Learning to Swim
In this excerpt from his book Conquest of Mind, Easwaran paints a beautiful picture of how swimming can help us understand the process for training our minds through the practice of meditation.
As an avid swimmer myself, I love how he points out that “each morning, we can descend to the depths and gather armloads of precious jewels: breathtaking gems of love and wisdom, lustrous pearls of patience and compassion. We can distribute them freely, knowing we have an infinite inheritance from which to draw every day.”
Please enjoy and share this article – it is truly a jewel!
Excerpt
My friends children have been learning to swim, and throughout the summer I received glowing reports about how well they were doing. At the beginning, I remember, the children themselves turned in a very different story. “Just looking at all that water makes me scared,“ they told me. “I’ll never be able to swim!” They believed that, and they acted on it. When their parents drove them into town for lessons, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth all along the road.
Now the same children have invited me to preside over their graduation from swimming school. They look forward to coming to the pool now: they swim back-and-forth, play games underwater, even dive in the deep end. This did not come about overnight. It came through hard work, under the guidance of a good swimming teacher who knows just how to demonstrate the strokes and skills she wants her pupils to develop.
The transformation starts in the “kiddie pool,“ where drowning is difficult even if you have a talent for it. They are the children learn to duct their heads under the water and hold their breath. They learn to blow bubbles. They hold onto the side and learn to kick….
In the words of Sri Ramakrishna:
Dive deep, O mind, dive deep
In the Ocean of God’s Beauty;
If you descend to the uttermost depths,
There you will find the gem of Love…
Recommended Reading
Learn why it is so difficult to stop thinking during meditation and how to relax and quiet the mind during meditation.