Classics of Indian Spirituality - Softcover

Three best-known texts from the Indian wisdom tradition now available in an elegant boxed set, a perfect gift and source of lasting inspiration. This set of classics - the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, and the Upanishads - comprises the most important, most universal texts from the Indian wisdom tradition. Easwaran's editions have consistently been among the best selling translations, appealing to academics and to general readers alike.These texts pose the fundamental questions of life, asked by thinkers throughout the ages: Who am I? What happens to me after death? What's the purpose of my life? Each classic offers compelling answers, reflecting the style and the personality of the Vedic and Buddhist authors. And Easwaran argues convincingly that each of these great texts is as relevant to readers today as it was centuries ago.The Bhagavad Gita, 'The Song of the Lord', is the best known and most read of all the Indian scriptures. Easwaran held the Gita to be India's greatest gift to the world, and his introduction prepares readers carefully for this core text with a clear, engaging explanation of key concepts, and his translation is confident and lyrical." The Dhammapada" is a collection of the Buddha's teachings, permeated with all the power and practicality of one of the world's most appealing spiritual teachers. Rejecting superstition on the one hand and endless philosophical speculation on the other, he taught the end of suffering and the way to spiritual liberation. Although the Buddhist canon is vast, Easwaran believed that we need nothing more than the Dhammapada to follow the way of the Buddha.The Upanishads are among the oldest of the Indian wisdom texts, the records of question-and-answer sessions given by illumined sages to their students. These students include a teenager daring to question Death himself, a powerful king in his court taking instruction from a highly unconventional sage, and a wife seeking a last lesson in immortality before her wise husband leaves forever for the forest. Each Upanishad reflects extraordinary flashes of insight, gained after many years of investigation of consciousness itself. The sages' discoveries are an expression of what Aldous Huxley called the Perennial Philosophy, the wellspring of all religious faith.What makes Easwaran's editions so successful? In his introductions to all three books, Easwaran conveys his own warmly personal appreciation for these texts and gives a concise overview of the cultural and historical setting for each. His translations have been acknowledged as both reliable and poetic. Chapter introductions and notes are included in all three volumes, and the new foreword places these classics in a contemporary context.About the author: 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 Western 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.He 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 twenty-seven books on meditation and the classics of world mysticism have been translated into twenty-six languages.

Michael N. Nagler is the founder and president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence. He cofounded the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at UC Berkeley, where he is professor emeritus of classics and comparative literature.