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Eknath Easwaran: The Mundane Mystic

I read last night that Easwaran’s devotion to his own spiritual teacher, his grandmother, led him later in life to a devotion to Sri Krishna, the divine incarnation his grandmother worshiped. He described the process as a kind of inheritance his grandmother passed on to him through her own devotion to Krishna. I find hope in this, since I have not felt much devotion to the great incarnations (Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, etc.) but am beginning to feel a flicker of devotion to Easwaran himself. I think I’ve felt hesitant to devote myself to a teacher so contemporary and down-to-earth as Easwaran, but obviously neither of those qualities precludes deep spiritual awareness. Another reason for my hesitance to allow myself to become a devotee of Easwaran is that he himself encouraged his students to direct their ardor toward one of the classic divine figures. Lastly, and this may be the heart of it, it just feels wrong to express religious devotion to any being other than a “recognized” incarnation.

 Nevertheless it is to Easwaran that I turn for instruction, Easwaran who built the spiritual community that nourishes me and my practice, Easwaran who hangs on the wall behind my meditation table and Easwaran who said (like many other teachers) that he (He?) would be with us even after he left his body. What do I have to lose by at least experimenting with devotion to this mundane mystic?

 A final thought: I’m just realizing there’s a dose of self-consciousness in the thought of being a devotee of such a relatively unknown teacher. Most people would understand, maybe even admire, my devotion to Jesus, Buddha or Krishna: these are legitimate vessels of the divine. But Eknath Easwaran, a twentieth-century Indian Fulbright scholar who taught English literature before becoming a meditation teacher? Maybe Easwaran’s obscurity is all the more reason to direct my devotion to him; it’s a blow to my ego not to be attached to a famous spiritual figure.
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