The Bhagavad Gita Guide

THE BIG IDEAS Live Your Dharma The Bhagavad Gita Classics of Indian Spirituality How about now? Fire & Smoke It’s part of the process. Seeing Truly God is everywhere! The Power of Our Will Re-shape your life. Two Paths Choose wisely. Results “Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve… Learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation. Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. Cultivate vigor, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride. Then, you will achieve your destiny.” & Non-attachment. Temperance of a Yogi ~ Krishna from The Bhagavad Gita The Middle Way. The Bhagavad Gita is incredible. Meditate A principal book of Hinduism, inspiration to Gandhi and overall “must-read” for any big Pretty, please. thinking seeker, if you haven’t read it yet, I *highly* recommend you add it to your list. How’s Your Faith? Well, how is it? (I personally love Eknath Easwaran’s translation and commentary.) There Is No Failure In these brief six pages, we’ll barely scratch the surface of the depth of the Gita and, as always, On the path. we’ll focus on the Big Ideas we can immediately grasp and, most importantly, apply to our lives. Selfless Service QUICK CONTEXT Give yourself!! The Bhagavad Gita is believed to have been written between the 5th and 2nd centuries BCE and its 700 verses are part of the longer Mahabharata. The content of the Gita consists of a conversation between Krishna, the supreme manifestation of the Lord Himself, and the warrior prince Arjuna before the start of the Kurukshetra war. Krishna is advising Arjuna as he hesitates in moral confusion over the challenge of going to war with his own family. “By devotion to one’s own particular duty, everyone can attain perfection.” ~ Krishna Viewed allegorically, the war represents the perennial struggle between good and evil within each of us and Krishna’s wisdom points the way to following the yogic path of living in harmony with universal laws as we strive to live our highest truths. LIVE YOUR DHARMA “It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma. But competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity.” Dharma. It comes from the Sanskrit dhri, which means “to support, hold up or bear.” The word means many things, but according to Eknath Easwaran, dharma “implies support from within: the essence of a thing, its virtue, that which makes it what it is.” “Relying on internal discipline, meditate on me always.” ~ Krishna On a larger scale, dharma means “the essential order of things, an integrity and harmony in the universe and the affairs of life that cannot be disturbed without courting chaos. Thus it means rightness, justice, goodness, purpose rather than chance.” There’s also a (highly) personal application of dharma. In essence, we all have our own “dharma” or purpose and reason for being alive. As Krishna states in the Gita, following someone else’s dharma is dangerous. If you live your life trying to impress others and not fulfilling what you’re here to do, you’ll feel the pain. So… How about you? Are you living your dharma? Or struggling to fulfill someone else’s ideas about who you should be and what you should do?! In his great book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (see Notes), Deepak Chopra dedicates a chapter to his 7th Law: The Law of Dharma. In that chapter, he has a bunch of great questions to help us discover and live our dharma. One of my favorites: “If you had all the money and all the time in the world, what would you do?!!?” So… If you had all the money and all the time in the world, what would you do? * journal time! * :) FIRE & SMOKE “One person in many “It is better to perform one’s own duties imperfectly than to master the duties of another. By thousands may seek fulfilling the obligations he is born with, a person never comes to grief. No one should abandon perfection, yet of these only a few reach the goal and come to realize me.” ~ Krishna duties because he sees defects in them. Every action, every activity, is surrounded by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke.” So, we’ve established the importance of following YOUR dharma and not someone else’s. Sweet. Now, what about if you’re not perfectly following your path? Well, that’s a good time to check in with the Gita and remember: ”No one should abandon duties because he sees defects in them. Every action, every activity, is surrounded by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke.” And how about Abraham Maslow (see Notes on Motivation and Personality) who studied the greatest people of his generation (from Einstein to Eleanor Roosevelt) as he identified the hallmarks of what he called “self-actualizing” individuals? He taught us: “There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good, very good indeed, in fact, great. There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers…even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.” And Rumi (see Notes) who advises: “There is no worse sickness for the soul, o you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.” The moment we allow ourselves to be less than perfect, we open ourselves up to the opportunity to grow. Here’s to many of those moments! :) SEEING TRULY “He alone sees truly who sees the Lord the same in every creature… seeing the same Lord everywhere, he does not harm himself or others.” “Calmness, gentleness, silence, self-restraint, and purity: these are the disciplines of the mind.” ~ Krishna The end result of following Krishna’s wisdom and living the yogic truths is simple: we see “the Lord the same in every creature.” We experience the beauty and the power of seeing the interconnectedness of our existence and do no harm to ourselves or others. Reminds me of more of Maslow’s mojo: “Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.” And Einstein’s statement: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison.” And, what about Donne’s For Whom the Bell Tolls? “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” We’re all ONE. Let’s see truly. And, why not emulate Walt Whitman who tells us: “In the faces of men and women, I see God.” “Giving simply because it is right to give, without thought of return, at a proper time, in proper circumstances, and to a worthy person, is sattvic giving.” ~ Krishna THE POWER OF OUR WILL “Reshape yourself through the power of your will… Those who have conquered themselves… live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame… To such people a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same… Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights.” Self-mastery. Another theme echoed (again and again!) throughout these Notes. The Buddha (see Notes on The Dhammapada) says: “One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand men on the battlefield.” Jesus says: “He who rules his spirit has won a greater victory than the taking of a city.” Rumi (see Notes) says: “The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.” How’s YOUR self-mastery? Are you re-shaping yourself through the power of your will? Perhaps the quickest, simplest and most powerful way to begin re-shaping yourself starting NOW is to ask yourself these two questions: 1. What’s one thing your Highest Self would like to be doing you’re not currently doing? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ 2. And, how about something that you are doing that you know you need to stop doing?!? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Let’s diligently, patiently and persistently re-shape ourselves through the power of our will, my friend! “I continue to act, but I am not driven by any need of my own.” ~ Krishna TWO PATHS “Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve… Learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation. Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. Cultivate vigor, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride. Then, you will achieve your destiny.” That’s from a chapter called “Two Paths.” A description of the other path? “The demonic do things they should avoid and avoid the things they should do… Hypocritical, proud, and arrogant, living in delusion and clinging to their deluded ideas, insatiable in their desires, they pursue unclean ends… Bound on all sides by scheming and anxiety, driven by anger and greed, they amass by any means they can a hoard of money for the satisfaction of their cravings… Self-important, obstinate, swept away by the pride of wealth, they ostentatiously perform sacrifices without any regard for their purpose. Egotistical, violent, arrogant, lustful, angry, envious of everyone, they abuse my presence within their own bodies and in the bodies of others.” So, which one are you choosing? RESULTS & NON-ATTACHMENT “The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.” You ever notice that your stress comes from CLINGING to your idea of what should happen and when it should happen? (Me, too. :) Russell Simmons, the vegan-yogi-hip-hop-mogul brings the point home brilliantly in his great book, Do You! (see Notes): “I know some people say ‘Keep your eyes on the prize,’ but I disagree. When your eyes are stuck on the prize, you’re going to keep stumbling and crashing into things. If you really want to get ahead, you’ve got to keep your eyes focused on the path.” So, next time you’re stressed, take a peak and see if it’s because you’re WAY TOO worried about the RESULTS. Then, take a deep breath in, exhale. One more time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Then get back to doing your best and follow the wisdom of the Gita: “Abandon all attachment to the results of action and attain supreme peace.” TEMPERANCE OF A YOGI “Those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation.” Buddha calls it the “Middle Way” and Aristotle calls it the “Virtuous Mean.” Whatever YOU call it, pay attention. :) And ask yourself these questions: What am I doing too much of? What I am doing too little of? Then re-shape yourself through the power of your will!