When Prabhupada’s Gita is so obviously not as it is, how can he call it as it is?

From Dharmaveer

He translates karma-yoga as bhakti-yoga, inserts Krishan where there is no Krishna and makes so many changes in his English Gita. How then can he claim his Gita to be as it is?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
question how can Prabhupada claim his Gita to be as it is when it is so obviously not as it is Prabhupada so clearly translates Karma Yoga as Bhakti Yoga translates Gyan Yoga as Bhakti Yoga he clearly his Bhagavad Gita is not as it is so how can he claim his Bhagavad Gita to be as it is when he is doing such obvious doing such obvious non-literal translations and yet claiming it to be as it is answer the Bhagavad Gita is as it is in terms of essential purpose not necessarily in terms of linguistic technicalities I will answer this at three levels first is that what is the essential purpose of the Gita now how do we know it we have to look at it by looking at the Gita’s context itself what happens to Arjuna after hearing the Gita does he become a Ashtang Yogi does he become a Gyan Yogi no he explains his understanding is he even becoming a Karma Yogi no because he is telling Arjuna he is telling Krishna in the middle of the Gita that I accept you as the supreme lord that you are the supreme being you are the supreme god this is what all the greatest sages have said and you have confirmed it I accept it fully he says so he is accepting Krishna as the supreme reality and that is the characteristic of Bhakti Yoga and on top of that this is 10.12.13.14 and then at the end of the Bhagavad Gita when he expresses his resolve in 18.73 he says I will do your will he is not just saying I will do Kshatriya Dharma I will do your will this is the attitude of a devotee so Bhagavan and Bhakti the supremacy of Bhagavan as the Sadhya and the supremacy of Bhakti as the Sadhana the goal and the means that is established in the Bhagavad Gita systematically by its thought flow and that is how Arjuna understands it and that is what we see in his life he acts as a devotee as we will look at his life later in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavatam so essentially the Bhagavad Gita is a book in terms of its ultimate purpose of the transformational power of love of understanding that when god loves us when we understand that god loves us and when we seek to love him back then life becomes completely transformed we get a new enriching vision of life and we are able to move forward through whatever obstacles life may send our way so this is the vision that the Gita gives us and it is this vision that Shri Prabhupada also gives us so he makes it very clear that we have to devote ourselves to Krishna and Krishna is the highest truth so in terms of the essential purpose of the Gita of establishing sadhana and sadhya as supreme Prabhupada does make it very clear what is the goal so now that is with respect to essential purpose now with respect to linguistic technicalities now let’s is linguistic precision the means to intellectual comprehension in everything linguistic precision is generally required but does that alone comprise the qualification suppose someone has suppose a very advanced book on quantum physics is written in English now I may be a English PhD professor but does my knowledge of English guarantee me that I will be able to understand the whole book or translate that book into Hindi if required just because I know a particular knowledge doesn’t mean that I know everything in that language similarly just because somebody knows Sanskrit doesn’t mean that one can know all the subject matter in that book nor does it mean that just because something doesn’t seem to be linguistically correct the essential meaning is lost because words have different meanings at different times the meanings change and when we divorce the meanings from the cultural context then the essential purpose can be lost suppose there is a book of medicine in Chinese and it’s an ancient book and the Chinese doctor has been treating many people and curing many people as per that medicine and the Chinese doctor also learns English and translates the book now the Chinese doctor is neither a Chinese scholar there is a scholar in Chinese as a language nor is the doctor scholar in English as a language but when the doctor translates the book and in contrast we have a scholar, a linguist who is a scholar in Chinese and English and that person translates the book whose translation would be more reliable from the point of view of linguistic technicality the linguist translation might be better but from the point of view of practical transformational applicability, practical healing potency in the doctor’s translation would be better so the essential purpose would maintain much better so when we want to study a book like Gita it’s a book for healing the human heart as I said the human heart is bewildered ruptured by its fracture from the divine heart and the Bhagavad Gita shows how that you can be fractured, that fracture can be healed by the healing process of Bhakti Yoga so it’s a process for application and for that application we need to look at those who have applied the Gita in their lives and have guided others to apply the Gita and from them we can understand the import of the Gita properly so that’s why the linguistic we shouldn’t get too caught in linguistic technicalities Prabhupada by his devotion had experience of Krishna and he is sharing that experience of Krishna, that love for Krishna with others now moving forward is Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita not as it is, we could have said it is not as it is if he had suppressed the Sanskrit text he could just have given the translation and the purports and we would not, most of us at least in the initial stage of Gita study would just have studied the translation and purport but Prabhupada gives us the Sanskrit and not only Sanskrit in Devanagari font, he gives Sanskrit in the English font in the Latin font also and then he gives us the transliteration he gives the Sanskrit in Devanagari then he gives the transliteration then he gives the word to a translation, then he gives the translation and the purport, now that means he is not hiding his strategy at all if he is translating Karma Yoga as Bhakti Yoga then he is allowing us to the whole world to see that this is what I am doing and then on top of, when he does something like this and on top of that he says this Bhagavad Gita as it is, it will force us to ask the question, how can this be as it is if his intention was simply to say mislead people and just impose his own interpretation on the Gita then why would he have given the Sanskrit because he is giving because he wants us to think, his message is in terms of essential purpose yes, Krishna does talk about Karma Yoga but then there are several places in Bhagavad Gita which talk about how Karma Yoga culminates in Bhakti Yoga there is 3.9, there is 3.30, there is again the progression from 18.40 to 18.56 I don’t have time to go into technicalities over here, but like that Prabhupada, all the Yogas are showing the Bhagavad Gita to culminate in Bhakti and then we understand this essential point, this central this progressive nature of the Gita’s revelation, so what comes at the end of the Gita Prabhupada gives throughout the Gita now why does he do that? It’s because of compassion because he knows the Gita is a complex philosophical book which was written in a particular cultural intellectual framework so all the background technical knowledge which people had at that time, which enabled them to understand the Bhagavad Gita which enabled Arjuna to understand Krishna’s message most people today don’t have that cultural intellectual background so for them to first understand the whole cultural intellectual background and then to understand how through all that cultural intellectual background with all the various means for spiritual elevation how the ultimate means of elevation is Bhakti Yoga, to understand all that will take a lot of time and most people may not be interested and will not be interested in spending so much time and thought in trying to understand the book, so Prabhupada makes sure that they get the conclusion in every chapter practically every purport every few purports, that is his compassion, now Prabhupada is also aware of the flow of the Gita, for example if you look at 2.72 he in the purport he says in this chapter a hint of Bhakti Yoga is given and Karma Yoga has been described in detail now that is true because the only hint of Bhakti Yoga is in 2.61 Yuktasita Mat Paraha fix the consciousness on me but Prabhupada in his purport has not just given a hint he has given a full picture of Bhakti Yoga he has talked about how Ambarish Maharaj used to clean the temple of the Lord, used to take darshan of the deities of the Lord, used to use all his senses in the service of the Lord, so like that Prabhupada has talked about Bhakti quite a lot he has given more than a hint, so what is Prabhupada doing? Prabhupada is consciously aware of the flow of the Gita and he is consciously choosing a strategy where he gives the complete picture of the Gita the conclusion of the Gita which is devotion throughout the Gita. At one time some Mayavadis asked, Mayavadi came to Prabhupada and asked Swamiji there is no Krishna in this translation of the verse why you put Krishna over here? So Prabhupada replied you Mayavadi is where there is Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita you have removed him from there also, so to compensate I have put Krishna where he is not there also so what does it mean? the Mayavadis especially most infamously in 9.34 where Krishna uses Manna so many times manmana bhava madhbhakto madhyaji mam namaskuru mam evasyasi yuktvayivam atmana madhparana, six time math is there and Mayavadis comment that one has to surrender to some unknown light within Krishna, so where Krishna is, the Mayavadis have removed, so Prabhupada says that Prabhupada is responding in his purpose towards to the current cultural and intellectual setting, where that means two factors are there, one factor is that people just don’t have time to apply time to apply to understand the Gita’s world view and then come to its conclusion, that’s why Prabhupada gives conclusion repeatedly that is emphasizing on Bhakti and Krishna and secondly because Bhakti and Krishna have been deliberately practically banished from the Gita because many scholars wanted to propose monism that there are historical nationalistic considerations for that they wanted to unite all of Indians and for that purpose they thought the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t talk about any one particular God, then the people who are worshipping different Gods also they can all come under banner of the Bhagavad Gita, so they had their political utilitarian motivations for their nationalistic interpretations and they had exiled Krishna so Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita as it is is a very carefully thought out response to socio-cultural circumstances so as to best present the Bhagavad Gita’s conclusion to people so that people who have every lame person’s bias, they cannot miss the personal understanding and people who are too distracted they also, even if they do not go through the technical flow of the Gita, they understand its conclusion and he has given the original Sanskrit he has given the original he has given the transliteration, the word to word translations and by all this, those who want to become serious students of the Gita, he has given them, he has given them a facility for that and Prabhupada never said that when he says this Bhagavad Gita is as it is, that does not mean that there are not other as it is Bhagavad Gita’s he himself was wanting to write another commentary on the Gita and he accepted the commentaries of great Vaishnavacharyas Ramamacharya and others and he expected disciples also to write books on the Gita, so the idea is that for a technical flow of the Gita Prabhupada also where the Bhakti conclusion is maintained and it is progressively established Prabhupada accepts that there can be other bona fide translations also but which give the systematic flow and Prabhupada himself quotes from Baldevidya Bhushan, he quotes from Srinath Chakradhakur and they have translated Karma Yoga as Karma Yoga so Prabhupada is saying that his idea his Bhagavad Gita is as it is is not a monopolization of the Bhagavad Gita saying that everyone else is wrong his Bhagavad Gita is as it is in terms of giving its essential conclusion consistently and if one wants to go to the progressive conclusion there are other Gitas also whose authority also he accepts and by that also one can understand the Bhagavad Gita’s conclusion in a progressive way thank you Hare Krishna