The Bhagavad Gita / Edition 2

by Eknath Easwaran

Overview

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 of The World’s Religions

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781586380199
Publisher:	Nilgiri Press
Publication date:	05/17/2007
Series:	Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality , #1
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	24,679
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	7
1.	The War Within	47
2.	The Illumined Man	57
3.	Selfless Service	71
4.	Wisdom in Action	81
5.	Renounce & Rejoice	91
6.	The Practice of Meditation	99
7.	Wisdom from Realization	111
8.	The Eternal Godhead	119
9.	The Royal Path	129
10.	Divine Splendor	137
11.	The Cosmic Vision	147
12.	The Way of Love	159
13.	The Field & the Knower	165
14.	The Forces of Evolution	175
15.	The Supreme Self	181
16.	Two Paths	187
17.	The Power of Faith	193
18.	Freedom & Renunciation	201
	Notes	7
	Glossary	225
	Index	239

Editorial Reviews

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 of The World’s Religions

From the Publisher