THE BHAGAVAD GITA A Walkthrough for Westerners Jack Hawley
Introduction Why the Bhagavad Gita?
“Ancient, but strangely close and familiar....”
The Gita is an epic mystical poem about life, death, love, and duty from the peoples who settled in the river valleys in southern Asia and developed a sophisticated culture thousands - probably scores of thousands - of years ago. It is a half-inch-thick poem embedded in the middle of a six-inch-thick poem, the Mahabharatha, a literary masterpiece about the heights and depths of the human soul.
The Bhagavad Gita contains the inner essence of India, the moral and spiritual principles found in the very earliest scriptures of this ancient land. One of them, the Rig Veda, is said to be the oldest record of mankind! To read The Bhagavad Gita, therefore, is to reach countless epochs back in time - and yet, as I settled into these cobwebby teachings they felt strangely close and familiar. It was as if some force could at long last take my hand and walk me down a not-so-quiet path to important and meaningful truths; as if I - this too-worldly Western businessman living behind the fading whitewashed walls of an ashram in southern India - could now, finally, be let in on the most profound secrets of mankind.
This ancient tome is not, as one might expect, about withdrawing from life to meditate in some far-off cave. It’s more of a manual to clutch close, a friendly guide for living a more spiritual life today - a more purposeful and fulfilling life even while staying fully active in the world. The Gita is very much about how to remove sorrow and pain from life and thus achieve contentment and serenity, which is a wondrous goal. But even more than that, it’s about the absolute highest prize: liberation and self-realization in this lifetime. It’s not merely about the quest for these lofty things, it’s a detailed map to the treasure itself - a handbook for living a higher, more satisfying existence here, now, in today’s tough and troubling times.
And the Gita is also about how to die, and what happens after.
As I studied the Gita, I found myself so engrossed in this old yet current scripture that I carefully worked through each of the 700 verses (slokas), one by one. I called it a “walkthrough,” and it was not an easy stroll. The Gita’s message is full of profound, sometimes intricate spiritual concepts. Many of the painstaking translations, written by scholars for other scholars, can be almost painfully thorough. And Sanskrit, the early language of the Gita, contains exact terms for spiritual and philosophical concepts that, when put into English, can sound too condensed - like one of those old pay-by-the-word telegrams (“Arrive Noon Tuesday Meet Me”). Important details are missing; you often don’t know what is really being said.
I wanted to understand the book in a way that spoke as directly as possible to my struggles and daily concerns, so I developed a pattern of juggling five or six translations of the Gita on my desk and lap, scratching notations in the margins, checking one against the other, and writing out my own synthesis of each sloka in modern American English. This allowed me to get into the flow of ideas and not interrupt my reading every few words to clarify the meaning of some hard-to-grasp idea. I ended up working my way through thirty-some versions, many over 1,000 pages, several consisting of two or three volumes (one was seventeen volumes).
It wasn’t as onerous or bookish as it sounds because over the years I had already developed a relationship with the Gita. Although my cultural background (a practical organization consultant from California via upstate New York) is far distant from India, for me the Gita’s teachings were tangible and immediate. For twelve years my wife Louise and I had lived about six months each year in a spiritual community in rural India where the culture of the Gita is still a strong part of daily life. I was therefore able to test these teachings on the touchstone of life’s trials as I lived them.
As each day closed, I would read my notes to Louise, who had also grown to love this great work, to see if the day’s writings made sense to another ordinary, interested Westerner. We looked forward to these nightly sessions, and as we grew to better understand the Gita we developed an even greater admiration and trust of it.
Dusting off the Gita’s gems of wisdom and adding them to the necklace of our daily living changed us and beautified our lives (and perhaps our immersion in the Gita even saved Louise’s life, as I explain in the Afterword). There is a humility that comes with rediscovering these old pearls that have touched countless millions of souls through many thousands of years. And there is an awe at seeing how germane they are to the problems of today’s world.
The “walkthrough” metaphor contained more than I had envisioned. At first it just felt like a friendly term implying an ease of reading. But as the work progressed my task became more evident; this needed to be a truly different style of Gita. The traditional way of imparting these ancient truths is to pre-sent a short, aphorism-like teaching (a “telegram phrase”), and then explain it through several pages of in-depth “commentary.”
That process is too lumbering for today. This needed to be a livelier Gita, more attuned, a Gita that could be read from cover to cover without backtracking to recall certain words, or sidetracking into companion volumes to find out what it really means. This Gita had to stand on its own two feet, without crutches of any kind. The whole point is to take your time, walk through it from beginning to end, and enjoy the stroll.
Thus I found myself even more intensely juggling the many resource books, making sure that in the end I could stroll easily, and Louise could listen smoothly, with understanding. I had to repeat the meanings of unfamiliar words, and restate several times the explanations of certain ideas that are used quite differently in the Gita than we Westerners use them (the definition of reality, for example). I chose to repeat these clarifications as asides or in parentheses so the reading would continue to flow.
“Clarity and flow” became my mantra as the work developed, but I also had to assure that it did not turn into just another interesting self-help book - that it retained its very special energy and remained a full-strength, undiluted Gita. I tested the manuscript with several people who are knowledgeable of Sanskrit and the Gita, including professor friends who are not at all shy about giving criticism. Some wrinkled their brows (“just for Westerners?”), but after getting into it they all liked it and offered many suggestions. A few even confessed that they had personally learned much from it. Not one of them found the frequent reminders too repetitious. Indeed, Krishna, the God figure in the Gita, restates the same truths again and again in different contexts and imageries - like a mother repeating lessons to her child.
That’s how it unfolded. In this quite natural way, this new version of The Bhagavad Gita shuffled happily into being - a concise but powerful book that invites ancient but strangely close and familiar ideas into our lives, and gives us new understanding of ancient truths.
JAH
Prasanthi Nilayam,
Manhattan Beach
January 2001
HOME
