The Song of the Lord, The Bhagavad-Gita
| In
sanskrit Bhagavad-Gita means "song of the Lord". The
Bagavad-Gita is a a sanskrit poem incorporated into the
Mahabharata, one of the greatest religious
classics of Hinduism. The Gita (as it is often called) consists
of a dialogue between
Lord Krishna and Prince Arjuna
on the eve of the great battle of Kurukshetra.
Arjuna is
overcome with anguish when he sees in the opposing army many of
his kinsmen, teachers, and friends. Krishna persuades him to
fight by instructing him in spiritual wisdom and the means of
attaining union with God. The main doctrines of the Gita are
karma-yoga, the yoga of selfless action performed with inner
detachment from its results; jnana-yoga, the yoga of knowledge
and discrimination between the lower nature of man and his soul,
which is identical with the supreme self; and bhakti yoga, the
yoga of devotion to a particular god—in this case, Krishna, who
reveals himself to Arjuna as the avatara (incarnation) of
Vishnu, Lord of the Universe.
The Bhagavad-Gita is essentially Upanishadic in content,
but it differs significantly from the brahman-atman doctrine of
the
Upanishads
in teaching that the highest God is personal and that love and surrender
to God's grace is a better and easier spiritual path than that
of pure knowledge. The Gita has been the subject of many
commentaries and has been much translated. Its translators
include Annie Besant, Sir Edwin Arnold, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,
and Mohandas Gandhi.
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Adapted from
Questia
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