Pearls of Wisdom

Arjuna and Krisha

The Bhagavad Gita is considered, unquestionably, one of Eastern spiritual literature’s most profound masterpieces. According to Mahatma Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita is a spiritual poem with deep philosophy and divinity. There is a wide range of views on the exact time of writing, authorship (traditionally ascribed to the Sage Vyasa), and historical occurrence. Upon reading, these differences in opinion fade from understanding the human mind and relationship to the divine. 

For those preoccupied with such details, they may explore here and beyond. I leave these matters to the scholars and other “experts.” My interest is how the wisdom expressed in The Gita impacts all humankind's lives, any time, anywhere.

From time to time, I will post excerpts from The Gita, as translated by Eknath Easwaran. In his words, “The Gita’s subject is ‘the war within,’ the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious, and that ‘The language of battle is often found in the scriptures, for it conveys the strenuous, long, drawn-out campaign we must wage to free ourselves from the tyranny of the ego, the cause of all our suffering and sorrow.’”

The setting of The Gita in a battlefield has been interpreted as an allegory for the ethical and moral struggles of human life.

“In profound meditation, they (e.g., the ancients) found, when consciousness is so acutely focused that it is utterly withdrawn from the body and mind, it enters a kind of singularity (Throughout Eastern spirituality this is known as Samadhi) in which the sense of a separate ego disappears. In this state, the supreme climax of meditation, the seers discovered a core of consciousness beyond time and change. They called it simply Atman, the Self.”