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1 Strength in the Storm

Steadiness of mind is one of the most practical of skills. Nothing is more vital than learning to face turmoil with courage, confidence, and compassion. Fortunately, we already possess these capacities. But we need a calm mind to draw on them. That is the practical importance of a calm mind.

Your Undiscovered Resources

Introduction by Christine Easwaran

Big or small, global or personal, stress and challenges are woven into the fabric of our days. Life takes us by surprise, pushing us to the limit and beyond.

Over the years, we have received thousands of letters from people telling us how Easwaran’s teachings helped them face such times of turmoil. Some came from people we never met, who knew him only from his books; others came from friends who had come to our retreats. Their stories form a tapestry of modern life, from traffic irritations and angry encounters to brushes with death that remind us of what really matters.

One good friend, Chuck, wrote us about a particularly urgent surprise – the kind everyone dreads. It came just weeks after a long period of pain and stress from a hip replacement. While he was still recovering from the surgery, life decided to send him this:

Lynn and I were in town for dinner when the chest pains started. I’d had an incident a couple of months earlier that felt similar, and the diagnosis then was “digestive upset.” I was reluctant to go into the emergency room again with the “same old problem.”

“Hospital or home?” Lynn asked.

“I really don’t know what to do,” I said.

She took one look at me: “I do,” she said. She pulled a fast right and headed for the hospital. . .

Stress isn’t new, of course. All of us have our own stories to share. The problem with dramas like these is not so much that they come without warning, but that we are already burdened by anxieties about ongoing concerns beyond our control. When a crisis comes we’re under stress already, simply from the load we carry in our daily lives: family responsibilities, tense relationships, money worries, work pressures, and those incessant, nagging fears about the state of our neighborhoods, our schools, the threat of terrorism, a world at war.

In the pages that follow, Easwaran makes a wise point we often forget: life will always be full of ups and downs, but we don’t have to go up and down with it. We can’t control what life sends us, but we can have a say in how we respond.

The secret is the mind. It is the mind that feels agitated, stressed, pressured, helpless, or anxious. And it is the mind that can learn to stay calm, resourceful, compassionate, and effective. Everything depends on our state of mind – the one thing in life we can do something about.

Within ourselves, Easwaran assures us, we already have the resources to meet and even thrive on challenges. We don’t have to develop this capacity; everything we need is already present in the depths of our hearts. To draw on it, all we have to do is calm the mind so that its agitation doesn’t get in the way. As we learn to do this, wonderful reserves of strength, love, wisdom, and creativity begin to flow into our lives.

In this chapter, Easwaran develops this idea and introduces a skill with truly limitless power to calm the mind. Other strategies follow in later chapters. With these simple techniques, thousands of people have learned not only to weather crises but to emerge from them a little stronger, a little wiser, a little more compassionate.

Chuck and the others we quote from in this book are people like these. They are Easwaran’s students: ordinary men and women who have been practicing what he teaches and have written to tell us about their experiences. We’ve included two or three of these stories in every chapter – Chuck tells the conclusion of his later in this chapter.

Strength in the Storm

By Eknath Easwaran

My first encounter with an ocean storm came on my way to the U.S. on the Fulbright exchange program. I sailed from Bombay on an ancient P&O liner that had been in service before the first world war. There were no luxuries, but I enjoyed the trip because of the variety of passengers – from empire builders to scholars from the Far East – and the ever-changing beauty of the sea.

But July in the Arabian Sea is monsoon season, and three or four days out our little ship began to be tossed like a toy by winds and rain.

A storm is a great equalizer. All distinctions of class and color were swept away. Empire builders hung at the railings side by side with Asian academics, clutching identical brown bags. All of us cheered with relief when the weather passed and we were obliged to put in at Aden for repairs.

Sailing from Cherbourg to New York on HMS Queen Mary was an utterly different experience. The Queen Mary too was nearing retirement age. But she was fast, and positively luxurious by comparison with that P&O vessel. When we hit rough seas on the Atlantic, we sailed through majestically without a roll.

“Why aren’t we being tossed about?” I asked an officer. “Is it because of the ship’s size?”

“No,” he said proudly, “it’s the stabilizers. We installed them a couple of years ago. Now rough waters don’t bother her at all.”

I often recall those two journeys to illustrate one of the most important truths I have ever learned. Like a storm, life is a great equalizer. It does bring sunny days, but it is sure to bring storms as well. And regardless of class, color, status, birth, or wealth, some of us sail through surely while others flounder and even go under.

We can’t control life, but we can control how we respond to life’s challenges. The answer lies in stabilizing the mind.

Few human beings are born with the skill to weather storms and stress with grace. Yet everyone can learn. We can’t control the weather outside, but we can control how we respond. Like the Queen Mary, we can install stabilizers – in the mind.

For it is in the mind that the storms of life really blow. What matters is not so much the turmoil outside us as the weather within. To a person with an agitated mind, something as minor as a rude driver can cause enough stress to ruin a day. By contrast I think of Mahatma Gandhi, who gave himself away when he confessed, “I love storms.” Gandhi began life as a timid child, but he learned to keep his mind so steady that he could face tremendous crises with courage, compassion, wisdom, and even a sense of humor.

This steadiness of mind is one of the most practical of skills. Without it, no one can face the challenges of life without breaking. And life today is challenging to say the least. We live in the midst of conflicts – within ourselves, at home, in the community, even nationally and internationally. This is an age of conflict, which makes it an age of anxiety as well. Nothing is more vital than learning to face this turmoil with confidence and compassion.

We already have the capacity to deal with challenges. But we need a calm mind to draw on the resources locked up within.

Fortunately, we don’t have to develop these capacities. We already have them. But we need a calm mind to draw on them. When the mind is agitated or confused, the deeper resources we require are simply locked up inside. That is the practical importance of a calm mind.

So how do we calm the mind? One very powerful way is so simple that everyone can learn it easily, right now, even a child: the repetition of a mantram, or “prayer word” as it is called in some circles in the West.

You can think of the mantram as a handrail for the mind. It gives you something to hold on to, so that you can steady yourself in confusing circumstances until your thoughts become clear.

The mantram is a tool for calming the mind that anyone can learn and use at any time.

You can think of repeating the mantram as calling God collect – or, if you prefer, as an emergency call to your highest self. Either way, repeating the mantram is an appeal for resources that are always present but seem invisible in times of trouble. “This is beyond me,” we are saying. “I need strength I can’t find – I can’t even pay for this call. Please send help, and pick up the bill too.”

What Is a Mantram?

What is a mantram? How can it help you? How does it work?

The term mantram (or mantra) stands for a word or short phrase that you can repeat silently to yourself to help you cope with stress. It has the power to calm and steady your mind whenever you need access to deeper reserves of strength or patience within you.

You may already be using stress reduction techniques such as counting to ten, taking a couple of deep breaths, or repeating a positive affirmation to yourself. All of these can help, but the mantram is just as quick, just as easy to use, and much more powerful. It combines immediate help with long-term benefits that, like a savings account, accumulate the more it’s used.

This simple skill is thousands of years old. Saint Francis of Assisi, for example, repeated “My God and my all.” Mahatma Gandhi used “Rama, Rama.”

But you don’t have to think of yourself as religious to use a mantram. It works for everyone, because it works directly on the mind. You’ll see from the stories in this book how the mantram continues to help ordinary people face crises today.

How does the mantram help?

* It calms you down, whether you’re facing a minor irritation or a major drama.

* It stops you from reacting too quickly and saying or doing something you may later regret.

* It halts rising anger, fear, panic.

* It gives you a breathing space. Once you’ve got your mantram going, you’ll find yourself in a much better state to choose your next move – and to choose it wisely.

The mantram works fast. If you start using it today, you’ll probably feel the benefit of it the very next time you face a problem. But the more often you repeat the mantram, the deeper its benefits go.

For more on choosing and using a mantram, see the Points to Practice right after this article. You’ll find a fuller list of mantrams to choose from on our Web site at easwaran.org.

If you’re like me, at this point you may doubt that such a simple skill could do what I claim.

I doubted it, too, when my grandmother tried to tell me what the mantram can do. Granny was the wisest person I have ever known, and I loved her passionately, so I always took her advice seriously. But, after all, grannies don’t know everything. “Granny,” I protested, “that’s just mindless repetition! What can repetition do?”

“Walking is just repetition too,” she said. “One step after another, each one the same.”

She had me there. But I still didn’t believe her.

But life went on presenting challenges, and in college I encountered a really intimidating one: public speaking. I found the activity fascinating and took every opportunity to learn, but no matter how many times I stood before an audience and lived to tell the tale, I was always afraid that on the next occasion I would trip on my way to the podium or open my mouth and find that no words would come out.

When I confessed this fear to my granny, she had a very simple piece of advice: not to sit there going over my notes or trying to size up my audience, but to repeat the mantram to myself quietly while awaiting my turn.

I decided she didn’t really understand. After all, she never had to give a speech! But because of my love for her, I promised to give it a try.

The next time I had to give a talk, I sat quietly repeating Rama, Rama, Rama over and over and over in my mind. Whenever my thoughts tried to blurt out “I’m afraid! I’m afraid!” instead, I would bring them back to “Rama, Rama” – adding to myself, every now and then, “I hope it works.”

And the talk went well. With my mind calmer, the words came up right on cue.

I kept on practicing this little trick, and after a while I began to say, “Rama, Rama, Rama . . . I think it works!”

Today, after years of practice, I can assure you with complete confidence that I know it works. This is really the only way that trust in the mantram can come – through your own personal experience.

Using a mantram is not just mechanical repetition. You learn to trust it by using it.

You can draw on the power of the mantram like this at any time, wherever you happen to be, whatever you happen to be doing. But if you want the mantram to come to your rescue when you need it, if you want it to steady your mind in times of turmoil, you need to practice, practice, practice in calm weather.

Whenever you get a moment free, unless you are doing something that requires attention, repeat your mantram to yourself silently, in the mind – while waiting, walking, washing dishes, and especially when falling asleep at night. Constant repetition drives the mantram deep into consciousness, where it can anchor your mind so surely that no amount of agitation can sweep you away.

I must have given this advice a million times, but it can never be repeated too often. Throughout my life, no matter how assiduously I practiced this skill, I have always been able to find more time, additional opportunities to put it to use. This is how we can gradually extend sovereignty over the mind.

This protective influence can even extend to the body, as I can illustrate with another story from that stormy ocean voyage.

From my first day on board that P&O liner, I acquired a reputation as a very odd bird. For one thing, I had to have my meditation every morning – and since my little cabin was cramped and airless, I chose to huddle in a blanket up on the sports deck, which was quite deserted at dawn. That alone secured the amused attention of some young Australians, whose boredom found relief in making cracks at my expense.

Then, after my meditation, I would take a long, fast walk repeating my mantram to myself – a habit I must have picked up from Mahatma Gandhi’s example many years earlier. Of course, a long, fast walk on a relatively small liner means going around and around and around . . . at the pace of an Olympic walker. More opportunities for amusement for my fellow passengers, who much preferred their deck chairs. After a few days of this, my reputation was assured.

Then the storm struck – and when the view started gyrating wildly between sky and sea, my stomach began to behave the same way. I made it through the first day, but the next morning I awoke with the sinking sensation that my time had come. My first impulse was to grab a brown bag and join the others draped miserably over the rails.

But my mantram had awakened too – “Rama, Rama, Rama” – without any conscious prompting. After all those years of practice, it knew when I needed help.

Clinging to the mantram as tightly as to the handrail, I managed to reach the sports deck without incident and sat down for meditation. For a while it was touch and go. But then my mind settled down, and I got absorbed in what mystics call the “sea of peace” within.

When I finished and opened my eyes, my stomach had stopped complaining. It had calmed down along with my mind. I felt on top of the world. With the ship still pitching wildly, I sauntered as best I could into the dining room and sat down to a first-rate breakfast – in solitary dignity, monarch of all I surveyed.

The purser looked on in awe. When I rose to go, he approached with new respect and asked in a conspirator’s whisper, “What tablets do you use?”

I wanted to tell him, “It’s not the stomach that needs to be settled. It’s the mind.”

STORY

Fear of Flying

Natalie, a software engineer, has been learning to calm her mind to deal with an anxiety that millions of us can relate to.

“At some point in the early nineties, as a result of seeing several scary airplane crash movies, I became very scared of flying. Not so scared that I couldn’t get on a plane to go somewhere, but scared enough to have sweaty palms, nausea, and plenty of anxious thoughts.

“This was a situation that definitely needed the 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 Lord of the universe”).

* Muslims repeat the name of Allah or Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim (“In the name of God, Merciful, Compassionate”).

* Probably the oldest Buddhist mantram is Om mani padme hum, referring to the “jewel in the lotus” of the heart.

* In Hinduism, one of the oldest and most popular mantrams is the one used by Mahatma Gandhi: Rama, Rama, – a name for God meaning the source of joy within.

What if you don’t want a mantram from your own tradition?

Many people are allergic to the religion of their childhood. In such cases, if no other mantram on the list appeals to you, Rama is simple, powerful, and carries no negative associations. You can never go wrong with Rama.

2. Once you’ve chosen a mantram, you’re ready to give it a good test run. Start by making it part of your day. Repeat your mantram silently to yourself whenever you have an opportunity. Remember, the more you use it, the more it will sink in. Here are some ideal times:

*While walking or jogging

* While waiting in lines or stalled in traffic jams

* Whenever you feel angry, anxious, upset, or afraid

* While doing mechanical chores like washing dishes

* And especially when you are falling asleep

During the day, the mantram will help keep you relaxed and alert. When you fall asleep in it, the mantram will go on working for you throughout the night as well.

One important exception: don’t repeat the mantram when you are doing something that requires attention, such as chopping vegetables or driving a car. That’s the time to keep focused on what you are doing!

Inspiration

Let Nothing Upset You

Let nothing upset you

Let nothing frighten you.

Everything is changing;

God alone is changeless.

Patience attains the goal.

Who has God lacks nothing;

God alone fills every need.

– Saint Teresa of Avila