In all the existing scriptures that I have read, I found that the Bhagvata Gita is a living scripture, it is chinmaya because it is the words of the Lord. Give light to everyone who takes refuge in the teachings of the Lord. It was the Gita by which Mahatma Gandhi was able to do great things, it was the Gita by which great beings performed miracles. This is the most widely read book in the world, this is the only scripture that great beings loved to talk about. Every scholar found his intended meaning in this great scripture, this is because the Bhagavata Gita is not just a dharma grantha, it is about life. It is believed that the lord himself gave it to Arjuna in the midst of the battle of Kurikshetra. The battle that was fought between Pandvas and Kauravas was a dharma yuddha, that is, when the question of good and evil became indeterminable. It was the battle where merits that never existed before for the people were determined, maybe this is the reason why it was called dharmakshetra which was kurukshetra.
This battlefield where virtue has to be established by the great intelligence of Lord Krishna, the mind of the hero Arjuna was caught by the great Moha (a word that is still untranslatable). Being unable to understand what should be done and what should not be done, he posed the highest question that could have been posed to a man of disposition: what is this dharma of killing human beings, those who are loved already? the family members themselves? What a pity that we have decided to commit a great sin by being eager to kill our own relatives and relatives out of greed for the pleasure of a kingdom! Having asked he took refuge at the feet of the lord. He asked, ‘with my nature dominated by defect due to lack of enlightenment. With a mind bewildered by duty, I ask you: tell me what is the supreme absolute and eternal goal. I am your disciple; instruct me who have taken refuge in you’. With this wholehearted refuge in the teacher-friend Krishna began the discourse on the truth of life. Arjuna, being a friend of Krishna, had great faith in his wisdom, as Krishna had guided him at many junctures in his life. He was taught the entire Gita for the removal of the Moha from him (PROVISIONS) from him.
Everything he said was final, but people couldn’t understand it. In the Gita, Krishna divided the paths into two: sankhya and yoga. Bhakti came between the two, it was not mentioned as a separate path. Pandits and Sadhus drew only the metaphysical aspect of Gita, not the actual teaching that it imparted to mankind through Arjuna. This is one of the big reasons for the decline of the Indian society. What benefit will humanity derive from pure metaphysical teachings? The greatness of the Gita is that this is the only scripture available to men that provides mankind with real living truths. It is because Gita was taught when humanity faced a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality. Arjuna’s crisis was both ethical and spiritual. Sri Aurobindo in his essays on the Gita has shed some light on this aspect According to him, “there are three things in the Gita that are spiritually significant, almost symbolic, typical of the deeper relationships and problems of spiritual life and existence human in its roots; they are the divine personality of the teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple, and the occasion of his teachings.
The teacher is the same god descended to humanity; the disciple is the first, as we might say in modern parlance, the representative man of his age, closest friend and chosen instrument of the Avatara, its protagonist in an immense toil and struggle whose secret purpose is unknown to the actors in it, known only by the Divinity incarnate who guides everything from behind the veil of his unfathomable mind of knowledge; the occasion is the violent crisis of that work and it struggles at the moment when the anguish and the moral difficulty and the blind violence of its apparent movements impose themselves with the impact of a visible revelation on the mind of its representative and raises the whole question of the meaning of God in the world and the end and drift and meaning of life and human conduct”.
Gita is the only scripture available to mankind that advocates action instead of asceticism, karma yoga instead of sankhya yoga. She does not condemn Gyana and Bhakti yoga but says that this Karma yoga is better because both materialism and spiritualism can be obtained from it if practiced perfectly. “In the practice of Karma yoga there is no destruction of result and no loss of merit. Even a little of this righteousness saves one from great fear.” This yoga of action is superior to any other form of yoga because God himself practices it. Why should one not follow the great supreme soul, the Purushottama, who is always engaged in action? In the Gita, the Lord Himself says, “In the three worlds, O Partha, there is no duty for me (to perform); there is nothing unachieved that needs to be accomplished. Still, I am busy at work.” Sanyasa dharma is only for a few, especially those who can easily give up worldly desires. Sanyasa cannot be a general religion because humans cannot easily give up desire. As long as the body exists, there is desire and action, therefore one cannot transcend the actions performed by nature, therefore Gita puts an emphasis on karma through yoga. The principle of Karma Yoga is found in some of the major Upanishads, but not as a discipline. Ishavasyopnishad has a verse that profoundly proclaims karma yoga, it goes like this: ‘kurvanneveh karmani jijivishechatam samah evam….’.
But it is the Gita where we find that it is taught as a systematic yoga that has a profound metaphysics; sometimes it seems as if it is beyond Vedanta philosophy. Gita is probably the highest stage of Vedanta philosophy here knowledge, action and devotion are synthesized. What Krishna says ‘yoga’ is the synthesis of the three yoga systems. From the second to the eighteenth chapter he synthesizes these three systems. Knowledge must be obtained by any means, be it yoga of action or yoga of knowledge, which is why he first taught the greatness of knowledge. Since both paths must be realized, there is no difference in both with respect to the end. Gita says, ‘Fools, not scholars, speak of Sankhya and Yoga as different. Anyone who has resorted to only one of them obtains the result of both’. Gita’s ‘Yogi’ is a man who knows perfectly well that KNOWLEDGE is the last resort and the end of all action.
Only a yogi can be known as the master of Gita; that he perfectly knows the mysteries of existence. Knowing that Lord Purushottama is the basis of everything, the indestructible and the immutable, the eternal, the Dharma and absolute bliss, Yogi performs actions only for him. ‘He is all this’ says the Upanishad, so he sees that he spreads everywhere and does your duty for the welfare of the world. In the Gita, two beautiful verses thus express the essence of karma yoga: ‘You perform the obligatory duties, because action is superior to inaction. And, for you who are (will be) without duty, even the maintenance of your body will not properly be possible.’ ‘This man is bound by an action other than that which is intended for the overlord. Without being attached, O son of Kunti, you perform actions for him.’ According to Gita, to be a Karma yogi, the most important things in a man are required: complete surrender to God, since man surrenders himself at the feet of the Lord, by default he renounces attachment to action, the fruit of action and the detachment in inaction. This is because if this existence is God Himself, what is the reason for performing the action by oneself?
