Eknath Easwaran quotes

Eknath Easwaran was an Indian-born spiritual teacher, author, and translator known for his accessible writings on meditation and world mysticism. His books made ancient spiritual texts and meditation practices approachable for modern audiences. He inspired thousands worldwide through his teaching, writing, and the founding of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. Here are 53 of his quotes:

By giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.

Eknath Easwaran

Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart.

Eknath Easwaran

It takes a lot of experience of life to see why some relationships last and others do not. But we do not have to wait for a crisis to get an idea of the future of a particular relationship. Our behavior in little every incidents tells us a great deal.

Eknath Easwaran

We all need joy, and we can all receive joy in only one way, by adding to the joy of others.

Eknath Easwaran

We look at the world through our likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, opinions and judgments. We want everyone to behave as we think they should; otherwise we get agitated. But we are here to accept the world as it is, even as we work to make it better.

Eknath Easwaran

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

Meditation is warm-up exercise for the mind, so that you can jog through the rest of the day without getting agitated or spraining your patience.

Eknath Easwaran

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

When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.

Eknath Easwaran

When the mind is still, we can become an instrument of peace.

Eknath Easwaran

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

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

Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.

Eknath Easwaran

We have to have a purpose greater than the endless struggle to satisfy personal desires.

Eknath Easwaran

Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.

Eknath Easwaran

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

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

Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.

Eknath Easwaran

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

Eknath Easwaran

Human relationships are the perfect tool for sanding away our rough edges and getting at the core of divinity within us.

Eknath Easwaran

When we try to get ourselves out of the way, we can understand much better the needs of the people closest to us.

Eknath Easwaran

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