Gita - Tagi and Sri Ramakrishna's wisdom
Topic: Thought for the day

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day
A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
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Thy desire is thy prayer; and if thy desire is without ceasing,
thy prayer will also be without ceasing. . . . The continuance of
your longing is the continuance of your prayer. - Saint Augustine

I once had a physicist friend who would gladly discuss electric power;
but harnessing the power of a passion or a craving - well, that was
not dynamics; that was poetry. "Power," he told me sternly, "is the
capacity to do work. Work is the energy required to move a definite
mass a definite distance. No movement, no work. No work, no power."

Day or night I had never seen my friend far from his desk. Then late
one evening I came out of a movie theater and saw him striding along
like an athlete, several miles from his office. "What got you up from
your desk?" I asked. "You're breaking the habits of a lifetime."

"Coffee," he muttered. "I ran out of coffee."

"Here," I said, "a very definite mass has been propelled at least
three miles, simply by one little desire for a cup of coffee."
He got my point.

Every deep desire is a prayer. Every desire also contains a certain
quantum of energy - energy to grasp the desired goal.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day
A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 28

To display His eternal attributes
In their inexhaustible variety,
The Lord made the green fields of time and space.
- Jami

The Lord has strewn little signs of his presence throughout the
universe. The person who is observant will see these signs and know
where the Lord is to be found. There is a marvelous story about a man
looking for the Buddha the way one follows the tracks of an animal in
the jungle. He went around talking to people everywhere, and whenever
he found a person whose life had been transformed he would exclaim,
"Those are the tracks of a really big elephant!"

The men and women who have realized God leave big, unmistakable
tracks. In a smaller way, when we see someone being extremely
patient, someone who can listen quietly to criticism without
retaliating or losing her temper, we might think, "Aha! That's not
my friend Jane; that is the Lord in Jane." Jane is leaving a trail --
broken twigs of patience, torn leaves of kindness -- all subtle signs
by which we can track the Lord's presence.

Though the Lord is present everywhere, the expression of his presence
varies throughout the infinite variety of his creation. Wherever
perfection is approached, his glory is revealed a little more --
among people, among trees, among mountains, among stars.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day

A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 27

The body is mortal, but the person dwelling in the body is immortal
and immeasurable. - Bhagavad Gita

When I say that this body is not me, I am not making an intellectual
statement. It is an experiential statement. If you were to ask me,
"Who is this body?" I would make an awful pun: "This is my buddy. I
give him good food and good exercise, and I look after him very well,
but he is not me." My body has always been my faithful buddy, through
many trials, and during many difficult times; and I let him know how
much I appreciate his faithful service. We have an understanding: I
take very good care of him, and he looks up to me as the boss.

As Saint Francis used to say, "This body is Brother Donkey. I feed
him, I wash him, but I am going to ride on him." Whenever we use
drugs, or smoke, or drink, or even overeat, the donkey is riding on
us. The mystics challenge us: "Don't you want to get that donkey off
your back and ride on it?"

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day


A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 26

Purity of heart is to will one thing. - Kierkegaard

There is a Hindu story comparing the mind to the trunk of an elephant
-- restless, inquisitive, always straying. In our villages in India,
elephants are sometimes taken in religious processions through the
streets to the temple. The streets are crooked and narrow, lined on
either side with fruit and vegetable stalls. Along comes the elephant
with his restless trunk, and in one sinuous motion, he grabs a whole
bunch of bananas. He opens his cavernous mouth, and tosses the
bananas in -- stalk and all. From the next stall he picks up a
coconut and tosses it in after the bananas.

No threats or promises can make this restless trunk settle down.
But the wise mahout will give that trunk a short bamboo stick to
hold. Then the elephant will walk along proudly, holding the bamboo
stick in front like a drum major with a baton. He doesn't steal
bananas and coconuts now, because his trunk has something to hold
on to.

The mind works in the same way. We can keep it from straying into
all kinds of situations if we just give it the mantram.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day
A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 25

If you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things,
you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite
for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is
certain in them. - Saint John of the Cross

The mind should be a reliable instrument of observation, but it very
often is not, because it is so deeply influenced by the compulsive
habits and addictions that characterize so much of modern life.
Comparing the mind to a camera, you could say that these habits
skew the focus, alter the depth of field, and in general do all they
can to make us see not what is really there but what the mind wants
us to see. And what it wants us to see is the profit or momentary
gratification it is interested in, whether it is a pastry or a sports
car, a promotion or a dividend. When our attention is glued to these
things, we see only the fragmented, turbulent surface of life, not
the vast interconnected web of relationships supporting that surface.

Through meditation, we unglue the mind from the tantalizing surface
and make it turn inwards. Then we begin to see life in a completely
new way -- not as a struggle to get what we want no matter what
the cost, but as a compassionate dance where each creature has
a beautiful role.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day


A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 24

The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.
- Sri Ramakrishna

All that you and I have to do is to put up our sails and let the wind
of grace carry us across the sea of life to the other shore. But most
of us are firmly stuck on this shore. Our sail is in tatters and our
boat cannot move because of all the excess baggage weighing it down:
our likes and dislikes, our habits and opinions, all the resentments
and hostilities which we have carefully acquired. But just as
it is we, ourselves, who have acquired this baggage, it is we who
can gradually learn to toss it overboard. The wind is blowing, but
we have to make our boat seaworthy. We can patch up our sail, and
unfurl it to catch the wind that will carry us to the other shore.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day


A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 23

The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the
mind. - Mahatma Gandhi

I first became interested in improving my diet under the influence of
Mahatma Gandhi, who used to include articles on diet and heath in his
weekly newspaper along with all the latest political news. I had been
brought up on traditional South Indian cuisine. I had enjoyed it all
thoroughly, but I had never asked what the purpose of food is. At
Gandhi's prompting, I started asking this kind of question and
concluded to my great surprise that food is meant to nourish the body.
I started changing. I began to eat foods that wouldn't have appealed
to me in earlier days. Now asparagus tastes better than chocolate
torte.

The palate is the ideal starting point for getting some mastery over
your senses. You have three, four, maybe more opportunities a day:
breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any number of between-meal snacks. No
need to talk of fasting or strange diets. Just resolve to move away
from foods that don't benefit your health and begin choosing foods
that do. With this simple resolution, you'll strengthen your will
and deepen your meditation.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day



A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 22

This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm,
a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.
- The Buddha

Time runs out so soon! In our teens and twenties, even our thirties,
we have ample margin to play with the toys life has to offer. But we
should find out soon how fleeting they are, for the tides of time can
ebb away before we know it. We live from moment to moment by God's
grace, and none of us knows when death will come to cut the thread of
our lives. death. As we grow older and our family and friends begin
to pass away, we see how relentlessly time is pursuing all of us;
every death should remind us of the imminence of our own. There is
no time to quarrel, no time to feel resentful or estranged. There
is no time to waste on the pursuit of selfish pleasures that are
over almost before they begin.

The all-devouring jaws of time are following us always, closer
than our shadow. As long as I live only for myself, as a feverish
little fragment apart from the whole, I cannot escape the jaws of
time. It is good to bear in mind how evanescent life is so that we
do not postpone the voyage across this sea of separate existence,
the ceaseless process of birth and death.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day

A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 21

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the
past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles,
but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. - The Buddha

When the mind is stilled through the practice of meditation, we are
lifted out of time into the eternal present. The body, of course, is
still subject to the passage of time. But in a sense, the flickering
of the mind is our internal clock. When the mind does not flicker,
what is there to measure change? Time simply comes to a stop for us --
or, more accurately, we live completely in the present moment. Past
and future, after all, exist only in the mind. When the mind stops,
there is no past or future. We cannot be resentful, we cannot be
guilt-ridden, we cannot build future hopes and desires and fears on
past experiences; no energy flows to past or future at all.

Past and future are both contained in every present moment. Whatever
we are today is the result of what we have thought, spoken, and done
in all the present moments before now - just as what we shall be
tomorrow is the result of what we think, say, and do today. The
responsibility for both present and future is in our own hands.
If we live right today, then tomorrow has to be right.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day
A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 21

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the
past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles,
but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. - The Buddha

When the mind is stilled through the practice of meditation, we are
lifted out of time into the eternal present. The body, of course, is
still subject to the passage of time. But in a sense, the flickering
of the mind is our internal clock. When the mind does not flicker,
what is there to measure change? Time simply comes to a stop for us --
or, more accurately, we live completely in the present moment. Past
and future, after all, exist only in the mind. When the mind stops,
there is no past or future. We cannot be resentful, we cannot be
guilt-ridden, we cannot build future hopes and desires and fears on
past experiences; no energy flows to past or future at all.

Past and future are both contained in every present moment. Whatever
we are today is the result of what we have thought, spoken, and done
in all the present moments before now - just as what we shall be
tomorrow is the result of what we think, say, and do today. The
responsibility for both present and future is in our own hands.
If we live right today, then tomorrow has to be right.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the day
Topic: Thought for the day
A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 20

I tell you one thing: if you want peace of mind, do not find fault
with others. Rather learn to see your own faults. Learn to make
the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; this
whole world is your own. - Sri Sarada Devi

When we get even the slightest glimpse of the unity of life, we
realize that in tearing others down we are tearing ourselves down
too. When you sit in judgment on other people and countries and
races, you're training your mind to sit in judgment on yourself.
As we forgive others, we are teaching the mind to respond with
forgiveness everywhere, even to the misdeeds and mistakes of
our own past.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the day
Topic: Thought for the day
A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 19

Peace is not the absence of war. It is a virtue, a state of mind,
a disposition for benevolence, confidence, and justice. - Spinoza

"He insulted me, he cheated me, he beat me, he robbed me" - those
who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace. - The Buddha

Resentment is nothing more than compulsive attachment to a set of
memories. If you could peek through the window of the mind when you
feel resentful, you would see a production line turning out the same
emotion-charged memory over and over: "He did that to me in 1983, he
did that to me in 1983 . . ." You are dwelling on something that took
place in the past -- or, more likely, on how you misunderstood that
event and reacted to your misunderstanding.

When you keep pumping attention into an event in this way, a limp
little memory gets blown up into a big balloon of hostility. When you
withdraw your attention by repeating the mantram, the balloon is
deflated. It's as simple as that.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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