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When we go slower, we are more patient and when we are more patient we have a choice in how we respond.

Eknath Easwaran

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Eknath Easwaran
Age: 88 †
Born: 1910
Born: December 17
Died: 1999
Died: October 26
Author
Philosopher
Translator
Keralam
Patient
Choice
Choices
Slower
Respond

More quotes by Eknath Easwaran

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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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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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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
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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.
Eknath Easwaran
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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
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Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.
Eknath Easwaran
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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
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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.
Eknath Easwaran
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We can all learn to conquer hatred through love -drawing on the power released through the practice of meditation to throw all our weight, all our energy, and all our will on the side of what is patient, forgiving, and selfless in ourselves and others.
Eknath Easwaran
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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.
Eknath Easwaran
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Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.
Eknath Easwaran
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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.
Eknath Easwaran
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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.
Eknath Easwaran
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Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.
Eknath Easwaran
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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.
Eknath Easwaran
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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.
Eknath Easwaran
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An unhurried mind brings the capacity to make wise choices every day - choices of how we use our time, of where we place our resources and our love. I am not just talking about avoiding the rat race, but about a life full of an artistic beauty - a life that has almost vanished from modern civilization, but is quite within the reach of everyone.
Eknath Easwaran
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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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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.
Eknath Easwaran