Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Guide to Yoga, Meditation, and Indian Philosophy

305 Pages·2011·3.22 MB·English

by  Eknath Easwaran

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eknaTh easwaran (1910 –1999) “It is impossible to get to the heart of those classics unless f ss e s s e n c e The bhagavad giTa is India’s best-
te
you live them, and [Easwaran] did live them. My admiration of hn o f t h e known scripture – magnificent poetry
was brought up in the Hindu tradition and
ec
the man and his works is boundless.” e couched as a dialogue between a warrior-
learned Sanskrit from a young age. He was B
– huston smith, author of The World’s Religions prince named Arjuna and his charioteer
chairman of the English department at a (Reviewing Easwaran’s translation, The Bhagavad Gita) h and spiritual guide, Sri Krishna.
major Indian university when he came to a
t h e b h a g a v a d g i t a opens with a crisis – Princeg Like Mahatma Gandhi, Easwaran sees
the United States on a Fulbright fellowship
Arjuna despairs on the battlefield, unsure if he should fight hisa the Gita as “a sure guide to human
in 1959. v affairs – one that could throw light on
kinsmen in a dreadful war. For Easwaran, the Gita’s epic battle
a

A Contemporary Guide the problems I faced in my own times of
represents the war in our own hearts and Arjuna’s anguishd
A gifted teacher and writer, Easwaran
crisis.” A foremost translator of the Gita,
reflects the human condition: torn between opposing forces,
taught in the West for forty years, living G to Yoga, Meditation he taught classes on it for over forty years.
confused about how to live. Sri Krishna’s timeless guidance, Bhagavad
out the principles of the Gita in the midst
Easwaran argues, can shed light on our dilemmas today.i & Indian Philosophy This book is Easwaran’s distillation of
t
of a busy family and community life. His the Gita’s teachings from the end of
a
Placing the Gita’s teachings in a modern context, Easwaran
his life, based on talks given to his close
translations of the Indian classics, The Gita
explores the nature of reality, the illusion of separateness, the
students and published here for the first
Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, and The
search for identity, the meaning of yoga, and how to heal the
time. Easwaran shows how, through
Dhammapada, are all best-selling editions, unconscious. The key message of the Gita is how to resolve
the principles of yoga and the practice
and more than 1.5 million copies of his our conflicts and live in harmony with the deep unity of life, of meditation, the Gita can point a way
E
through the practice of meditation and spiritual disciplines. forward for us, both as individuals and in
books are in print.
a
society today.
Sri Krishna doesn’t tell Arjuna what to do. He points out the
s
prince’s choices and then leaves it to Arjuna to decide. New Ultimately, as Easwaran writes, the dia-
w
Easwaran shows us clearly how these teachings still apply – companion to logue between Arjuna and Krishna is “a
and how, like Arjuna, we must take courage and act wisely if a Easwaran’s best-selling searching of the soul – the heart’s appeal
we want our world to thrive. translation of the for wisdom, answered, as it only can be,
r
Bhagavad Gita
from within.”
a
ISBN 978–1–58638–068–7 $14.95
ISBN 978-1-58638-068-7 n
51495
Eknath Easwaran
Nilgiri Press
9 781586 380687
www.easwaran.org
Religion / Hinduism
nilgiri
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essence of the bhagavad gita
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the wisdom of india Essence of the
•
B HAG AVA D G I TA
Essence of the Bhagavad Gita
A Contemporary Guide to Yoga,
Essence of the Upanishads
Meditation & Indian Philosophy
forthcoming:
•
Essence of the Dhammapada
Eknath Easwaran
Essence of Yoga
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Essence of the
B HAG AVA D G I TA
A Contemporary Guide to Yoga,
Meditation & Indian Philosophy
•
Eknath Easwaran
nilgiri press
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© 2011 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation
All rights reserved.
First edtion November 2011
isbn : 978–1–58638–069–4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922429
Nilgiri Press is the publishing division of the Blue Mountain
Center of Meditation, a nonprofit organization founded
by Eknath Easwaran in 1961. The Center also offers retreats
based on the eight-point program of passage meditation that
Easwaran developed and practiced. For information please
visit www.easwaran.org, call 800 475 2369 (USA) or
707 878 2369 (international and local), or write:
The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation,
Box 256, Tomales, CA 94971–0256, USA.
• Table of Contents
Series Preface: The Wisdom of India 7
Introduction 11
1 The War Within 23
2 The Nature of Reality 33
3 The End of Sorrow 55
4 Levels of Personality 67
5 The Sticky Illusion of Separateness 85
6 The Meaning of Yoga 105
7 Wisdom Through Meditation 129
8 Yoga as Skill in Daily Living 147
9 Healing the Unconscious 167
10 Life After Life 189
11 The Long Journey of Evolution 205
12 Into Battle 229
A Garland of Verses 249
Further Reading 275
Glossary 277
Index 289
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publisher’s note
This book has been produced by Eknath Easwaran’s senior editors,
longtime students who worked closely with him since his first book
in 1970 and were charged by him with continuing to compile his
books from transcripts of his talks after his passing.
In his last editorial planning meeting, in 1998, Easwaran gave
instructions about the books in progress that he wanted completed
from his unpublished transcripts, outlines, and notes. Essence of
the Bhagavad Gita is the first of those posthumous projects to be
published, Easwaran’s final distillation of the Gita’s teachings. It is
something rare and precious: the legacy of a gifted teacher sharing
a lifetime’s immersion in a sacred text, conveyed in his talks and
informal sessions with some of his closest students.
It is a great privilege to pass such a work as this on to Easwaran’s
readers around the world.
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series preface
• The Wisdom of India

Some years ago I translated what I
called the classics of Indian spirituality: the Upanishads, the
Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada. These ancient texts,
mem orized and passed from generation to generation for
hundreds of years before they were written down, represent
early chapters in the long, unbroken story of India’s spiritual
experience. The Upanishads, old before the dawn of history,
come to us like snapshots of a timeless landscape. The Gita
con denses and elaborates on these insights in a dialogue set
on a battlefield, as apt a setting now as it was three thousand
years ago. And the Dhammapada, a kind of spiritual hand­
book, distills the practical implications of the same truths pre­
sented afresh by the Compassionate Buddha around 500 B.C.
These translations proved surprisingly popular, perhaps
because they were intended not so much to be literal or liter­
ary as to bring out the meaning of these documents for us
today. For it is here that these classics come to life. They are
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