On YA Stats

This month we're continuing to celebrate the blog's two-year anniversary and wanted to share with you some stats on the blog itself, and the BMCM's other big online endeavor over the past year, the webinars.

YA Blog
We have an average of 612 unique monthly visitors (up from 532 a year ago). Since January of this year we've had visitors from over 68 countries, though the blog has the most visitors from the US, India, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands.

We've been pleased with the reception to our audio talks from Easwaran with nearly 250 plays on the audio talk "Harmony with Others and Oneself" and nearly 60 plays on the Gandhi talk posted just last week.

Anecdotally, we hear great stories at our retreats about friends, family, grandparents, and neighbors using the YA blog as a comfortable entry point for sharing passage meditation with YAs and non-YAs alike, as well as using the blog as a source of satsang when meditators don't have a physical community nearby. 

Webinars
Last year the BMCM hosted its first ever webinar and we're so pleased to be able to reach out to a new audience, and especially provide a way for our international friends to participate!

Since January 2014 we've held three introductory webinars introducing passage meditation and just four weeks ago we held our first ever "Webinar 2" focusing on the rest of the eight points and how they help you get the most out of your meditation.

We got a lot of feedback from our "Webinar 1" curriculum and as a result integrated group brainstorms, self-reflection exercises, and an extended Q&A period into Webinar 2. We loved seeing all the questions and comments come in throughout the webinar and were pleased to hear from long-time friends as well as brand new folks. As the BMCM continues to develop its online offerings, we're so grateful for all our audience support and we'd like to share a bit about the webinar. Here are some statistics:

• There were 394 registrations!
• 19% of registrations came from outside the US from 20 countries.
• 20% of registrants have no current meditation practice (and 30% of those were YAs!)
• 71% of participants first became interested in passage meditation by reading one of Easwaran's books.
• After attending the webinar, participants were asked what next steps they were going to take and visiting the YA Blog was the second most popular next step (attending a retreat was most popular).

We also heard directly from some participants:

From someone relatively new: "I appreciate this opportunity to have more connection with other passage meditators since I just started this practice in January. So far I have been mostly focusing on passage meditation and using a mantram. I was happy to get a better sense of how to expand into the use of the other points."

From a longer-term meditator: "It was a great experience to participate in this webinar. It was inspiring and enlightening. It motivated me to dig deeper in my practice - learn a new passage for meditation, meditate every day, go to a retreat, continue in satsang. "

What about year three?
We're queuing up more great posts for you from our broader YA community and curating more readings and audio content from Easwaran to continue the blog for its third year.

In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you! In the comments below, let us know if there's a particular topic you'd love to see on the YA blog, either from a YA or in Easwaran excerpts.

Easwaran on Gandhi

This week we’re pleased to share an mp3 talk which Easwaran gave in 1983 on Gandhi. Gandhi is a favorite source of YA inspiration, both because of  the work he accomplished, and because he was so human.

There are many aspects to Gandhi’s life, but what we find so special about Easwaran’s talks and writings on Gandhi is his focus on Gandhi as a spiritual figure, whose bedrock was his spiritual practice.

In the talk Easwaran describes how he visited Gandhi’s ashram and heard verses from the Bhagavad Gita being read during a prayer meeting. Easwaran also writes about this in his book Gandhi the Man, and this short excerpt from the book gives you a glimpse of his view of Gandhi:

After the walk it was time for Gandhi’s prayer meeting. By this time it was dark, and hurricane lanterns had been lit all around. Gandhi sat straight with his back against a tree, and I managed to get a seat close by, where I could fix my whole heart on him. A Japanese monk opened with a Buddhist chant and then a British lady began one of Gandhi’s favorite hymns, John Henry Newman’s “Lead, Kindly Light.” Gandhi had closed his eyes in deep concentration, as if absorbed in the words.

Then his secretary, Mahadev Desai, began to recite from the Bhagavad Gita, India’s best-known scripture, which is set on a battlefield which Gandhi said represents the human heart. In the verses being recited, a warrior prince named Arjuna, who represents you and me, asks Sri Krishna, the Lord within, how one can recognize a person who is aware of God every moment of his life. And Sri Krishna replies in eighteen magnificent verses unparalleled in the spiritual literature of the world:

They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart. Not agitated by grief or hankering after pleasure, they live free from lust and fear and anger. Fettered no more by selfish attachments, they are not elated by good fortune nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers.

***

These verses from the Gita are the key to Gandhi’s life. They describe not a political leader but a man of God, in words that show this is the very height of human expression. They tell us not what to do with our lives but what to be. And they are universal. We see essentially the same portrait in all scriptures, reflected in the lives of spiritual aspirants everywhere. 

We hope you enjoy the talk. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

2 Years Later: How Does Community Help You?

"Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world. In this lies the power and the meaning of spiritual companionship." – Eknath Easwaran

In December of 2012, the BMCM formed the Young Adult (YA) Outreach team and tasked that group with reaching out to new audiences and supporting current YAs. During our early planning we tossed around a lot of crazy ideas, did a lot of sky's-the-limit thinking and one day we said "what about a blog?" In April of 2013, the blog was launched!

Originally, we thought this would be a 3–6 month endeavor, but this month marks our two-year anniversary and we are so pleased to be able to continue to share stories from YAs around the world as well as content from Easwaran on YA topics.

Our goal with this blog is to share the YA community with a broader audience, and to provide support and inspiration for passage meditators of all ages (though especially for YAs). Easwaran has always been clear about the important role that spiritual fellowship plays in our practice and in our interaction with the wider world – re-read the top quote for a thrilling reminder. In the spirit of this quote, we want to gather stories about spiritual community. To celebrate, this week we're asking to hear from you! 

In the comments below, tell us about an instance where spiritual community has impacted your life. This could be in-person fellowship, online interactions, retreats, or even just reading the blog. We encourage YAs and non-YAs alike to comment below. (You can expand the comment section by clicking on "Comments" at the very bottom of this post and scrolling down.)

We're eager to hear about you and your community!