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.