Download Easwaran’s Learning to Love: Free just for today and tomorrow!

Posted on February 13, 2012 by  | Read 4 Comments | Add Comment

How do we build last­ing rela­tion­ships? Not through can­dle­light and roses, but through patience, kind­ness, and for­give­ness. A gen­tle sense of humor also helps, as Easwaran demon­strates in this new short e-book – avail­able free for only two more days.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

Down­load the free e-book Learn­ing to Love

Download free e-book Learning to Love — available four days only!

Posted on February 10, 2012 by  | Read 2 Comments | Add Comment

St. Valentine’s Day is com­ing up, and the stores are full of pink hearts and choco­lates. We wanted to offer our read­ers some­thing more last­ing – Easwaran’s advice on build­ing lov­ing rela­tion­ships. Learn­ing how to love is a skill that we all need urgently to acquire, both for our own per­sonal hap­pi­ness and for the wel­fare of the world.

Down­load the new, short e-book by Eknath Easwaran titled Learn­ing to Love (PDF).

This e-book is com­piled from excerpts from a num­ber of books by Eknath Easwaran, and it’s avail­able free of charge from now through St. Valentine’s Day.

Please share this e-book with all your friends and loved ones! True romance lies not in roses and can­dle­light, Easwaran writes, but in devel­op­ing the patience, self­less­ness, and strength we need for mak­ing a wiser, more mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to all of life.

Passage Meditation now in Chinese

Posted on January 28, 2012 by  | Add Comment

We were delighted to open our copies of a new for­eign edi­tion of Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion in sim­pli­fied Chi­nese, with a smart jacket design and a beau­ti­ful photo of Easwaran, as you can see below. The pub­lisher is Bei­jing Zhengqing Cul­ture and Art, brought to us by our agent, Big Apple Tut­tle Mori, and the book has already sold 3,000 copies over the last twelve months.

Are you on Facebook? Please visit Easwaran’s new Essence of the Bhagavad Gita page

Posted on January 13, 2012 by  | Add Comment

We’ve recently launched a new page for Easwaran’s new book, Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita, on Face­book – you’ll rec­og­nize the cover. We’ve already posted some of our favorite quotes from the book, and look for­ward to read­ing com­ments from Easwaran’s read­ers. Please visit the page, and let us know what you think of it!

Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita on Facebook

Easwaran’s new book seen through the eyes of our Amazon reviewers

Posted on January 6, 2012 by  | Add Comment

The fol­low­ing three excerpts are from reviews of Easwaran’s com­pletely new book, Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita: A Con­tem­po­rary Guide to Yoga, Med­i­ta­tion, and Indian Phi­los­o­phy.

Review 1: A clear expla­na­tion of how med­i­ta­tion heals our personalities

“This book is fab­u­lous! An intri­cate tapes­try of verses from the Gita woven together with a deeper under­stand­ing of how we can fight ‘the war within’ — the war between our higher and lower selves — through a dis­ci­plined spir­i­tual prac­tice that includes med­i­ta­tion and self­less ser­vice.
Essence of the Bhagavad Gita
“The first few chap­ters describe in detail the split in our con­scious­ness that keeps us from being who we really want to be. What is this split? Easwaran char­ac­ter­izes it as ‘the ten­sion between the upward pull towards free­dom from bio­log­i­cal con­di­tion­ing and the down­ward pull that holds us back.’ Through the use of com­pelling imagery, Easwaran helps us see that liv­ing at the top of this split — ‘the world of every­day experience’ — can never be sat­is­fy­ing. We live in emo­tional tur­moil, and then feel that there is noth­ing we can do about it.

“As with all of Easwaran’s writ­ing, I love the fact that he makes this under­stand­ing imme­di­ately applic­a­ble in our own lives, if we’re will­ing to put in the effort required — that is a spir­i­tual prac­tice that includes med­i­ta­tion and allied dis­ci­plines. Oth­er­wise we can­not help react­ing to the events in our lives. In chap­ters six through eight, he shows us how learn­ing to train our atten­tion and jug­gle our likes and dis­likes can make our minds more even. ‘In what­ever walk of life we may be engaged, once we take to med­i­ta­tion, life becomes vibrant with mean­ing because every moment we have a choice — if you like, between imme­di­ate per­sonal grat­i­fi­ca­tion and per­sonal growth, between per­sonal desires and the wel­fare of all. It is this exer­cise of choice that slowly begins to trans­form all that is ugly in our life and con­scious­ness into a work of art.’

“The sub­se­quent chap­ters out­line how the split con­tin­ues to heal at deeper and deeper lev­els in the later years of our prac­tice. First, we are train­ing our atten­tion, then our will, and finally our desire. What a long jour­ney into the depths of our con­scious­ness — over lifetimes!

“Nowhere have I found such a clear expo­si­tion of the path into deeper con­scious­ness and how we can truly trans­form our personalities.”

Review 2: Seri­ously life-enhancing — I only wish there more stars to give it!

“The book dis­plays Easwaran’s usual grace­ful clar­ity of thought and word. But I think this is the deep­est of Easwaran’s books to date. This one goes deep, deep into the heart and mind of human­ity. I’ve gained insights from this book which I have not gained from his prior books, even though I’ve stud­ied them all.”

Review 3: A Panoramic View of the Gita’s Truths

“In read­ing Eknath Easwaran’s Essence of the Bha­gavad Gita, you get the impres­sion of some­one who is located at the heart of this spir­i­tual clas­sic look­ing out while the rest of us are peer­ing in through the outer panes. This can only be a result of Easwaran’s schol­arly knowl­edge of the Gita com­bined with ‘liv­ing the mes­sage’ in his daily life.

“From this still point, Easwaran uncov­ers for us the var­i­ous lay­ers of the Gita in a rich tapestry...These are woven together seam­lessly, giv­ing the reader a panoramic view of the Gita that few authors can pro­vide. Easwaran’s genius is his abil­ity to describe the time­less truths of the Gita in lan­guage that is con­tex­tual and easy to com­pre­hend. And yet, as the publisher’s note points out, this book is a dis­til­la­tion of 40 years of teach­ing. Like any other dis­til­la­tion, it is con­cen­trated and must be savored in small por­tions and repeat­edly. That is cer­tainly what I intend to do!”

Our thanks to all these review­ers, and we’ll end with a short quote from Easwaran him­self, from the Epilogue:

“It is sig­nif­i­cant that the Gita doesn’t end with vic­tory, but with the res­o­lu­tion to fight until 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 this beau­ti­fully: ‘Full effort is full victory.’”

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)

Google ebook­store

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.

New Easwaran E-books: Deep inspiration for 99 cents

Posted on December 16, 2011 by  | Add Comment

What can we do to help new read­ers to find Easwaran, now that so many of the tra­di­tional book­stores have dis­ap­peared? One answer is to take some of Easwaran’s finest pub­lished writ­ings and repack­age them ele­gantly into short e-books, Easwaran sam­plers, avail­able on all the lead­ing e-bookstores for a very low price. So, for any­one unwrap­ping a Kin­dle, a Nook, an iPad, or a Kobo reader on Christ­mas Day, we have two e-book essays that we’re call­ing Easwaran Inspirations.

The first of these is How to Med­i­tate. It con­tains chap­ter 1, “Med­i­ta­tion on a Pas­sage,” from Easwaran’s clas­sic Pas­sage Med­i­ta­tion, together with the After­word from the same book, “Invi­ta­tion to a Jour­ney.” This lit­tle e-book has been avail­able for sev­eral months now and has been sell­ing quite well.

How to Med­i­tate from Ama­zon — for the Kin­dle e-reader

How to Med­i­tate from Ama­zon UK — for the Kin­dle e-reader

How to Med­i­tate from Barnes & Noble — for the Nook

How to Med­i­tate from the Apple iBook­store — for iPad, iPhone, or computer

How to Med­i­tate from the UK Apple iBook­store — for iPad, iPhone, or computer

The sec­ond is How to Under­stand Death, at this point avail­able only at Ama­zon. The con­tent for this short e-book is the lead arti­cle, “The Les­son of the Lilac,” from the Sum­mer 2011 Blue Moun­tain jour­nal. This arti­cle has been highly acclaimed by our jour­nal readers.

How to Under­stand Death from Ama­zon — for the Kin­dle e-reader

How to Under­stand Death from Ama­zon UK — for the Kin­dle e-reader

We’re plan­ning to issue more titles in this series, includ­ing a new one for Jan­u­ary 1st, 2012.

Do please spread the word about these short e-books, and let us know what you think of them. We hope they will encour­age new read­ers to explore Easwaran’s wisdom!

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.
Essence of the Bhagavad Gita
“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)

Google ebook­store

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.”

Easwaran’s Books in Japanese: “Things are developing wonderfully”

Posted on November 17, 2011 by  | Add Comment

We’ve just heard from a trans­la­tor friend in Japan that there is now a Japan­ese edi­tion of Easwaran’s The Undis­cov­ered Coun­try.

She writes: “The Japan­ese title is Eter­nal Life: To the Undis­cov­ered Coun­try
 beyond Death. It has a very beau­ti­ful cover. I began to read my trans­la­tion imme­di­ately as if it were another’s, 
and couldn’t stop until the last page. What an excel­lent mes­sage! 
It has been my dream to have a sec­ond Sri Easwaran book pub­lished in Japan. It took ten years to make this a real­ity after Take Your Time came out in 2001.”

Both these edi­tions are the result of our friend’s ded­i­cated efforts – a pro­fes­sional trans­la­tor, she is also a long­time med­i­ta­tor and stu­dent of Easwaran. We asked her to tell us more about the Japan­ese edi­tion of Take Your Time. She replied: “Take Your Time has been very well received here. It has had seven print­ings so far, a total of 42,000 copies pub­lished dur­ing the last ten years. It appeals to us Japan­ese liv­ing in our high-paced soci­ety. Accord­ing to Amazon’s cus­tomer reviews, quite an impres­sive num­ber of peo­ple showed their appre­ci­a­tion to Sri Easwaran’s inspir­ing mes­sages and wish to read more of his works. It is very encour­ag­ing to know that so many are wait­ing for this to hap­pen. I feel extremely hon­ored to have this priv­i­lege of trans­lat­ing his thoughts and words.”

Our friend is now work­ing with a pub­lisher on trans­lat­ing our new edi­tion of Gandhi the Man. As she says, “Things are devel­op­ing won­der­fully in this country.”


  • 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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