In 2001, I had the good fortune to visit London. I was doubly lucky to have been able to have dinner at the Hare Krishna restaurant near Soho Square. Outside the front door on that occasion was a life-size cardboard cut-out of Krishna and Arjuna riding on the latter's chariot. The caption read: "The Bhagavad Gita - The Greatest Dialogue Ever Written." A bold claim, but one that to my mind is true.
The Bhagavad Gita forms part of the great Indian epic The Mahabharata. It comes at the point when two powerful families of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kuravas, are just about to fight a war for control of an Earthly kingdom. Arjuna, a prince of the Kuravas, asks his charioteer Krishna to drive his chariot midway between the two armies so that he can see the faces of the relatives he is about to slay; and in viewing those cousins and uncles he loves so, he breaks down and loses all taste for action. Krishna tells Arjuna to arise and take action, and so begins the dialogue.
Of course, the scenario is a metaphor: Krishna is the omnipotent God, Arjuna is the human mind, the chariot is the body, the two contending armies are the forces of good and evil, and the kingdom is the human soul. "On the battle field of life" are we to side with good or evil, or do we do nothing?
Arjuna asks the questions, Krishna supplies the answers. We are told of a cosmogonic vision of God, the universe and our place in it. Separateness is an illusion. God is in all, and all is in god. The motive force of Creation is love. We can apprehend the Truth in three ways: through knowledge, through work and through devotion. Krishna says the easiest way for most people is through devotion to him (in his form as he appears in time and space), then through holy work according to the principles he lays down in the last few chapters.
The Bhagavad Gita is the ultimate mindfulness handbook: do everything as though you were doing it for the god you adore, and do it in the awareness of the light of the Eternal. Luckily for us, Krishna had a good editor, and the whole thing weighs in at 120 pages. Once read, The Bhagavad Gita is the gift that keeps on giving, eternally.
Publishing details: The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin, London, first published 1962, trans. Juan Mascaró)
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