Welcome! We’re glad you’re here. This the original sixteen session of Gita Talk, an online discussion of the Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell.
All the blogs below and the rich discussions are still open. Just dive in, go at your own pace. Tell us what’s on your mind. Ask us the questions you were asking yourself as you were reading. Read other readers comments.
You will always get a personal response from me. (If you don’t hear back within a few days, please let me know on Facebook.) I’m always anxious to talk to anyone about the Gita.
For an overview of the Bhagavad Gita, a good place to start is:
Gita in a Nutshell:
Big Ideas and Best Quotations
Please be sure to let me know if I can help you in any way.
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The Complete Gita Talk (Original Round)
(All remain open for further discussion)
Top Ten Reasons to read the Bhagavad Gita
Gita Talk–An Experiment in Online Book Discussion
Gita Talk #1: First Assignment–Read the Introduction
Gita Talk #2: Greetings, Gita Geeks. How is your reading coming?
Gita Talk #3: It’s Showtime. Please Start Talking All At Once!
Gita Talk #4: Why Is the Gita So Upsetting At First?
Gita Talk #4a: Gandhi’s Bible or a Call to War?
Highlights (Gita Talk #4): “What is God to You?” & “Dealing with Our Emotions”
Gita Talk #5: Sublimely Simple, Profound and Livable
Gita Talk #6: And Now for Something Completely Different
Gita Talk #7: What’s Your Favorite Passage?
Graham Schweig’s Rapturous Vision of the Gita
Gita Talk #8: Very Special Guest Graham Schweig
Gita Talk #9: First Date with the Gita? If Not, Remember Yours?
Gita Talk #10: Pretend We’re All Just Sitting Around In My Living Room Together
Gita Talk #11: Different Yoga Strokes for Different Yoga Folks
Gita Talk #12: Does the Infinitely Wondrous Universe
Give a Damn About You and Me?
Gita Talk #13: “The Infinite God, Composed of All Wonders”
Gita Talk #14: A Warm and Wonderful Article by Special Guest Amy Champ
Gita Talk #15: Nearing the Conclusion of Gita Talk / How are We Doing?
Gita Talk #16: In a Nutshell: The Big Ideas and Best Quotations
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A Little Background Material
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the “big three” ancient Yoga texts, along with the Upanishads and the Yoga Sutra. The Yoga Sutra gets 95% of the attention, but it is quite incomplete without the other two. The three together are nothing short of astounding.
My own feelings about the Bhagavad Gita are well expressed in my review last year of Mitchell’s version:
Falling Head-Over-Heals In Love with the Universe
For those of you who have always wanted to absorb the spectacular wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, but have found it difficult, I highly recommend Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell. This is my fourth version and sixth reading of the Bhagavad Gita. I have gotten a lot from all four versions, but Mitchell’s is clearly the most accessible and enjoyable, without sacrificing any of the meaning.
The Bhagavad Gita is quite literally about falling in love with the indescribable wonder of the universe, that is to say, God. These two are synonymous in the Gita. (Believe it or not, the text itself says that you can approach God as either an unfathomable cosmic life-force or as an intimate personal diety. Either leads you to the same boundless love and joy.)
The Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra are two of the most important ancient texts of Yoga. They could not be more different. The Yoga Sutra is mostly secular in nature, and mentions God only briefly and perfunctorily. The Bhagavad Gita, in contrast, is literally “The Song of the Beloved Lord”, and most of the text is the voice of the awesome life-force of the universe itself.
The Yoga Sutra is a cookbook for achieving inner peace. The Bhagavad Gita, in contrast, won’t settle for anything less than ecstatic union with the divine. Put them together and you have the astounding whole of Yoga philosophy in two relatively short texts.
Try Mitchell’s version of the Bhagavad Gita. You’ll be glad you did.
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Ongoing Resources:
Gita in a Nutshell: Big Ideas & Best Quotations
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Join Gita Talk Facebook Group for weekly notices
and to meet fellow participants.
34 replies on “Welcome to Gita Talk: Self-Paced Virtual Seminar on the Bhagavad Gita. (Original Round)”
I'm not going to give up!! 🙂
Great to have you here, Lorraine.
what is the meaning of the war within?
Hi, dawn. Could you remind me where that phrase occurs so I can see it in context?
I want to say it means all the ways in which our minds and emotions pull us in different directions, and our inner struggle to resolve them. But I would really like to see it in context first.
Thanks for writing.
Bob Weisenberg
Wow, Frank. We appear to have reached near total agreement through very different paths, even on things we hadn't discussed yet, like reincarnation. Exciting to find an apparent spiritual soulmate.
The answer to your last paragraph is simple–all those different forms of "God", even the very concept of "God" itself, are just layers of metaphor for what I'm fond of calling the "infinitely wondrous unfathomable life-force of the universe", i.e. Brahman. In my reading of the Gita, and to me it's absolutely explicit about this, all of those other concepts dissolve into Brahman, and that's the whole point of the Gita.
You'll see all my textual support on Monday. What I've done that's unusual is to rearrange the key passages of the Gita by theme, as opposed to the order in which it's written. The farther along I got on this major project, the more convinced I became of the complete logic of the whole.
(One of my goals in reading the ancient Yoga texts has been to get far enough along that I can form my own opinions about the meaning, as opposed to relying entirely on the expert commentators and scholars.)
Thanks again for your long reply above. We will have a lot of interesting discussions, I can see.
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
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