The Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita is the best known of all the Indian scriptures, and Eknath Easwaran’s best-selling translation is reliable, readable, and profound.
Easwaran's 55-page introduction places the Bhagavad Gita in its historical setting, and brings out the universality and timelessness of its teachings. Chapter introductions clarify key concepts, and notes and a glossary explain Sanskrit terms.
Easwaran grew up in the Hindu tradition in India, and learned Sanskrit from a young age. He was a professor of English literature before coming to the West on a Fulbright scholarship. A gifted teacher, he is recognized as an authority on the Indian classics and world mysticism.
The Bhagavad Gita opens, dramatically, on a battlefield, as the warrior Arjuna turns in anguish to his spiritual guide, Sri Krishna, for answers to the fundamental questions of life. Yet, as Easwaran points out, the Gita is not what it seems – it’s not a dialogue between two mythical figures at the dawn of Indian history. “The battlefield is a perfect backdrop, but the Gita’s subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious.”
Arjuna’s struggle in the Bhagavad Gita is acutely modern. He has lost his way on the battlefield of life and turns to find the path again by asking direct, uncompromising questions of his spiritual guide, Sri Krishna, the Lord himself. Krishna replies in 700 verses of sublime instruction on living and dying, loving and working, and the nature of the soul.
Easwaran shows the Gita’s relevance to us today as we strive, like Arjuna, to do what is right.
“No one in modern times is more qualified – no, make that ‘as qualified’ – to translate the epochal Classics of Indian Spirituality than Eknath Easwaran. And the reason is clear. It is impossible to get to the heart of those classics unless you live them, and he did live them. My admiration of the man and his works is boundless.”– Huston Smith, author The World’s Religions
Updated to be more accessible to readers with vision impairment (July, 2022)
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About the Author
Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999) is one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers and an authentic guide to timeless wisdom.
He is a recognized authority on the Indian spiritual classics. His translations of the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada are the best-selling editions in the USA.
His books on meditation, spiritual living, and the classics of world mysticism have been translated into sixteen languages. His book Passage Meditation (originally titled Meditation) has sold over 200,000 copies since it was first published in 1978. Two million copies of Easwaran's books are in print.
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Born in Kerala, India, Easwaran was a professor of English literature at a leading Indian university when he came to the United States in 1959 on the Fulbright exchange program. A gifted teacher, he moved from education for degrees to education for living, and gave talks on meditation and spiritual living for 40 years. His meditation class at UC Berkeley in 1968 was the first accredited course on meditation at any major university.
In 1961 he founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, a nonprofit organization that publishes his books, videos, and audio talks, and offers retreats and online programs.
Easwaran lived what he taught, giving him lasting appeal as a spiritual teacher and author of deep insight and warmth.
Discovering Meditation
Easwaran discovered meditation mid-life, while he was teaching on a college campus in central India. In the midst of a successful career he found himself haunted by age-old questions: Why am I here? What is life for? What will happen when I die?
Meanwhile in a few short months he lost two people passionately dear to him: Mahatma Gandhi, whom he’d visited in his ashram, and his beloved grandmother, who was his spiritual teacher. Finally he came home one day to find his dog had been killed by a passing truck, and his sense of loss would not subside. His dog stood for death itself, for all who had passed away.
“Almost instinctively,” Easwaran said, “I went to my room and picked up my Gita, most of which I knew by heart. I closed my eyes, and as I began to repeat the verses silently to myself, the words opened up and took me deep, deep in.” Over the next weeks he continued in the same way, seated in silence in the early morning. His meditation practice had begun.
Still leading a full life at the university, Easwaran looked for guidance in this new inner world. He read the Upanishads, Patanjali, the Catholic mystics, the Buddhist scriptures, the poetry of the Sufis. In addition to his Bhagavad Gita, he found passages for meditation from every major spiritual tradition. Some of the mystics he studied had chosen not to retire into monasteries but, like himself, to seek the spiritual path in the midst of everyday life.
In meditation, he found a deep connection between the wisdom in the passages and the way he conducted himself throughout the day. It was a thrilling discovery. “The passages were lifelines, guiding me to the source of wisdom deep within and then guiding me back into daily life.”
Years passed, and Easwaran’s inner and outer life became richer and more challenging as his meditation deepened.
In 1959 he came to the US on the Fulbright scholarship and lectured widely on the spiritual heritage of India. Some students were eager to learn about meditation, and Easwaran loved teaching. He developed a simple, effective eight-point program of passage meditation based on his own spiritual experience. Thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds now follow this program all around the world.