Blue Mountain Center of Meditation Information About Satsangs
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Blue Mountain Center of Meditation Information about Satsangs W e lc o m e to our Blue Mountain Center of Meditation (BMCM) Satsang. Our Satsang provides regular spiritual fellowship for people who share a commitment to Eknath Easwaran’s eight-point program of passage meditation. We meet regularly for mutual support and inspiration. Our approach is nondenominational, nonsectarian, and free from dogma and ritual. It can be used within each person’s cultural and religious background to relieve stress, heal relationships, release deeper resources, and realize one’s highest potential. Eknath Easwaran has been called one of the foremost teachers of meditation in our times. From his arrival in the United States in 1959 on the Fulbright exchange program until his passing in 1999, he taught to modern men and women his eight-point program, based on his unique method of meditation on memorized inspirational passages from the world’s great religions. Many thousands of people representing the full range of cultural and religious backgrounds attest to the benefits of his teaching. He continues to teach through his thirty books on spiritual living – over 1.5 million copies in print in twenty-seven languages – and through the ongoing programs and publications of the organization he founded in 1961 to carry on his work: the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation and its publishing arm, Nilgiri Press. Passage Meditation : An Eight-Point Program 1. Meditation on a passage Silent repetition in the mind of memorized inspirational passages from the world’s great religions. Practiced for one-half hour each morning. 2. Repetition of a mantram Silent repetition in the mind of a Holy Name or a hallowed phrase from one of the world’s great religions. Practiced whenever possible throughout the day or night. 3. Slowing down Setting priorities and reducing the stress and friction caused by hurry. 4. One-pointed attention Giving full concentration to the matter at hand. 5. Training the senses Overcoming conditioned habits and learning to enjoy what is beneficial. 6. Putting others first Gaining freedom from selfishness and separateness; finding joy in helping others. 7. Spiritual fellowship Spending time regularly with others who are practicing passage meditation for mutual inspiration and support. 8. Spiritual reading Drawing inspiration from writings by and about the world’s great spiritual figures and from the scriptures of all religions. Studying Eawwaran’s works for general inspiration and for specific instruction in passage meditation. © 2002 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. All rights reserved. www.easwaran.org Begin by devoting half an hour every morning as early as convenient to the practice of passage meditation. Do not increase this half-hour period, but if you want to meditate more, have half an hour in the evening also. Have a room in your home for meditation, or a special corner, and keep it as austere as possible. A quiet, cool, well-ventilated room is best. If you like, you may want to have a picture or image of a spiritual figure who inspires you. If you want to sit in a straight-back chair, one with arms is best; or sit cross-legged on the carpet. Sit with spinal column erect and eyes gently closed. As concentration deepens you may begin to relax and fall asleep; if so, draw yourself up and move away from your back support so that you can keep the spine, neck, and head in a straight line. Have an inspirational passage memorized, such as the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, the second or twelfth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, the Twenty-third Psalm, the first chapter of the Dhammapada of the Buddha, or the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Go through the words of the passage in your mind as slowly as you can, letting the words slip one after another into your consciousness. Do not follow any association of ideas, but keep to the words of the inspirational passage. When distractions come, do not resist them, but try to give more and more attention to the words of the prayer. If you find your mind has wandered away completely, go back to the first word of the stanza and begin again. Keep adding to your repertoire of inspirational passages from the scriptures of all religions to prevent dryness in meditation. The secret of passage meditation is that you become what you meditate on. When you use the second chapter of the Gita in meditation, for instance, you are driving the words deeper and deeper into your consciousness, so that one day perhaps after many years – they will become an integral part of your consciousness and will manifest themselves in your daily life. Meditation on an inspirational passage is part of an eight-point program that helps you to stay calm, kind and focused throughout the day. Please do not copy or distribute | © Blue Mountain Center of Meditation | 800 475 2369 | www.easwaran.org Blue Mountain Center of Meditation Passages for Meditation T H E PRAYER OF SAINT FRANCIS Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life. P S A L M 2 3 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. T H E UPANISHADS : INVOCATION Lead me from the unreal to the real. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality. © 2002 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. All rights reserved. www.easwaran.org Blue Mountain Center of Meditation Frequently Asked Questions Why meditate for thirty minutes? Easwaran recommends half an hour of passage meditation in the morning. Less than half an hour doesn’t let you “get your teeth into it.” If you want more meditation, have half an hour in the evening as well. To deepen your meditation, don’t increase the half-hour period of meditation but rather extend your practice of the other seven points throughout the day. The other seven points of passage meditation help you carry the benefits of your half-hour meditation session into your outer life. This balances inner growth with outer ability to face life’s challenges. Why do we meditate on a passage, rather than on a mantram or breathing or on “emptiness”? Easwaran honored all traditional forms of meditation. However, the method he developed for his own spiritual practice was meditation on a passage, which he felt was especially well-suited for our modern word-oriented and intellectual society. Easwaran’s recommended inspirational passages are positive, practical, and drawn from inspired mystics and scriptures from all the world’s great wisdom traditions. Look at the books God Makes the Rivers to Flow or Timeless Wisdom or our Web site www.easwaran.org/passages for a large selection of suitable passages. Is it acceptable to coordinate my breathing with the inspirational passage? During meditation all our attention should be on the words of the passage. If we are also trying to coordinate our breath, our attention will be divided. As we concentrate more and more on the passage, the breath will naturally become slow and steady without our attending to it. I don’t understand how you can repeat the words of the passage without thinking about their meaning. During meditation, we should try not to reflect or speculate on the meaning of the passage. In other words, don’t try to think about what “an instrument of peace” means while meditating on the Prayer of St. Francis. Simply repeat the words with as much concentration as possible. You will get better at this with practice. In the book, Passage Meditation, Easwaran explains: “As you attend to each word dropping singly, significantly, into your consciousness, you will realize that there is no discrepancy between sound and meaning. When you concentrate on the sound of each word, you will also be concentrating on the meaning of the passage. Sound and sense are one.” I have a mantram that is not on your list. Can I use it? Easwaran recommends mantrams that have been used by generations of earnest seekers in a living spiritual tradition. His selected list of these time-honored mantrams or Holy Names can be found in his books Passage Meditation and The Mantram Handbook, and on our Web site, www.easwaran.org. If you have chosen passage meditation as your meditation method, please © 2002 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. All rights reserved. www.easwaran.org Frequently Asked Questions page 2 select one of the mantrams Easwaran recommended.