When we learn to live and work selflessly we don’t have to go looking for joy; joy comes looking for us.

This short ebook is based on two articles of deep insight, realism and warmth from Easwaran's Blue Mountain Journal

How can karma help us find hope and happiness?

Eknath Easwaran is a foremost translator and interpreter of the Indian classics (The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads and The Dhammapada), and a highly respected teacher of meditation. This short ebook is one chapter from Essence of the Dhammapada: The Buddha's Call to Nirvana.

Would you like better concentration, more vitality and creativity, more patience and inner strength?

Daily meditation can help you develop these qualities. Easwaran taught meditation for over forty years, and his instructions are practical and clear. He shows you how to choose a spiritual text, or passage, from the world’s great traditions that embodies your highest ideals. With regular practice, meditation becomes your lifeline, taking you to the source of wisdom deep within and guiding you through all the challenges of daily life.

This short ebook is the first chapter "Meditation on a Passage" from the book Passage Meditation – A Complete Spiritual Practice by Eknath Easwaran.

Easwaran is one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers and an authentic guide to timeless wisdom. His class at the University of California, Berkeley was the first accredited course on meditation at any Western university. He is the author of the best-selling translation in English of the Bhagavad Gita, India’s best-known scripture.

With quiet humor and practical wisdom, he offers insights and advice for readers of all ages and backgrounds. True romance lies not in roses and candlelight, but in developing the patience, selflessness, and strength we need for rich relationships and for making a wiser, more meaningful contribution to life.

This short ebook is compiled from excerpts from a number of books by Eknath Easwaran.

With stories from East and West, and quotes from the world’s mystics, Easwaran explains the meaning of death, the process of dying, and how to use simple spiritual practices to find the source of abiding joy and security within us all.

This essay has been excerpted from Easwaran’s book "The Undiscovered Country".

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)

Easwaran’s best-selling translation of the ancient wisdom texts called the Upanishads is reliable, readable, and profound.

In the Upanishads, illumined sages share flashes of insight, the results of their investigation into consciousness itself. In extraordinary visions, they experience directly a transcendent Reality which is the essence, or Self, of each created being. They teach that each of us, each Self, is eternal, deathless, one with the power that created the universe.

Easwaran’s best-selling translation of selections taken from the principal Upanishads and five others is reliable and accessible. It includes an overview of the cultural and historical setting, with chapter introductions, notes, and a Sanskrit glossary. But it is Easwaran’s understanding of the wisdom of the Upanishads, and their relevance to the modern reader, that makes this edition truly outstanding.

Each sage, each Upanishad, appeals in different ways to the reader’s head and heart. As Easwaran writes, “The Upanishads belong not just to Hinduism. They are India’s most precious legacy to humanity, and in that spirit they are offered here.”

Updated to be more accessible to readers with vision impairment (August, 2022)

Easwaran’s best-selling translation of this classic Buddhist text The Dhammapadais reliable, readable, and profound.

Dhammapada means "the path of dharma," the path of harmony and righteousness that anyone can follow to reach the highest good. The Dhammapada is a collection of verses, gathered probably from direct disciples who wanted to preserve what they had heard from the Buddha himself.

Easwaran's comprehensive introduction to the Dhammapada gives an overview of the Buddha's teachings that is penetrating, and clear - accessible for readers new to Buddhism, but also with fresh insights and practical applications for readers familiar with this text. His translation is based on the original Pali. Chapter introductions, notes and a Sanskrit glossary place individual verses into the context of the broader Buddhist canon.

Easwaran is a master storyteller, and the introduction includes many stories that make moving, memorable reading, bringing young Siddhartha and his heroic spiritual quest vividly to life. This faithful interpretation brings us closer to the compassionate heart of the Buddha.

Updated to be more accessible to readers with vision impairment (August, 2022)

Easwaran grew up in the Hindu tradition and learned Sanskrit from an early age. A foremost translator and interpreter of the Gita, he taught classes on it for forty years, while living out the principles of the Gita in the midst of a busy family and community life.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna, the Lord, doesn’t tell the warrior prince Arjuna what to do: he shows Arjuna his choices and then leaves it to Arjuna to decide. Easwaran, too, shows us clearly how these teachings still apply to us – and how, like Arjuna, we must take courage and act wisely if we want our world to thrive.

This is the story of Gandhi’s spiritual evolution – the turning points and choices that made him not just a great political leader but also a timeless icon of nonviolence.

Eknath Easwaran grew up in India and witnessed how Gandhi inspired people of all races, backgrounds, and religions to turn anger into compassion and hatred into love.

How had Gandhi transformed himself from an ineffective young lawyer into the Mahatma, the “great soul” who led 400 million ordinary men and women in their nonviolent struggle for independence? To find out, Easwaran visited Gandhi’s ashram and watched the Mahatma absorbed in meditation on the Bhagavad Gita – the wellspring of Gandhi’s spiritual strength.

Easwaran, a leading authority on the Bhagavad Gita and on spiritual living, explains the principles underlying Gandhi’s nonviolence. He highlights how we can all use Gandhi’s teachings to make our families, workplaces, and communities more peaceful in the world today.

More than 70 photographs illustrate his life, and a detailed chronology provides historical context.