The Gainful Gita
The Bhagvad Gita or The Gita for short, is the holy book of Hindus. It is part of the Indian Epic ‘The Mahabharat’. First, let us discuss about what we know about the Gita and the Mahabharat.
What is the Mahabharat and what is the big deal about it? Let us figure out. The Mahabharat is the world's longest epic poem. The Mahabharat is one of the two Indian Epics written approximately two thousand and five hundred years ago, by Sage Vyas. Legend has it that Sage Vyas dictated the Mahabharat to Lord Ganesh, who agreed to write it all out. It is said that the work was so complex and voluminous that no human being could have ever accomplished it.
“On a lighter note: This is the only known instance when a human was in charge and told the Lord what to do though it is usually the other way around.”
It is the story of a Great War between two sets of cousins, The five Pandavas (the good guys) and the one-hundred Kauravas (the not so good guys). What we know today as the Mahabharat actually started off as a much shorter story called Jaya, which contained The Gita and the core story of the Mahabharat. After, many deletions and additions we have what we call India’s biggest blockbuster bestseller. But, enough about the Mahabharat, let us move to The Gita.
The Gita has seven hundred shlokas divided into eighteen chapters. It makes its appearance in the sixth parva (or chapter) in its mother epic, the Mahabharat. It is the conversation between the Pandava prince, Arjun and his friend and charioteer, Lord Krishna. Now that we have established that the Gita is a conversation, let us find out when it took place. The conversation took place just before the Great War begun. It is in a question and answer form in which Arjun talks about his dilemma (on whether to fight or flee away from the war) and asks questions. It took a conversation seven hundred shlokas long for the compassionate Lord to provide answers to Arjun and suggest him not to choose escapism and follow his nature of a warrior to defeat the evil. Thus, the Gita is the only sermon given by God Almighty himself.
“On a lighter note, for the Indians who do not stop asking questions, God himself had to come here and answer. Everywhere else, he could get the similar job done through his messengers. But in India if you want to explain or change anything, nothing less than God himself will do!”
This epic conversation between Arjun and Lord Krishna is considered to be profound work attempting to answer some of the very basic questions we humans are searching answers for.
The Gita is full of cool lessons that can guide you even today. My favourite ones are:
You are what you are and there is nothing you can do about it:
o Stay true to your nature and you shall be happy.
o Talk to your inner voice, often at length and accept its advice.
Don’t worry, Be happy:
o You should only focus on doing your duty, as you are not entitled to the fruits of your action.
o The course of your life is determined, you can't control it or change it, but you can enjoy it.
o Focus on your duty; let the Universe take care of the rest.
There is no ceasing to be or coming to be. It’s all eternal and bound by laws.
o Matter is neither created nor destroyed it only changes form.
o Every action has an opposite and equal reaction.
Believe in self, avoid desire and yours is the world and everything that’s in it:
o Have faith and the rest will come.
o Anger, Desire and Greed destroy intelligence and rational thinking, therefore avoid them.
No matter how scary or boring, you must do what you have to:
o Always be prepared to defend the good.
o Responsibility might be unpleasant but there is nothing you can do about it, therefore you might as well stop complaining and get it done.
o Defend the good and destroy the bad.
Love, Devotion and Self-discipline - an unbeatable combo:
o Single minded devotion to any cause will be rewarded.
o God does not need riches, scrumptious food or fine silk. All he needs is love.
Thou art that ("That" here, means the supreme one):
o Everyone is essentially the same. God himself is the soul of all beings, therefore there is no difference between your soul and the Universal soul.
The best part of Gita according to me is the part at the end of the Gita where Lord Krishna gives Arjun the choice to decide. Lord Krishna says that he has told Arjun secret, sacred knowledge and now he should do as he wishes. This tells us that ultimately, we should have courage to make our decisions and we should not follow anyone blindly, not even the Lord himself!
Now the questions are:
(1) is the Gita relevant in the modern era where our questions have become so direct that we are even questioning the very existence of God? and
(2) if the answer to the first question is yes, then what can one learn from the Gita? I have found the answers in the Gita itself.
The ancient stories are actually allegories, stories which can be interpreted in various ways. While one is the most obvious: The Mahabharat is the story of a war between two sets of cousins, one truthful, law abiding and just while the other unjust, ungrateful and crooked. While the other one is: The Mahabharat symbolises the war that rages in the battlefields of our minds. We humans are different from other creatures because we have the ability to make choices. Not simple choices like playing basketball vs. playing tennis but moral choices like being nice vs. awful.
According to me the mind is symbolized as Arjun and the inner voice is Lord Krishna. The mind always searches for the easier way out and constantly makes excuses as to why his easier (and sometimes escapist) choice is right. While the Lord, inside all of us, our inner voice tells us what is right. Probably making the right choices will make you unpopular or feel uncool at the moment but in the long run it will benefit you. At the end of it is our mind who has to take the decision, our conscience (the inner voice) cannot since it’s not attached to the desires the mind is attached to. Life is a war, and we constantly have to take decisions and the easier way out won’t always help us, we ought to listen to our inner voice and rough it out.
When I first started reading the Gita I thought ‘How is this going to help me in life since I am never going to find myself stranded, confused on actual battlefield not knowing what to do.’ But, as I progressed reading it I understood by war the Gita doesn’t actually mean a literal war with swords and arrows but it refers to the war that rages inside our heads every day.
So, what should you do when you find yourself confused about what is the right choice? Should you go around asking random people on the road what you ought to do or should you just refuse to admit you are confused and go about doing your routine work? No, says the Gita. There is nothing wrong in being confused, everyone gets confused at least once a day when it comes to making choices. But what makes some people different (what made Arjun different) from the others is that they have the ability to admit they are confused and they do not know what to do. The Gita urges us to be like Arjun who tuned everything else out and listened with an open-mind what Lord Krishna had to say. So, take out some time from your schedule and talk to your best friend, your inner voice, the Krishna inside all of us.
What is the Mahabharat and what is the big deal about it? Let us figure out. The Mahabharat is the world's longest epic poem. The Mahabharat is one of the two Indian Epics written approximately two thousand and five hundred years ago, by Sage Vyas. Legend has it that Sage Vyas dictated the Mahabharat to Lord Ganesh, who agreed to write it all out. It is said that the work was so complex and voluminous that no human being could have ever accomplished it.
“On a lighter note: This is the only known instance when a human was in charge and told the Lord what to do though it is usually the other way around.”
It is the story of a Great War between two sets of cousins, The five Pandavas (the good guys) and the one-hundred Kauravas (the not so good guys). What we know today as the Mahabharat actually started off as a much shorter story called Jaya, which contained The Gita and the core story of the Mahabharat. After, many deletions and additions we have what we call India’s biggest blockbuster bestseller. But, enough about the Mahabharat, let us move to The Gita.
The Gita has seven hundred shlokas divided into eighteen chapters. It makes its appearance in the sixth parva (or chapter) in its mother epic, the Mahabharat. It is the conversation between the Pandava prince, Arjun and his friend and charioteer, Lord Krishna. Now that we have established that the Gita is a conversation, let us find out when it took place. The conversation took place just before the Great War begun. It is in a question and answer form in which Arjun talks about his dilemma (on whether to fight or flee away from the war) and asks questions. It took a conversation seven hundred shlokas long for the compassionate Lord to provide answers to Arjun and suggest him not to choose escapism and follow his nature of a warrior to defeat the evil. Thus, the Gita is the only sermon given by God Almighty himself.
“On a lighter note, for the Indians who do not stop asking questions, God himself had to come here and answer. Everywhere else, he could get the similar job done through his messengers. But in India if you want to explain or change anything, nothing less than God himself will do!”
This epic conversation between Arjun and Lord Krishna is considered to be profound work attempting to answer some of the very basic questions we humans are searching answers for.
The Gita is full of cool lessons that can guide you even today. My favourite ones are:
You are what you are and there is nothing you can do about it:
o Stay true to your nature and you shall be happy.
o Talk to your inner voice, often at length and accept its advice.
Don’t worry, Be happy:
o You should only focus on doing your duty, as you are not entitled to the fruits of your action.
o The course of your life is determined, you can't control it or change it, but you can enjoy it.
o Focus on your duty; let the Universe take care of the rest.
There is no ceasing to be or coming to be. It’s all eternal and bound by laws.
o Matter is neither created nor destroyed it only changes form.
o Every action has an opposite and equal reaction.
Believe in self, avoid desire and yours is the world and everything that’s in it:
o Have faith and the rest will come.
o Anger, Desire and Greed destroy intelligence and rational thinking, therefore avoid them.
No matter how scary or boring, you must do what you have to:
o Always be prepared to defend the good.
o Responsibility might be unpleasant but there is nothing you can do about it, therefore you might as well stop complaining and get it done.
o Defend the good and destroy the bad.
Love, Devotion and Self-discipline - an unbeatable combo:
o Single minded devotion to any cause will be rewarded.
o God does not need riches, scrumptious food or fine silk. All he needs is love.
Thou art that ("That" here, means the supreme one):
o Everyone is essentially the same. God himself is the soul of all beings, therefore there is no difference between your soul and the Universal soul.
The best part of Gita according to me is the part at the end of the Gita where Lord Krishna gives Arjun the choice to decide. Lord Krishna says that he has told Arjun secret, sacred knowledge and now he should do as he wishes. This tells us that ultimately, we should have courage to make our decisions and we should not follow anyone blindly, not even the Lord himself!
Now the questions are:
(1) is the Gita relevant in the modern era where our questions have become so direct that we are even questioning the very existence of God? and
(2) if the answer to the first question is yes, then what can one learn from the Gita? I have found the answers in the Gita itself.
The ancient stories are actually allegories, stories which can be interpreted in various ways. While one is the most obvious: The Mahabharat is the story of a war between two sets of cousins, one truthful, law abiding and just while the other unjust, ungrateful and crooked. While the other one is: The Mahabharat symbolises the war that rages in the battlefields of our minds. We humans are different from other creatures because we have the ability to make choices. Not simple choices like playing basketball vs. playing tennis but moral choices like being nice vs. awful.
According to me the mind is symbolized as Arjun and the inner voice is Lord Krishna. The mind always searches for the easier way out and constantly makes excuses as to why his easier (and sometimes escapist) choice is right. While the Lord, inside all of us, our inner voice tells us what is right. Probably making the right choices will make you unpopular or feel uncool at the moment but in the long run it will benefit you. At the end of it is our mind who has to take the decision, our conscience (the inner voice) cannot since it’s not attached to the desires the mind is attached to. Life is a war, and we constantly have to take decisions and the easier way out won’t always help us, we ought to listen to our inner voice and rough it out.
When I first started reading the Gita I thought ‘How is this going to help me in life since I am never going to find myself stranded, confused on actual battlefield not knowing what to do.’ But, as I progressed reading it I understood by war the Gita doesn’t actually mean a literal war with swords and arrows but it refers to the war that rages inside our heads every day.
So, what should you do when you find yourself confused about what is the right choice? Should you go around asking random people on the road what you ought to do or should you just refuse to admit you are confused and go about doing your routine work? No, says the Gita. There is nothing wrong in being confused, everyone gets confused at least once a day when it comes to making choices. But what makes some people different (what made Arjun different) from the others is that they have the ability to admit they are confused and they do not know what to do. The Gita urges us to be like Arjun who tuned everything else out and listened with an open-mind what Lord Krishna had to say. So, take out some time from your schedule and talk to your best friend, your inner voice, the Krishna inside all of us.
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