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(LARGE PRINT EDITION) 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.”
Chapter introductions, notes, and the essay "Reading the Upanishads" are by Michael N. Nagler, PhD, who is professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999) brings to this volume a rare combination of credentials. Trained from a young age in one of the purest Sanskrit traditions in India, he had a deep intuitive knowledge of his own Hindu legacy. He also had a great love of Western literature and was chairman of the English department at a major Indian university when he came to the United States on a Fulbright fellowship in 1959.
From the 1960s onwards, Easwaran held classes on mysticism and practical spirituality for a primarily American audience. A gifted teacher, he was able to anticipate the problems that Western readers may have with the concepts underlying the classics of Indian spirituality, and to explain them in fresh and profoundly simple ways.
In 1961 Easwaran founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in California, and in 1967, at the University of California, Berkeley, he taught the first academic course on meditation ever offered for credit at a major American university. He continued to teach passage meditation and his eight-point program for spiritual living to an American and international audience for almost forty years. His books on meditation and the classics of world mysticism have been translated into many languages.
Easwaran drew on the Upanishads and the other Classics of Indian Spirituality throughout his life for deep inspiration. As Huston Smith writes, “it is impossible to get to the heart of those Classics unless you live them, and he did live them.”
Through the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation and its publishing arm, Nilgiri Press, Easwaran continues to reach an ever-growing audience around the world through publications and retreats.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
ISHA The Inner Ruler
KATHA Death as Teacher
BRIHADARANYAKA The Forest of Wisdom
CHANDOGYA Sacred Song
SHVETASHVATARA The Faces of God
MUNDAKA Modes of Knowing
MANDUKYA Consciousness & Its Phases
KENA Who Moves the World?
PRASHNA The Breath of Life
TAITTIRIYA Ascent to Joy
AITAREYA The Unity of Life
MINOR UPANISHADS Beads of Wisdom
TEJOBINDU
ATMA
AMRITABINDU
PARAMAHAMSA
Afterword: A Religion for Modern Times
by Michael N. Nagler
Glossary
Notes
Index