Climbing the Blue Mountain: Take the Next Step on Your Spiritual Journey - Softcover

Easwaran, Eknath

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586381490 ISBN 13: 9781586381493

Publisher: Nilgiri Press, 2022

Synopsis

A master spiritual teacher invites us on a journey – to the summit of self-discovery. This is a book to lift the spirit of anyone aiming to live a kinder, calmer, more meaningful life, in the midst of all the challenges facing the world today.

Fifteen warm, engaging essays present different aspects of meditation and the spiritual life, showing how we can rearrange our lives, little by little, to fit a higher purpose. Featuring saints and mystics from East and West, and a host of stories and anecdotes, this book reads like a conversation with a wise friend, with deep spiritual insights that you’ll want to come back to again and again.

Easwaran writes, “When you travel within, every day is fresh with discoveries and challenges, inspiration and profound peace. The scenes I paint for you in the following pages are just a fleeting glimpse of the continuing adventure that awaits you as you enter this world.”

The final essay, “Climbing the Blue Mountain,” which gives the book its title, is a moving account of the spiritual quest. Easwaran compares this with a long journey that he makes from the hot, dusty plains of Central India, up through jungle and plantations, to his home in the cool hills of the Blue Mountains, where his mother waits for him – reminding us that on the spiritual path, we too will one day find our true home.

About this title

About the Author

Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) is respected around the world as an authentic teacher of timeless wisdom. More than two million copies of his books are in print, including his best-selling translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. Easwaran grew up in Kerala, India. As a young man he visited Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram and was deeply influenced by the way that Gandhi brought spiritual values into daily life. He later became professor of English literature at a leading university, and was well known as a speaker and writer before coming to the United States in 1959 on the Fulbright exchange program. A gifted teacher, Easwaran gave talks on meditation and spiritual living for 40 years. In 1961 he founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, a nonprofit organization that publishes his books, videos, and audio talks, and offers retreats and online programs. His meditation class at UC Berkeley in 1968 was the first accredited course on meditation at any major university. Easwaran lived what he taught, giving him lasting appeal as a spiritual teacher and author of deep insight and warmth.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In this book, you can look upon me as a travel agent for the world within. I will be showing you some beautiful posters of spiritual achievement – Sri Ramakrishna, Saint Teresa of Avila, Mahatma Gandhi – and I will be describing some of the most breathtaking inner landscapes. The captions are of a sort you will not find in any other travel agent’s brochures: “Here you see rising a sun which will never set.”

Whenever I speak or write about such sights, everybody gets interested, because all of us are secretly longing for such adventures. “Where can we see this kind of splendor? Are you talking about Helsinki, in the land of the midnight sun?”

“Not at all,” I say. “That’s still the same old sun you see in Buffalo.” And I recite a marvelous stanza from the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita:

If a thousand suns were to rise together,
The blaze of their light would resemble a little,
The supreme splendor of the Lord within.

That is the glory of the Self within you, within us all, and the journey inwards to find this Self is the greatest adventure known to mankind. . . .

This is the great realization that comes to all those who have become at home in the world within. No external novelty is needed; when you travel within, every day is fresh with discoveries and challenges, inspiration and profound peace. The scenes I paint for you in the following pages are but a fleeting glimpse of the continuing adventure that awaits you as you enter this world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Nilgiri Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586381490
• ISBN 13: 9781586381493
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 175