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The Company We Keep
by Eknath Easwaran

In Sanskrit there is a pithy saying that was on the tip of my grandmother’s tongue every year when school began.  At the end of the day I would run home to tell her who I had been with and what we had done that day.  “You don’t have to tell me who you have been with,” she would say.  “I can tell.”

“All right, Granny, who?”

She would proceed to name every one of them.  And she was always right.  “Granny,” I would ask in amazement, “how did you know?”

And she would reply, “Samsargad doshaguna bhavanti” – which means, roughly, “We become like those we hang out with.” 

Granny wasn’t one to waste words, so it was only when I learned to meditate that I began to understand what she was trying to tell me.  Much more than words or behavior, Granny was talking about character – the influences on the mind that shape the kind of person we are becoming, for better and for worse.

According to this ancient Sanskrit saying, what is good in us and what is bad, our strong points and our weak points alike, develop because of constant association.  When we associate with calm people, we become calm; when we associate with agitated people, we become agitated.  When we frequent the company of people who are wise, we become wiser; when our company is otherwise, we become otherwise too.

All of us have experienced this.  When we have spent an evening with someone who is wrought up over some political issue or some gross injustice that has been done to him personally, we come home so agitated ourselves that we cannot sit and enjoy our dinner; we cannot sleep in peace.  There may be no apparent connection with the other person’s grievances; our mind is simply stirred up, racing at top speed.  And we just can’t understand: in the afternoon we were feeling so calm, so composed; what happened to get us so agitated?  Then we remember: “Oh yeah, we had dinner with Uncle Bob!”

The more intimate the relationship, of course, the more susceptible to this we are.  “When you go out with your boyfriend and come back agitated,” I used to tell my students, “I wouldn’t say that person is a ‘boyfriend.’ The correct word is ‘boyfoe’.  When you go out with a girl who makes you agitated, she’s not a girlfriend; she’s a girlfoe.”

Long-term Effects

Over the longer term, these effects can work deep into our own personality.  If we spend much time with people who talk negatively about themselves or others, for example, we may begin to absorb these qualities and attitudes ourselves – no matter how immune we feel.

There is an old story about a Cockney boy from Billingsgate who knew all the bad words in the English language and used them frequently.  When his parents came into some big money, the first thing they wanted to do was to teach him to speak correctly and grammatically so that he might escape his past.  So they sent him to stay for a year with a well-known professor from Oxford.  When the father came to reclaim the boy, he told the professor how much we was looking forward to hearing his son speak like a “paffick Hinglish genlmn.”  The professor replied, “Garn!  Didger hexpect thet o im?”  He was speaking just like the boy.

This kind of influence can take place easily, especially when we are vague about our own standards and values.  If we could observe ourselves objectively over a long period, we would find it striking how much we become like the people we associate with.

The Mental Atmosphere

The spiritual psychology of India has a penetrating explanation for the power of association.  According to this theory, we participate in other people’s states of mind.  Being physically oriented, we think states of mind must be separate just as our bodies are.  But thoughts have no containers.  There are more like a field of forces, and like physical forces they act and react on each other in a larger field.

In this sense, we can think of consciousness as a kind of mental atmosphere.  Mental states commingle like the air we breathe.  In a room, if one person has the flu, others are likely to catch it in the air; similarly, if one person is angry, fearful, or depressed, that state of mind is likely to spread.

This contagion is so common today that mental agitation – anger, negativity, hostility, greed – has become epidemic.  Agitated people will always make a beeline for each other; and where two agitated people come together, two and two make twenty-two.  One agitated person is enough to disturb the whole home, the whole office, even the whole community.

Right Speech

Speech is an important part of this mental atmosphere.  The way we speak communicates our state of mind.  For that reason, we need to be vigilant about the kind of conversation we participate in.

In India, it’s not at all uncommon for people to repeat anything they here.  “Of course, I wouldn’t say this myself, but my neighbor says that the schoolteacher’s sister…”  I think it was from Mahatma Gandhi that I learned never to listen to this kind of conversation and never to repeat anything at another person’s expense.

Whenever we find ourselves in agitated or degrading conversation – backbiting, gossip, or deprecation of other people, races, sexes, or religions – we can teach our mind to be offended and our ears not to listen.  The least of all we can do on such occasions is to walk out.  This is a healthy reminder to everybody that we don’t have to listen to everything that is going on about us, particularly when it is in deprecation of others.

If we could see the mental states involved, we would see that most gossip is malicious.  For some reason, people who are insecure feel bigger when they diminish others; people who are not particularly good themselves feel better when they run down others who are.  The Buddha, a master of psychology, warned that all of us bear responsibility not only for what we say but also for what and whom we listen to.  Sooner or later, the kind of talk we indulge in will come around to us.

The Mass Media

I would apply this not only to people but to books, magazines, papers, movies, and TV shows – everything connected with the mass media.  All this is part of the mental atmosphere we live in.

The other day I went to see a movie which I expected to be mildly amusing.  It turned out to be wildly violent.  What amazed me was that half the audience were children.  One little fellow about five was wandering about like a lost angel.  We wondered where his parents were, but all of us, despite our sophistication, take this kind of tawdry stuff in as readily as a child.

This has been hailed as a great film, and because millions of people have been told it is a great film, they will go to see it and recommend it to others.  Most people get so overwhelmed by reviewers and so-called experts that the will to differ is simply not present.

Even choosing to go to a movie where vulgarity is put forth as art and disruption of human relationships is presented as shining examples of communication, we are not only immersing ourselves in those values; we are accepting and supporting them to the extent of our participation.

We have to ask ourselves whether we really want to absorb such values, whether this is the kind of atmosphere we want to breathe.  In the language of the Compassionate Buddha, these are powerful influences that shape us – influences that are going to have their say in the kind of person we are becoming every day.

It is particularly sobering to realize that our own thoughts, too, are part of the company we keep.  Negative thoughts are the worst kind of company because it is so difficult to throw them out.  That is why I advise that whenever you find yourself caught in negative thinking, start repeating the mantram or Holy Name.  When the mind gets absorbed in the mantram, it has no room for other thoughts; it is alert, calm, and focused always.

Spiritual Companionship

Desire for the company of spiritually oriented people comes naturally once we take to meditation.  We are beginning to change inside, often dramatically; it is natural that our tastes and desires should be changing too.  As the desire to know ourselves becomes stronger and stronger, we’ll be looking in the paper not to find a good movie but to find a talk on meditation.  When we go to a bookstore, we’ll pass by the bestseller tables to get to the religion or self-help sections.  And we will be looking everywhere for the company of others who are dedicated to the spiritual life – not intellectually interested, but actually practicing disciplines like the Eight Point Program.

This is the positive side of the power of association: we absorb good qualities, too, by spending time with people who embody them.  If you want to be secure and selfless, the Buddha says, associate with people who are reasonably secure and selfless, and learn to be like them in the daily living example.  By association we can become good, by association we can become self-less, by association we can elevate ourselves to a nobler way of life.

This too, we may have already experienced.  When we are agitated about something and want to express our agitation by agitating a few more people around us, we go by mistake to the house of someone who is calm and secure.  He comes to the door, sees the agitation in our eyes, and says, “You want to agitate me too?  Come on in!  You can put your mind in overdrive and race along however you like.”  You start recapitulating what wrongs the world has done you, how you have always been innocent, and your friend just sits and listens.  Halfway you begin to say, “Maybe sometimes I do make mistakes.  Maybe sometimes I do provoke people myself.”

Your friend is not saying anything.  He is just looking with shining eyes of love and understanding.  But by the time your visit ends, you have become calm.  And you just don’t know what has happened to your agitation.  It takes most of us a long time to understand that whenever we associate with people, we participate in their mental states – in this case the better.

Satsang - Spiritual Association

Finding suitable companionship can be difficult on the spiritual path.  Without it, however, we may turn into a lone wolf.  For those who are practicing meditation and seeking to change their lives, it is helpful, if possible, to make time for regular association with others with similar goals and values.

This kind of association is called satsang in Sanskrit, and it is so important that I have made it one of the points in my Eight Point Program.  Satsang is not just uplifting companionship; it means regular association, as often as possible, with others who are practicing the same disciplines.  When we gather together like this, even though each may have drawbacks, we absorb what is the best in all.

This kind of support is vital as meditation deepens.  There will be gulfs where we have to leap across, precipices we have to climb just like a mountaineer.  Climbers protect themselves by tying ropes to one another so that even if one person slips, the others can provide support.  That is just what satsang means.

If you are following my Eight Point Program, my practical suggestion would be to make time to meditate as often as possible with others on the same path.  You may read together for a short while or watch one of our videos, but the important part is meditation.  Wherever people meditate together, a healing force is released that deepens the experience for all.

Spiritual Retreat

Satsang means literally “the company of the holy, the company of the good.”  The principle is embedded in all the world’s great mystical traditions, but nowhere, I think, so systematically as in India.  There, since time immemorial, it has been a fundamental part of the spiritual life for sincere aspirants to spend as much time as possible in the ashram, or spiritual community, of their teacher.  Even after a great saint like Sri Ramakrishna is no longer present in the body, a living presence remains which all of us can gradually absorb a little spiritual awareness.  By this association we take on a part of their peace, a part of their equanimity, a part of their undivided devotion.

In India, satsang is said to be the secret of all spiritual endeavor.  That is why so many Indians like to spend their vacations in an ashram, where they can pass a week or two associating with people who talk about God, meditate regularly, and try their best to come face to face with the Lord who lives within them.

One of the important reasons for our Blue Mountain Center retreats is to provide this kind of rendezvous, where people whoa re searching for the supreme purpose of life can support one another and share companionship on this demanding journey.  I am always pleased to hear from friends that our retreats are like an oasis for them, where they can find living waters and return home refreshed.

Eternal Companions

On the spiritual path, we all need the human companionship of others following the same disciplines.  But we also need transcendent companionship.  The highest form of spiritual association is with someone who embodies our highest ideals and aspirations, someone we want to be like in every possible way.  It might be Jesus or the Compassionate Buddha; in might be a great saint like Sri Ramakrishna, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, or Therese of Lisieux.

In the Indian tradition, the human soul in its search for God is represented as a beautiful woman named Radha who is always meditating on Sri Krishna.  When the Lord appears to her one day, Radha is so overwhelmed that she tells him, “I love you so much, I meditate upon you so passionately, that one day I am going to become you!”  And Sri Krishna replies delightfully, “Radha, I love you so much and think about you so much that the day you become Krishna, I am going to become Radha.”

This is the real principle of satsang: we become like those we love.  If I can in any way account for the small measure of spiritual awareness that has come to me, the only explanation I can offer is that I loved my spiritual teacher, my mother’s mother, so deeply that I made it possible for her to convey to me a small part of her awareness of God.  Today, in a very small way, I have become  like her – not because of any special virtues I might have had, but because I loved her so utterly that I absorbed some of her consciousness through a kind of spiritual osmosis.  In this sense, spiritual awareness is not taught; it is caught.

This does not require a physical presence.  Jesus, the Buddha, great sages like Sri Ramakrishna, Mahatma Gandhi, Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, all continue to guide us.  They are not dead.  Their bodies are gone, but their spirit moves about freely in the world, helping those who turn to them with a unified heart.

This is not rhetoric.  My Grandmother is much more real to me today than she was when I was a child.  For Francis and Teresa, Jesus was a friend with whom they conversed intimately, just as Sri Ramakrishna did with the Divine Mother.

Even for people like you and me, luminous figures like these in every religion can be living companions – much more real, much more influential, than flesh and blood friends whose lives are scattered.  By reading about them, thinking about them, meditating on their words, we can bring their presence into our daily lives.

Reprinted with permission from Blue Mountain, A Journal for Spiritual Living Published by the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation & Nilgiri Press, www.nilgiri.org, Winter 2002.

To review Sri Easwaran's book "Meditation", just click on the title.  We hope to soon be carrying it on our site as well.

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