Strength in the Storm. Eknath Easwaran
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mantram, but I wasn’t using one in those days and didn’t recognize that using it could help me with this massive fear.
“Now I start saying the mantram before I even arrive at the airport, during takeoff, landings, definitely when there’s turbulence (or sometimes worse – odd noises!) and even while just cruising comfortably. Using my mantram during these times of intense fear has helped to drive it deeper into my consciousness and has made it possible for me to fly with less anxiety. I still get scared, but the mantram lets me bear with the situation.
“I realize now that every time I fly, some part of me is coming face to face with my fear of death. After so many opportunities to repeat my mantram when I fly, my thinking regarding this fear has started to change. It’s shifting from, ‘God, please don’t let me die! I’m not ready to die yet’ to ‘God, may we all arrive safely at our destination today. But if for some reason we don’t, help me to keep repeating your name and go straight to you if my time is up.’ This is a huge change in my perspective. I’m not free of the fear . . . but I’m seeing how well the mantram works in dealing with it.”
– Natalie M., Washington
STORY
The Year of the Mantram
Before his heart attack, Chuck says, he had been repeating his mantram “on occasion,” such as when falling asleep. It was the pain and stress of hip surgery that drilled the mantram in. Because of that, it was there to help him two months later when the chest pains started – making this “the year the mantram moved to stage center in my life.”
“When my wife, Lynn, and I arrived at the emergency room, we rushed inside and within minutes I was diagnosed with a heart attack. They injected me with blood clot thinner and wheeled me to an area dominated by a huge overhead fluoroscope. I kept repeating my mantram and actually followed as the cardiologist worked a catheter toward the area of worst blockage – the main artery. It was 90 to 95 percent blocked. The pain was intense at this point, and I was clinging to the mantram.
“When the cardiologist dissolved the major blockage, I had a sudden wonderful sense of release. The whole knot of pain in my chest opened like a flower. To that moment, things had seemed terribly dark and bleak.
“After the clot was dissolved, they put me into a hospital bed to await surgery. I slept for one hour only. It was an exceedingly long night – long enough, it seemed to me, for the creation of the world.
“The tension preceding the surgery was monumental: if the operation went wrong, I’d simply be swept away. I have no way of knowing how many mantrams were silently spoken during those hours, but surely there were hundreds, maybe thousands.
“Early the next day, Lynn arrived in time for us to meditate together before one of the nurses started prepping me for surgery. She gave me some potent pills and by the time she wheeled me out, I was almost asleep. Just before the elevator doors closed behind the nurse and me, I heard her tell Lynn that all the operating room staff approaches heart surgery as a spiritual experience. I knew then I was in good hands.
“When I came out of anesthesia, I started the mantram again and it carried me through recovery, just as it still carries me through the tensions and turmoil of my daily life. Now, even recalling this experience reminds me of the vivid sense of joy and opportunity I felt when I came out of the anesthesia and realized I’d survived.”
– Chuck C., Oregon
A steady mind has resources for every crisis. You don’t need to analyze the causes – just learn to steady your mind.
As far as the mind is concerned, the cause of stress is not particularly important. What matters are the waves of agitation in the mind. Whether we feel anxious, panicky, angry, afraid, or simply out of control, the mind is doing the same thing: heaving up and down like the sea.
This is a precious clue. It means that we don’t have to prepare for one kind of crisis in this way and another in that way. All we have to do is learn to steady the mind.
We learn this with little challenges – the thousand and one daily irritations that upset us even when we know they aren’t worth getting upset over. Whenever someone cuts in front of you in traffic, repeat the mantram and don’t react. Whenever someone contradicts you, repeat your mantram and hold your tongue. Life graciously provides us with innumerable little incidents like this, which instead of irritants can become opportunities for gaining strength. If you go on taking advantage of them as they arise, you can gradually raise your threshold of upsettability higher and higher, until hassles take one look and run away.
Of course, there is much more to life than “small stuff.” Coping with hassles is just training. The Olympic challenges are the crises and tragedies – accidents, illness, separation, betrayal, bereavement – that are bound to come to all of us in one form or other without warning. That is when we need to know how to find strength within ourselves, for that is just when external supports are likely to fail.
The most important lesson to learn from crisis is to find your center of strength within.
If I may offer my own small example, I have been struck by very severe blows in the course of my life. But it is from those trials that I learned to go deep inside myself for strength and consolation. It was a storm of personal tragedies that caused me to turn inward and learn to meditate. This is the real lesson to learn from crisis: not to rely on any external support, but to find your center of strength within.
“Emergencies and crises,” the psychologist William James observed, “show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.” This is the opportunity that crisis and challenge offer us. Every one of us has capacities inside us that we have never even dreamed of, which we can learn to draw on in our daily lives. That is our legacy as human beings.
The purpose of this book is to help you get started on the great adventure of claiming this legacy. As a meditation teacher, I have to point out that this is the purpose of meditation, which I have explained in other books. Here I want to focus on skills you can apply right away: simple techniques that anyone can use to banish worry and anxiety, stay calm under pressure, and live each moment to its fullest – and, most significantly, radiate that new-found calm to everyone around.
KEY IDEAS
Strength in the Storm
1. We can’t control life, but we can control how we respond to life’s challenges. The answer lies in stabilizing the mind.
2. We already have the capacity to deal with challenges. But we need a calm mind to draw on the resources locked up within.
3. The mantram is a key tool for steadying the mind. It’s not just mechanical repetition – you learn to trust it by using it.
4. A steady mind has the resources to meet any crisis – no matter what the cause. You don’t have to analyze each crisis separately; just use the mantram and you can calm the mind.
5. The most important lesson to learn from crisis is to find your center of strength within.
POINTS TO PRACTICE
Choosing & Using a Mantram
The mantram is the key to all the skills and strategies in this book. If you feel ready to start, here are some suggestions:
1. Choose a mantram established by long tradition. Select one from the list below, or from our Web site at www easwaran.org/mantrams. A mantram given to the world by Francis of Assisi or the Buddha has great power. Don’t make up your own.
Every religious tradition has a mantram, often more than one. You needn’t subscribe to any religion to benefit from the mantram, however. You simply have to be willing to try it.
* For Christians, the name of Jesus and the Jesus Prayer – “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us” – are ancient mantrams. Catholics also use Hail Mary or Ave Maria (not the full “Hail Mary,” just those two words).
* Jews may use Barukh attah Adonai (“Blessed art thou, O Lord”) or Ribono shel olam (“O