'Bhagavad Gita: The Divine Song'

I’m delighted to announce the release of my new book: Bhagavad Gita: The Divine Song.

In addition to a new and accessible translation of this ancient and life-changing text, the extensive commentary explores its many themes, including:

The psychological suffering experienced by all human beings
How to live a happy and successful life
The power of karma yoga as a means of cultivating a tranquil, stress-free mind
The nature of the Self, the individual and existence
Understanding the nature of God and the creation
Dharma and following your innate life purpose
The nature of action and free will
Understanding and mastering the three gunas or qualities underlying all forms and objects
Meditation
How to master your mind rather than be a victim to it
Dealing with emotions, fears, desires and attachments
The immense power of cultivating a devotional attitude
Practical advice on lifestyle management, diet, sleep and relationships
Self-knowledge as the key to enlightenment.

The Bhagavad Gita is a remarkable synthesis of both the spiritual and mundane. It’s an instruction manual for not only living well in the world but also attaining enlightenment—or liberation from psychological sorrow.

As the Gita is one of its primary source texts, the verses and commentary provide an excellent overview of the entire teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Indeed, most of the ‘Essence of Vedanta’ articles on this site have been excerpted from the first half of this book. The book, however, contains very much more.

Over the past two years, I worked my way through 10,000 pages worth of commentaries by luminaries such as Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Paramarthananda of Chennai, Swami Chinmayananda, my own teacher James Swartz, and of course Adi Shankara, who set the gold standard for commentaries way back in the 8th century.

My intent was to distill the essence of those brilliant works into a single book.

Bhagavad Gita: The Divine Song is the result!

Published in association with ShiningWorld, and including a foreword by James Swartz, one of the West’s foremost Vedanta teachers, it is now available to purchase from UnbrokenSelf’s online shop in paperback and ebook format. When you purchase the paperback you’ll receive a code to download the ebook for free.

The book is also available on Amazon (both as a paperback and Kindle edition) and other online book stores. You can even order it from your local bookstore!

Here’s an abridged excerpt from the book’s introduction.

Introduction

“Cast aside your despair and self-doubt. This self-indulgence is unbecoming of the noble warrior you are. It will not help this crisis, nor will it lead to enlightenment. Get up, Arjuna, and fight!”

I was twenty-one years old when I first picked up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. The moment I opened it, the above words, spoken by Krishna in the second chapter, leapt out at me and have remained with me ever since—an exhortation at once inspiring and, at the time, perplexing.

As part of the Mahabharata epic, the Bhagavad Gita remains a prized jewel of India’s cultural heritage; its story, characters and themes deeply embedded in the national psyche. Being a Westerner, I had only a passing familiarity with the Gita, but I knew that I held something special in my hands.

Delving into the ancient text, I found it both a fascinating and challenging read. Unfamiliar as I was with the Mahabharata, the first chapter was admittedly a struggle, filled with long, unpronounceable names and terms. But once I got to the second chapter, and Krishna began discussing the wonders of the Eternal Self, I was spellbound.

I can’t remember how much more I read, but I soon floundered, in part because of what I saw as its overt religiosity (something that had put me off conventional Western religion). Moreover, as a committed pacifist, I couldn’t reconcile the notion that God would command someone to fight and kill. Krishna’s repeated injunction to Arjuna, a warrior overcome by doubt, is basically: “Go kill them, you wuss!”

Maybe I was a wuss too, because I decided the Gita wasn’t for me.

It was around ten years later that, having scoured the spiritual scene in my search for answers, by sheer grace, and at a time of desperation and readiness to give it all up, I discovered Advaita Vedanta.

I devoured just about everything ever written by my teacher, James Swartz, and listened to audios of his talks every single day. One of the seminars was on the Bhagavad Gita. I dug out my dust-covered copy and read it again with a mind free of preconception.

That was when the Gita truly came alive for me. I came to see it as the masterpiece it unquestionably is; not only as a guide to Self-Realisation, but as a work of psychology and a comprehensive and surprisingly practical manual for daily life.

The Gita is a template for living; for overcoming suffering, finding our path and purpose, dealing with the obstacles of ignorance and attachment, and transcending the dualities of pleasure and pain, desire and fear, joy and sorrow. Krishna’s timeless words invite us to turn within and discover our own innermost nature—which is, as it happens, is the key to liberation.

This seven hundred verse ‘Song of God’ (as the title translates) takes the form of a dialogue between the warrior-prince Arjuna and his divine mentor, Krishna. Whereas Krishna is an avatar, a direct embodiment of the Divine, Arjuna symbolises the proverbial everyman.

The Gita begins with Arjuna in despair at a moment of terrible crisis. It’s important to note that, although his circumstances are unique, Arjuna’s sorrow represents the basic suffering of all human beings. It’s this suffering which eventually brings all of us to our knees, forcing us to confront life’s ‘big questions’:

—What is the purpose of life?
—Why am I here?
—How do I overcome this sorrow?
—What is my true nature and the nature of the world, God and reality?

The Gita answers all of these questions and more. It deftly balances the profound and the practical, the cosmic and the mundane, in a remarkable synthesis that provides sincere seekers with nothing less than a roadmap to freedom.

Because its message transcends time, culture and context, the Bhagavad Gita is as relevant today as it was when composed by the scribe Vyasa over two millennia ago, and will remain so as long as human beings inhabit the Earth.

The Crisis Point

There comes a point in any mature person’s life when they finally realise that, no matter what they try to do, be, have, or become, nothing in life is capable of removing their fundamental sense of lack and insecurity. It’s usually not until this point that, out of sheer desperation, they begin inquiring about life, the self and the nature of suffering.

Arjuna, embroiled in what will be the greatest war the world has known, has reached such a crisis point.

The situation is grim and the future bleak. Greed, ambition and jealousy have divided the royal family of Hastinapura, as two groups of cousins engage in a deadly struggle for the throne. Arjuna and his brothers, the Pandavas, have been robbed of their rightful claim to the kingdom by their cousins, the Kauravas, led by the ambitious and ruthless Duryodhana.

By cheating at a game of dice, Duryodhana’s uncle managed to strip the Pandavas of everything, including their wife, kingdom and freedom. The brothers were exiled into the forest for thirteen years, after which they were permitted to return and reclaim the throne.

Upon their return, however, the obstinate Duryodhana refused to concede, declaring that if they wanted the kingdom they would have to fight for it. Though Arjuna and his brothers had been willing to compromise and accept even a single house, Duryodhana left them with no option but to declare war.

Although Arjuna was battling for a righteous cause—to free his kingdom, restore order and correct a grave injustice—life was making impossible demands of him. As we see in the opening chapter, Duryodhana had gathered Arjuna’s own beloved uncles, cousins, teachers and friends to fight against him. Upon seeing the face of his enemy, Arjuna’s resolve crumbles.

Crippled by confusion and despair, the prince doesn’t know what to do. Thus far he’s done everything expected of him and everything that he could to try to make things right. Circumstances have only gone from bad to worse and now he must spill the blood of his own dearest kin.

That’s when Arjuna turns to his beloved friend and charioteer, Lord Krishna.

Arjuna regarded Krishna as a wise mentor and held him with the utmost regard. Indeed, when Krishna offered Arjuna the choice between having either him or his army fight alongside him on the battlefield, Arjuna opted to have Krishna by his side, even though that meant being vastly outnumbered by Duryodhana’s forces.

Devastated at now having to fight his own family and friends, Arjuna’s mind is incapacitated with grief and he cannot see a way forward. It’s at this point that Arjuna turns to his mentor and beseeches Krishna to accept him as his disciple. He asks Krishna to show him the way forward.

As we have seen, Krishna’s initial response is, “Get up, Arjuna—and fight!”

Arjuna’s confusion is understandable, which leads to Krishna revealing the ultimate Truth that leads to freedom from all bondage.

This Truth is arguably the primary subject matter of the Gita: Self-knowledge.

The Battlefield is the Mind

The terrible war about to erupt between the Pandavas and the Kauravas forms the backbone of the Mahabharata. Historians believe it may have been based upon actual historical events in India’s ancient past.

In the context of the Gita, however, this conflict should be considered in not just a literal but in a metaphorical sense. It becomes clear that the real battlefield isn’t Kurukshetra, where the two armies meet—it’s the battlefield of the human mind. The Gita’s conflict symbolises the eternal war raging in the human heart and psyche.

Arjuna’s situation is clearly an extraordinary one. Fortunately, few people will ever find themselves in such an extreme predicament: having to lead an army into battle against their own kith and kin.

But in order for the Gita’s message to be relevant and applicable in a universal sense, it’s important to understand that Arjuna’s suffering represents the basic suffering of humankind. Though outer circumstances vary greatly, both the cause and the ultimate remedy for this basic human malady are the same for all people across all civilisations and time.

If the first chapter of the Gita lays out the problem: the universal suffering of worldly existence; the remaining seventeen chapters provide the solution.

Both Profound and Practical

The Gita can be divided into three sections, each consisting of six chapters.

The first section deals with the topics of dharma, karma yoga, and the issue of action and renunciation. These chapters focus on preparing the mind for moksha, or liberation, by prescribing the proper lifestyle and the right mindset.

The middle section of the Gita explores meditation, the nature of the Self and the creation, and upasana yoga, or devotional practice.

The concluding section focuses on Self-knowledge and how to integrate this knowledge in one’s life in order to attain enlightenment.

The Gita’s deft interweaving of the spiritual and the practical, the divine and the worldly, marks it as truly unique. In fact, the eight century visionary Adi Shankara stated that if a person were to study only one piece of scripture, it should be the Bhagavad Gita.

The Timeless Light of Truth

The Bhagavad Gita is one the most important spiritual texts ever composed. Simple yet sophisticated, it beautifully balances themes of psychology, cosmology and provides a timeless and effective map for achieving enlightenment and liberation from worldly sorrows.

In spite of this, the Gita has, in large part, been sadly ignored in the West.

My aim in writing this book was to help change that; to provide a translation and commentary that’s both faithful in spirit and content yet accessible to all people.

In the spirit of karma yoga (one of the Gita’s most important topics), I offer this work in gratitude to my teachers and to the divine Self in all beings.