Arizona Real Estate Notebook

My wife is part of a meditation group that gets together every Sunday afternoon at a Congregational church in East Phoenix. Once a year the group has a one-day Mediation Retreat for beginners and current meditators. This year Liz is helping organize the “retreat” which is this coming Saturday.

Passage Meditation

There are different styles of meditation. This style is called “passage meditation.”

You meditate on spiritual passages, or texts from religious books, philosophers or poets, or pretty much any text that is meaningful to you. If a passage doesn’t jump out at you, they suggest starting with the Prayer of St. Francis (Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace…).

Passage mediation was developed by an Indian guy, Eknath Easwaran. Easwaran was a professor of English Literature in India and the United States who died in the late 1990′s.

With his command of English language and literature, Easwaran became well known for his English translations and discussions of ancient Indian texts such as the Bhagavad Gita. Even today when you go to Borders or Barnes and Noble you are likely to find his translations as wells as his books on meditation. (Beyond meditation, Easwaran suggested using a mantram and a few other things such as the surprisingly controversial, “Putting others first.”)

If you are thinking about starting to meditate, I suggest you check out this style of meditation to see if it suits you.

Passage Meditation Retreat

Scottsdale, January 24, 2009
Scottsdale Congregational United Church of Christ
4425 North Granite Reef Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85251
9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Fee: $60–$140 (sliding scale) includes lunch
For more information, or to enroll, call the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation at 800.475.2369 or visit www.easwaran.org/retreats