Eknath Easwaran's book The Essence of the Upanishads is an endearing conversation of what he believes is the true purpose of spirituality, mysticism, and yoga; to become a genuinely good and inspiring person. He references Ramakrishna, The Great Swan, stating the goal isn't no-ego but to become a ripe ego.
He pushes mindfully against asceticism and renunciation, explaining in his persistent kindness that there are very few that seek and need that sort of life. As someone who gravitates towards the more extreme practices of yoga, I was swayed to consider the limitations of that method. All of us, even the renunciate samanas are only looking for joy, meaning, and goodness. Life is meant to be lived not denied. The book fuses the esoteric ambition of ancient practices with the practical value of their doctrines, explaining how deeply necessary and difficult the worldly aim of being happy and living beyond the reach of self-will, selfishness, and ego actually is. Once we identify the "undying thing" within us, all we have to do is heed it, Eknath explains throughout the book. The term "undying thing", is Eknath paying homage to the progenitors of this tradition and the Upanishads themselves.
The gist of his point is that self-restraint is a necessary skill that leads to selflessness. Desires need to be unified into the single desire of discovering the true self. That true self is what will lead us to a truly happy and fulfilling existence.
It is a lovely read. Eknath's age and tranquility come out with every sentence, most of all, in his quirky and often involved metaphors. As I read through the pages I regularly felt as if he were in front of me sitting as a grandparent speaking without pretense, straight to what matters most. Be good. Be happy. It is not easy, many fool themselves and believe it is, but it is worth it. You must try.
Below are a flow of notes and quotes I took from the book, beginning to end. An asterisc * represents a personal note.
Enjoy!
87 Notes & Quotes
Beauty is what lures us in - like flowers to bees.*
We aim to become the lessons*
Who am I?-which, of course, is not just an end but a beginning.
Given the antiquity (of the Upanishads), it is amazing how directly they speak to us now. This is because we are all experiencing the same world - difference is the great illusion.
Choice and free will is the gift and burden of consciousness
The journey is integrating the personality - a journey needs a starting point and a destination that takes time to reach.
Sooner or later every serious student of life sets aside passport and visas and settles down to look within. Meaning the outside world, travel, and leisure become less significant.
In-depth metaphor: There is a vast (inner) world waiting. It is like the sea. Its surface too is constantly changing and opaque, yet deep below the surface are mountains larger than the Himalayas, great gorges deeper than the Grand Canyon, creatures that spend their lives where light has never penetrated (thoughts). This may be a poetic view of the unconscious, but it is not at all inaccurate.
Very few care to learn anything from Death.
Pleasure is another kind of perennial philosophy, an age-old, virtually universal faith. Can this religion offer fulfillment?
Opening the door to the inner world is about closing doors - not opening them.
All flesh is grass.
Speaking of desire for pleasure; You have paid for it with something much more precious than money; a part of your vitality has gone out.
The simple problem is constant stimulation.
Speaking about plastic surgery and fixation with appearance; An older person without lines of age is like a clock without hands.
Discontent is what inspires us to change, but we can choose the lesser or the greater path. Discontent is not the problem our inability to choose what is greater is.
We are trying to access higher wisdom, to discover its source, and let it work through us.
Ramakrishna quote: "If you want to go east, don't go west."
We must continue learning how to live; that is a matter of behavior and choice.
Buddha quote: "You can have no better friend than a well-trained mind or no greater enemy than an untrained mind."
Insecurity is the absence of personal power. Where does that power go? Or did we ever have it?
Speaking to becoming irritated, upset, or angry; Even our blood pressure can be regulated by others.
Life can be said to be a series of large and small goals - the goal of meditation is to control ourselves.*
Samskaras refer to habits or impulses and means "to do intensely"
Negative samskaras come from insecurity. We must admit how we are insecure. You can find insecurity by exploring where there is anger.
We impose stress on ourselves
When preference is narrow stress abounds.*
(When we have no true self-control) our life is at the mercy of any rascal who chooses to annoy us.
Funny metaphor about how an untamed mind can disorient us; The other day a teenage friend gave me a pair of specatcles to try on. They looked quite ordinary, but they did strange things to what I saw. Everything was distorted and threatening. A friendly gesture looked like a karate attack; a smile seemed twisted into a grimace.
We become what we meditate on because mental events are physical events.
Progress comes swiftly to those that try their hardest.
Will quotient - practice will power. That is it!
Patience is a dynamic quality; I am not talking about repression. A patient mind is a calm mind, secure, and unthreatened by life.
How much do we desire to change? Those who hesitate are momentarily lost. *
We are hoodwinked by desire because we think dissatisfaction won't happen to us. *
Actions and consequences are inseparable. To perform one is to perform another.
Buddha quote: "All creatures love life. All creatures fear death."
Speaking about the unkind and cruel; They do not mean to be unkind, they simply do not see.
What matters (for a spiritual change) is the sense of futility that builds up in a person whose desires are many and trivial.
Wherever you find great success in life, it is due to the intense unification of desires.
We attack our bank of willpower, usually through absurd little self-indulgences; a drink of that, an unkind word, an unnecessary complaint.
The world has the attitude that pleasure is everything, and the absence of pleasure the worst of fates.
The whole secret of spiritual transformation is turning selfish desire into selfless desire.
Speaking of the soul, "The face beneath all faces."
What is most real in life is what is most consistent.
I no longer lived in the everyday world of stimulus and response; I lived in a world of freedom.
Responsibility for making wise choices, then, extends through many levels of personality.
When will and intellect part company, it is not possible to see clearly.
The trap, in other words, is more than just sugarcane; it is sugarcane plus desire.
We are animals, still.*
In an immature person, the mind (chitta) is continually lashed into waves by the ups and downs of life around them.
It is not beyond our reach to see life whole.
It is our fierce desire to do what we like that puts blinders on judgment and leads it round and round.
The man or woman with a clouded intellect "wanders on and on from death to death."
To understand all is to forgive all
A mind that is fast is sick, a mind that is slow is sound
All you have to do is sit down for an hour or so.
A quote from Eknath's grandmother, "You've done a lot of things today, son, but I wouldn't call them living."
Once I understood that I was not even living my own life, there arose a tremendous desire to be free. So I began doing something that was just the opposite of natural.
Ghandi quote; "Taste lies not in the palate but in the mind."
John Donne quote speaking of the truth of spirituality not being about isolation; "I am involved in mankind."
We take shadow for reality.
As our security improves (because of proximity to the self), we find it easier to forgive, we do not dwell on ourselves.
In this sense, life is a kind of condominium with billions of apartments, each with a different name on the door yet each with the same occupant.
We never really experience the world around us; all we encounter is our own nervous system.
For the skeptics; embrace, atleast, within the nothing of the inner-unknown there might be something, imperceivable but real.*
Outer and inner are a matter of linguistic convenience
Shankara quote, "Only that is real which never changes."
To be able to call ourselves awake, we should have freedom of choice every moment.
Rest in the lap of the self.
Unity is black, all colors, all forms. The Void is full.*
We arrange billions of sense-impressions into a personal picture and call it the real world.
The idea that pleasure brings security is an illusion and a cruel one at that.
Very, very few ever develop a taste for reality; the rest all say, "If this is not real, go ahead, deceive us."
Pleasure is beckoning outside.
The ripe-ego is incapable of anger or hatred or any negative feeling.
Ekhart quote, "One eye on time, the other on eternity."
Ramakrishna quote referring to enlightenment, "The land where there is no night."
Grace is the blessing of embrace. When we embrace the world it feels, magically, the world responds alive and embraces us.*
Humans are free when they control themselves.*
Self-restraint is really about merging desires into that single effort to know ourselves.
Kama and Rama cannot live in the same house.
Buddha quote, "Soft fetters." This is referring to the chains of negative habits are heavy, the chains of positive habits are soft.
Little by little. Longer by longer.
Compulsive desires cannot easily be cast aside by any human being, for the simple reason that we do not want to cast them aside.
Referring to the eternal possession of spiritual joy, "For some things in life you do not ask the price."
Take the happiness of a person whose worldly desires are satisfied. Let that be one measure of joy. Millions of times greater is the joy that comes when all selfish desires are distilled.