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BHAGAVADGITA PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Sir Edwin Arnold | 112 pages | 01 Feb 1994 | Dover Publications Inc. | 9780486277820 | English | New York, United States What Is the ? | The Bhagavad Gita’s Influence on - Yoga Journal

The timeless message of the Bhagavad Gita does not refer only to one historical battle, but to the cosmic conflict between good and evil: life as a series of battles between Spirit and matter, soul and body, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, health and disease, changelessness and transitoriness, self-control and temptations, discrimination and the blind sense-mind The devotee should analyze his daily mental and physical actions to determine just how much of his life is ruled by the ego's ignorance delusion and body consciousness, and how much he is able to express of the soul's wisdom and divine nature. Yoga meditation is the process of cultivating and stabilizing the awareness of one's real nature, through definite spiritual and psychophysical methods and laws by which the narrow ego, the flawed hereditary human consciousness, is displaced by the consciousness of the soul. Each person has to fight his own battle of . It is a war not only worth winning, but in the divine order of the and of the eternal relationship between the soul and , a war that sooner or later must be won. In the holy Bhagavad Gita, the quickest attainment of that victory is assured to the devotee who, through undiscourageable practice of the divine science of yoga meditation, learns like to hearken to the inner wisdom-song of Spirit. Sri 's message in the Bhagavad Gita is the perfect answer for the modern age, and any age: Yoga of dutiful action, of nonattachment, and of meditation for God-realization. To work without the inner peace of God is Hades; and to work with His joy ever bubbling through the soul is to carry a portable paradise within, wherever one goes. The path advocated by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is the moderate, medium, golden path, both for the busy man of the world and for the highest spiritual aspirant. To follow the path advocated by the Bhagavad Gita would be their salvation, for it is a book of universal Self-realization, introducing man to his true Self, the soul—showing him how he has evolved from Spirit, how he may fulfill on earth his righteous duties, and how he may return to God. The Gita's wisdom is not for dry intellectualists to perform mental gymnastics with its sayings for the entertainment of dogmatists; but rather to show a man or woman living in the world, householder or renunciant, how to live a balanced life that includes the actual contact of God, by following the step-by-step methods of yoga. In the beginning of creation and the advent of man, the Infinite impregnated His intelligent creative Cosmic Energy Maha-Prakriti or Holy Ghost with not only the power of repulsion—the individualizing of Cosmic Consciousness into souls and a universe of matter—but also with the power of recalling souls from their prodigal wanderings in matter back to unity with Spirit. All things come from, are made of and sustained by, and ultimately resolve into this intelligent Cosmic Energy, and thence into Spirit. Ascension follows in reverse the exact course of descension. In man, that course is the inner highway to the Infinite, the only route to divine union for followers of all religions in all ages. By whatever bypath of beliefs or practices a being reaches that singular highway, the final ascension from body consciousness to Spirit is the same for everyone: the withdrawal of life and consciousness from the senses upward through the gates of light in the subtle cerebrospinal centers, dissolving the consciousness of matter into life force, life force into mind, mind into soul, and soul into Spirit. The method of ascension is , the eternal science that has been integral in creation from its inception. The Kriya Yoga technique, taught by Krishna to Arjuna and referred to in Gita chapters IV and V—28, is the supreme spiritual science of yoga meditation. Babaji himself ordained me to spread this holy science of God-union Any devotee who will emulate Arjuna—epitome of the ideal disciple—and perform his rightful duty with nonattachment, and perfect his practice of yoga meditation through a technique such as Kriya Yoga, will similarly draw the blessings and guidance of God and win the victory of Self-realization. As God talked with Arjuna, so will He talk with you. As He lifted up the spirit and consciousness of Arjuna, so will He uplift you. As He granted Arjuna supreme spiritual vision, so will He confer enlightenment on you. We have seen in the Bhagavad Gita the story of the soul's journey back to God—a journey each one must make. According to Dennis Hudson, there is an overlap between Vedic and Tantric rituals with the teachings found in the Bhagavad Gita. The Shatapatha , for example, mentions the absolute who dwells in every human being. A story in this vedic text, states Hudson, highlights the meaning of the name Vasudeva as the 'shining one who dwells in all things and in whom all things dwell', and the meaning of to be the 'pervading actor'. In Bhagavad Gita, similarly, 'Krishna identified himself both with Vasudeva, Vishnu and their meanings'. Soon the work was translated into other European languages such as French , German, and Russian. John Garrett, and the efforts being supported by Sir. Mark Cubbon. In , Larson stated that "a complete listing of Gita translations and a related secondary bibliography would be nearly endless". According to Sargeant, the Gita is "said to have been translated at least times, in both poetic and prose forms". The translations and interpretations of the Gita have been so diverse that these have been used to support apparently contradictory political and philosophical values. For example, state Galvin Flood and Charles Martin, these interpretations have been used to support "pacifism to aggressive nationalism" in politics, from "monism to theism" in philosophy. According to the exegesis scholar Robert Minor, the Gita is "probably the most translated of any Asian text", but many modern versions heavily reflect the views of the organization or person who does the translating and distribution. In Minor's view, the Harvard scholar Franklin Edgerton's English translation and Richard Garbe's German translation are closer to the text than many others. The Gita has also been translated into European languages other than English. In , passages from the Gita were part of the first direct translation of into German, appearing in a book through which Friedrich Schlegel became known as the founder of Indian philology in Germany. The Gita Press has published the Gita in multiple Indian languages. Raghava Iyengar translated the Gita into Tamil in sandam metre poetic form. Mother Geeta in the similar shloka form. The book is significant in that unlike other commentaries of the Bhagavad Gita, which focus on yoga , , and yoga in relation to the Gita, Yogananda's work stresses the training of one's mind, or raja yoga. Bhagavad Gita integrates various schools of thought, notably , and Yoga, and other theistic ideas. It remains a popular text for commentators belonging to various philosophical schools. However, its composite nature also leads to varying interpretations of the text and historic scholars have written bhashya commentaries on it. According to Richard Davis, the Gita has attracted much scholarly interest in Indian history and some commentaries have survived in the Sanskrit language alone. The Bhagavad Gita is referred to in the , and numerous scholars including Shankara , Bhaskara , Abhinavagupta of tradition, and wrote commentaries on it. He calls the Gita as "an epitome of the essentials of the whole Vedic teaching ". Abhinavagupta was a theologian and philosopher of the Kashmir Shaivism tradition. The Gita text he commented on, is slightly different recension than the one of . He interprets its teachings in the Shaiva Advaita monism tradition quite similar to Adi Shankara, but with the difference that he considers both soul and matter to be metaphysically real and eternal. Their respective interpretations of jnana yoga are also somewhat different, and Abhinavagupta uses Atman, , Shiva, and Krishna interchangeably. Abhinavagupta's commentary is notable for its citations of more ancient scholars, in a style similar to Adi Shankara. However, the texts he quotes have not survived into the modern era. Ramanuja was a Hindu theologian, philosopher, and an exponent of the Sri Vishnu tradition in 11th and early 12th century. Like his Vedanta peers, Ramanuja wrote a bhashya commentary on the Gita. Madhva , a commentator of the school, [] wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which exemplifies the thinking of the "dualist" school Dvaita Vedanta. Madhva's commentary has attracted secondary works by pontiffs of the Dvaita Vedanta monasteries such as Padmanabha , Jayatirtha , and Raghavendra Tirtha. The text states that Dasasloki — possibly authored by Nimbarka — teaches the essence of the Gita ; the Gita prakashika interprets the Gita also in a hybrid monist-dualist manner. the proponent of "Suddhadvaita" or pure non-dualism, wrote a commentary on the Gita, the "Sattvadipika". According to him, the true Self is the Supreme Brahman. Bhakti is the most important means of attaining liberation. With its translation and study by Western scholars beginning in the early 18th century, the Bhagavad Gita gained a growing appreciation and popularity. At a time when Indian nationalists were seeking an indigenous basis for social and political action against colonial rule, Bhagavad Gita provided them with a rationale for their activism and fight against injustice. The Bhagavad-Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe. Robert Oppenheimer , American physicist and director of the Manhattan Project , learned Sanskrit in and read the Bhagavad Gita in the original form, citing it later as one of the most influential books to shape his philosophy of life. Oppenheimer later recalled that, while witnessing the explosion of the Trinity nuclear test , he thought of verses from the Bhagavad Gita XI,12 :. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Ralph Waldo Emerson, remarked the following after his first study of the Gita , and thereafter frequently quoted the text in his journals and letters, particularly the "work with inner renunciation" idea in his writings on man's quest for spiritual energy: []. I owed — my friend and I owed — a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Geeta. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us. The Gita presents its teaching in the context of a war where the warrior Arjuna is in inner crisis about whether he should renounce and abandon the battlefield, or fight and kill. He is advised by Krishna to do his sva- , a term that has been variously interpreted. According to the Indologist Paul Hacker, the contextual meaning in the Gita is the "dharma of a particular ". To render it in English for non- for its better understanding, one must ask what is the sva-dharma for the non-Hindus? The Lord, states Chatterjee, created millions and millions of people, and he did not ordain dharma only for Indians [Hindus] and "make all the others dharma-less", for "are not the non-Hindus also his children"? According to Chatterjee, the Krishna's religion of Gita is "not so narrow-minded". The Gita has been cited and criticized as a Hindu text that supports varna-dharma and the caste system. Ambedkar , born in a family and the principal architect of the Constitution of India, criticized the text for its stance on caste and for "defending certain dogmas of religion on philosophical grounds". To Ambedkar, states Klausen, it is a text of "mostly barbaric, religious particularisms" offering "a defence of the duty to make war and kill, the assertion that varna derives from birth rather than worth or aptitude, and the injunction to perform karma " neither perfunctorily nor egotistically. The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste]. Nadkarni and Zelliot present the opposite view, citing early Bhakti saints of the Krishna-tradition such as the 13th-century . For Dnyaneshwar, people err when they see themselves distinct from each other and Krishna, and these distinctions vanish as soon as they accept, understand and enter with love unto Krishna. According to , sva-dharma in the Gita does not mean "caste duty", rather it means the duty that comes with one's life situation mother, father, husband, wife or profession soldier, judge, teacher, doctor. For Vivekananda, the Gita was an egalitarian scripture that rejected caste and other hierarchies because of its verses such as For seeing the Lord as the same everywhere present, he does not destroy the Self by the Self, and thus he goes to the highest goal. Aurobindo modernises the concept of dharma and svabhava by internalising it, away from the social order and its duties towards one's personal capacities, which leads to a radical individualism, [] "finding the fulfilment of the purpose of existence in the individual alone. Gandhi's view differed from Aurobindo's view. According to Jacqueline Hirst , the universalist neo-Hindu interpretations of dharma in the Gita is modernism, though any study of pre-modern distant foreign cultures is inherently subject to suspicions about "control of knowledge" and bias on the various sides. Krishna is presented as a teacher who "drives Arjuna and the reader beyond initial preconceptions". The Gita is a cohesively knit pedagogic text, not a list of norms. Novel interpretations of the Gita , along with apologetics on it, have been a part of the modern era revisionism and renewal movements within Hinduism. Vivekananda's works contained numerous references to the Gita , such as his lectures on the four — Bhakti, Jnana, Karma, and Raja. According to Ronald Neufeldt, it was the Theosophical Society that dedicated much attention and energy to the allegorical interpretation of the Gita , along with religious texts from around the world, after and given H. Blavatsky, Subba Rao and Anne Besant writings. These late 19th- century theosophical writings called the Gita as a "path of true spirituality" and "teaching nothing more than the basis of every system of philosophy and scientific endeavor", triumphing over other "Samkhya paths" of Hinduism that "have degenerated into superstition and demoralized India by leading people away from practical action". In the Gita , Krishna persuades Arjuna to wage war where the enemy includes some of his own relatives and friends. In light of the non- violence teachings in Hindu scriptures, the Gita has been criticized as violating the Ahimsa value, or alternatively, as supporting political violence. During the freedom movement in India, Hindus considered active "burning and drowning of British goods" which technically illegal under the colonial laws, were viewed as a moral and just war for the sake of liberty and righteous values of the type Gita discusses. Savarkar "often turned to Hindu scripture such as the Bhagavad Gita, arguing that the text justified violence against those who would harm Mother India. Mahatma Gandhi credited his commitment for ahimsa to the Gita. For Gandhi, the Gita is teaching that people should fight for justice and righteous values, that they should never meekly suffer injustice to avoid a war. According to the Indologist Ananya Vajpeyi, the Gita does not elaborate on the means or stages of war, nor on ahimsa , except for stating that " ahimsa is virtuous and characterizes an awakened, steadfast, ethical man" in verses such as Gandhian ahimsa is in fact "the essence of the entire Gita ", according to Vajpeyi. Instead, it is teaching peace and discussing one's duty to examine what is right and then act with pure intentions, when one's faces difficult and repugnant choices. Philip Glass retold the story of Gandhi's early development as an activist in South Africa through the text of the Gita in the opera Satyagraha The entire libretto of the opera consists of sayings from the Gita sung in the original Sanskrit. In Douglas Cuomo's Arjuna's dilemma , the philosophical dilemma faced by Arjuna is dramatised in operatic form with a blend of Indian and Western music styles. The Sanskrit film, Bhagavad Gita , directed by G. Steven Pressfield acknowledges that the Gita was his inspiration, the golfer character in his novel is Arjuna, the caddie is Krishna, states Rosen. The movie, however, uses the plot but glosses over the teachings unlike the novel. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Bhagavad Gita disambiguation. For other uses, see Gita disambiguation. Hindu scripture; part of the . Mahabharata. Chronology of . See also: Smarta Tradition. Face pages of chapters 1, 2 and 3 of historic Bhagavad Gita manuscripts. Top: Bengali script ; Bottom: Gurmukhi script. Selfless service It is not those who lack energy nor those who refrain from action, but those who work without expecting reward who attain the goal of meditation, Theirs is true renunciation. Main article: . Bhagavad Gita and related commentary literature exists in numerous Indian languages. Chapter 11 of the Gita refers to Krishna as Vishvarupa above. This is an idea found in the . Main article: . Main article: . How a Gita recitation sounds? On motives. Verse 2. On meditation. Main article: Jnana yoga. Main article: Dharma. Main article: . Cover pages of early Gita translations. Main article: Influence of Bhagavad Gita. The Indologist Franklin Edgerton was among the early scholars and a translator of the Gita who believed that the Gita was a later composition that was inserted into the epic, at a much later date, by a creative poet of great intellectual power intimately aware of emotional and spiritual aspects of human existence. Further, he states that the Mahabharata has numerous such interpolations and inserting the Gita would not be unusual. This text, states Fitzgerald, must have been integral to the earliest version of the epic. Further, states Basham, the verses that discuss Gita's "motiveless action" doctrine was probably authored by someone else and these constitute the most important ethical teaching of the text. Fragments of this early text have survived into the modern era. The Gita attempts to present a harmonious, universalist answer, state Deutsch and Dalvi. Bhagavad Gita is a part of this recollection. Arjuna's chariot is the body. The blind king Dhritarashtra is the mind under the spell of ignorance, and his hundred sons are man's numerous evil tendencies. The battle, a perennial one, is between the power of good and the power of evil. The warrior who listens to the advice of the Lord speaking from within will triumph in this battle and attain the Highest Good. That is a view which the general character and the actual language of the epic does not justify and, if pressed, would turn the straightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a constant, laborious and somewhat puerile mystification But there is this much of truth in the view, that the setting of the doctrine though not symbolical, is certainly typical. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Tilak and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as notable commentators see: Gambhirananda , p. Tilak and Gandhi and their use to inspire the independence movement see: Sargeant , p. In the literature, the quote usually appears in the form shatterer of worlds, because this was the form in which it first appeared in print, in Time magazine on 8 November Roberts Bros. Book one the first, page Robert Neil Minor ed. Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavad Gita. State University of New York Press. Nadkarni , pp. Robinson Jacob Neusner ed. Westminster John Knox Press. Retrieved 16 May Bhagavad-Gita: The word of God. Signet Classic. Peeters Publishers. Asian Humanities Press. The Essence of Bhagavad Gita. Academic Publishers. Understanding Asian Philosophy. Northwestern University Press. Gopinatha Rao Elements of . Motilal Banarsidass. Robert L. Brown ed. Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God. Williams Handbook of . Oxford University Press. Accomplishing all that would require a human who lived several thousand years, so scholars do place the story of his achievements as those of one man in the area of mythology. They refer to as a mythical or symbolic author of the Mahabharata. Advaita Ashram. The Bhagavad Gita, Part 2. Harvard University Press. Fitzgerald Journal of the American Academy of Religion. The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism. Notes sur la Bhagavadgita. Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner. Hinduism and the Religious Arts. Lochtefeld The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Volume 1. The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Bloomsbury Publishing. Bhagavad Gita — The Song of God. New American Library. Cambridge University Press. Moral Passion and Christian Ethics. Philosophy East and West. University of Hawai'i Press. Framarin A descriptive catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts in the Adyar Library. Adyar Library Oriental Pub. This is especially remarkable in the light of the numerous variants for the remainder of the Mahabharata, some of which are quite serious. Secondary insertions are found in individual manuscripts of the Gita, but these are clearly secondary. The number of stanzas in the Gita is , a number confirmed by Shankara, and possibly deliberately chosen in order to prevent interpolations. The Bhagavad Gita 3rd ed. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal, Land- en Volkenkunde. Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. LXXV : 36— Indian Literature. Maxwell Theological Studies. Sage Publications. Ranade Mysticism in Maharashtra: Indian Mysticism. Bryant Krishna: A Sourcebook. The Bhagavad Gita. Plott et al. As we have already observed, this is the basic and ineradicable distinction between Hinduism and Buddhism". The concept of anatta, or anatman, is a departure from the Hindu belief in atman "the self". Put very briefly, this is the [Buddhist] doctrine that human beings have no soul, no self, no unchanging essence. Columbia University Press. Springer Science. Coward Raju Structural Depths of Indian Thought. Nadkarni , p. Nilgiri Press. Phillips Johnson Julius Lipner ed. Bangalore: Wesleyan Mission Press. Retrieved 18 January Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Winternitz , p. Business Standard. Retrieved 12 October Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada; et al. Bhaktivedanta Book Trust edition. Back to Godhead. Retrieved 8 February Brill Academic. Isaeva Shankara and Indian Philosophy. Indich Consciousness in . Bartley Sircar Indian Epigraphy. Gordon Melton McLeod Guy L. Beck ed. Krishnamurti Sharma Other editions: , , Jim Rankin, editor. The author is listed as M. Gandhi; Mahadev Desai, translator. The Collected Works of . Bhagavad Gita. The Telegraph. Young India. Archived from the original on 31 July Retrieved 28 July Robert Oppenheimer on the Trinity test ". Atomic Archive. Retrieved 23 May Retrieved 6 March American Sociological Review. Elena Loizidou ed. Disobedience: Concept and Practice. Retrieved 29 February From untouchable to Dalit: essays on the Ambedkar Movement. Manohar Publications. The Political Philosophy of . Wesleyan University, , p. Retrieved 9 February The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata. University of Chicago Press. Easwaran, Eknath The Bhagavad-Gita. Robert Oppenheimer". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. American Philosophical Society. Bhagavadgita | Definition, Contents, & Significance | Britannica

The devotee should analyze his daily mental and physical actions to determine just how much of his life is ruled by the ego's ignorance delusion and body consciousness, and how much he is able to express of the soul's wisdom and divine nature. Yoga meditation is the process of cultivating and stabilizing the awareness of one's real nature, through definite spiritual and psychophysical methods and laws by which the narrow ego, the flawed hereditary human consciousness, is displaced by the consciousness of the soul. Each person has to fight his own battle of Kurukshetra. It is a war not only worth winning, but in the divine order of the universe and of the eternal relationship between the soul and God, a war that sooner or later must be won. In the holy Bhagavad Gita, the quickest attainment of that victory is assured to the devotee who, through undiscourageable practice of the divine science of yoga meditation, learns like Arjuna to hearken to the inner wisdom-song of Spirit. Sri Krishna's message in the Bhagavad Gita is the perfect answer for the modern age, and any age: Yoga of dutiful action, of nonattachment, and of meditation for God-realization. To work without the inner peace of God is Hades; and to work with His joy ever bubbling through the soul is to carry a portable paradise within, wherever one goes. The path advocated by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is the moderate, medium, golden path, both for the busy man of the world and for the highest spiritual aspirant. To follow the path advocated by the Bhagavad Gita would be their salvation, for it is a book of universal Self-realization, introducing man to his true Self, the soul—showing him how he has evolved from Spirit, how he may fulfill on earth his righteous duties, and how he may return to God. The Gita's wisdom is not for dry intellectualists to perform mental gymnastics with its sayings for the entertainment of dogmatists; but rather to show a man or woman living in the world, householder or renunciant, how to live a balanced life that includes the actual contact of God, by following the step-by-step methods of yoga. In the beginning of creation and the advent of man, the Infinite impregnated His intelligent creative Cosmic Energy Maha-Prakriti or Holy Ghost with not only the power of repulsion—the individualizing of Cosmic Consciousness into souls and a universe of matter—but also with the power of recalling souls from their prodigal wanderings in matter back to unity with Spirit. All things come from, are made of and sustained by, and ultimately resolve into this intelligent Cosmic Energy, and thence into Spirit. Ascension follows in reverse the exact course of descension. In man, that course is the inner highway to the Infinite, the only route to divine union for followers of all religions in all ages. By whatever bypath of beliefs or practices a being reaches that singular highway, the final ascension from body consciousness to Spirit is the same for everyone: the withdrawal of life and consciousness from the senses upward through the gates of light in the subtle cerebrospinal centers, dissolving the consciousness of matter into life force, life force into mind, mind into soul, and soul into Spirit. The method of ascension is Raja Yoga, the eternal science that has been integral in creation from its inception. Composed perhaps in the 1st or 2nd century ce , it is commonly known as the Gita. On the brink of a great battle between warring branches of the same family, Arjuna is suddenly overwhelmed with misgivings about the justice of killing so many people, some of whom are his friends and relatives, and expresses his qualms to Krishna, his charioteer—a combination bodyguard and court historian. He persuades Arjuna to do his duty as a man born into the class of warriors, which is to fight, and the battle takes place. He argues that one can kill only the body; the soul is immortal and transmigrates into another body at death or, for those who have understood the true teachings, achieves release moksha or extinction nirvana , freedom from the wheel of rebirth. Krishna also resolves the tension between the Vedic injunction to sacrifice and to amass a record of good actions karma and the late Upanishadic injunction to meditate and amass knowledge jnana. The solution he provides is the path of devotion bhakti. With right understanding, one need not renounce actions but merely the desire for the fruits of actions, acting without desire nishkama karma. The moral impasse is not so much resolved as destroyed when Krishna assumes his doomsday form—a fiery, gaping mouth, swallowing up all creatures in the universe at the end of the eon—after Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his true cosmic nature. In the middle of this terrifying epiphany , Arjuna apologizes to Krishna for the many times when he had rashly and casually called out to him as a friend. He begs Krishna to return to his previous form, which the god consents to do, resuming his role as intimate human companion of the warrior Arjuna. The Gita has always been cherished by many Hindus for its spiritual guidance, but it achieved new prominence in the 19th century, when the British in India lauded it as the Hindu equivalent of the New Testament and when American philosophers—particularly the New England Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau —considered it to be the pivotal Hindu text. It was also an important text for Mohandas K. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Ralph Waldo Emerson, remarked the following after his first study of the Gita , and thereafter frequently quoted the text in his journals and letters, particularly the "work with inner renunciation" idea in his writings on man's quest for spiritual energy: []. I owed — my friend and I owed — a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Geeta. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us. The Gita presents its teaching in the context of a war where the warrior Arjuna is in inner crisis about whether he should renounce and abandon the battlefield, or fight and kill. He is advised by Krishna to do his sva-dharma , a term that has been variously interpreted. According to the Indologist Paul Hacker, the contextual meaning in the Gita is the "dharma of a particular varna". To render it in English for non-Hindus for its better understanding, one must ask what is the sva-dharma for the non-Hindus? The Lord, states Chatterjee, created millions and millions of people, and he did not ordain dharma only for Indians [Hindus] and "make all the others dharma-less", for "are not the non-Hindus also his children"? According to Chatterjee, the Krishna's religion of Gita is "not so narrow-minded". The Gita has been cited and criticized as a Hindu text that supports varna-dharma and the caste system. Ambedkar , born in a Dalit family and the principal architect of the Constitution of India, criticized the text for its stance on caste and for "defending certain dogmas of religion on philosophical grounds". To Ambedkar, states Klausen, it is a text of "mostly barbaric, religious particularisms" offering "a defence of the kshatriya duty to make war and kill, the assertion that varna derives from birth rather than worth or aptitude, and the injunction to perform karma " neither perfunctorily nor egotistically. The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste]. Nadkarni and Zelliot present the opposite view, citing early Bhakti saints of the Krishna-tradition such as the 13th-century Dnyaneshwar. For Dnyaneshwar, people err when they see themselves distinct from each other and Krishna, and these distinctions vanish as soon as they accept, understand and enter with love unto Krishna. According to Swami Vivekananda, sva-dharma in the Gita does not mean "caste duty", rather it means the duty that comes with one's life situation mother, father, husband, wife or profession soldier, judge, teacher, doctor. For Vivekananda, the Gita was an egalitarian scripture that rejected caste and other hierarchies because of its verses such as For seeing the Lord as the same everywhere present, he does not destroy the Self by the Self, and thus he goes to the highest goal. Aurobindo modernises the concept of dharma and svabhava by internalising it, away from the social order and its duties towards one's personal capacities, which leads to a radical individualism, [] "finding the fulfilment of the purpose of existence in the individual alone. Gandhi's view differed from Aurobindo's view. According to Jacqueline Hirst , the universalist neo-Hindu interpretations of dharma in the Gita is modernism, though any study of pre-modern distant foreign cultures is inherently subject to suspicions about "control of knowledge" and bias on the various sides. Krishna is presented as a teacher who "drives Arjuna and the reader beyond initial preconceptions". The Gita is a cohesively knit pedagogic text, not a list of norms. Novel interpretations of the Gita , along with apologetics on it, have been a part of the modern era revisionism and renewal movements within Hinduism. Vivekananda's works contained numerous references to the Gita , such as his lectures on the four yogas — Bhakti, Jnana, Karma, and Raja. According to Ronald Neufeldt, it was the Theosophical Society that dedicated much attention and energy to the allegorical interpretation of the Gita , along with religious texts from around the world, after and given H. Blavatsky, Subba Rao and Anne Besant writings. These late 19th-century theosophical writings called the Gita as a "path of true spirituality" and "teaching nothing more than the basis of every system of philosophy and scientific endeavor", triumphing over other "Samkhya paths" of Hinduism that "have degenerated into superstition and demoralized India by leading people away from practical action". In the Gita , Krishna persuades Arjuna to wage war where the enemy includes some of his own relatives and friends. In light of the Ahimsa non-violence teachings in Hindu scriptures, the Gita has been criticized as violating the Ahimsa value, or alternatively, as supporting political violence. During the freedom movement in India, Hindus considered active "burning and drowning of British goods" which technically illegal under the colonial laws, were viewed as a moral and just war for the sake of liberty and righteous values of the type Gita discusses. Savarkar "often turned to Hindu scripture such as the Bhagavad Gita, arguing that the text justified violence against those who would harm Mother India. Mahatma Gandhi credited his commitment for ahimsa to the Gita. For Gandhi, the Gita is teaching that people should fight for justice and righteous values, that they should never meekly suffer injustice to avoid a war. According to the Indologist Ananya Vajpeyi, the Gita does not elaborate on the means or stages of war, nor on ahimsa , except for stating that " ahimsa is virtuous and characterizes an awakened, steadfast, ethical man" in verses such as Gandhian ahimsa is in fact "the essence of the entire Gita ", according to Vajpeyi. Instead, it is teaching peace and discussing one's duty to examine what is right and then act with pure intentions, when one's faces difficult and repugnant choices. Philip Glass retold the story of Gandhi's early development as an activist in South Africa through the text of the Gita in the opera Satyagraha The entire libretto of the opera consists of sayings from the Gita sung in the original Sanskrit. In Douglas Cuomo's Arjuna's dilemma , the philosophical dilemma faced by Arjuna is dramatised in operatic form with a blend of Indian and Western music styles. The Sanskrit film, Bhagavad Gita , directed by G. Steven Pressfield acknowledges that the Gita was his inspiration, the golfer character in his novel is Arjuna, the caddie is Krishna, states Rosen. The movie, however, uses the plot but glosses over the teachings unlike the novel. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Bhagavad Gita disambiguation. For other uses, see Gita disambiguation. Hindu scripture; part of the Mahabharata. Ramayana Mahabharata. Chronology of Hindu texts. See also: Smarta Tradition. Face pages of chapters 1, 2 and 3 of historic Bhagavad Gita manuscripts. Top: Bengali script ; Bottom: Gurmukhi script. Selfless service It is not those who lack energy nor those who refrain from action, but those who work without expecting reward who attain the goal of meditation, Theirs is true renunciation. Main article: Vishvarupa. Bhagavad Gita and related commentary literature exists in numerous Indian languages. Chapter 11 of the Gita refers to Krishna as Vishvarupa above. This is an idea found in the Rigveda. Main article: Karma yoga. Main article: Bhakti yoga. How a Gita recitation sounds? On motives. Verse 2. On meditation. Main article: Jnana yoga. Main article: Dharma. Main article: Moksha. Cover pages of early Gita translations. Main article: Influence of Bhagavad Gita. The Indologist Franklin Edgerton was among the early scholars and a translator of the Gita who believed that the Gita was a later composition that was inserted into the epic, at a much later date, by a creative poet of great intellectual power intimately aware of emotional and spiritual aspects of human existence. Further, he states that the Mahabharata has numerous such interpolations and inserting the Gita would not be unusual. This text, states Fitzgerald, must have been integral to the earliest version of the epic. Further, states Basham, the verses that discuss Gita's "motiveless action" doctrine was probably authored by someone else and these constitute the most important ethical teaching of the text. Fragments of this early text have survived into the modern era. The Gita attempts to present a harmonious, universalist answer, state Deutsch and Dalvi. Bhagavad Gita is a part of this recollection. Arjuna's chariot is the body. The blind king Dhritarashtra is the mind under the spell of ignorance, and his hundred sons are man's numerous evil tendencies. The battle, a perennial one, is between the power of good and the power of evil. The warrior who listens to the advice of the Lord speaking from within will triumph in this battle and attain the Highest Good. That is a view which the general character and the actual language of the epic does not justify and, if pressed, would turn the straightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a constant, laborious and somewhat puerile mystification But there is this much of truth in the view, that the setting of the doctrine though not symbolical, is certainly typical. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Tilak and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as notable commentators see: Gambhirananda , p. Tilak and Gandhi and their use to inspire the independence movement see: Sargeant , p. In the literature, the quote usually appears in the form shatterer of worlds, because this was the form in which it first appeared in print, in Time magazine on 8 November Roberts Bros. Book one the first, page Robert Neil Minor ed. Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavad Gita. State University of New York Press. Nadkarni , pp. Robinson Jacob Neusner ed. Westminster John Knox Press. Retrieved 16 May Bhagavad-Gita: The word of God. Signet Classic. Peeters Publishers. Asian Humanities Press. The Essence of Bhagavad Gita. Academic Publishers. Understanding Asian Philosophy. Northwestern University Press. Gopinatha Rao Elements of Hindu Iconography. Motilal Banarsidass. Robert L. Brown ed. Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God. Williams Handbook of Hindu Mythology. Oxford University Press. Accomplishing all that would require a human who lived several thousand years, so scholars do place the story of his achievements as those of one man in the area of mythology. They refer to Vyasa as a mythical or symbolic author of the Mahabharata. Advaita Ashram. The Bhagavad Gita, Part 2. Harvard University Press. Fitzgerald Journal of the American Academy of Religion. The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism. Notes sur la Bhagavadgita. Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner. Hinduism and the Religious Arts. Lochtefeld The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Volume 1. The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Bloomsbury Publishing. Bhagavad Gita — The Song of God. New American Library. Cambridge University Press. Moral Passion and Christian Ethics. Philosophy East and West. University of Hawai'i Press. Framarin A descriptive catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts in the Adyar Library. Adyar Library Oriental Pub. This is especially remarkable in the light of the numerous variants for the remainder of the Mahabharata, some of which are quite serious. Secondary insertions are found in individual manuscripts of the Gita, but these are clearly secondary. The number of stanzas in the Gita is , a number confirmed by Shankara, and possibly deliberately chosen in order to prevent interpolations. The Bhagavad Gita 3rd ed. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal, Land- en Volkenkunde. Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. LXXV : 36— Indian Literature. Maxwell Theological Studies. Sage Publications. Ranade Mysticism in Maharashtra: Indian Mysticism. Bryant Krishna: A Sourcebook. The Bhagavad Gita. Plott et al. As we have already observed, this is the basic and ineradicable distinction between Hinduism and Buddhism". The concept of anatta, or anatman, is a departure from the Hindu belief in atman "the self". Put very briefly, this is the [Buddhist] doctrine that human beings have no soul, no self, no unchanging essence. Columbia University Press. Springer Science. Coward Raju Structural Depths of Indian Thought. Nadkarni , p. Nilgiri Press. Phillips Johnson Julius Lipner ed. Bangalore: Wesleyan Mission Press. Retrieved 18 January Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Winternitz , p. Business Standard. Retrieved 12 October Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada; et al. Bhaktivedanta Book Trust edition. Bhagavad Gita - Wikipedia

In man, that course is the inner highway to the Infinite, the only route to divine union for followers of all religions in all ages. By whatever bypath of beliefs or practices a being reaches that singular highway, the final ascension from body consciousness to Spirit is the same for everyone: the withdrawal of life and consciousness from the senses upward through the gates of light in the subtle cerebrospinal centers, dissolving the consciousness of matter into life force, life force into mind, mind into soul, and soul into Spirit. The method of ascension is Raja Yoga, the eternal science that has been integral in creation from its inception. The Kriya Yoga technique, taught by Krishna to Arjuna and referred to in Gita chapters IV and V—28, is the supreme spiritual science of yoga meditation. Babaji himself ordained me to spread this holy science of God-union Any devotee who will emulate Arjuna—epitome of the ideal disciple—and perform his rightful duty with nonattachment, and perfect his practice of yoga meditation through a technique such as Kriya Yoga, will similarly draw the blessings and guidance of God and win the victory of Self-realization. As God talked with Arjuna, so will He talk with you. As He lifted up the spirit and consciousness of Arjuna, so will He uplift you. As He granted Arjuna supreme spiritual vision, so will He confer enlightenment on you. We have seen in the Bhagavad Gita the story of the soul's journey back to God—a journey each one must make. O divine soul! Close Are you sure you want to cancel your registration. Yes No. Back to Schedule Donate. The Spiritual Battle and Ultimate Victory in Everyday Life The timeless message of the Bhagavad Gita does not refer only to one historical battle, but to the cosmic conflict between good and evil: life as a series of battles between Spirit and matter, soul and body, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, health and disease, changelessness and transitoriness, self-control and temptations, discrimination and the blind sense-mind The Gita's Balanced Path: Meditation Plus Right Activity [Lord Krishna's] life demonstrates the ideal not of renunciation of action—which is a conflicting doctrine for man circumscribed by a world whose life breath is activity—but rather the renunciation of earth-binding desires for the fruits of action. External Websites. Her research and teaching interests revolve around two See Article History. Krishna, of the Hindu god Vishnu, mounted on a horse pulling Arjuna, the human hero of the epic poem Mahabharata ; 17th-century illustration. Read More on This Topic. In quasi-dialogue form, it is relatively Get exclusive access to content from our First Edition with your subscription. Subscribe today. Learn More in these related Britannica articles:. In quasi-dialogue form, it is relatively brief, consisting of verses divided into 18 chapters. When the opposing parties in the Mahabharata war stand ready to begin battle, Arjuna, the hero of the…. Not itself a shruti , it has, however, been accorded the status of an…. Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God. Bhagavad Gita Gyan Yagna. Imparts Brahma Vidya Unable to deal with the immediate problem at hand, Arjun approached Shree Krishna for a palliative to overcome the anguish he was experiencing. Teaches the Practice of Yog The Bhagavad Gita is not content with providing a lofty philosophical understanding; it also describes clear-cut techniques for implementing its spiritual precepts for everyday life. Encompasses all Aspects of Life Inexperienced spiritual practitioners often separate spirituality from temporal life; some look on beatitude as something to be attained in the hereafter. Subscribe by email Start your day with a nugget of timeless inspiring wisdom from the Holy Bhagavad Gita delivered straight to your email! Full Name: Email: type above digits here:. Follow Swami Mukundananda. To share feedback or volunteer for this project, write to : "d i v a k a r at jkyog dot in".

Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God – Swami Mukundananda

He persuades Arjuna to do his duty as a man born into the class of warriors, which is to fight, and the battle takes place. He argues that one can kill only the body; the soul is immortal and transmigrates into another body at death or, for those who have understood the true teachings, achieves release moksha or extinction nirvana , freedom from the wheel of rebirth. Krishna also resolves the tension between the Vedic injunction to sacrifice and to amass a record of good actions karma and the late Upanishadic injunction to meditate and amass knowledge jnana. The solution he provides is the path of devotion bhakti. With right understanding, one need not renounce actions but merely the desire kama for the fruits of actions, acting without desire nishkama karma. The moral impasse is not so much resolved as destroyed when Krishna assumes his doomsday form—a fiery, gaping mouth, swallowing up all creatures in the universe at the end of the eon—after Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his true cosmic nature. In the middle of this terrifying epiphany , Arjuna apologizes to Krishna for the many times when he had rashly and casually called out to him as a friend. He begs Krishna to return to his previous form, which the god consents to do, resuming his role as intimate human companion of the warrior Arjuna. The Gita has always been cherished by many Hindus for its spiritual guidance, but it achieved new prominence in the 19th century, when the British in India lauded it as the Hindu equivalent of the New Testament and when American philosophers—particularly the New England Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau —considered it to be the pivotal Hindu text. It was also an important text for Mohandas K. Gandhi , who wrote a commentary on it. Bhagavadgita Article Media Additional Info. Home Literature Poetry. Print Cite. Facebook Twitter. Give Feedback External Websites. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article requires login. External Websites. Her research and teaching interests revolve around two Thoreau found this possibility so compelling that he tried to practice yoga based solely on his reading of the Gita and other Indic texts in translation. By the time he wrote Walden during the late s and early s , Thoreau had fairly precise ideas about yoga, which he inserted into the essay's conclusion as if recounting a hoary Hindu parable. There the American essayist tells the story of the artist of Kouroo who possessed a rare and complete single-pointed concentration and set out to carve a perfect wooden staff. Eons had passed by the time he finished, but the artist had, by his devotion to this simple task, made "the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff. Ram Dass treated reading and teaching! More recently, people like Ram Dass as well as contemporary yoga teachers have conveyed, in supremely accessible vernacular, this more practical element of the Gita. In the summer of , Ram Dass, who had been a professor of psychology at Harvard until , taught a course called the Yogas of the Bhagavad Gita. The setting was historic—a summer session of the newly created Naropa Institute today a university in Boulder, Colorado, founded by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist. He also assigned exercises based on the Gita that could "evolve into a complete ," or program for spiritual practices. These included keeping a journal, meditating, chanting , and even "going to Church or Temple. Over the course, Ram Dass peeled back the layers of the Gita, one by one, but he summed it up thusly: "It's about the game of awakening, about the coming into Spirit. Karma yoga was, in Ram Dass's formulation, an injunction: "Do your work Personally, Ram Dass relied most on bhakti, or devotional, yoga, specifically Guru Kripa, in which the practitioner focuses on the guru and relies on the guru's grace. That summer he offered his students some ideas about how to cultivate a devotional attitude; he told them how to set up a table similar to an altar and how to know when they'd found their guru. But the point for Ram Dass was that all methods, or types of yoga , had their pitfalls and "traps"; it was the practitioner's job to use even the "traps" themselves as tools of awakening. Many contemporary yoga teachers, including Mas Vidal, the spiritual director of Dancing Shiva Yoga and in Los Angeles, turn to the Bhagavad Gita to balance the overemphasis on the practice in the West. Like Ram Dass, Vidal sees the Gita as a practical guide for "raising consciousness. He is also quick to emphasize the coherence of its approach. He presents the "four main branches of yoga" to his students as a single system: "It was never intended to be practiced as a fragmented system," Vidal insists. The branches are bhakti love , jnana study , karma service , and raja meditation. Above all, Vidal teaches the Gita as a metaphor for spiritual struggle in which the practitioner learns to use the mind and body as tools for awakening—tools that don't have much value in themselves. There is still another element of the Gita: Krishna's insistence on the value of acting in this world rather than shirking its demands, a value that has long appealed to Westerners. This concept underlies karma yoga and Krishna's insistence that Arjuna fight his kinsmen, dreadful as that seems. True, Arjuna must renounce the fruits of his actions, but he also must give up the idea that it is ever possible not to act. As Krishna explains in chapter 3 from Barbara Stoler Miller's translation :. Historian James A. Hijiya argues that this teaching of the Gita solves the riddle of Robert Oppenheimer's career: that he created the bomb and advocated its use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only to become a leading critic of nuclear weapons and war. Just as Krishna insisted that renouncing action was far worse than taking disciplined action and was ultimately not possible in any case , so Oppenheimer rejected the ivory tower, and its illusion of remove, for the Manhattan Project. According to Hijiya, Oppenheimer believed scientists should "act selflessly but effectively in the world" and once said, "If you are a scientist you believe It was, he believed, for humankind, not him, to deal with the awesome power he helped unleash, "according to its lights and values. That American thinkers, poets, and yoga teachers have drawn so much inspiration from the Gita over more than a century is a testament to this scripture's power. That they have pulled out different strands and woven them into their lives and our culture is even more remarkable considering how apologetically that first English translator presented this work. Wilkins, for all his efforts, felt he hadn't fully lifted the veil of the Gita's mystery. Undeterred by such difficulties, Americans have long sung this celestial song, harmonizing it with the peculiar temperament of each era. Please note that we independently source all of the products that we feature on yogajournal. If you buy from the links on our site, we may receive an affiliate commission, which in turn supports our work. Poses by Anatomy. Poses by Level. The Yoga for You. Types of Poses. Yoga Sequences. Yoga by Benefit. Yoga for Beginners. Intermediate Yoga. Advanced Yoga. Yoga History of Yoga. Types of Yoga. Yoga Basics. Yoga FAQs. Benefits of Meditation. Guided Meditation. How to Meditate. Science of Meditation. Yoga Trends. Yoga for Athletes. Yoga Influencers. Yoga Teachers. 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