Quote

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

Eknath Easwaran

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Eknath Easwaran

Image
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.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
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.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
I like to remind my friends frequently how short life is. This is the important message of death: not a day to waste, not a day to quarrel, not a day to brood upon yourself. This is not losing the joy of life this is gaining the joy of life.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
When we go slower, we are more patient and when we are more patient we have a choice in how we respond.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
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.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Having come to realize in the first stage of meditation that we are not our bodies, in the second stage we make an even more astounding discovery we are not our minds either.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
God made the senses turn outwards, man therefore looks outwards, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
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.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
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.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
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.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
To be secure everywhere is the mark of sophistication, to be unshakable is the mark of courage, to be permanently in love with every person is the mark of masculinity or femininity, to forgive is the mark of strength, to govern our senses and passions is the mark of freedom.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
When the mind is still, we can become an instrument of peace.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Today, everything I do from morning meditation on - eating breakfast, going for a walk, writing, reading, even recreation - is governed by one purpose only: how to give the very best account of my life that I can in the service of all.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Don't think the purpose of meditation is to go deep into consciousness, wrap a blanket around yourself, and say, 'How cozy! I'm going to curl up in here by myself let the world burn.' Not at all. We go deep into meditation so that we can reach out further and further to the world outside.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
When we meditate every morning we are putting on armor for the day's battle against our own impatience, inadequacy, resentment, and hostility.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
It may sound paradoxical, but however tight our schedule, however many things clamor to be done, we don't need to hurry. If we can keep our mind calm and go about our business with undivided attention, we will not only accomplish more but we'll do a better job - and find ourselves more patient, more at peace.
Eknath Easwaran