I recently started reading a 3-volume commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the first among the scriptures of the Hindus. The commentary is written by Swami Ranganathananda, the current President of the Ramakrishna Mission. The erudition and scholarship of Swamiji is well known and I am really looking forward to reading his work.
However, his 68-page introduction itself was so informative and comprehensive that I found it difficult to move on. I had to go back and read it again, more slowly than the first time. I found a wealth of information in this introduction to the Gita, some of which I would like to share with people who take time out to read this.
Although the Gita is perhaps the holiest book of the Hindus, it might surprise many to know that it was not written for any particular religion or ethnic group. It talks about an eternal religion or Sanatana Dharma, which is meant for all mankind. Originally written in Sanskrit, it was included as a part of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. The subject of the Gita is a dialogue between Krishna, who is an incarnation of God and Arjuna, a mortal, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
The Gita, says Swamiji, was first translated into English by Sir Charles Wilkins and published by the British East India Company, with an introduction by none other than Warren Hastings, the first British Governor General of India, in which we find the following prophetic sentence :
“the writers of the Indian philosophies will survive when the British Dominion in India shall long have ceased to exist, and the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance.”
The Gita has influenced many people in the western world. Some prominent names in this connection are Sir Edwin Arnold (who also rendered the Gita in English, calling it “The Song Celestial”), Thomas Carlyle, both of England, and also Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau of the USA.
As mentioned by Swami Ranganathananda, the dharma or philosophy taught in the Gita is of a twofold nature, charcterised by pravritti, outward action, and nivritti, inward contemplation. Both action and meditation are needed for balanced development of a human being. Today, there seems to be more stress on pravritti all around us and no emphasis on nivritti. It is work, work and work, accumulate more and more wealth and achieve all the comforts and a variety of pleasures that money can buy. Yet there is no peace of mind and life is full of tensions. The German philosopher Schopenhauer said : “When men achieve security and welfare, now that they have solved all other problems, they become a problem to themselves.”
This unhappiness comes because we only look outwards and not inwards. We do not try to know our true Self, that spark of Divinity that is present in all of us. Our centre of gravity has always been outside. This can be avoided when we add that second value to human life, namely nivritti (meditation) through which one comes in touch with the ever-present divine within.
The combination of pravritti and nivritti is the great teaching of the Gita. This is a philosophy which makes for total human development. This message is not only for Hindus or Indians but for all humanity. That is its universality.
I leave you with that thought. I will now return to Krishna and Arjuna on the great battlefield of Kurukshetra, that is, if I can get past the introduction of Swamiji without stopping to read it again.
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