Quote

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

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
Slower
Respond
Patient
Choice
Choices

More quotes by 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
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
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.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
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
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
Whatever we have done, we can always make amends for it without ever looking back in guilt or sorrow.
Eknath Easwaran
Image
Instead of looking at difficulties as deprivations, we can learn to recognize them as opportunities for deepening and widening our love.
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
Image
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
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
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
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
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.
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
Wisdom may be perennial, but to see its relevance we must see it lived out.
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
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
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