The BMCM 2024 Celebration of Easwaran’s Life & Teachings

“The great religions of the world have always taught that there is more to the human being than the body: an essential core of personality that is not physical but spirit, divine. Every one of us is born to make the discovery of who we are, where we come from, and what our responsibilities in living are.

Like everybody else, I grew up believing that I was purely physical, a collection of biochemical constituents. What has changed for me since then? Everything. Not two or three things but everything. Through meditation, with the help of the demanding disciplines I followed every day in the midst of a busy life, that belief in myself as a purely physical creature has fallen away completely. Today I do not look upon myself or anyone else as physical. I identify with the Self, pure spirit, the same in all.” – Eknath Easwaran 

Every year since his passing in 1999, the BMCM has celebrated Easwaran’s life and teachings in late October and his students have used this time to honor their teacher and rededicate themselves to their spiritual practice. For the past four years, this celebration has expanded to include the worldwide community of Easwaran’s students. This has been a wonderful time of collective striving with each of us deepening our own practice and our connection with Easwaran.

 The theme of this year’s celebration is “Our Real Self,” drawing on Easwaran’s teachings in the the Fall/Winter 2018 Blue Mountain Journal titled “Do You Know Who You Really Are?”

 Read on to learn more about how you can join in the BMCM’s month-long study on the theme of “Our Real Self” and participate in the celebration mantram day on Sunday, October 27.

Five-Week Journal Study

The BMCM will be using the month leading up to the celebration on Sunday, October 27 to dive deep into the Fall/Winter 2018 Blue Mountain Journal. We’ll be hosting the study via two of our existing satsangs: BMCM Satsang Live, and the eSatsang. You are welcome to choose one of these satsangs to follow along with, or to join both. You can also choose to join the complete month-long study or to participate only in the weeks that work for your schedule.

BMCM Satsang Live

BMCM Satsang Live is a video satsang hosted by BMCM presenters that is offered twice a week, on Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time and Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. Beginning on Tuesday, September 24, BMCM Satsang will spend five weeks reading through the journal. BMCM Satsang Live intentionally repeats the satsang material on Sunday to make it accessible for friends around the world. You are welcome to attend either session, or both!

BMCM eSatsang

The eSatsang is an online community that provides passage meditators with a space to engage with Easwaran’s teachings and to discuss his eight-point program. The eSatsang shares weekly content for personal study and reflection and offers opportunities to share comments with other passage meditators. The eSatsang will begin studying the journal on Friday, September 27.

Celebration on Sunday, October 27

On Sunday, October 27 we invite Easwaran’s students around the world to participate in a day of mantrams dedicated to peace and healing in the world. We invite you to make BMCM Satsang Live the centerpiece of your mantram day and join us there at 9:40 a.m. Pacific Time to write the mantram before the program begins at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Our collective effort to keep our mantrams going as much of the day as possible, from the time we wake up until the time we drift off to sleep at night, is a wonderful offering to Easwaran to celebrate his life and teachings.

We’ll leave you with a continuation of the excerpt from Easwaran from the “Do You Know Who You Really Are” Blue Mountain Journal.

“Of all that is wonderful in the human being, our most glorious asset is this capacity to change ourselves. Nothing is more significant. I admire the achievements of science, but I do not feel intimidated by the current conviction that we are what our genes are. My body is what my genes make it, but my character and behavior are not fixed by my genetic code.

As proof we have the lives of great men and women of all religions who have thrown these claims to the winds with their personal transformations—from angry to compassionate, from insecure to unshakable, from human to divine. The message of their lives echoes down the corridors of time to those who have ears to hear: “You are not what your body is. Your real nature is spirit, which nothing can diminish or deny.” Whatever our past, whatever our present, all of us have the capacity to change ourselves completely through the practice of meditation.

When I was enabled, after years of meditation, to discover who I am, the joy of that discovery knew no bounds. And my love knew—and knows—no bounds.

Today I know I am not just a separate fragment of existence subject to old age and death. I live in everyone. I am related to everything around me—the seas, the skies, the mountains, the rivers, the forests, the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. I am an immortal being with a million interconnections with all of life.

This is our greatness, to be connected with everything on earth. And when we discover this, the Buddha says, we go beyond all sorrow.”