How do we discern which Gita to read?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
always this question is there that which Gita is the real Gita you said conclusion is in bhakti yoga, but is bhakti yoga or bhakti the essence of Bhagavad Gita I don’t think so these are all ways, karma yoga is there, jnana yoga is there so why to go that one particular translation only I appreciate your point, first thing is I didn’t at all say that which translation we read doesn’t matter what I said is that in today’s world we can’t legislate people are going to write whatever they think and we live in a democratic society we can’t stop people and if some people have as you said a fan following, their Gita can spread far and wide and then the actual meaning of the Gita can get obscured so if we consider the Gita to be like a sun sometimes clouds can come and obscure the sun that’s definitely a real danger and there are many commentaries on the Gita or many analysis of the Gita which they don’t even come in the ballpark what the Gita is saying and what they are saying it is, there is nothing to do with the Gita so they are just, we could say they are riding piggyback on the Gita drawing from the prestige of the Gita to add like a feather in their own cap, yeah I commented on the Gita also so definitely that is there, but how do we discern so how do we decide which Gita to follow or which Gita to study so basically rather than legislating something from above, I am recommending a simple approach, read the Gita read the Gita’s translations, read the commentaries and see which Gita commentary makes the most sense, not just in terms of how I can apply in my life, but which Gita commentary helps us make sense of the Gita so now we could say that different commentaries can help us make sense in different ways well as I said the Gita is not a closed book in the sense that it says everybody has to follow this way the Gita accommodates people with different paths, different levels of consciousness and it provides different paths now Bhaktivinand Swami Prabhupada as I said he comes in a particular tradition, yes some people considered him a neo-guru at that time, however when he presented his tradition, his credentials then there are several scholars from the west there are several teachers from India who acknowledged eventually that he is not just some newfangled guru he is not teaching anything newfangled he is actually representing an ancient tradition the specific Vaishnava tradition goes back to 500 years the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, but the overall Vaishnava tradition goes thousands and thousands of years into history so how will we know which Gita is authentic, well just read the Gita study the commentary of the Gita and see which commentary helps us to understand the Gita in a way that is consistent with the Gita’s flow