Once again, the following article is taken from an email to Ananda members in the Seattle-area Sangha:
Each Sunday
at the weekly Service we read a stanza from the Bhagavad Gita. What is this text, this “The Song of God,” quoted by
so many great people of influence?
Ralph Waldo
Emerson said of 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.”
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "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.”
Mahatma Gandhi confessed that "When doubts haunt me, when
disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the
horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-Gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I
immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who
meditate on the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every
day".
And finally, J. Robert Oppenheimer,
American physicist and director of the Manhattan Project (that created the
world’s first atom bomb), learned Sanskrit in 1933 and read the Bhagavad Gita in the original, citing it
as one of the most influential books in his life. Upon witnessing the first
nuclear test in 1945, he quoted the Gita: “Now
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
What is this extraordinary work of
literature, allegory and divine inspiration? The “Gita” is the most beloved of
the great scriptures of India. It is one chapter in the midst of the world’s
longest epic, the Mahabharata (over
100,000 couplets). The Gita itself has about 700 verses arranged in 18 chapters:
not very long in itself. The Mahabharata makes
an allegory of an actual historic and apocalyptic battle that took place not far
from what is now New Delhi sometime after the first millennia B.C. It’s a “good guys” vs the “bad guys” story,
with the good guys winning, but just barely.
The Gita itself consists of a dialogue
between Lord Krishna, the charioteer and guru for Prince Arjuna (a good guy),
one of the fiercest warriors of the two opposing clans. Their conversation
takes place on the eve of battle.
Arrayed against his own cousins (who
usurped his and his brothers’ rule of the kingdom), Arjuna asks his guru, “What
virtue, what victory is there to be found in killing my own family? They are
far from perfect, but I don’t seek riches or power? Why must I fight?”
And thus begins the greatest story ever
told: your story, and mine. This is the story of the challenges we face, the
victories and defeats we experience, and our quest for the Holy Grail of
Happiness.
The greatest work ever written by Swami
Kriyananda, “Essence of the Bhagavad Gita,” was inspired by the commentary on
the Gita dictated by Paramhansa Yogananda in the early months of 1950 at his
desert retreat in 29 Palms, CA. This book will change your life. At the
completion of his dictation efforts, Paramhansa Yogananda declared to Swamiji
“Millions will find God through this work. Not just thousands: millions! I have
seen it. I know!”
Joy to you,
Nayaswamis Hriman and Padma