Bhagawad Gita – An Introduction !

The first thing that I did after getting out of bed in the morning was to read an article on Bhagawad Gita. From that instant, I am thinking a lot about this book. The word Bhagawad Gita takes me 15 years back in my memory lane.

All that I know about Bhagawad  Gita now is only because of my Adhyapika – Savithri Mam and my school. Yes.. I first became aware of the Bhagawad  Gita in the mid ’90s. I was a school student taking my first tentative steps onto my spiritual path. The Bhagawad  Gita was actually taught in my school, complete with the method of chanting it, its context in the Mahabharata and its meaning. We also would participate in Gita reciting competitions of Chinmaya Mission and win prizes. Which means that I learnt to see the document in question not as ineffable scripture or dogma, but as a treatise that had to be rigorously analyzed in order to obtain maximum benefit from it. Since leaving school, I've had the inclination and opportunity to revisit said treatise fairly frequently.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. But that happens every time I read this book. I wish to talk and thank Krishna for all that he has said ! J This book is a uniquely portable magic; the quietest and most constant of friends; the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. This book leaves me with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. I live several lives while reading it

The Bhagavad Gita both is and is not philosophy. The battlefield of Kurukshetra is separated in time and space from the phenomenon which occurred in Ancient Greece; however, it is akin to the works of authors like Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Plato insofar as we might say that it, too, has a love of wisdom. The human minds and souls that have encountered the Bhagavad Gita have found it to be amongst the greatest books of the East. One question you might ask yourself when you read the Gita is whether the Socrates of Plato's Republic would level the same claims against the Gita's poetry as he did against Homer's (and what Plato himself is thinking). The Mahabharata is an epic about eight to ten times the size of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, but it, too, is an epic.

Bhagawad  Gita is like ocean, the more you read the more deep you go. Gita teaches you so many things. It teaches how to  lead life; helps realize the importance of Karma; inculcates the habit to see the good in any situation; boosts confidence; teaches you the importance of peace and the ability to let go. But reading doesn’t change anything, practicing it does. But it’s not easy, you need constant motivation, discipline, Control on yourself to let it change your life.

When we are not able to do something that someone does, we make that doer a mahatma. Mahatma means – Extraordinary soul. It is the excuse that we give ourselves for not doing it thinking ourselves not equal to him. Did Gandhi call himself Mahatma ? We call him so because we fail to be like him.

That mahatma says “I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies – and my life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible, no indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad Gita.”

I know I am no mahatma, But I also know I’ll return to the Gita again and again, because every time I do I discover something new.

“In this material world there are different types of achievement, but of all of them the achievement of knowledge is considered to be the highest because one can cross the ocean of nescience only on the boat of knowledge. Otherwise the ocean is impassable.”—Srimad-Bhagavatam 4.24.75

According to me, actual knowledge is extraordinary and concerns more than the material sphere of science, physics, math, history, geography and so on. It was here in Gita that I first encountered actual knowledge. This book is path to the lost, answer to the confused and wisdom to everyone. 

In a discussion that I had with my friend yesterday, I happened to speak about lot many books and I happened to tell about Gita. He said he had an opinion that there is a lot of hypocrisy regarding Gita and he found it as an over glorified boring and dry story. So he asked me on why he has to read Gita again.

I do not have an answer to this question. You will have to read it, to find out. And then ask yourself whether you have to remain under the spell. There is no book that cannot be of any use - and the answer can be given without knowing the book itself. If you believe in the truth - you will have lost, for you will be a religious reader. If you understand the book as a system and if you can argue against the system from within and from without - it will become your philosophical background in debates. If you can use the book to destabilize the logic of other books - you'll be able to use it as a philosopher.

But why not give a try reading it ? There is nothing that you would lose doing so.