The Bhagavad Gita Decoded: Lessons from a Guru

Gain insight into the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita in this episode of Beyond the Book where we are guided by the incredible insights of Vinoba Bhave. We'll show you how ancient teachings can bring peace, purpose and strength to your modern life.

In this video, we're breaking down Vinoba Bhave’s "Talks on the Gita" to make the profound lessons of the Bhagavad Gita easy to understand and apply in your daily reality. Vinoba, a spiritual leader who advised Mahatma Gandhi, offers a fresh take on this classic text. 

We'll explore key ideas like finding your true purpose (dharma), acting selflessly, gaining knowledge, and connecting with your inner self.

Through personal stories and practical examples, we’ll show you how the Gita’s wisdom can transform your daily life. Join us on this journey to unlock the secrets of the Bhagavad Gita and see how it can help you live your best life.

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Transcript

0:34

This is one of the most important books ever written. It gets into the heart of Hinduism. In this episode, I'm going to reveal the biggest secret within the Bhagavad Gita. It's the one thing I believe is most important in living our best life. It's always useful to try and get as close to the source material as possible. When looking at religion or spirituality, even philosophy. I definitely don't think you have to read entire religious source text to understand a religion or a spiritual construct, but it can't hurt. I've read a fair amount of the Bible over my life, even though I'm not a Christian anymore. I read a very complete text of the Buddhist Pali Canon called, in Buddha's words. I summarized it here on this channel a few months ago. Check out the card in the upper right hand corner for that video. It's definitely worth a watch. I've also been through the Dao teaching for Daoism and the Analects of Confucius, which have great wisdom. I've read Essential Judaism, and it gave me insight into Jewish foundational text. Scott Cunningham's Wicca A guide for the Solitary Practitioner, is kind of a source text for that religion. Just as these texts have provided me with deep insight into various spiritual traditions, my exploration of Hinduism led me to the Bhagavad Gita, a text that has always intrigued me with its profound wisdom. Hinduism speaks deeply to me. Having read multiple books on Hinduism and the Vedic beliefs, I've felt really connected with this school of thought. But until I read this book for today's episode, I haven't been able to really completely wrap my head around the Bhagavad Gita. Some people call it just the Gita It's kind of daunting to read. The Gita is actually a standalone portion of the Mahabharata, which is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It's the longest poem ever written. So instead of just reading the Gita word for word, I decided to read it with more of a teacher or a guide. And so I read talks on the Geeta by Vinoba. He was a major spiritual figure associated with Mahatma Gandhi and Gandhi's nonviolence movement. He was the spiritual successor to Gandhi and worked to continue a dream of not just an independent India, but a society that was built on loving kindness. Vinoba is considered an eminent philosopher of India, and he was a well rounded person in his intellectual pursuits, kind of a polymath, if you will. This work is based on a series of 18 lectures on the Geeta. Each follows a chapter from the original work, and Vinoba was a political prisoner of the British during the Indian Movement for independence through nonviolence. He gave his talks on the Gita each week while in prison, and I think that adds something to this book. The fact that this man was able to so artfully describe this epic work, this foundational text in, in World religion. And he was able to do it while he was in prison. And I think that probably says something about, what Hinduism can do for people and the peace that it can bring. So what is the Bhagavad Gita? It centers around the great warrior Arjun and his struggle with violence in war. In the story of war was about to start and Arjun would be forced to fight his own family. He had been in many battles and he was really adept at warfare, but he had only begun to question his path when he was suddenly faced with the prospect of the death of those that he knew, because he was going to have to fight his own family. The 18 chapters of the Gita to capture Arjun's conversations with Krishna. He's a primary Hindu god in literal sense. The work is about this epic battle and the struggles around it, but abstractly and probably more to the intent, the bhagavad-gita is about the process we undertake to find the divine, to understand the universe and see peace. It's about universal compassion and finding love, light and the kindness that's inside of us and all around us. And that might seem odd given the backdrop of this epic war, but it all makes sense to me personally. a special agent came to me once when I was based in Afghanistan, and he asked what I look for the most in a new agent when they got to our unit, because I was there for several years, and I thought about it for a moment and I told him that it was kindness. That's what I looked for, because it's not something that is naturally or easily taught, but with kindness, everything else is possible. Everything else just kind of flows. And so I absolutely understand this concept of loving kindness and how you can come to that kind of conclusion when surrounded by war. And let's look at key themes and teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. It looks at Dharma or a higher purpose. Arjun's Dharma was as a warrior to fight in this epic battle. Despite his own personal doubts and his fears. You have your own dharma or higher purpose that's unique to just you. And I think that's something we're going to talk about a little bit later here in this episode, there was Karma Yoga, or The Path of Selfless Action, where you perform actions without attachments to the results of the actions, because we just if we just do things without being attached to what's going to happen when we do those things, it's going to be more peaceful existence, because those attachments to what may or may not happen take our mind down all these different paths. That's what causes our mind to race. And so when we are less attached to these things, we're going to be more at peace. There's the focus on the process and intention rather than the results of what may happen. There's the path of knowledge. This is the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, This leads to understanding the true nature of reality and the self within. Or the Atman, which is the soul. And you realize the difference between the physical body and this eternal soul within yourself. And that's an important distinction. Bhakti Yoga or the path to devotion. In this, you're surrendering oneself to the divine in cultivating a personal relationship with the divine. Or you might call it God. Some of you may call it nature. It's known by many names, by different people around the world, but it probably is saying something very similar. Devotion is a means to attain spiritual liberation. There's the nature of the self. This is the Atman or the soul, which is our true self. And this soul is eternal and it's unchanging, and it's distinct from the physical body. And when we understand this, we start to see our place in the universe. Or maybe the fact that we're one with the universe. Understanding your true nature leads to the liberation from this cycle of birth and death and rebirth. The Gita emphasizes the concept of detachment. Detachment involves remaining unaffected by success and failure or pleasure and pain. You maintain balance and some inner peace. Regardless of these external circumstances that are happening all around you, there's the supreme reality or the Brahman. The Brahman in Hinduism is this ultimate, unchanging reality it's both within and it's also beyond the world. You come to understand the oneness of the individual soul or your Atman with this supreme reality, which is the Brahman. You can think of the Brahman as the universe or God. It goes back to that divine thing, which is consistent pretty much through most spiritual constructs or religions from around the world. There's this interconnectedness of all life, and this omnipresence of the divine is really emphasized in the Bhagavad Gita. And towards the end of it all, you come to the path of liberation or moksha. This is the liberation from the cycle of birth and death and rebirth that I was just talking about. It's achieved through living and understanding all of these themes and teachings that have come, before that we just kind of list it out here. I found so much in this book that made sense to me. It spoke to me and I appreciate Vinoba is artful way of relating a long and complicated work to the untrained person. Things really clicked for me in a few places where he was describing some of the dogma associated with the search and finding that divine thing, the Brahman, that universal oneness, that thing that is inside of us and in everything all around us, from a grain of sand to a mountain, the wind or the rain. It's all of it. And I think so much more. I think if you go out in nature, if were just gone out into greenspace and you've been maybe kind of alone and you've quieted your mind and you've kind of just noticed everything around you, for me, that's a place where I can say I'm definitely part of something bigger. The part that spoke to me the deepest was about Dharma. We all have a purpose in life, something that is just for us and no one else is this innate thing inside of us that at some point we just know and understand. We should all try to be doing that thing inside of us. Whatever our natural duty is in this world, maybe it's fate or destiny or a calling, but it should flow naturally from you, for some of us will feel it and we'll know what it is, even if we might not be able to verbalize it for others, it might be more blocked off or walled off. Something might be keeping us from that realization of what our higher purpose is, what our Dharma is, and this higher purpose may change as we change. Change is probably the only absolute in the universe. So don't ignore your higher purpose or your dharma. How often do we, sense our purpose or calling inside of us and we cast it aside or we ignore it? I think that happens way too often. We get caught up in what we think we should be doing, or what society wants us to do, or what someone else tells us that we should be doing. And so we get separated from this natural purpose within. But finding this natural, higher purpose, this dharma is key not just to your happiness and well-being, but also in seeing what lies beyond our true self and ultimately that divine thing. I think this is really the essence of the Bhagavad Gita. It's a huge shift in perspective. The guide instructs us how to not only find our way, but to then change our way of seeing and living in the world around us. And in doing that, we find peace. We see more love. We see more light. If you find your higher purpose, you're way ahead of the game. If you then undertake this natural purpose with acceptance and vigor and you just go all in, you begin to not just find joy in it, but in all these other things around you, things that you may have never even seen or noticed. It's the process of making life more effortless, natural and flowing. We get caught in these cycles of life. They rinse and repeat like a load of laundry. They can be micro cycles or macro cycles. So we aren't just spinning, but we're spinning within this whole system of spinning and that's also being spun. So it's all these little cycles and these larger cycles. And then they're spinning within other cycles. And if that sounds dizzying to you, that's maybe that's a good thing because it's about trying to escape these cycles to free yourself, being freed of all these micro cycles all the way up to these most macro cycles, is going to set you free. If we can do this, then you can see enlightenment, you can see the path. But we have to free ourselves from all these attachments. So just let go. We hold on so tight. Ask yourself why you hold on so tight. Where are we going? If we just let go? Are we going to be thrown off this spinning rock we inhabit? No, we're going to still be here. even if you let go, you're going to be here. So let the beauty of this world wash over you and just be in it. Present today. Live in the moment. What will change if you let go? Ultimately, the only change will be more peace, more kindness, more love, and more light. You don't have to go to the ocean or the mountain, or the forest or the desert to be at peace, to find this thing. You carry it right here inside of you, wherever you are. a part of you. All of these rich, beautiful things are inside of you. But you sacrifice them for concrete and asphalt and steel and glass. These possessions that we have. And I'm in awe of humankind, just as much as the next person. But sometimes we have to set it aside, and then we look within in a mirror. Shouldn't scare us. It should lead us to be more in love with what ultimately we are inside. And some say that we accumulate these series of impactful events throughout our lives. These things that stay in our mind, in our heart and soul, thoughts, memories, or whatever you want to call them. So these imprints left inside of us determine the totality of our experience. ask yourself, are you leaving a stack of positive imprints within you that dwarf the negative stack of imprints? And if you're not doing that, can you ask yourself why? Let me know in the comments if you're able to do that. Are you are you leaving this stack of positive things in your soul, in your heart, in your mind? And if not, why is that? I'm interested in how we approach this. There isn't a single path to peace, salvation, or whatever we may call it. The path is whatever you need it to be. It's the series of steps that lead back to an effortless dance. It's art in motion. It's peace on earth. It doesn't matter what you call it. It doesn't matter how you get there. You find your way. You see what works best for you, and you go out there and explore and be curious and you try things out. In the end, this isn't abstract, it's very real. And you don't just get to live it. you don't have to live it. You get to live it. Not a part of it, but about all of it. You just have to let go and accept the universe. See yourself be in peaceful consciousness and ultimate awareness. There's so much more in this book that I could have talked about here. Really, this is just scratching, just the basic surface of the bhagavad-gita and the depths of the knowledge and wisdom that that contain, that are contained in this book. and it would be hard for me to convey it all here in this short video, but it's definitely beautiful. It's definitely worth your time. And if you're looking for more on Hinduism, please check out our episode on Inner Engineering by Sadhguru. And until next time, I wish you peace on your journey.