Introduction

 

This book has "happened." I didn’t "plan" to write it. It got written. It happened like this: I first wrote a short essay titled "The Bhagavad Geeta: Overview and Principal Themes" in November 2009, in which I briefly covered subjects like "yoga", "Dnyana-yoga", "Karma-yoga", "moksha" (liberation), "samatva" (equanimity), "attachment" (bondage) and detachment, and "sannyasa" (renunciation), certainly important topics in the Bhagavad Geeta. But after completing it, I felt I had not done justice. There was so much more in the Bhagavad Geeta, and so many good and important things had got left out, that it left me feeling that much more needed to be done to do real justice. Secondly, I was left with the feeling that I had merely picked and chosen what were my favorite topics out of the Geeta and written on them. This was no way to understand any book, let alone a text like the Geeta. The Bhagavad Geeta, although quite small in length as compared with other religious texts like the Bible and the Quran, is in a sense the most difficult to understand. Since it delivers a very important message in a compact manner, which other Hindu religious texts take volumes to do, every word of it is packed with meaning. If justice had to be done, every verse had to be looked at in much more detail than I had done.

And so I started writing, systematically going through every verse. Now the very act of writing does something to you. Firstly, it helps in achieving clarity. Something undefinable happens to you when you put things in black-and-white. Things which are vague and 'in-the-air' get clarified and definite. Plus you commit yourself to it! It becomes "established" within you, and you can move forward and act with greater clarity and firmness. As days went by, I found that whether anyone else benefited from reading it or not, I myself was certainly benefiting tremendously from writing it!

One thing led to another. As I was working on the section 2:14-30 (which is now the chapter "The nature of the soul"), I realized that I needed to clarify the whole Advaitic philosophy first, because many of the passages in the Geeta (like 2:14-30) and even entire chapters like chapter 8, 13, and 14, just can’t be understood without an understanding of the Advaitic philosophy. And most people don’t have any idea of the Advaitic philosophy at all! And so I wrote what has now become the chapter "What is Advaita". But when I was doing that, I realized that I needed to briefly write on the Upanishads as well, because Advaita is essentially Upanishadic (Vedantic) philosophy. And so, what is now the chapter called "The Bhagavad Geeta and the Upanishads" got written. The writing went on and one day, it struck me, "Hey, this has become a book by itself!"

This book is better read sequentially, like a novel. Although the chapters deal with particular sections of the Geeta, they are also connected with each other. Many a time, the later chapters assume that you have read the former ones, and refer back to them. If you haven’t read the earlier chapters, the later ones may not make sense. Hence it is better to read it sequentially.

I have thoroughly enjoyed writing all this. It was great fun! And not only that, I have also benefited tremendously from it. It was not only great fun, but also very uplifting and strengthening. As you start off reading this book, I pray the same for you: that it would be as uplifting and strengthening for you as it has been for me. And as much fun.