mirror.)
Whatever you pick, Easwaran recommends you practice it again and again and again in all the spare moments of your day—focusing your mind and bringing that wild elephant-trunk-mind to a still point as you cultivate your one-pointed attention, which happens to be our next Idea. :)
Is your mind one-pointed or many-pointed?
“In all these common cases, the mind lacks an essential condition for clear thinking and smooth functioning: one-pointedness. In Sanskrit, this is called ekagrata. Eka means ‘one’; agra means ‘point’ or ‘edge.’ ‘One-pointedness’ is a very vivid expression, because it assumes quite accurately that the mind is an internal instrument which can either be brought to a single, powerful focus or left diffuse. Light, as you know, can be focused into an intense beam through the use of reflectors. But if holes and cracks lace the reflecting surface, the light will spill out in all directions. Similarly, when the mind is diffuse and many-pointed, it cannot be effective. The mental powers are divided up, and less remains available for the task at hand.”
One-pointedness.
Ekagrata.
How many points does YOUR mind have? And, more importantly, can you focus your attention in ONE direction when you want, at what you want, for however long you want?
As Easwaran tells us: “If we want to live in freedom, we must have complete mastery over our thoughts.”
The primary ways to develop this ekagrata?
Easwaran tells us that the first step is the systematic practice of meditation. Another tool is to practice doing ONE thing at a time, to “abandon totally our habit of trying to perform several operations simultaneously.”
We often chat about the fact that multi-tasking is a myth: we’re not doing two things at once but rather quickly switching between one thing and another—doing neither as well as we could if we focused.
Now, we have another reason to stop doing that: To sharpen our ekagrata.
Remember that the ability to go deep via one-pointed attention is simultaneously becoming more rare and more valuable.
Here’s to one-pointedness!
Swim upstream (w/friends!)
“The Buddha would say that most people throw themselves into the river of life and float downstream, moved here and there by the current. But the spiritual aspirant must swim upstream, against the current of habit, familiarity, and ease. It is an apt image. We know how the salmon fights its way along, returning at last to its original home. Those who set out to change themselves are salmon swimming against the relentless flow of the selfish life. Truly, we need every bit of support we can get; we need friends, loyal companions on the journey. We have to do the swimming, of course; nobody else can do it for us. But there will be an easier and swifter passage if we can swim with those who encourage us, who set a strong pace and will not stop until they reach their destination. The burdens are shared, easing them; the joys are shared too, multiplying them.”
That’s from a chapter discussing the importance of creating “Spiritual Fellowship.”
We need to swim upstream and its best to do that with others committed to our ideals.
Take a moment and picture that image of a salmon swimming upstream. THAT’s what it’s like when we choose to live by our highest ideals rather than get caught up in society’s current.
George Leonard (see Notes on Mastery) tells us: “If you’re planning to embark on a master’s journey, you might find yourself bucking current trends in American life. Our hyped-up consumerist society is engaged, in fact, in an all out war on mastery.”
While Emerson tells us: “And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.”
Let’s get our swimming trunks on, my salmon friends.
Direction?
Upstream.
Attending lectures vs. Doing the work
“Spiritual reading is meant to inspire us to change and show us how to change, but I feel sure the mystics themselves would agree — some having learned it through trial and error — that reading cannot be substituted for experience. No matter how many mystics we read, we cannot move forward on the spiritual path without practicing their teaching in daily life.
A hard admonition for some of us. One contemporary thinker put it very well when he remarked that if we had to choose between uniting ourselves with God and hearing a lecture about it, most of us would hunt for the good seat.”
Hah! Are you hunting for the good seat or doing the hard work?
Michael Beckwith echoes this wisdom in Spiritual Liberation (see Notes) where he tells us: “That which transforms your life is what you practice. And what you practice constitutes your personal laws of life—not what you merely believe in, but what you practice. It’s all well and good to read books, and to attend seminars, lectures, and workshops, and to say, ‘Oh, that really resonates with me! It’s now part of my life’s philosophy.’ Your philosophy may give you a temporary state of euphoria, but if you want to be anchored in reality, it takes practice, practice, practice. We are not here to be euphoric but to get free. Rudimentary spirituality is theory; advanced spirituality is practice.”
I repeat:
RUDIMENTARY SPIRITUALITY IS THEORY.
ADVANCED SPIRITUALITY IS PRACTICE.
Ernest Holmes has a great line about this as well. In Creative Mind and Success (see Notes) he says: “I would rather see a student of this Science prove its Principle than to have him repeat all the words of wisdom that have ever been uttered.”
I’m also reminded of how Vernon Howard captures this Idea in The Power of Your Supermind (see Notes): “You see, knowing the words is not the same thing as living the meaning. Suppose I memorize the printed instructions on a first-aid kit. Does that mean I can give first aid? No. The full meaning comes when I admit I know nothing and then try, practice, succeed.”
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