Is the Gita relevant today?
Lecture Outline:
1. “We have guided missiles and misguided men …” We need inner mastery to complement the outer control provided by technology.
2. The Gita’s setting demonstrates the necessity of inner mastery.
3. The Gita’s message takes us beyond material appearance to spiritual substance and brings clarity and strength.
4. Gita is yoga-shastra – it connects us with higher spiritual realities and provides inexhaustible hope. eg. anchored boat
5. Arjuna’s Gandiva bow – initially lowered (1.46) and finally upraised (18.76) – signifies our determination and the Gita’s capacity to boost our morale. Quotes of Thoreau, Emerson and Gandhiji.
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Is the Bhagavad Gita relevant today? We have guided missiles and misguided men. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
This poignant quote by Martin Luther King illustrates one of the defining dilemmas of contemporary society. The world around us, we see today phenomenal scientific advancement and this has given us the ability to, as Dr. King states, to have guided missiles. We have enormous amount of technology, geometrical progress by which we are able to control the outer world.
Now, at the same time, we are also seeing a catastrophic misuse of resources, which can lead to a large amount of problems, which is leading to a large amount of problems, in fact. So, this catastrophic misuse of resources can range from both ecological resources, which are given to us in nature, to technological resources, which we have developed with our intelligence and our science. So, we have misguided men, as it is said.
So, now, we, our life has two dimensions at a broad level. We could call this as the outer dimension and the inner dimension. The outer dimension is addressed by science, wherein we, through various gadgets, are able to control more and more things and do things which would have been considered impossible in even a century ago.
At the same time, at the inner level, where stress, hypertension, depression and a variety of mental problems are increasingly troubling people, are increasingly tormenting society. Now, if we look at the inner world, what exactly do we mean by it and how is it to be controlled? So, this is illustrated most vividly in the Bhagavad Gita, which is a time-honored classic coming from the Indian wisdom tradition. It has been widely acknowledged by many leading thinkers, scientists, authors and millions of people all over the world.
Now, the need for inner control as the foundation for outer control, the need for inner stability as the prerequisite for outer success is illustrated in the very setting of the Bhagavad Gita. There are many books of wisdom coming in the world in various different traditions, but few, if any, have a setting as dramatic as is the setting of the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is spoken on a battlefield.
And Arjuna is the foremost archer of his times and what we can achieve with our high-tech missiles that Arjuna had achieved using his extraordinary archery skills. He was a peerless archer during his times and he had phenomenal control. In fact, he had such control that almost the whole army which was facing him, he had single-handedly defeated in a confrontation a few months ago.
The Bhagavad Gita is spoken on a battlefield, on a battlefield which is known as the Kurukshetra battlefield and before that Arjuna had fought with the Kauravas who were the antagonists at a battlefield in Virat and they single-handedly had defeated all of them. But here he seemed to lose the battle even before the start of the battle because he lost his nerve. So, the Bhagavad Gita has its setting in not the specific socio-cultural or historical-political context, but in its central message whose relevance endures beyond time, place and circumstance.
Although Arjuna who has to fight a war against his relatives and finds himself losing his nerve, facing an emotional breakdown and being unable to fight the war, he collapses. At the start of the Bhagavad Gita which has 18 chapters, the first chapter describes firstly the observing the armies on the battlefield and secondly Arjuna’s emotional breakdown. And by the end of the first chapter, Arjuna collapses and he says, विस्रुज्य सशरं चापं शोक सम्वीग्नमान सहा So, विस्रुज्य सशरं चापं in 1.46 in the Bhagavad Gita is described, विस्रुज्य giving up सशरं चापं सशरं with the bow and the arrow, giving up the bow and arrow he sat down, शोक सम्वीग्नमान सहा being dejected.
Now, the challenge for Arjuna was that he couldn’t fight. The specific context of the war is something which we will discuss later. And the point is that when he had to fight and he had to fight against his relatives, it overwhelmed him.
And if we look at the message of the Bhagavad Gita, it doesn’t go into geopolitical justification of the war. Why the Pandavas are right and the Kauravas are wrong and why it is a matter of necessity to fight the war. But the Bhagavad Gita, although there are references to the war in the initial chapters, Krishna asks Arjuna to rise and fight.
But as we move forward from the fifth chapter onwards, from the fifth chapter onwards till the end, there is practically, there are practically only one or two references to the war. Because the Bhagavad Gita’s message rises far above its setting. And the teacher and the student in their discussion of questions about the universal truths.
What is the purpose of existence? Who are we? Who am I? How do I decide what I should do and what I should not do? These are the questions that go to the heart of the human dilemma. And these are the questions which the Bhagavad Gita addresses. So after hearing the full message of the Gita, what happens? Bhagavad Gita describes how by its end, in the last verse in 18.78, it is described Yatra Yogeshwara Krishna, Yatra Partha Dhanurdhara, Yatra Shri Vijayoh Bhutir, Dhruvani Thirma Thirma Maa So Yatra Yogeshwara Krishna, wherever there is Krishna, Yatra Partha Dhanurdhara, where there is Arjuna who is the wielder of the bow.
So where both of them are together, there there is supreme success. There there is supreme glory. There there is victory.
There is morality. In fact there is all virtue. So the significance of this verse is multifarious.
Most important is it is describing Yatra Partha Dhanurdhara. Dhanurdhara is one name of Arjuna that he was a person who is the wielder of the bow. But along with that, it also signifies the position of Arjuna as the wielder of the bow.
That means he has lifted up the bow. He was a wielder of the bow. He was expert at fighting with the bow.
But at the start of the Bhagavad Gita, he had put down the bow in rejection and by the end of the Gita, he has lifted up the bow and he is aroused ready to he is ready to tackle the battle of life. So all of us have to battle with various circumstances. We have professional problems, we have relational problems, we have mental problems, we have ecological problems, we have economic problems and life often is nothing more than a sequence of battles and sometimes rather than there being sequential battles, we have parallel battles where problems from various directions come upon us at the same time.
And just as Arjuna lost heart at the start of the Gita, I said Arjuna put down his bow and said I cannot fight. In 2.9 of the Bhagavad Gita, I said I will not fight. So similarly, there are times when we lose heart, when we feel overwhelmed, when we feel what is the point, how can I continue, why should I continue, what should I do? So the Bhagavad Gita is no doubt based on history.
Most eminent scholars throughout acknowledge the historicity of Krishna and the historicity of the Mahabharata. At the same time, the Bhagavad Gita also has a deeper significance. Arjuna’s Gandiva bow represents our determination.
It represents our determination to live and pursue a life of duty, of life of integrity, a life of quality. But just as Arjuna was overwhelmed when faced with a heart-wrenching dilemma, we too get overwhelmed. The specific dilemmas that overwhelm us may be different from what specifically overwhelmed Arjuna, but the principle remains the same.
That principle is when we go beyond the surface of existence to the substance of reality and grasp that substance, then we come in contact with a reality that is unchangeable, a reality that is unshakable, a reality that constantly shelters us. The Bhagavad Gita is known as a yoga shastra, as a book that talks about yoga. In the traditional narrations of the Bhagavad Gita, the colophon, the text that is recited at the end of each chapter, states that it calls each chapter as a yoga shastra.
So, the Bhagavad Gita is a book of yoga and yoga has one of its aspects as physical postures for toning and shaping and healing the body, but the substance of yoga, it comes from is connection. Yoga is connected, it’s cognate with this English word yoke. This is a yoke, it used to connect two things, say a bull to a bullock cart or a horse to a chariot or whatever.
A farmer may use a yoke to connect together the tools that are used for plowing and an animal that is going to do the towing. So, it essentially means connection. So, yoga is that process which connects us, which connects our consciousness with the deepest realities of existence.
So, the Bhagavad Gita’s narrative takes us beyond appearance to the substance. Krishna starts the message by talking about the spiritual essence that pervades all of existence. He talks about how at our core, we are indestructible spiritual beings and as the Gita’s message develops, it talks about how there is an imperishable, inexhaustible connection between us as souls and already being centered on the absolute truth.
This vision of spiritual connectedness wherein we see ourselves indestructible and wherein we see all of reality as strongly connected, that brings a profound level of peace in our lives. Not just peace but also strength. Just as a person who is in a boat will be tossed up and down, up and down, up and down because of the waves in the ocean.
Similarly, in this world, there are the waves of dualities. There is success, failure. There is happiness, distress.
There is honor, dishonor and these keep shaking us, keep swaying us, keep tossing us here and there and they steal away from us our long-term purpose, our capacity to act in our long-term interests and to fulfill our highest potentials. So the Bhagavad Gita guides us how to go beyond the surface dualities and to connect with our highest purpose. Just as a boat, when it is anchored to something which is far greater than itself, then the shaking of the boat decreases.
The shaking of the boat becomes lesser and lesser and becomes stabler and stabler. Similarly, the Bhagavad Gita gives the knowledge of yoga by which we can connect with higher spiritual realities. We can connect with our spiritual identity.
We can align with our spiritual purpose and we can harmonize with the highest spiritual reality and thus we can become calmer. We can become clearer in our perspectives. We can become happier in our life.
So the Bhagavad Gita guides us towards inner control. When Arjuna, who had the capacity to fight and win in the war, he had the capacity of phenomenal outer control. But when his emotions ran riot in his inner world, he collapsed.
So similarly, in the world today, although through technology we have phenomenal outer control, but the inner control is very much lacking. And because of that, there are a variety of problems. And the Bhagavad Gita provides us the intellectual armor, the wisdom by which we can gain inner control.
We can gain inner mastery. And just as Arjuna lifted up his bow and became ready to fight by the end of the Gita, similarly, we too can rise with confidence, with enthusiasm, with stability, with determination, with wisdom and march through life. So there are many great thinkers who appreciated this transformational wisdom of the Gita.
So it was Henry David Thoreau, he said that when I studied the cosmogonal wisdom of the Gita, you know, all our western literature and what it has offered to us seems puny and insignificant. So this was not so much to discredit the western literature as to give due credit to the wisdom of the Gita. The Gita takes us to the substance of reality.
And when we see that substance, then we see everything else in perspective. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, I owe a magnificent day to the Gita, wherein, he says, I heard the voice of an old intelligence that spondered and answered the questions that exhaust us even today. So this is the universal relevance beyond its specific socio-cultural, geopolitical context.
There is the universal message of how to connect with our deepest self and how to live in harmony with our inner nature. That message is a message of hope and strength. Mahatma Gandhi said that, when doubts haunt me, when disappointment stares me in the face and when I see not a ray of hope anywhere, I turn to the Gita.
And even if it’s overwhelming sorrow, as I meditate on its verses, I find myself smiling. Those who meditate on the Gita will get fresh inspiration and meaning from it every day. That is the invitation of the Gita for all of us.
That we are living in a world which offers us phenomenal outer control and we need parallel inner mastery by which we can use the resources that we have for our good and for the good of others. The Bhagavad Gita complements the inner void, compensates for the inner void that is there in the life of people today by providing empowering spiritual wisdom. Wisdom that can help us to achieve, to realize our talents, do justice to our potential and to achieve the fulfillment that we are always seeking.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.