Quotes from Eknath Easwaran

Whatever the flavor of our anger – irritability, rage, stubbornness, belligerence, or sullen silence – it can all be transformed into compassion and understanding. Those we live with will certainly benefit from that, and so will we.

Even with the best of conscious intentions, we may provoke a nasty clash. But if we can support the other person and express our disapproval tenderly, with respect, it will help him or her to see more clearly.

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself and all things possible. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and warrants them to take effect, where he who does not love would faint and lie down.

Training the senses does not mean denying them or depriving them. It means educating them not to demand things that will cost us in health, security, or freedom. In training the senses, we don't forfeit anything in life of lasting value.

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.

When Gandhi was observing his day of silence, someone once asked him for a message. He just wrote, "My life is my message.

The schedule was always tight, but he was never in a hurry. Not once, then or since, did I see him pressured into speeding up to get more done in the time available. By his example, he was constantly teaching what he knew from experience: the most effective way to accomplish a lot is to do one thing at a time and do it well.

One advertisement proclaims, A flat stomach is beautiful! For me, a flat ego is beautiful.

But when we train the senses we conserve our vital energy, the very stuff of life. Patient and secure within, we do not have to look to externals for satisfaction. No matter what happens outside--whether events are for or against us, however people behave towards us, whether we get what pleases us or do not--we are in no way dependent. Then it is that we can give freely to others; then it is that we can love.

You occasionally hear it said that spiritual aspirants should drop everything and set off for the woods, or go to India and wander about on the slopes of the Himalayas. But only through daily contact with people--not trees or brooks or deer--can we train ourselves to be selfless in personal relationships.

Love that is physical, death will destroy. But love that is spiritual, death can never destroy.

The body is not me; it is only the jacket which I wear. When this jacket is torn and tattered, the time has come for me to throw it away and put on a new jacket. Sri Krishna asks, "What is there to grieve about? What is so tragic about putting on a new jacket? Do you want to keep an old jacket that lets in cold air, makes you uncomfortable, and can no longer be used to serve others?

All life is a battlefield, she used to tell me; whether we like it or not, we are born to fight. We have no choice in this, but we do have the choice of our opponent and our weapon. If we fight other people, often our dear ones, we cannot but lose, but if we choose to fight all that is selfish and violent in us, we cannot but win. There is no such thing as defeat on the spiritual path once we join Sri Krishna, but if we try to fight against him, we shall never know victory.

The mind is powerful, but it needs something to hold on to so it doesn't wander.

Almost every estrangement can be mended if one person involved is willing and able to forgive.

Past and future, those twin burdens, fall away, and here, in the present moment, we are free to love unconditionally, wholly.

Mysticism is the conviction, born of personal experience, that there is a divine core in human personality which each of us can realize directly, and that making this discovery is the real goal of our lives.

One who has merely heard of fire has ajnana, ignorance. One who has seen fire has jnana. But one who has actually built a fire and cooked on it has vijnana.

Most of us are vigilant when making big decisions, but less so when dealing with little ones. We forget the cumulative effect of all those missed "little" opportunities. It is precisely on those thousand little occasions, and over a period of time, that the mind is taught to be calm and kind - not instantaneously or by great leaps. In the ordinary choices of every day we begin to change the direction of our lives.

Windmills put the wind to work. Similarly, you can set up an anger mill, which will put your an- ger to work, drawing the living waters of compas- sion and creativity from the depths of your heart to help all those around you.

All that you used to avoid will turn itself to great sweetness and exceeding joy.

Patience means self-mastery: the capacity to hold on and remain loving in a difficult situation when every atom of your being wants to turn and run. ? Perversely, the more we try to run from occasions that might cause us grief, the more we add to our burden of it.

mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.