The Bhagavad Gita (500 B.C.E.), often referred to as the Gita, is a 700-verse Sanskrit scripture that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The Gita is set in a narrative framework of a dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Krishna. At the start of the Dharma Yudhha (righteous war) between Pandavas and Kauravas, Arjuna is filled with the moral dilemma and despair about the violence and death the war will cause. He wonders if he should renounce and seeks Krishna’s counsel, whose answers and discourse constitute the Bhagadvad-Gita. The dialogue covers a broad range of spiritual topics, touching upon ethical dilemmas and philosophical issues that go far beyond the war Arjuna faces.
Quotations from The Bhagavad Gita…
O scion of Bharat, I am also the knower of all the individual fields of activity. The understanding of the body as the field of activities, and the soul and God as the knowers of the field, this I hold to be true knowledge.
Higher, deeper, innermost, abides another life.
All creatures live bewildered, save some few.
He who would be master of himself shall win it, if he bravely strives.
No heart that holds one right desire treads the road of loss.
Water flows continually into the ocean
But the ocean is never disturbed.
Desire flows into the mind of the seer
But he is never disturbed.
The seer knows peace.
Thinking about sense objects
Will attach you to sense objects;
Grow attached, and you become addicted;
Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;
Be angry, and you confuse your mind;
Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;
Forget experience, you lose discrimination;
Lose discrimination, and you miss life’s
only purpose.
Whatever thou doest, whatever thou eatest, do all as if for me.
Those whose minds are attracted to my invisible nature have a great labor to encounter, because an invisible path is difficult to be found by corporeal beings.
That which is non-existent can never come into being, and that which is can never cease to be. Those who have known the inmost Reality know also the nature of “is” and “is not.”
