Bhagavad-Gita: The Ambrosial 'Sat-Song' of Sri Krishna

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The Bhagavad Gita is more than a profound Vedic scripture; it is a song of liberation but this song is no nursery rhyme or lullaby to be sung to your children before bedtime for all of its beauty and lyricism, the Bhagavad-Gita presents its readers with a great spiritual challenge. The opening scene of the Gita finds the warrior prince Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna situated between two armies readied for war. Arjuna has come to get a better look at his enemies, and:

There Arjuna saw, Stationed within the ranks of both armies, Fathers and grandfathers, teachers, maternal uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, And cherished friends as well.

Overwhelmed by the sudden realization of who he is about to go to war with, Arjuna cries out in despair. How can he sound the call to war when he sees that the enemy is made up of friends, family, and noblemen? What kind of man would set out to destroy that which he loves most? It is here that his charioteer Krishna, who is actually the personification of God, tries to convince Arjuna to throw himself into battle.

The whole subtext of the Gita is what Arjuna saw out there on the battlefield, why Krishna wants him to go into battle, and whether or not Arjuna can rise to the occasion. What is easy to misunderstand, though, is not only why Krishna wants Arjuna to go into battle, but what it is that Arjuna is being asked to conquer. The Gita is not something that you can read from a distance if you want to understand what it is trying to communicate.

Sajohn Davey’s Bhagavad-Gita is a real delight, and will be a treasure to anyone who reads it. His presentation is profound not only in its scholarly precision of translation, but also in its particularly insightful commentary. It is Sajohn's commentary that helps to draw us into the Gita and close the distance between the text and the reader. For if the Bhagavad-Gita is to open us to the richness of its treasure, we must enter into it as we would enter a forest or a stream.

Gita means song, a Nurgatar is an august personage, and the Bhagavad-Gita, contained within the ancient epic Mahabharata, is probably the most widely read of all Vedic scriptures. Its author is said to be India's great sage Vyasa, on whose illustrious resumé we also find the Vedas, the Brahma-Sutras, and the Puranas as well. Since the time of the Gita's initial recital, said to be at least three thousand years ago, revered masters from among India's many different schools of spiritual ideology have certainly presented a multitude of diverse approaches to Self-realization. Yet there seems to be unanimous agreement among them that the unique gift of the Bhagavad-Gita is its especially potent ability to illuminate the receptive heart with pointers toward divine awakenment of one's true nature, The Mahabharata describes how the Pandava brothers' cruel cousin Duryodhana usurped their kingdom by deceitful means, consigned them to thirteen years' exile, and subjected them to profuse miseries in his many attempts to murder them. Yet even after all of that, he refused to honour his promise to return their kingdom upon their return from exile, saying that he would not give them 'even as much land as would fit on the head of a pin. Krishna first acted as an ambassador of peace to try to prevent a war, but despite numerous appeals by Krishna and others for a kinder decision, Duryodhana's obstinacy ordained that war was inevitable. Unlike most wars, however, this particular one was prefaced by a discourse to one of the Pandava princes, Arjuna, regarding the nature of living beings, the universe and the Absolute, which has since become a source of continual inspiration and hope for truth-seekers everywhere.