Prayer of Saint Francis

Prayer of Saint Francis:

my first serious commitment to meditation was with using Eknath Easwaran’s passage meditation practice, a method of devotional concentration on a certain spiritual excerpt from a religious or inspired text that has stood out through time for it’s deeply moving message. Using passages from the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, and other spiritual texts, most specifically The Prayer of Saint Francis — the student memorizes the words and slowly, silently, repeats them as if each word is a single mantra, allowing the meaning to sink within, the passage becoming a living part of us and shaping how we conduct our daily lives. It’s a beautiful practice, leading to great stillness as the words fall away to a quiet mind. Easwaran believed that we become what we meditate upon and that a spiritual passage would lend itself to a higher quality of life.

I believe so too.

this is why Easwaran would recommend beginning with the Prayer of Saint Francis, committing to these words as the foundation of our practice. It’s a prayer I turn to often, even outside the use in meditation, and through the years of practicing Passage Meditation, it’s meaning has become an important part of me, expressed in a very real sense through the actions of my life.