Top 90 Eknath Easwaran Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.”

— Eknath Easwaran

Featured in: Patience Quotes, Life is Hard Quotes, Not Giving Up Quotes, Work Hard Quotes, Don't Give Up Quotes

2. “The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ourselves, ‘Are these words true?’ If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, ‘Are the necessary?’ At the last gate, we ask, ‘Are they kind?’”

— Eknath Easwaran

3. “A calm mind releases the most precious capacity a human being can have: the capacity to turn anger into compassion, fear into fearlessness, and hatred into love.”

— Eknath Easwaran

4. “Excitement and depression, fortune and misfortune, pleasure and pain are storms in a tiny private, shell-bound realm – which we take to be the whole of existence. Yet we can break out of this shell and enter a new world.”

— Eknath Easwaran

5. “When we truly are putting others first, we cannot but feel at peace with ourselves.”

— Eknath Easwaran

6. “As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings and fits of emotion begin to lose their power to dictate our behavior. We see clearly that choices are possible; we can say yes or we can say no. It is profoundly liberating.”

— Eknath Easwaran

7. “Today, everything I do from morning meditation on – eating breakfast, going for a walk, writing, reading, even recreation – is governed by one purpose only: how to give the very best account of my life that I can in the service of all.”

— Eknath Easwaran

Featured in: Reading Quotes

8. “Eventually, meditation will make our mind calm, clear, and as concentrated as a laser which we can focus at will. This capacity of one-pointed attention is the essence of genius. When we have this mastery over attention in everything we do, we have a genius for life.”

— Eknath Easwaran

9. “This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.”

— Eknath Easwaran

10. “It is not action or effort that we must surrender; it is self-will, and this is terribly difficult. You must do your best constantly, yet never allow yourself to become involved in whether things work out the way you want.”

— Eknath Easwaran

11. “God made the senses turn outwards, man therefore looks outwards, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.”

— Eknath Easwaran

12. “Having come to realize in the first stage of meditation that we are not our bodies, in the second stage we make an even more astounding discovery; we are not our minds either.”

— Eknath Easwaran

13. “Don’t try to control the future,” he would say. “Work on the one thing you can learn to control: your own responses.”

— Eknath Easwaran

14. “In the spiritual lore of India there is a story that the Lord whispered only one word in our ears when he sent us into the world: ‘Give.’ Give freely of your time, your talent, your resources; give without asking for anything in return. This is the secret of living in joy and security.”

— Eknath Easwaran

15. “We can all avoid travel that is unnecessary; we do not need to travel around the world when the source of all joy and all beauty is right within us.”

— Eknath Easwaran

16. “We have to have a purpose greater than the endless struggle to satisfy personal desires.”

— Eknath Easwaran

17. “Live only for yourself and you will never grow; live for the welfare of all those around you and you will grow to your full stature.”

— Eknath Easwaran

18. “The real essentials of life – compassion, kindness, good will, forgiveness – are what is fundamental to living as a true human being.”

— Eknath Easwaran

19. “Patience can’t be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.”

— Eknath Easwaran

20. “Don’t think the purpose of meditation is to go deep into consciousness, wrap a blanket around yourself, and say, ‘How cozy! I’m going to curl up in here by myself; let the world burn.’ Not at all. We go deep into meditation so that we can reach out further and further to the world outside.”

— Eknath Easwaran

21. “Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.”

— Eknath Easwaran

22. “When we meditate every morning we are putting on armor for the day’s battle against our own impatience, inadequacy, resentment, and hostility.”

— Eknath Easwaran

23. “When the mind is still, we can become an instrument of peace.”

— Eknath Easwaran

24. “When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.”

— Eknath Easwaran

25. “Make wise choices about what you read. Read only what is necessary or worthwhile. And then take the time to read carefully. One book read with concentration and reflected upon is worth a hundred flashed through without any absorption at all.”

— Eknath Easwaran

26. “The goal of meditation is awareness, not relaxation.”

— Eknath Easwaran

27. “We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands.”

— Eknath Easwaran

28. “When we go slower, we are more patient and when we are more patient we have a choice in how we respond.”

— Eknath Easwaran

29. “We look at the world through our likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, opinions and judgments. We want everyone to behave as we think they should; otherwise we get agitated. But we are here to accept the world as it is, even as we work to make it better.”

— Eknath Easwaran

30. “I like to remind my friends frequently how short life is. This is the important message of death: not a day to waste, not a day to quarrel, not a day to brood upon yourself. This is not losing the joy of life; this is gaining the joy of life.”

— Eknath Easwaran

31. “When we are at home with ourselves, we are at home everywhere in the world. When we have found peace within ourselves, peace and love follow us wherever we go.”

— Eknath Easwaran

32. “People who have strong likes and dislikes find life very difficult; they are as rigid as if they had only one bone.”

— Eknath Easwaran

33. “As we get deeper, we move closer and closer to other people; we feel closer to life as a whole.”

— Eknath Easwaran

34. “Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.”

— Eknath Easwaran

35. “I am time, the destroyer of all; I have come to consume the world.”

— Eknath Easwaran

36. “I have never been able to understand the compelling phrase, ‘keeping up with the Joneses.’ It does not matter very much whether I keep up with Tom Jones or anybody else; what is important is to keep up with myself by making my today a little better than my yesterday.”

— Eknath Easwaran

37. “As by knowing one tool of iron, dear one, we come to know all things made out of iron: that they differ only in name and form, while the stuff of which all are made is iron- so through that spiritual wisdom, dear one, we come to know that ll of life is one.”

— Eknath Easwaran

38. “Like Gandhi, like the Buddha, like all great spiritual teachers, Easwaran had no use for beliefs unless they generated actions. Doing, not saying, is what counts.”

— Eknath Easwaran

39. “Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.”

— Eknath Easwaran

40. “Our deepest need is for the joy that comes with knowing we are of genuine use to others.”

— Eknath Easwaran

41. “The Buddha said, “When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit. Don’t wobble.”

— Eknath Easwaran

42. “Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart.”

— Eknath Easwaran

43. “As long as we lean on anything outside ourselves for support, we are going to be insecure. Most of us try to find support by leaning on all sorts of things – gold, books, learning, sensory stimulation – and if these things are taken away, we fall over. To the extent that we are dependent on these external supports, we grow weaker and more liable to upsets and misfortune.”

— Eknath Easwaran

44. “There is a tale of a man who found on the road a large stone bearing the words, “Under me lies a great truth.” The man strained to turn the stone over and finally succeeded. On the bottom was written, “Why do you want a new truth when you do not practice what you already know?”

— Eknath Easwaran

45. “Patience is an unfailing remedy for friction in personal relations. Even if a person has never won a beauty contest, has no money in the bank, can’t even change a flat tire, if he or she has inexhaustible patience, then we will find that life with such a person will never grow stale.”

— Eknath Easwaran

46. “Each time a divine incarnation comes to us, it is not to bring new truths or to establish a new religion but to remind us of what we have forgotten: that we are all one, and that we must live in harmony with this unity by learning to contribute to the joy and fulfillment of all.”

— Eknath Easwaran

47. “Fasting may not be as easy as feasting, but after a while it is not too different. Both are extremes. It is not hard to go the extreme way, but what is really difficult is neither to fast nor to feast, but to be moderate in everything we do.”

— Eknath Easwaran

48. “As long as there are poor people in the world, as long as there are people who are deprived and handicapped in the world, if we are sensitive, we will not load ourselves with unnecessary adornment.”

— Eknath Easwaran

49. “To be secure everywhere is the mark of sophistication, to be unshakable is the mark of courage, to be permanently in love with every person is the mark of masculinity or femininity, to forgive is the mark of strength, to govern our senses and passions is the mark of freedom.”

— Eknath Easwaran

50. “At the first gate, the gatekeeper asks, “Is this true?” At the second gate, he asks, “Is it kind?” And at the third gate, “Is it necessary?” If we applied this proverb strictly, most of us would have very little to say. I am not recommending silence, however, but control over our speech.”

— Eknath Easwaran