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Sri Easwaran seems to have worked on the premise of Montaigne
who years ago said: "A man who fears suffering is already
suffering from what he fears". The give-away titles of the
12 chapters - Finding the turning points, Anger, Fear and Greed,
Forgiveness, Second half of life, The spiritual element of
healing and Helping others etc.— give us a peep into his
teachings. Wood dwells more on his last teaching programme Setu
(the bridge), which Sri Easwaran began when his own life hung in
the balance in 1991. His physicians were unable to trace the
cause. His 80-year-old body could not continue under the strain,
he said. And unless he could function as a spiritual teacher,
there would be no reason for him to remain in this life. Sri
Easwaran lived for another eight years till 1999. Wood writes at
length on the physical body and Setu, the mental body and Setu,
complete with allusions and references from the Bhagavadgita
and the Upanishads, provided by Easwaran in his various
discourses. She also dwells on the two new disciplines of
Meditation - Detached Reflection and Determined Redirection as
tools for transforming our weaknesses into strengths.
The role models
for meditation for Sri Easwaran have been Gautam Buddha and
Mahatma Gandhi. He seems to have imbibed the teachings of Gandhi
in the very persona of his being. Easwaran used to relieve the
tedium of his teachings by giving examples from everyday life to
his students and, once in a while, by giving examples from the
world of English literature. "He was primarily a
classicist, with deep interests in Shakespeare, Shelley,
Wordsworth, Keats... Even his method of meditation employed
words." Words of wisdom were contained even in the examples
he gave to illustrate a concept. Sri Easwaran quoted from W.
Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, "When Larry
returns home, he loses interest in a preordained career and a
shallow relationship. He begins a spiritual journey to discover
life's meaning, and he finds peace of mind." For acting on
the insights gained in Detached Reflection, Sri Easwaran
developed Determined Redirection.
Sri Easwaran was
on a predictable self-discovery mission even when he used to
teach in Nagpur University and an opportunity came his way in
the shape and form of the Fulbright Scholarship and he found his
vocation in the USA as a spiritual teacher. His teachings are
not set in the classical mould of spiritual teachers but are
given the format of anecdotal modern idiom for clarity,
comprehension, realisation and action thereafter. He never used
to speak from the mystic mansion of his own making, instead he
drew inspiration from the wells of everyday wisdom.
As an aid to the
teachings of Sri Easwaran, the writer has given a glossary of
Sanskrit terms used in the text along with poetic rendering of
Setu passages for Meditation. The book is a modern day guide to
meditation detailing all the possible methods of 'how to end
suffering'. This reminds me of the oft-quoted words of Helen
Keller (1880-1968): "Although the world is full of
suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."
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How
to End Suffering is a
tribute to the work and teachings of Sri Easwaran from Dolores Wood.
Wood has worked in the fields of journalism and publishing for more
than two decades. She came into contact with Sri Easwaran in 1990
when she took up a job with Nilgiri Press, the publishing arm of the
Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, California, founded by Sri
Easwaran. Later on she was impressed with the teachings of Sri
Easwaran and led many workshops on his teaching programme, Setu (the
bridge), as well as on the Eight-Point Programme of meditation of
Easwaran who called himself "a teacher of ancient truths, but a
very modern man".
