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

Eknath Easwaran

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Eknath Easwaran
Age: 88 †
Born: 1910
Born: December 17
Died: 1999
Died: October 26
Author
Philosopher
Translator
Keralam
Opportunity
Deepening
Learn
Deprivation
Love
Difficulties
Opportunities
Recognize
Difficulty
Instead
Looking
Widening

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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.
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Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.
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The eye cannot see it the mind cannot grasp it. The deathless Self (the Supreme Soul or God) has neither caste nor race, Neither eyes, nor ears, nor hands, nor feet, Sages, this Self is infinite, present in the great and in the small, Everlasting and changeless, the source of life.
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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.
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The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone.
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International war is the sum total of millions of individual wars, raging in the minds of the people, between what is selfish and what is selfless. To the extent that you and I develop selflessness in our own hearts, to that extent we contribute to peace in our family, community, country, and world.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When we try to get ourselves out of the way, we can understand much better the needs of the people closest to us.
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Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.
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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.
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When the mind is still, we can become an instrument of peace.
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When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.
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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?'
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Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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