To capture the essence of the Gita, the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada, I offer what I have learned personally from trying to live them out in a complex, hurried world. I write not as a scholar, but as an explorer back from a long, long voyage eager to tell what he has found.
Yet however personal the exploration, these discoveries are universal. So it is not surprising that at the heart of each of these classic lies a myth--variations on the age-old story of a hero in quest of wisdom that will redeem the world. In the Upanishads, a teenager goes to the King of Death to find the secret of immortality. In the Gita, standing between opposing armies on the eve of Armageddon, the warrior-prince Arjuna seeks guidance from an immortal teacher, Sri Krishna. And behind the Dhammapada lies the story of the Buddha himself, a true story woven into legend: a prince who forsakes his throne to find a way for all the world to go beyond sorrow in this life. These old stories are our own, as relevant today as ever. Myth always involves the listener. We identify with its heroes; their crises mirror ours. Their stories remind us not only what these scriptures mean but why they matter. Like the texts themselves, they seek a response in our own lives.
---Eknath Easwaran, in the Series Preface in "Essence of the Dhammapada"---
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