The Upanishads

Among the oldest of India’s spiritual texts, the Upanishads are records of intensive question-and-answer sessions given by illumined sages to their students – in ashrams, at family gatherings, in a royal court, and in the kingdom of Death. The sages share flashes of insight, extraordinary visions, the results of their investigation into consciousness itself. The Upanishads have puzzled and inspired wisdom seekers from Yeats to Schopenhauer. In this best-selling translation, Eknath Easwaran makes these challenging texts more accessible by selecting the passages most relevant to readers seeking timeless truths today. This book 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 that makes this edition truly outstanding. Each sage, each Upanishad, appeals in a different way to the reader’s head and heart. For Easwaran, the Upanishads are part of India’s precious legacy, not just to Hinduism but to humanity, and in that spirit they are offered here.

Author Biography

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 theclassics 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 onmeditation 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 onmeditation 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 theheart 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.