Nish

“family has always been a symbol of unity and selfless love in spite of the serious problems that have afflicted it from time to time. Arjuna’s confusion over his family responsibility is ours as well, for we have let competition and self-interest tear our families apart. Husband and wife compete against each other, parents and children compete, sister and brother compete; even the grandparents are trying to get into the act. This competitive tendency has spread from the home to the school and campus, to organizations, and of course to international relationships. It breeds distrust, suspicion, and jealousy wherever it goes. As our security increases through meditation, we find we do not need to compete, for the source of joy and wisdom is right within us. Competition has so distorted our vision that we are defensive towards even our dear ones, but as our meditation deepens, we see what lasting joy there is in trying to complete one another rather than compete against one another.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The End of Sorrow: The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume 1

“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, Passage Meditation - A Complete Spiritual Practice: Train Your Mind and Find a Life that Fulfills

“When Gandhi was observing his day of silence, someone once asked him for a message. He just wrote, “My life is my message.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The End of Sorrow: The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume 1

“The reason why, if he were not more than two thousand years dead, he would have gladly rubbed him out is that he saw him as a prototype for the many millions of self-satisfied and truly ignorant teachers throughout history who have smugly and callously killed the creative spirit of their students with this dumb ritual of analysis, this blind, rote, eternal naming of things. Walk into any of a hundred thousand classrooms today and hear the teachers divide and subdivide and interrelate and establish “principles” and study “methods” and what you will hear is the ghost of Aristotle speaking down through the centuries—the desiccating lifeless voice of dualistic reason.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance