Passage Meditation

[woody]

Hello,

Is anyone here familiar with Eknath Easwaran's method of passage meditation? I have only recently started meditating, for about a month or so now, and for one reason or another I came to practice the method I mention.

Does anyone here practice this and find it an effective method? I'm not sure what I'm expecting, except not to expect anything, but sometimes I don't know if the passage recital is distracting or really is helping me to slow my mind. Such is the nature of the early stages meditation that I have lots of distracting thoughts flying around!

Bit garbled, but hope you know where I'm coming from :d

 

[Leithen]

Thanks for sharing! This has really peaked my intrest.

Although I have not personally tried passage meditation, I definitely understand where you are coming from with distracting thoughts floating around your head. As you said this is the nature of meditation at first and of course the goal is to do away with these.

I have done a bit of research on Easwaran and passage meditation and have a few thoughts. Although it could be helpful, I believe I would find the longer passages distracting and harder to maintain my attention. If they are well memorized then maybe it could work but I personally believe mantras would be more effective. I use these a lot and there are hundreds of thousands of them. It is a similar concept but just shorter phrases. I find this very effective because anytime I do get distracted I can simply start back at the beginning of the mantra and re-center myself. I think this is a similar idea for what you are doing.

Again this is just personal speculation and I am going to be trying some of this passage meditation very soon. (tonight) :thumb_up:

 

[woody]

Hi Leithen,

That's interesting you should mention the mantra as I have recently started this method myself under the guidance of a teacher and am finding it more effective for focusing on. You're right I think about the longer passages becoming more distracting to hold attention to. Obviously at this stage there are still lots of distracting thoughts but I find the mantra easier to come back to and most of the time I am still repeating it even if my attention has wandered.

How have you been doing with the longer passages?

 

[Leithen]

I seem to of had a very similar experience. I found most passages too long to really hold the attention and clear my mind. Even if I was focusing on the passage I would frequently think about it too much and get quite distracted.

That being said I only know one passage very well by heart (The Lord's Prayer) and that seemed to work all right.
Never the less I have switched back to mantras. The class om mani padme humis one of my favorites. I have never really had a teacher in these sorts of thing and think that is a much needed invaluable resource.

Thanks again for sharing, you have really got me back in this great state of mind.