Talk show – How is the Gita relevant today?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hello, everybody. My name is Vaksha Mike.
I’m sitting here at the Govardhan Eco-Village in India with Hayley and Chaitanya Sharma. Today, we’re going to speak a little bit about the Bhagavad Gita really quick. I am here doing an advanced yoga teacher training with my teacher, Raghunath, and as well as Hayley.
I’m from upstate New York in the United States, and graciously, I’ve been asked by the ISKCON dietary to help present this information for you to view. Hayley, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, I’m Hayley. I’m from Australia.
I’m here also on the Suprasona yoga teacher training in Govardhan Eco-Village, having a really wonderful stay and a wonderful learning experience. And I’m here as well to just serve and to hear the views of the other people that have been in association with Govardhan Eco-Village. Also, graciously, Chaitanya Sharma Prabhu has graced us with his presence and has so happily engaged us in service to help him conduct this interview and speak on the Bhagavad Gita.
Would you like to briefly introduce yourself? Thank you. Happy to be here. So, I’m Chaitanya Charan, and I’ve been a monk for the last 20 years, and I’ve also been studying the Bhagavad Gita and trying to share its message.
For the last five years, I have especially focused on the Gita. I’ve been writing every day, a small 300 word article on the Gita on my website, Gita Daily. And I feel the Bhagavad Gita is a book which contains universal wisdom that can benefit everyone.
And my attempt is to, my prime, I see my life’s primary contribution as making the wisdom of Bhagavad Gita accessible, relevant, and appealing in today’s world. So, accordingly, I’ll try to speak some, we’ll have a discussion on the Bhagavad Gita today. I’m really glad that you put it that way, because I know for myself, and I’m sure a lot of other listeners, the Bhagavad Gita is such a poetic, such a spiritually moving and inspiring piece of literature.
But I feel that a lot of people sometimes struggle understanding what it’s about and what it’s saying. So, I’m glad that you’ve graced us with your presence and that you have taken the time to really cultivate and make this knowledge presentable to everybody. We do have a few burning questions we would love to ask you, and hopefully you can shed some insight and help us to understand more this very ancient philosophy.
So, I suppose, let’s start at the beginning with a simple question of what is the Bhagavad Gita and in making it accessible to people, I suppose, where does it fit within Vedic literature, and what is the Bhagavad Gita in your work? The Bhagavad Gita is a Sanskrit book. It is a 700 verse poetic composition, which is a part of a much, much larger book. In fact, the Mahabharata, of which it is a part, is the world’s largest poem.
It is hundred and ten thousand verses, which is seven times longer than the world’s longest poems, Iliad and Odyssey combined together. So, within that, the Bhagavad Gita comes in the seventh section of the Mahabharata, and it has 18 chapters. And essentially, it is a conversation between Krishna, who is God descended to the human form, descended to this world in a human form, and Arjuna, who is the preeminent archer and warrior at that time.
And among all the various sacred books in this world, few have as riveting a context as the Bhagavad Gita. So, the Bhagavad Gita is spoken just before the climactic war in the Mahabharata. So, the Mahabharata has a group of good people and a group of evil people.
And there is a war between the good and evil. And this, the speciality of the Mahabharata is that the lines of black and white are not clear cut. There are a lot of shades of grey in between.
And these shades of grey are what confuse Arjuna. And he loses his nerve. He says, how can I fight this war? And then, at that time, when he is confused about his duty, he turns to Krishna and asks him, what should I do? And in response to his question, the Bhagavad Gita is spoken.
And the Bhagavad Gita raises broad questions of identity, mentality and destiny. Who am I? What is the right attitude I need to cultivate? And what is it that I am ultimately meant to achieve? So, the Bhagavad Gita addresses these questions and through addressing these questions, by covering a wide gamut of topics, it comes to a conclusion. And that conclusion enables Arjuna to regain his morale.
And while speaking this message about identity, mentality and destiny, the Bhagavad Gita talks about how love permeates all of life. How there is an all-attractive supreme being who loves us. And when we live in the light of his love, then our whole life gets transformed.
The Bhagavad Gita is a testimony to the transformational power of love, where it can transform a person from being demoralized and disheartened to becoming confident and energized. Thank you very much. Very well said.
And I suppose while you’re talking there, some of the things that struck a chord with me, both listening to that huge area of grey that is obviously spoken to within the Gita, but also that we all deal with within life. Speaking of our mentality, our identity, our mentality and our destiny. And I think these are questions that all of us struggle with in human life.
As life as spirit souls in a human body on earth. And you also did start to touch on the essential message of the Bhagavad Gita being, you know, the love being all-encompassing and that being the path towards transformation. Are there any other essential messages that you wanted to bring out or key messages that you wanted to bring out within the Bhagavad Gita that might entice people to either look into it deeper or even pick it up for the first time? Yeah.
So you can see the Bhagavad Gita talks about five broad subjects. If you consider the world around us, the details about the world are endless. But in terms of broad components, we could say there is consciousness.
All of us are conscious beings. So, the Bhagavad Gita uses the word soul to refer to us. So, there is consciousness or there are souls.
Then there is the supreme consciousness, we call the absolute truth, God, source, whatever the word we used. That is the second. So, there is consciousness or supreme consciousness.
And then there is nature. There is the world around us, which comprises of a variety of natural objects. This is the third thing in reality.
So, this concept, there is an alliterative way of referring to this. There is Jagat, which is nature or universe. There is Jiva, which is the soul.
And there is Jagdish, that is God. So, these three are the fundamental components of existence. So, nature, consciousness and supreme consciousness.
And now, in the interaction, this is what, if you have science, you can have physics and chemistry. Physics broadly talks about the structure, chemistry talks about interactions. So, these three we could say are the physics.
This is what is comprised of. And the interactions, the movement is done by two factors. There is Kala and there is Karma.
Kala is time. Time changes things. And time, the difference between Kala and Karma, Kala is something that changes things involuntarily.
Now, we are small, we grow young, we grow middle-aged, we grow old. This Kala is constantly changing things, even without our choice, without our intention. And that is one agent of change.
The other agent of change is Karma. Karma is volitional. This we do certain activities based on our choices, our actions.
So, the whole purpose in one sense is by understanding these five things, Jiva, Jagat, Jiva, Jagdish, Kala and Karma. All of us are doing Karma, but what is the Karma that we should do by which we can bring out our best, by which we can attain the best results in life. That is what the Bhagavan is guiding us to.
Fantastic. Could you talk a little bit more about, the word Karma is used in so many different ways and shapes, particularly in the West and forms and understood in different ways. Could you talk to that point just a little bit more in terms of how it applies within the Bhagavad Gita? Yeah.
The word Karma actually has four distinct meanings. One is, it can refer to action. The kind of action that I am choosing to do.
So, okay, I will do the Karma of software engineer. It means I am doing the work, profession, vocation of software engineer. So, it is the actions that we do.
The other more common way in which the word Karma is used is for referring to the reactions that we get. So, for example, if somebody meets with an accident, it is my Karma. That means that is the reaction I am getting to the action which I have done.
The third way, Karma also refers to the system of action-reaction. Like we may say the law of Karma. The law of Karma is a justice that nobody can escape.
Now, we escape human forms of justice, but the cosmic form of justice, that is infallible. So, the system of action-reaction correlation, that is also called as Karma. And quite often, the word Karma is used also in this sense.
The Bhagavad Gita also uses the word Karma in a fourth sense as a particular kind of action. So, Karma means good Karma. So, we do good actions and we get good reactions.
So, the word Karma is used in these different senses. In the Bhagavad Gita, when the Bhagavad Gita talks about Karma, its primary focus is on guiding us towards the right kind of actions. What kind of actions should I do by which I can attain auspicious results? Fantastic.
Thank you very much. Could you also say that your Karma is able to change or no? Okay. Can our Karma change? Now, here we are using the word Karma in the second sense of the reactions that are going to come to us.
So, the Mahabharata talks about it. So, here we could say the word, we are using the word Karma in the sense of destiny, something which is destined for us. So, the Mahabharata puts it very beautifully.
It says destiny determines the consequences of our actions, not our actions themselves. If a student is studying for an exam, whether the student succeeds in that exam or not, that is determined by destiny. But whether the student studies or not, that is not determined by destiny.
So, another example, we could be sitting in a natural setting, we could use the example of agriculture. So, in agriculture, there are three components that are required for success. First is that the farmer has to plough the field and sow the seeds.
We could say that is the Karma, that is the duty of the farmer. The Karma is what the farmer does. Then there is destiny, the rains have to come at the right time and the right quantity.
And then after that, time has to pass. Harvest will not come immediately. So, then there is action plus destiny plus time and that leads to result.
So, now when you say can our Karma change, that means what you are asking basically is, can the destiny change? If you are talking about destiny, whether rains are going to come or not, that we cannot change. But by making choices in the best possible way, we can shape our future. So, if rains come also, if I have not sown the seeds, I am not going to get any crops.
So, what is in our hands is that we can always make right choices. In that sense, our Karma is in our hands. The outcome is always in our hands.
Thanks for the explanation. I suppose and leading on from that, in the Bhagavad Gita, as you explained, there is the conversation going on between the Supreme God or Krishna and Arjuna. And he is talking about Arjuna’s destiny or trying to assist Arjuna to understand what that is.
Given that this conversation is being held on a battlefield and Arjuna’s ultimate destiny is to fight that battle, some people might understand that or interpret that to an act of violence. Can you explain for anyone who is interested or has a questioning around that essence within the Bhagavad Gita? Does it suggest violence? Yes, definitely. It is a very resonating question today, especially because we see so much violence going on in the name of religion.
Now, I would like to offer three elements of food for thought for this. First is, although the Bhagavad Gita is spoken in a battlefield and is spoken to a disheartened warrior who resumes war after hearing the Bhagavad Gita, if we look at the thrust of the Gita, Arjuna himself does not ask Krishna, should I fight or should I not fight? Yes. When he surrenders to Krishna, the specific question that he asks is, I am asking you, what is dharma? Dharma, the word again dharma has many meanings, but dharma basically refers to the action or the duty that harmonizes us with the natural order of the world.
There is a natural order in the world and we can act in a way by which we are either harmonious with it or disharmonious with it. So, dharma is that action which harmonizes us with the world’s natural order. And Arjuna’s question is, what is dharma? And his question is very universal.
And if we look at Krishna’s answer, there is out of the 700 verses in the Bhagavad Gita, the reference to the war itself is barely in 10-15 verses, less than 15 verses definitely. So, the conversation takes off from the context of the war and it rises to universal questions about what is the right choice of action. And more importantly, what is the basis for deciding our actions.
And at the end, in terms of content, there is very little reference to the world. In fact, quite the opposite, there are at least 3-4 verses where Krishna glorifies Ahimsa. Ahimsa is non-violence.
Krishna says Ahimsa is a laudable quality, which should be cultivated by dharmic people. So, definitely the Bhagavad Gita is not a license for war. Secondly, if you look at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna doesn’t say, I will fight.
His conclusion is, in 18.73, he says, I will do your will. It means, it is more, and there is a famous declaration in the Bible, where Jesus says, O father, let thy will be done, not mine. That is considered the expression of surrender.
So, a loving surrender to God. Arjuna is taking that same theme of surrender. We could say one step forward.
He says, not just let thy will be done, but I will do your will. So, Arjuna’s conclusion is that the human will should harmonize with the divine will. Now, in that particular context, that harmonization might mean fighting a war.
But the essential conclusion that Arjuna internalizes is not that he has to fight the war. What he internalizes is, I have to harmonize with the divine. So, that is the essential message of the Gita.
And we, so I talked about the content, then I talked about the conclusion, the practical, what Arjuna’s understanding was, I have to harmonize with the divine. And then we can look at how the Gita has been by people for millennia. The most important commentators of the Gita, right from the 11th century, Ramanujacharya, Shankaracharya, they commented and down to Bhaktivedanta Swamishla Prabhupada.
Now, they have all been very elevated spiritual saints, and none of them has ever seen the Bhagavad Gita as a call to war. They have all seen it as a Bhagavad Gita as a call for inner transformation. So, the Bhagavad Gita is essentially not about violence or about nonviolence.
It is about transcendence. And pursuing transcendence will require different courses of action at different times. So, then we may ask if the message of the Bhagavad Gita is not about violence, then why is this setting chosen at all? Now, why have a setting of war at all? So, the reason is that the dramatic setting actually brings attention to the message.
Yes. Because normally people feel philosophy is for people who are armchairs vacillators. After I have done all my work in life, then I will discuss some philosophy.
Sure. But the Bhagavad Gita says philosophy is not something which is isolated from life, but philosophy is what is like a guidance in life. And who can be in a setting which requires more urgent action than a warrior on a battlefield? Sure.
He’s not deciding if he’s going to have a latte or a cappuccino in the morning, right? That’s a really great context. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate that analogy, because I always wonder too, why was it set right at the beginning of this massive war that’s about to happen? And I like how you explain how it impresses the importance of the urgency of studying these types of things.
If I could also ask maybe a question. You mentioned the ultimate theme of the Gita is to align our will with the divine will, to transcend. Would you say that supports in the 18th chapter, I believe it’s verse 66, where Krishna tells Arjuna to abandon at that point all dharma and to offer service to him? Yeah, that’s the theme.
In the 18th verse, Krishna says, sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekam śaraṇaṁ vraja. So he says, give up all varieties of dharma and surrender to me. Now, this is also sometimes a disturbing message, because dharma is something which is considered good.
Dharma is duty or religion. And why is Krishna telling Arjuna to give up dharma? So, here the thrust is not to give up dharma, but it is to take up the purpose of dharma, that is, mām ekam śaraṇaṁ vraja. That is to learn to surrender to God, to love God.
So whatever we are doing in life, the ultimate purpose should be to love God. So if we look at the start of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna has a conflict over dharma, a dilemma, because there are two dharmas, which are pulling him in two different directions. Sometimes in today’s life, we may see that, you know, say, we are a family member, and we are also a professional.
So our job pulls us in one direction, and our family obligations pull us in another direction. So where do we go in two directions? So like that, Arjuna also had two pullings. So he was a warrior, his warrior’s duty required him to fight.
But he was also the member of a particular dynasty. So there was kshatriya dharma, and there was kula dharma. He was a member of a dynasty, and the members of his own dynasty were on the other side.
So as a family member, he said, I cannot fight against my family members. So which duty should I follow? My duty as a family member, or my duty as a fighter, as a warrior? So he is confused about that. So what Krishna answered is that, don’t get confused about specific duties.
Focus on the ultimate purpose. The ultimate purpose, whether by doing your duty as a family member or a professional, is that we all are meant to move closer to God. So do that duty, which will help you to move closer to God.
That’s a very eloquent way of explaining it, because I know I’ve been to several Gita studies, as well as when I first started studying Bhagavad Gita. It was so confusing. In the beginning, he’s saying to do your dharma.
Then in the end, he’s saying, don’t do your dharma and serve unto me. So I appreciate you explaining it to that way. It helps me understand more, and I’m sure it would help viewers also understand.
Yeah. One of the principles of Gita is that dharma itself is multi-level. So what is good at one level may not be good at another level.
Say, a parent has two children, and both of them have come with their results today. So one of them is a mediocre student, who just gets 40% marks, barely passes. The other is a student who gets 80% marks, and is among the top.
And both of them have come today with 60% marks. And for the person who has come from 40 to 60, the parent may say, bravo, well done. The second person will say, what have you done? Both of us got 60%.
Are you praising him and criticizing me? No, for that person. So what is good for one may not be good for the other. So dharma is at multiple levels.
And when Krishna is telling Arjuna to give up dharma, even the duty as a family member is good. Duty as a professional is good. But the duty to God is the most important.
So Krishna is talking about rising from one level of duty to another level of duty. So give up the lower level of dharma so that one can embrace the highest level of dharma. That is the Gita Ghasanacharya message.
Fantastic. Thank you so much. I do have one final question, which I know it has been a theme throughout the entire interview, but the relevance to, I suppose, modern day society.
And we’ve absolutely covered it off here. And to speak for myself and possibly every other student that I’m training with at the moment, we all battle with questions about identity. We all battle with questions about our mentality.
And of course, we all battle with questions about our identity. Is there any final words that you want to say in terms of how someone might approach the Bhagavad Gita or continue to use it in their practice and continue to include it for their own personal development or self-development in modern day life? I could say that the Bhagavad Gita is a very life affirming book. It tells us that God is to be attained not by rejecting the world, but by living in the world and contributing our best in this world.
So we could say that, the Bhagavad Gita says, Svakarmanatam abhyarcha, worship the divine through your work. So not that work itself is worship, but work can be made into worship when our heart is devoted to God. So there are two aspects to our life.
One is the aspect where we directly practice devotional activities, we meditate, we pray, we worship, we study scripture and by that we connect our heart with God. And then once we have connected our heart with God, then we connect our life in a mood of service to God. So what we are, the Bhagavad Gita, we can paraphrase the Bhagavad Gita in a similar way, what we are is Krishna’s gift to us.
What we become is our gift to Krishna. So whatever we have, whatever talents we have, we see them as God’s gift. We develop them to the fullest and we make positive contribution in this world while also being closer to Krishna.
I like how that was put. Thank you very, very much for your time. Thank you.
It’s nice talking with you. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you here and you really are making the messages accessible if there’s someone, if there’s a place that someone can go for more information, whether that be web-based or if they have themselves a Gita and are consistently questioning and wanting further information, is there a reference point that you offer to students? Yeah, I have a website called gitadaily.com. So where you can subscribe and daily a small 300 word article on the Bhagavad Gita will come. The idea is that the Bhagavad Gita is a big book, it’s difficult to read and get through.
So 300 words means just in three minutes, one can read a small article. Every article is based on a particular verse of the Gita. I try to make the Gita, as I said, accessible, relevant and appealing to the audience.
Fantastic. And you’ve done that today. Thank you very much.