Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: The First Review
Posted on December 9, 2011 by | Add Comment
Here’s the first review of Easwaran’s new book, recently posted on Amazon.
“From a small operation in Northern California, Eknath Easwaran and the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation continue to produce books of enormous importance. This latest addition to Easwaran’s legacy is one of the most insightful to date. If you enjoy Easwaran’s teachings, if you’re yearning for ultra deep insights into this beloved Hindu scripture, or if you simply want to read elegant prose seasoned with delightfully modern, often amusing stories and analogies, you’ll love this book.
“Many Gita commentaries (including Easwaran’s own three-volume set) explore the text passage by passage. Through these, we quickly discern that the battle described in the Gita is not physical but internal and that this battle is won using will power rather than firepower.
“Beyond the individual words and passages, however, lies much more. Deftly wielding his little but powerful lamp, Easwaran leads us on a spelunking trip deep into the heart of the Gita. Along the way, we encounter wisdom from such varied sources as Shankara, Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Spinoza, Jung, Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, physiologist Hudson Hoagland and others. The journey is at once simple and profound.
“The book begins by introducing the split in consciousness between our lower and higher selves that causes separateness and struggle. Easwaran explores the nature of reality and personality, explaining that we are not our bodies or our minds (!) and that identification with these imposters keeps us feeling separate from everyone and everything.
“Beginning with chapter six, we move from theory to practice. Easwaran explains how to heal the split using a system of living that includes meditation, living deliberately and experimenting with our likes and dislikes. The words are practical and enormously compelling.
“The final three chapters describe the journey of humanity toward its ultimate goal: self-realization. We have no choice but to fight this battle, Easwaran and the Gita insist. Putting our heads in the sand or playing with the toys of life only delays the battle and prolongs our misery. Ultimately, Easwaran’s Gita tells us we will not only fight but also win and that this glorious day comes much more quickly when we seize the initiative and realize our potential.
“This story could only be told by a lifelong student of the Gita, someone who has lived it each day and is now so familiar with it that its words pale against the underlying meaning. Even so, in the hands of a lesser writer, no one but an enlightened being could even understand how the meaning derives from the words. But Easwaran’s ideas fit together so well and are so nicely supported by the sparsely used but powerful Gita verses that, by the end, it’s utterly impossible to deny both the wisdom of this interpretation and the inevitability of its effect on us.”
Our thanks go to the reviewer, for taking the time to post such a thoughtful description. We very much appreciate reviews of Easwaran’s books.
Essence of the Bhagavad Gita now available on Amazon, and one last excerpt
Posted on December 2, 2011 by | Add Comment
The print paperback book of Essence of the Bhagavad Gita has now arrived in the US and is ready for shipment.
In the US, you can now view and purchase Essence of the Bhagavad Gita in paperback on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Outside the US, the paperback version of Essence of the Bhagavad Gita is available only from our own BMCM store.
View Essence of the Bhagavad Gita on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
You can now find the e-book of Essence of the Bhagavad Gita in North America on Kindle and Nook using the links listed above, and with these vendors as well:
Apple iBooks (for iPod, iPhone, iPad, or iTunes on a computer)
In the UK, the e-book is available on the Kindle store, Apple iBooks, and the Google ebookstore; in Australia on Apple iBooks and Google; and in the rest of Europe on Apple iBooks.
If you buy Easwaran’s new book, either as a paperback or as an e-book, would you write in and let us know what you think of it? We’d love to hear from you!
Today, we’re rounding off our series of excerpts with the Epilogue:
“Sri Krishna’s instruction to Arjuna is over now. It is past dawn on the battlefield; the war is about to begin. Sanjaya expresses his thrill at what he has heard:
This is the dialogue I heard between Krishna and Arjuna, and the wonder of it makes my hair stand on end! Through divine grace, I have heard the supreme secret of spiritual union directly from the Lord of Yoga himself. Whenever I remember these wonderful, holy words, I am filled with joy. Wherever Krishna and Arjuna are together, there will be prosperity, happiness, and victory; of this I have no doubt. (18:74 – 76, 78)
“It is significant that the Gita doesn’t end with victory, but with the resolution to fight till the war is won. This is the real promise of the Gita. ‘Wherever Krishna and Arjuna are together’ – that is, whenever we model our lives on that of Arjuna; whenever we cultivate this kind of devoted relationship with our real Self, which is divine – however fierce the obstacles we face, victory is assured; and all along the way, our lives will grow in beauty. Mahatma Gandhi expressed it beautifully: ‘Full effort is full victory.’”
Easwaran’s Essence of the Bhagavad Gita now available on Kindle as an e-book
Posted on November 18, 2011 by | Add Comment
We were delighted to see that Amazon has already made Easwaran’s new book available as a Kindle e-book on its website. If you are a Kindle reader and you download Easwaran’s book, we’d be very interested in your feedback! We expect the e-book to be available on the other e-bookstores very soon.
Essence of the Bhagavad Gita is also available as an e-book on the Apple iStore in the UK, Australia, and much of Europe.
The print edition is available for pre-order, but the books won’t be shipped for a week or two. The number of pre-orders of Easwaran’s book is unusually high, so if you have placed a pre-order, thank you, and we very much hope you enjoy the book when you receive it. And we will continue to publish short excerpts on this blog, as you’ll see below.
Click the image link to go to the paperback page on Amazon.
Click the link below for the Kindle e-book edition:
Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Guide to Yoga, Meditation, and Indian Philosophy (Wisdom of India)
Here’s the Prologue from Essence of the Bhagavad Gita:
“Close your eyes. You have been blind like this from birth, ruler of a kingdom you cannot see, dependent on the advice of those around you, some wise, most otherwise. Your choices of whom to listen to and whom to ignore have led to a war that will end in ruin for both sides. Unable to watch the pending catastrophe with your own eyes, you appeal to your charioteer, who possesses extrasensory vision:
Tell me, Sanjaya, what is happening on the field of battle, the field of dharma, where my army and my enemies have gathered for war. (1:1)
“So the Bhagavad Gita begins, with the words of the blind king Dhritarashtra, whose crippling attachment to his selfish sons has split his dynasty in two.
“This is also the last we shall hear from him, for the Gita has very little to do with his story or his war. Yet this opening verse makes a haunting introduction to the theme of a war within, and Dhritarashtra’s plight is a sobering reminder that each of us, too, has probably made blind decisions that have left us perplexed about how we got here and how to face a future that we ourselves have helped to create.
“Clearing up this confusion is the purpose of the Gita, so we shall spend no more time with blind kings and their stories. It is not Dhritarashtra who stands for us but Arjuna, a warrior who seeks understanding of life, death, and duty from his charioteer, Sri Krishna, a divine incarnation who has chosen him as his disciple and friend. Like Dhritarashtra, we too are about to listen in on a hidden dialogue, not one far away but deep within the heart. And while we too are unable to watch, the Gita will let us hear – and, more important, help us to understand.”
Yoga as Skill in Daily Living (from Easwaran’s new book Essence of the Bhagavad Gita)
Posted on November 11, 2011 by | Read 3 Comments | Add Comment
This excerpt comes from chapter eight in the new book by Easwaran that will be in bookstores in a few weeks’ time, and that has been compiled from previously unpublished material. Here he is telling us how – even in the midst of life today – we can attain the higher state that the Upanishads call ananda, or joy.
“One of the characteristic contributions of the Bhagavad Gita is its emphasis on life as a duality. Pleasure and pain, heat and cold, honor and dishonor, profit and loss, friend and foe – paired phrases like these, in the Gita’s usage, are shorthand for the position that life as we experience it is always an encounter with opposites. However much we might wish this were otherwise – and always wishing it to be otherwise seems part of our mental makeup – no one has ever succeeded in isolating pleasure and avoiding pain, in winning respect without incurring disapproval, or generally getting anything the way one wants in any aspect of life at all. It simply is not possible; that’s not how life is.
“Of course, we all know this, but that doesn’t stop the mind from incessantly wishing that things were different – which, as my grandmother liked to say, is like asking a banana tree to give you mangoes.
“However, the Gita isn’t talking about being realistic about what we want. It is making a point that is absolutely central to understanding how to live. The duality of life as we experience it is not a feature of life as it is; it is imposed by the makeup of the mind itself. It is an upadhi, an apparent limitation imposed on reality by each level of the mind.
“In fact, at one of these levels – that of buddhi, the intellect or higher mind – defining opposites is the basic function. Its very purpose is to make distinctions, so that we can decide what is beneficial and what is not, what is true and what is false, and so forth. We would be well enough off if things stopped there, but they do not. The lower mind steps in to insist on what it desires, which of course is often opposed to the higher judgment about what is beneficial; and the stickier our attachment to getting what we want, the more likely it is that the higher mind is going to get overruled. At the physical level, the body and senses join the discussion with their own insistence on getting what is pleasing. And at the root, as usual, is the ego, with its division between itself and the rest of life.
“This makes life a roller-coaster ride. The mind is constantly up, down, or wobbling, depending on how much we like or dislike what the world is giving us at the moment. Happiness will come our way today, sorrow will come tomorrow, and we get elated when happiness comes and downhearted when sorrow follows. Similarly, as long as we are susceptible to adulation, we are going to be susceptible to censure; as long as we get elated by success, we will get depressed by failure. We will be happy when people like us and unhappy when we think they don’t. This is the practical meaning of that abstract idea about a split in consciousness: it drives the mind to constant turmoil and vacillation.
“And the Gita, of course, is telling us that we don’t have to live this way. We can’t stop life from going up and down, but we don’t have to go up and down with it. Instead of wishing the world would give us what we want, we can, through the disciplines of yoga, go beyond the duality of a divided mind. And when we do, we find that instead of liking this and disliking that, we live continuously in a higher state that the Upanishads call ananda: joy. Liking and disliking are emotions, pleasure and pain are sensations; all these belong to the phenomenal world. Joy is a state of consciousness, on a different level altogether.
“The Indian scriptures illustrate this with a beautiful image. In a tropical country the weather can be quite dramatic, particularly during a monsoon storm. You can watch masses of indigo-blue rainclouds gather at the horizon and sweep towards you minute by minute till they cover the sky, so you can see neither the sun during the day nor moon and stars at night. But the sky itself is unaffected. When black clouds come, the sky doesn’t curl up and hide; it’s not even touched, and we know it’s only a matter of time before the clouds are swept away. Similarly, the scriptures say, when thoughts flit across the mind, they needn’t affect us. Even disturbing thoughts such as anger or fear, which come to all of us, are no more than clouds that darken the mind as they pass.
“In practice, this means that when negative thoughts come, we can try to behave as if we are not influenced by them. For example, even if you don’t like somebody, try to behave as if you do by talking to him with respect and listening to his point of view. All you have to do is not act on what you feel. Don’t use harsh words, don’t walk out, don’t refuse to cooperate. Every time you try this, it brings more detachment. It is difficult; no one has ever called it easy. But if you can practice this systematically, day by day, most of the agitation in the mind will stop, which means there is no wear and tear on the nervous system.
“Of course, the comment this immediately provokes is, “Isn’t this utterly hypocritical? Does the Gita want us to pretend?” Not at all. This is our real nature; it is anger that is hypocrisy. Even if kindness seems a pretense, it is being true to our real Self. All things considered, given that we are dealing with many years of conditioning to the contrary, it is remarkable how quickly we come to understand that this is our real nature. This can happen almost miraculously when consciousness is unifed, as Sri Krishna promises in verses that have consoled millions:
Whatever you do, make it an offering to me – the food you eat, the sacrifices you make, the help you give, even your suffering. . . .
Even sinners become holy when they take refuge in me alone. Quickly their souls conform to dharma and they attain to boundless peace. Never forget this, Arjuna: no one who is devoted to me will ever come to harm. (9:27, 30 – 31)”
- Essence of the Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran, p. 150
This book is available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite independent bookstore. We hope you’ll find it as inspiring as we do!
The Challenge of Karma Yoga (from Easwaran’s new book Essence of the Bhagavad Gita)
Posted on November 4, 2011 by | Add Comment
In the chapter titled “The Meaning of Yoga,” Easwaran addresses the three major paths to the ultimate goal: jnana, karma, and bhakti yoga. (All Sanskrit terms are defined at the end of the excerpt.) Here he is describing the challenges of karma yoga, the way of selfless action.
“This way appeals to those who want to make some contribution to the welfare of others, but karma yoga is more than service. Service – work that benefits others – is necessary for every human being, the Gita maintains; it is incumbent on us to give back to life as we take from it. But this becomes yoga only when it is selfless: when we forget ourselves in that work and desire nothing from it for ourselves, not even recognition or appreciation. When we learn to act in this way, egotism shrinks and separateness gradually dissolves.
“Such selfless service is rare. Much more common – among those who help the world at all – are those who do good but need some kind of recognition or reward. Such people have benefited the world enormously, so these words are not meant at their expense. The question is simply what effect this work has on them. If it loosens egotism, pride, and the bonds of separateness, it can be called karma yoga, but not if it is making these bonds stronger.
“The word karma comes from the Sanskrit word for doing, and refers not only to physical action but to words and even thoughts. Anything that has an effect in the field of prakriti, whether the physical world or the mind, is karma. Even when we are thinking, we are acting. Angry thoughts, for example, affect not only ourselves but those around us. Just go and sit near an angry person for a while; by the time you leave, you will feel you had been squeezed dry.
“So the word karma means not only actions but the consequences of action, in the fullest sense of the word. Every action has effects which go on to become causes, in an endless chain of cause and effect. The virtue of karma yoga is that when we act without thought of self, there is no channel for the results of our actions to act on us again. Every human being has an immense load of past karma – actions that must have effects. But as each of these fails to become a fresh cause, the burden of karma is reduced; and when it is reduced to zero, the Gita says, there is nothing to compel action; we act and live in freedom:
They live in freedom who have gone beyond the dualities of life. Competing with no one, they are alike in success and failure and content with whatever comes to them. They are free, without selfish attachments; their minds are fixed in knowledge. They perform all work in the spirit of service, and their karma is dissolved. (4:22 – 23)
“Karma yoga is praised throughout the Gita; since all of us must act in one way or another, Sri Krishna says, we should learn how to act selflessly because that alone will help us free ourselves from the results of past karma. But you can see why a true karma yogi is so rare. The best example I can point to in our own times who embodies this path is Mahatma Gandhi, and he is quite candid about how difficult he found it to work tirelessly for others without getting attached to things turning out his way.
“The key to this is given in some of the most famous verses in the Gita:
You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. (2:47 – 48)
“This sounds prescriptive, but Sri Krishna is just pointing out something we all know but can’t easily accept: we have really no control over the results of what we do. Even with something that seems completely within our domain, a million things can go wrong; a million events can change the outcome in an instant. We can’t control the universe; we are doing well if we manage to control ourselves. Therefore, Sri Krishna says, it is within our power to act wisely, but wise not to be anxious about getting what we want. Gandhi summarized this in a memorable aphorism: ‘Do your best, then leave the results to God.’
“Krishna goes on to explain the value of this kind of detachment:
Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill.
Therefore, devote yourself to the disciplines of yoga, for yoga is skill in action. (2:49 – 50)
“In practical terms, he is reminding us that worry, vacillation, and other divisions in consciousness only weaken our resolve and disturb our focus. When Mahatma Gandhi had to make a decision, he would put his attention on the problem completely, work out the pros and cons, and listen to trusted advice before deciding what to do. Then, once he had made his decision, he didn’t pay the slightest attention to praise or blame or even threats. It’s not that he ignored the outcome; when he decided he had miscalculated, he could reverse himself spectacularly. But he was always in the driver’s seat, not pushed and pulled about by what other people thought.
“The result of this is just marvelous: you don’t lose your nerve when things go wrong. The main reason why we get afraid of obstacles and anxious about problems, the Gita says, is that we become entangled in getting the results we want. The secret of karma yoga lies in using right means to achieve a right end, and then not getting anxious over the outcome. When we have learned to drop attachment to getting what we want while working hard and selflessly for a great cause, we can work without anxiety, with confidence and peace of mind. Reverses will come, but they will only drive us deeper into our consciousness.
Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace. (12:12)
“As I said earlier, this is a very tall order. One could practice it for a lifetime and still feel a beginner, as Gandhi said. Nevertheless, it is important for every one of us to do our best to learn this skill in every aspect of our lives, because the need for selfless service has become so urgent. We live in a world of immense turbulence. You have only to pick up a newspaper to see that none of us can afford to chase after personal profit or pleasure while the world seethes with problems which globalization brings right to our front door.”
- From Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, by Eknath Easwaran
From the Glossary (where longer explanations can be found):
karma yoga: The way of action; the path of selfless service
jnana yoga: The way of wisdom that seeks knowledge of the formless godhead.
bhakti yoga: The way of love. One of the major paths to Self-realization in the Gita.
prakriti: The basic energy from which the mental and physical worlds take shape.
We’ll publish another excerpt next week.
This book is available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite independent bookstore. We hope you’ll find it as inspiring as we do!
The Illusion of Separateness (from Easwaran’s new book Essence of the Bhagavad Gita)
Posted on October 28, 2011 by | Add Comment
Our next excerpt from this new book is from a chapter with an intriguing title: “The Sticky Illusion of Separateness.” There’s a new story, too, about a very old game.
“How did we come to identify ourselves so completely with the physical urges and private predilections that make up such a small fragment of who we are? Why can’t we shake off this nightmare of separateness – one party against another, one nation against another, one race against another, one individual against another? The Gita’s answer is simple but far-reaching: this is our biological legacy. When we are driven by anger, fear, lust, or greed, it is not hard to recognize the conditioning of our evolutionary past. It is this conditioning that makes us identify ourselves with body and mind – makes us think that is what we are.
“Sanskrit calls this obsessive identification maya, the creative power of illusion that is implicit in the human mind. But ‘illusion’ is misleading, for so long as we see life this way, this illusion is very real.
“Maya explains why we see what is not there and fail to see what is. The word has been connected with the English word magic, which may not be sound etymology but makes a fruitful image. The main principle in magic is to divert the attention of the audience. If I can get you to give complete attention to my left hand, I can do anything I like with my right and you won’t notice. Similarly, to conceal the Atman, no one has to hide it under a blanket; that would be very poor magic. The best magicians can hide something simply by making us look somewhere else. And that’s just what maya does: it conceals the Self within us by assuring us that what will satisfy us lies ‘out there,’ just around the corner – in physical attractions, in the allure of power or prestige, in the promise of romantic love. That’s why we always go looking for fulfillment in changing situations – in the flux of appearances, the world of the senses, the world of change.
“I can give a simple illustration of maya from my village in South India, where we used to play a game probably thousands of years old. The performer sits by the roadside with three coconut half-shells upside down on a piece of cloth, shows bystanders a little ball, and says, ‘I’m going to put this ball under one of these shells, and then I’m going to move the shells around in front of your eyes while you watch. My hands are so fast they’ll make your head spin. If you think your eyes are faster, you place some money in front of the shell that has the ball. If you’re right, I’ll give you double – but if you guess wrong, I get to keep what you bet.’
“Then he puts the ball under one of the shells and moves them all around in a blur while we watch like hawks. ‘Now who wants to bet?’ There would always be someone to step forward and put his money down – and every time, when the shell was lifted, there would be nothing underneath.
“I never saw anybody win that game, but we always felt so sure. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that the ball might actually end up in the palm of his hand. Raman would try and lose; then Shankaran would say, ‘I saw the ball, I really saw it, just under the first shell.’ He feels so certain that he puts down his quarter, but there’s nothing there. One by one, each places his bet, loses his money, and stands aside to watch the next fellow – and then goes and bets again.
“Sometimes a performer like this would come to school during lunchtime, spread out his mat, and start his spiel. Old-timers would warn the first-year students, ‘We’ve played this; you will never win.’ Deaf ears. They would go, play, and lose everything, and then next year they too would tell the next batch of students, ‘Don’t play that game. You will never win.’ And of course the newcomers go on to play and lose.
“This is maya: some magic spell that makes us think we see joy where it is not and fail to see joy where it is. You put your money down and maya makes you feel absolutely positive the ball is there. Every time. It may not work with Rosalind, but it’s sure to work with Juliet – and if not Juliet, well, maybe Viola or Miranda . . .
“That’s the kind of game that maya plays, and as long as we have personal desires to fulfill, the Gita says, we cannot help getting caught in it. Only when we are detached – when we cease asking life to give us something for nothing – will we stop and think, ‘Wait, no one has ever won this,’ and refuse to put our money down. In life, of course, even more than money, we put our feelings down – our hopes, our needs, our love. And when feelings are the stakes, they get hurt – and that is just what maya likes, because hurt feelings keep us in the game. ‘Just one more time . . .’”
- Essence of the Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran, pages 85 – 88
Easwaran continues with a vivid description of moha, which he translates as delusion, confusion, and hallucination. And in the following chapters he’ll tell us how we can free ourselves from both maya and moha through the practice of yoga and meditation. We’ll publish another excerpt next week.
This book is available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite independent bookstore. We hope you’ll find it as inspiring as we do!
Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: The first in our series of excerpts
Posted on October 21, 2011 by | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment
We’re starting our series of excerpts from the completely new book by Easwaran, Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Guide to Yoga, Meditation and Indian Philosophy. As background, here’s the Publisher’s Note from the front of the book:
“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.”
Here’s the first excerpt, from the Introduction:
The Epic Setting
The Bhagavad Gita appears in the sixth book of an immense epic called the Mahabharata, which tells the story of the struggle between two rival branches of the same dynasty: the Pandavas, five brothers, and the Kauravas, their cousins. But this story is only the backbone of the Mahabharata. India’s oral tradition, like India itself, is syncretic, and over the centuries many, many other stories and bits of mythology, lore, and wisdom were grafted onto this main storyline.
The Mahabharata is not so much a single work as a literature in itself. Though it can be condensed into a running narrative, the vast majority of us in India absorb it in pieces, episodes that are told or sung or dramatized on their own.
The Bhagavad Gita is one of these independent episodes and seems to have been always considered a work of its own. It is not so much part of the Mahabharata as an Upanishad, slipped into the narrative about a third of the way in – a view supported by the traditional colophon that ends each chapter, which identifies the Gita as an Upanishad on yoga.
So far as drama goes, in any case, the Gita’s placement in the storyline is brilliant. Despite attempts by the Pandavas to preserve peace, the Kauravas have insisted on war – a cataclysmic conflict that will draw in almost every kingdom in India.
The Gita begins on the morning before battle is joined. Arjuna, one of the Pandavas, instructs his charioteer, Sri Krishna, to drive their chariot into the open field between the opposing armies. There, seeing family, friends, and teachers preparing to destroy one another, he throws his bow to the ground and tells Krishna he cannot go on.
At this point the story is suspended, and we are lifted out of time while Sri Krishna gives Arjuna comprehensive instruction in the essentials of life and death: the Bhagavad Gita. Then the teaching concludes, we drop back into the narrative, and the Mahabharata continues – thousands upon thousands of verses giving the tragic details of a convulsive eighteen-day war in which virtually all the major combatants on both sides compromise their honor and are slain.
It is simplest, of course, to see the Gita as an integral part of this story, an episode that needs no explanation. Yet its overall character is so different from what comes before and after that it is easy to see why instead it has often been considered an allegory. The names themselves encourage this: the battlefield – Kurukshetra, “the field of the Kuru dynasty” – is dubbed dharma-kshetra, “the field of righteousness”; King Dhritarashtra’s name can mean “he who has usurped the throne”; the names of his sons all begin with du-, “evil,” and their eldest, Duryodhana – literally “dirty fighter” – leaves us no doubt about how well his name fits. On the other side is Sri Krishna, no less than an incarnation of God, and Arjuna and his four brothers, each of whom has a god as his father. While things are never quite black and white – the Mahabharata is as complex as Shakespeare – no one has ever wondered who the “good guys” are, or doubted that this war is a struggle between good and evil.
Mahatma Gandhi took this a step further: the war the Gita describes, he held, actually takes place within ourselves. There is a field called Kurukshetra north of Delhi where this battle is said to have taken place, but in Gandhi’s view the real battle– field is one’s own life, where the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil, rages from birth to death. There is ample support for this view in the text itself: for example, when Sri Krishna tells Arjuna that the enemies he must conquer are lust, fear, and anger. The dialogue between these two then becomes not so much symbolic as a searching of the soul – an interpretation that becomes living truth when one tries to translate the Gita’s teachings into thought and action. Like so many other dialogues between God and man in mystical literature East and West – The Imitation of Christ, the Psalms of David, the Katha Upanishad, the writings of Heinrich Suso or of Mechthild of Magdeburg – this is the heart’s appeal for wisdom and guidance, answered, as it only can be, from within. Then the choice of a dialogue format may remind us of Plato: the wisdom is within us, not in the text; the Gita only serves to draw it out.
One last point brings the Bhagavad Gita directly into our times. The central message of the Gita is that life is an indivisible whole – a concept that contemporary civilization flouts at every turn. Until we learn the principles of unity and how to live in harmony with them, the Gita would say, we cannot have abiding peace or live in harmony with each other and the planet; we cannot even enjoy the real and lasting progress that is the hallmark of civilization.
The Gita doesn’t ask us to take this on faith. It simply offers a frame of reference through which we can look afresh at what we see around us, scrutinize the plans and promises offered by contemporary politics and economics, and judge for ourselves how useful any approach can be that does not begin with the essential unity of life.
- Essence of the Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran, pages 15 – 18
“This is the heart’s appeal for wisdom and guidance, answered, as it only can be, from within.” We liked that sentence so much that we put it on the back jacket.
We’ll follow with another excerpt next week from the chapter titled “The Nature of Reality.” The book is available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite independent bookstore. We hope you’ll find it as inspiring as we do!
A Completely New Book: Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, by Eknath Easwaran
Posted on September 16, 2011 by | Read 6 Comments | Add Comment
Stephanie wrote in recently, with a number of very thoughtful questions on the role of the intellect on the spiritual path. She ends by saying she wishes she could ask her questions to Easwaran himself.
We have good news, Stephanie! We have a completely new book by Easwaran coming out soon, based on transcripts of talks he held with close students towards the end of his life. It’s titled Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, and we think you may well find your answers in that book.
It will be available in November, and next week we’ll be posting the new jacket on this blog and posting a series of extracts from the book. For now, here’s a list of chapter titles:
1 The War Within
2 The Nature of Reality
3 The End of Sorrow
4 Levels of Personality
5 The Sticky Illusion of Separateness
6 The Meaning of Yoga
7 Wisdom through Meditation
8 Yoga as Skill in Daily Living
9 Healing the Unconscious
10 Life After Life
11 The Long Journey of Evolution
12 Into Battle
Thanks for contacting us, Stephanie, and for your patience. We’ll write more about the new book by Easwaran next week.
Reflections on Karma Part 3: Markandeya and the Leap Across Evolution
Posted on September 9, 2011 by | Add Comment
Easwaran explains how karma enables us to evolve, and how there’s a lot we can do practically to help ourselves progress. But all spiritual concepts are ultimately elusive, so we conclude this series with a mysterious story. The young sage Markandeya asks Sri Krishna about Maya, the Lord’s creative power of illusion.
“In the Sanskrit scriptures there is a vivid dramatization of this immense leap across evolution into the unitive state. The story is about Markandeya, the boy whose devotion to Lord Shiva rescued him from death in his sixteenth year. In this story, with all the daring of a teenager, he asks Sri Krishna to explain to him the secret of Maya. It’s a question which allows for some rather imaginative answers.
“As soon as the words are out of the boy’s mouth the Lord disappears, and in one great roar all the seven seas rush in around Markandeya and rise up to the clouds in flood, the way they did in Genesis before the world was made. Everything is engulfed in the waters, not only the earth but the sun and all the starry firmament. And Markandeya, the boy who had gone beyond death, floats on these cosmic waters for billions of years, evolving from lifeless matter up the long ladder of animate existence.
“Suddenly he bursts into the human context. Life after life of selfish existence passes; he begins to shed all his selfishness and develops great devotion to the Lord. Then he sees in the distance a wonderful little baby, dark like the monsoon cloud, lying on a banyan leaf on that endless expanse of water. In a flash of recognition, Markandeya recognizes the baby Krishna, playing on the waters just as any other baby does, with one of his toes tucked into his little rosebud of a mouth.
“A thrill of unutterable joy runs through Markandeya at the thought of lifting and cradling in his arms this divine infant, whose playfield is the universe. But all these eons have been just one gentle breathing out of the baby Krishna, one day of Brahma; now he begins to breathe in again, and Markandeya is sucked inside through that tiny mouth into the body of the Lord, where he sees in wonderment all the galaxies of the universe suspended in the cosmic night. Outside there is again nothing but the primeval waters; matter and energy, time and space, everything is inside while creation rests.
“The experience must have lasted for billions of years. Then baby Krishna breathes out again. Markandeya is thrown out, and he is so overcome that he embraces little baby Krishna in adoration and tries to find words to express his gratitude for this vision of the Lord’s Maya. But the baby disappears in his arms, and Markandeya finds himself back in his own ashram seated in meditation. It’s a magnificent rendering of what can happen in samadhi, when we see that all the vast sweep of evolution is only the play of the Lord.”
- Like a Thousand Suns, volume 2 of The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, pages 150 – 151
We hope you enjoyed these extracts from Easwaran on karma, and the story of Markandeya’s cosmic adventure. Do write in with your thoughts and feedback — we are always very pleased to hear from you!
Reflections on Karma Part 2: Taking Destiny Into Our Own Hands
Posted on September 8, 2011 by | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment
How does karma play out in our own lives? And what, if anything, can we do about it? In the second extract in this series, Easwaran describes three types of karma, and how we can begin to shape our lives.
“This is the law of karma, which states unequivocally that any suffering we cause to other people must come back to us. It is an inescapable consequence of the fact that all of us are one. That is why it grieves me so deeply to see anybody treating another person harshly; it’s like hitting yourself with your own hand.
“In the traditional classification, there are three types of karma. The first may be called ‘cash’ karma, because it is all over with immediately. John hits Joe, and Jim hits John; there is no suspense, and John’s karma comes to a fast end.
“The second kind is more painful; it is the consequences we reap from past actions. ‘Others fear what will happen tomorrow,’ says the Sufi mystic Ansari of Herat; ‘I fear what happened yesterday.’ The Compassionate Buddha describes this kind of karma as an arrow we have already shot: it is on its way, and the best we can do is accept the suffering that comes from it and learn from that suffering not to shoot that arrow again.
“The third type of karma is that which we are about to create right now, in the immediate present. This is karma over which we have some control. If we can’t do anything about the arrows we have shot in the past, we can at least refrain from shooting more arrows in the future. Often we find ourselves in a situation where our passions have been roused, our anger is ready to burst, and all we can think of is retaliation. The arrow rests on the bowstring and the bow is drawn, ready to shoot. But, says the Buddha, we do not need to let the arrow go; the choice is up to us. That is the time to repeat the mantram, relax our hold, and put the arrow safely away.
“Here it is that the Hindu mystics make a really daring proposal. We do not need to let ourselves be buffeted towards the Lord by our own karma over millions and millions of years; we can take our evolution into our own hands. That is precisely what meditation is for, and great mystics like Sri Ramakrishna or St. Catherine of Siena are really pioneers in consciousness who have gone millions of years beyond us in human evolution.
“Patanjali, the great teacher of raja yoga in ancient India, tells us that any of us can make this great leap; the capacity is within us all. We are all born with enough vital energy for the journey, and a little extra to play around with while we get used to the car. The choice is ours what we do with this energy.
“Some of my friends tell me that in their earlier days, they used to leave their house in Berkeley early Monday morning fully intending to drive straight to New York City. They would stop at the grocery store for some orange juice, then go to a friend’s house and listen to a record or two, then remember to get some incense on Telegraph Avenue, and by the time it was nightfall they would still not have got out of town.
“But there are some people – St. Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi – who want so badly to get where they are going that they don’t spend any time on side trips. They put all their energy into the practice of the spiritual life and do everything they can to learn not to repeat the mistakes that all of us make. Every one of us can choose to do this, and the harder we try, the farther we will go.”
- Like a Thousand Suns, volume 2 of The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, pages 149 – 150
Is there anything here that strikes you? If you would like to share your reflections on karma, please write in to us via the comment box, or email us at info@easwaran.org with “Timeless wisdom blog: Karma” in the subject line.
We would be very pleased to hear from you.
A few times a week we’ll post something here to showcase the timeless wisdom of Eknath Easwaran.
We’ll also post items about the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation – new book announcements, retreat schedules and updates, news from our fellowship groups.
And we’ll post items from some of Easwaran’s many friends around the world who have brought his practical wisdom into their lives.
We hope you’ll join the conversation as well.
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