The Bhagavad-Gita

"We are born into the world of nature; our
second birth is into the world of spirit."
"But he who, with strong body serving mind,
Gives up his power to worthy work,
Not seeking gain, Arjuna! Such an one
Is honourable. Do thine alloted task!"
"He whose peace is not shaken by others, and before
whom other people find peace, beyond excitement and
anger and fear—he is dear to me."
"If thou wilt not fight thy battle of life because in
selfishness thou art afraid of the battle, thy resolution
is in vain: nature will compel thee."
"I have given thee words of vision and wisdom more secret
than hidden mysteries. Ponder them in the silence of thy
soul, and then in freedom do thy will."


The Bhagavad-Gita is the record of a conversation between a
young man and God (in the form of Krishna). The young warrior
Arjuna, from the royal Pandava family, is in a state of panic on
the morning of a battle. The "enemies" he is expected to fight are
cousins whom he knows well.
In this desperate predicament, Arjuna turns to his charioteer Krishna
for help. The answers he gets are not exactly what he wants to hear,
but it is Krishna's opportunity to tell a mortal about how the universe
operates and the best approach to life.
The Gita is a small but much-loved part of the vast Hindu epic the
Mahabarata, a poetic chronicle about two warring groups of cousins,
the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The title means Celestial Song or Song
of the Lord, and Juan Mascaró (whose translation is used here) has
described it as a "symphony" that represents a peak of Indian
spirituality.
The beauty of this work is that it operates on various levels—poetry,
scripture, philosophy, self-help guide—and here we will focus on the
last of these.
The meaning of Arjuna's predicament
Arjuna does not want to get involved in this battle, and why would he?
The reader cannot but agree that it is madness to wage war against
one's own relatives. The story is allegorical, however; it is about action
and non-action, and introduces us to the concepts of karma and
dharma.
Arjuna wonders, quite reasonably, why he should bother to do anything
good, or to do anything at all, in a world that is so bad. Joseph
Campbell says in The Power of Myth that part of maturity is saying
"yes" to the abominable or the evil, to recognize its existence in your
world. What he calls "the affirmation of all things" does not mean that
you can't fight a situation, only that you can't say that something does
not have the right to exist. What exists does so for some reason, even if
that reason is for you to fight it. It would be nice to withdraw from
life, to be above it all, but you can't. Because we are alive, we can't
avoid action or its effects—this is karma.
If we must throw ourselves into life, what should be our guide?
There is action motivated by desire, and action undertaken out of a
sense of purpose.
The first type seems easier, because it allows you to live without
questioning and requires little self-knowledge. In fact it goes against the
grain of universal law, usually leading to the departure of spirit from
our lives. Purposeful action seems more complicated and obscure, but
is in fact the most natural way; it is the salvation of our existence and
even the source of joy. The word for this is dharma.
Reason
The Bhagavad-Gita is a great book because it embodies the reasoning
mind, capable of choosing the way of purpose over the automaticity of
a life led by desire. If Arjuna simply follows his desire not to fight, he
learns nothing. Instead, Krishna tells him to "fight the good fight"—
this is his duty, his purpose, his dharma.
Freed from indecision, Arjuna is subsequently told that his opponents
"have it coming to them" anyway; Arjuna is merely the instrument
of divine karma.
The reader should not dwell too long on why God is recommending
war. The point of the story is that the young warrior, in questioning his
own action and existence, displays reason. Nowadays we tend to
equate reason with intelligence. This is lazy thinking, because it means
that a mouse or a computer, displaying the ability to "work something
out," is at our level.
Reason is actually the process by which we discover our place in
the larger scheme of things, specifically the work or actions by which
our existence is justified and fulfilled. It is what makes us human
beings.
The Gita is no flight into the mystical; in showing the path to reason,
it reveals our highest faculty and greatest asset.Work
The Bhagavad-Gita draws attention to the three "constituents of
nature," Tamas (darkness), Rajas (fire), and Sattva (light). A Rajas style
of life is full of action and endless business, with fingers in too many
pies, hunger for more, lack of rest, and lust for things and people. It is
about gaining and attaining, a life focused on "what is mine and what
is not yet mine."
Sound familiar? This is living according to "outcome," and while it
may be of a higher order than Tamas (inertia, dullness, lack of care,
ignorance), it is still one of mediocrity. And the life of light, Sattva?
You will know you are living it when your intentions are noble and
you feel peace in your actions. Your work is your sanctuary and you
would do it even for no reward at all.
This holy book's key point about work is that unless you are doing
the work you love, you are darkening your soul. If this seems impossible,
love what you are doing. Freedom—from fear and anxious worry
over "results"—will follow. The wise always have an outcome or result
in mind, yet their detachment from it makes them all the more
effective.
The Gita says that higher even than the peace of meditation is the
peace that comes from surrender of the fruit of one's actions; in this
state we are free from the rigidity of set expectations, allowing the
unexpected and remarkable to emerge.
The steady self
You may be relaxing in front of the television when a report comes on
about the year's Academy Awards, telling of the glitter and glory of the
Oscars and exclusive post-ceremony parties. Someone remarks, "This is
where the rest of the world would like to be." Beneath the superficial
enjoyment of the report, suddenly you get a sense of inferiority. "Who
cares if people say it's shallow, I want to be there! What have I done
with my life that I am not on the list for that party? Am I really going
back to my job on Monday morning?"
There is a phrase in psychology for this thinking: "object referral."
This means having a focus on others and seeking their approval.
Hollywood is famously a shrine to external valuations of worth,
where you are always wondering what people will think of your next
audition, performance, or deal. This is basically a life of fear and,
when things don't turn out as you had hoped, of desperation. The
Gita teaches that you can achieve a state where you don't need any
external commendation to make you feel right; you know you are of
real worth.
One of the main routes to this level of being is meditation, which
brings detachment from emotions like fear and greed. Through it we
discover a self that is not subject to change, that is, in Deepak Chopra's
words, "immune to criticism ... unfearful of any challenge, and feels
beneath no-one." This surely is real power, compared to what we can
acquire in the world of action.
In your baser conscious desires you are just like everyone else; in the
meditative state you grasp your uniqueness. What we do following
meditation does not normally generate negative karma, because we are
emerging from a zone of purity and perfect knowledge. "With perfect
meditation comes perfect act," says The Bhagavad-Gita.
The book repeatedly comments that the enlightened person is the
same in success or failure, is not swayed by the winds of event or emotion.
It is a manual on how to achieve steadiness, which ironically
comes from appreciating the ephemeral nature of life and the relentless
movement of time. Though the universe may be in a constant state of
flux, we can train our mind to be a rare fixed point. The book is a brilliant
antidote to the feelings of smallness and insignificance that can
swamp even the most confident in modern life.
Final comments
Those prejudiced against religious books as "mystical rubbish" may be
shocked to discover that The Bhagavad-Gita is one of the great works
on the sovereignty of the mind.
God tells Arjuna:
"I have given thee words of vision and wisdom more secret than hidden
mysteries.
Ponder them in the silence of thy soul, and then in freedom do thy
will."
Even though God is all powerful, man has free will. The Gita has delivered
this message with force across the ages because, perhaps ironically,
it is done through poetry, the language of the heart.
This is a perfect self-help book because it is not scholarly or complicated
but remains a source of the most profound wisdom, offering a
path to steadiness of mind and joy in one's work that could not be
more relevant amid the speed and pressure of life in the twenty-first
century.