About Us

The mission of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, founded in 1961 by Eknath Easwaran, is to teach his eight-point program of passage meditation to enable ordinary people to translate their highest ideals into daily living within the context of any religious tradition or none.

During four decades of active spiritual teaching, Easwaran directed the activities of the Blue Mountain Center, including the retreats program, the press, and the spiritual community called Ramagiri Ashram.

Since Easwaran’s passing, in 1999, his wife Christine has continued his leadership with the help of his students.

More about Easwaran

In the 1970s, Easwaran and a dedicated group of students created a residential community called Ramagiri Ashram on a beautiful piece of farmland in Northern California. Ramagiri is also home to the Blue Mountain Center and Nilgiri Press.

For thirty years Easwaran lived at Ramagiri, guiding the day-to-day life of the community, based on the practice of meditation. Today the community strives to carry on this vital legacy in order to pass it on to new generations of students well into the twenty-first century

If you attend one of our weekend or weeklong retreats in Tomales, you get the opportunity to have a tour of the ashram, meet Christine Easwaran, and meditate in our meditation hall. If you wish to come at other times, please call us in advance at 707.878.2369 to arrange a convenient time. The Center is closed on Saturdays.

Nilgiri Press publishes Easwaran’s books, as well as audio and video recordings of his talks.

Nilgiri Press now has twenty-six books in print, with many translations available from other publishers in Europe, China, Japan, India, and Latin America. More than 1.5 million copies of Easwaran’s books are in print.

Easwaran’s first book, Gandhi the Man, was published in 1972, followed by the classic vegetarian cookbook inspired by Easwaran and written by his students, Laurel’s Kitchen. His classic book Meditation, now titled Passage Meditation, has sold 195,000 copies to date. His Classics of Indian Spirituality – The Bhagavad Gita, The Dhammapada, and The Upanishads – are all bestsellers in their field.

Under the supervision of Christine Easwaran, our editorial team continues to publish books and talks, drawing on the archive of Easwaran’s unpublished material.