An Eternal Source Of Inspiration -1
The Bhagwad Gita, a religious classic, is an inexhaustible source of divine inspiration and a guide to holistic living. It occurs in the Bhishma-Parva of the Mahabharata and has 18 chapters in dialogue form. Its 700 verses were chanted by the all-pervasive Vishnu in his incarnation as Krishna to provide inner strength and spiritual insight to Arjuna at the battlefield of Kurukshetra. American transcendentalists like Ralph W Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman were greatly influenced by the philosophy of the Gita.
From Alberuni’s Arabic rendering of its contents in the 11th century, to its Persian translations commissioned by emperors Zain-ul’ Abidin and Akbar, and its Sufi interpretation by Shaikh ‘Abdu’r Rahman Chishti and Dara Shukoh; from Charles Wilkins’ first translation of the scripture into English to those of Demetrios Galanos into Greek, Fredrich von Schlegel into Latin, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s into German and Christian Lessen into French, there have been serious efforts to understand and explore the Gita in its religious, intellectual, ethical, social, and spiritual dimensions.
M K Gandhi read the Bhagwad Gita first time in 1890 through the English rendering of the scripture, titled The Song Celestial by Sir Edwin Arnold. To him the Gita was not just a scripture to be recited and adored, but more than that — it was like mother. ‘I lost my earthly mother who gave me birth long ago, but the eternal mother has completely filled her place by my side ever since.’ He appreciated its lucidity, philosophical profundity and ethical values. He believed that it helps one to transform love into bhakti, devotion, worldly deeds into divine acts, and understanding into enlightenment.
Gandhi saw no difference between the Gita and the Sermon On The Mount. ‘What the Sermon describes in a graphic manner, the Gita reduces to a scientific formula.’ ‘Earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow,’ says the Bible. He who eats without performing yajna, sacrifice, eats stolen bread, says the Gita. However, he once told a group of Christian missionaries that he found solace in the Gita which he missed ‘even in the Sermon On The Mount.’
The Gita represents the spiritual heritage of India as it reconciles different schools and strands of thought — the life-affirming philosophy of the vedas, the metaphysical formulations of the upanishads and the aranyakas, the ontological crux of the Samkhya, the logical realism of Nyaya, the meditativeness of Yoga and the devotional disciplines of the Bhakti tradition.
Om Namah Shivay
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