Bhagavad Gita

Background

Bhagavad Gita is one of the most sacred texts of Indian philosophy and is estimated to be written in the second half of the first millennium BCE. Bhagavad means Lord and Gita means Song so Bhagavad Gita is the song of the Lord. It is part of Upanishadic tradition of writing which consists of a dialogue between the master and the student. In the case of Gita, the student is Arjuna who is the most skilled warrior of his time and the master is Lord Krishna the personification of all pervading consciousness. The Gita is set in the battlefield of Kurukshetra where Arjuna is supposed to fight his kinsmen for the kingdom of Hastinapur.??On the battlefield when Arjuna sees his kinsmen, his teachers and his grandfather on the opposing side, he is filled with pity and refuses to fight. Bhagavad Gita is a dialog between Arjuna and Lord Krishna on the purpose of life.

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Influences

Dr. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were two of the most prominent civil right leaders of the 20th century who had overcome significant adversity to lead their people to freedom. Among other things, both were significantly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela considered Gandhi his role model. Dr. King said that Gandhi’s peaceful civil disobedience was “the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom”.

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Mahatma (Great Soul) Gandhi took on the powerful British empire and led a country of 300 million to freedom from oppressive rule through peaceful civil disobedience. Bhagavad Gita was the key influence on Mahatma in forming his philosophy of life. This is what Mahatma had to say about Bhagavad Gita -

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“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”

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Another key influence on Mahatma Gandhi was Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was an American philosopher and writer of transcendentalism school. He refused to pay taxes to protest against slavery. He was imprisoned for his refusal. It is a well known fact that Gandhi was significantly inspired by Thoreau’s essay called Civil Disobedience but what is not a well known is that Thoreau was also hugely inspired by Bhagavad Gita. This is what Thoreau said about Gita in his magnum opus, Walden -??"In the?morning I bathe my intellect in?the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial."?

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Thoreau’s guru Ralph Waldo Emerson, the father of American originalism, said this about Gita - "I owed a magnificent day to the?Bhagavad-Gita. 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.

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This is just the peak of the iceberg of the influence that Bhagavad Gita has had on the human civilization.??

The Yoga of Action

Bhagavad-Gita contains 18 chapter. In these 18 chapters, Lord Krishna explains the philosophy of Self, nature of the universe and how to act to achieve the highest good. My favorite chapter is chapter 3 - Karma Yoga (The Yoga of Action).??The chapter begins with Arjuna asking the Lord Krishna -

“If you think that understanding

is superior to action, Krishna,

why do you keep on urging me

to engage in this savage act?

With words that seem inconsistent,

your teaching has bewildered my mind.

Tell me: what must I do

to arrive at the highest good?”

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To this Lord Krishna responds -??

“In this world there are two main paths:

the yoga of understanding,

for contemplative men; and for men

who are active, the yoga of action.?

Not by avoiding actions

does a man gain freedom from action,

and not by renunciation

alone, can he reach the goal.”

?Here Arjuna wants to avoid his duty of fighting the war and wants a way out but Lord Krishna clearly state that by avoiding one’s prescribed duty, one cannot achieve the highest goal. He further explains what yoga of action is -?

“The superior man is he

whose mind can control his senses;

with no attachment to results,

he engages in the yoga of action.

?Without concern for results,

perform the necessary action;

surrendering all attachments,

accomplish life’s highest good.”

?Krishna further explains how great men should act -?

“ Whatever a great man does

ordinary people will do;

whatever standard he sets

everyone else will follow.

?In all the three worlds, Arjuna,

there is nothing I need to do,

nothing I must attain;

and yet I engage in action.??

For if I were to refrain

from my tireless, continual action,

mankind would follow my example

and would also not act, Arjuna.?

If I stopped acting, these worlds

would plunge into ruin; chaos

would overpower all beings;

mankind would be destroyed.”

How should wise men deal with ignorant -

“The wise man does not unsettle

the minds of the ignorant; quietly

acting in the spirit of yoga,

he inspires them to do the same.

Even the wise man acts

in accordance with his inner nature.

All beings follow their nature.

What good can repression do?”?

Finally Krishna inspires Arjuna to do his duty as a warrior to fight -

“Performing all actions for my sake,

desireless, absorbed in the Self,

indifferent to “I” and “mine,”

let go of your grief, and fight!”?

At the outside the message of Gita seems to be martial, inspiring one to engage in a war. How then Mahatma Gandhi, an apostle of peace was inspired by it? The secret lies in this passage -?

”It is better to do your own duty

badly, than to perfectly do

another’s; you are safe from harm

when you do what you should be doing.”

For Arjuna as a warrior his duty is to fight the war and for Mahatma Gandhi, a man of peace the duty is achieving freedom through peace. For Arjuna, pacification (by renouncing his right and obligation to rule) will go against his duty and for Mahatma Gandhi using violence to drive out British will be against his duty.?

My Experience?

Personally, this is the book that has influenced my entire outlook towards life. I have had a copy of Gita for decades and I tried to read it several times but it didn’t appeal to me and I put it down. But, as they say, when the student is ready, master appears, It wasn’t until my trip to India three years ago I developed admiration for Gita. Soon after I read (really read) Gita for the first time, a situation arose. In 2017-18, I was leading the customer reviews team. I had accomplished the goals that I set out for me. I had groomed my successor and was ready to give her the reins of the team. Around the same time I noticed that reviews abuse was ramping up rapidly and I had written a six pager to document in detail the abuse methods used by the bad actors. Since, I had worked myself out of the job, I was looking for a new mission and my manager was persuading me to take over community trust, the team that protects Amazon from fake reviews. I politely declined the offer and started interviewing outside of Amazon. I received an offer which seemed quite appealing and went to India for summer vacation. Before I went on the vacation I was very much inclined to leave Amazon. It was during this trip that I read Gita. It turned my world upside down. I introspected on why was I running away from the responsibility of solving the Reviews abuse problem. My main objection was that it was an extremely hard problem to solve and a person with obsessive personality like mine will be totally consumed by this problem. I looked towards Gita to show me the path. And this passage brought me clarity -

‘”It is better to do your own duty

badly, than to perfectly do

another’s; you are safe from harm

when you do what you should be doing.”

?I could not run away from my duty to set out what I needed to do. I came back and accepted the role. I did the most meaningful work of my career so far, learned??a lot and improved customer experience significantly.?Even today when I see no path forward, I turn to Bhagavad-Gita to show me the path

P.S. I have dozens of translations of Bhagavad Gita. The best way to study it is in the original Sanskrit text. But if you cannot then I would recommend reading multiple translations to route out the bias of an individual translation. The translation that I love the most is by Stephen Mitchell. The Gita excerpts in this article are taken from his translation. I hope he will not mind me using it.