It was spoken over 5000 years ago by Krishna to his devotee and friend Arjuna
on the battlefield of Kuruksetra.
On this day around the world, many recite its 700 shlokas (verses) and also
perform ritual fasting to concentrate their hearts and minds on this transcendental message.
In a nutshell, the Bhagavad Gita describes the Supreme, the living entities (souls), material existence,
and the nature of time and karma.
What great souls have found a deep philosophy for life from the Bhagavad Gita?
Albert Einstein: When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.
Mahatma Gandhi: When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditate on the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every day.
Henry David Thoreau: In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.
Rudolph Steiner: In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-Gita with full understanding it is necessary to attune our soul to it.
Aldous Huxley: The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.
Madhvacarya: The Mahabharata has all the essential ingredients necessary to evolve and protect humanity and that within it the Bhagavad-Gita is the epitome of the Mahabharata just as ghee is the essence of milk and pollen is the essence of flowers.
"One may cleanse himself daily by taking a bath in water, but if one takes a bath even once in the sacred Ganges water of Bhagavad-gītā, for him the dirt of material life is altogether vanquished."
-Gita Mahatmya verse 3
So in this season of giving and the advent of the wonderful, I would like to extend this gift of the Gita to anyone who would like one.
Leave a comment and I will get in contact with you to send you a book.
I'll take one!
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