the thing that's most striking about the gaita is the degree of focus it brings to a very simple question action and non-action what is the best thing to do people ask me what's the Gea really mean I was like it's really simple a guy's facing the biggest challenge of his life like all of us do and is faltering how do I fight my cousins my relatives my teachers I can't do this this course of action cannot be avoided now it's time for justice [Music] [Music] d I remember as a child actually hearing recitation of Gita on radio aware of the fact that this was something very important but not knowing what it meant because these were recitations in Sanskrit I probably began reading the babita more than 50 years ago in my 20s I was struck by the beauty of the language the power of the imagery and what the work was about my parents put a comic book in front of me based on the Gea this one right here actually and this comic book just laid it out to me so clearly like kind of being shown the core before seeing the rest of the planet I read the gaita in Divinity School the more you read it and the more you think about it really the better it gets we live life in the everyday and yet we're aware all around us inside somehow that that's not just the way every day is we dream we go off into other selves we come back we get scared we wonder what it's all about the gaita has all of that that's what got me the is the most philosophical and probably the most sacred book in modern Hinduism it lays out everything a Hindu needs to know to live a good life on Earth it lays out the nature of the universe the nature of the Soul what is truth and I think most importantly the attitude that we should take when facing any difficulties on Earth the babad Gita is one of the few books that Henry David throw took with him to Walden Pond it inspired the philosophy of Civil Disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi Martin Luther King Nelson Mandela it also inspired Gandhi's assassin to kill him the Gita has been treated as a Hindu Bible as a philosophical Treatise as a self-help book when we talk about the gas it can be a philosophical text be religious text it can be a call to action which is it well it's all of them really it's all of them and the the the power of the of the of the Gita is that it functions that way bhagwad Gita is a section of this Grand epic that is bigger than Iliad and odyssey combined by eight times or something so this is a huge huge text and bhagwat Gita is one small section the mahabarata is one of the two great ancient epics of India written over a period of several centuries between about 400 BCE and 400 CE the Mahaba doesn't have a single writer instead it links together groups of stor that have existed on the Indian subcontinent for a long time it has everything you would ever want it has love it has magic it has deep spiritual meaning the B Gita the song of the bhagavan of the blessed one begins at the Tipping Point of the whole epic it's an extremely dramatic moment where the least likely person in the Epic is going to express his horror at what effectively is the pending Civil War [Music] it has become the story of five brothers the sons of pandu the pandavas Arjun is actually the Middle Brother these brothers are in the midst of a struggle for their Kingdom with their cousins their cousins theod were jealous there's a famous place where they um the older brother loses a dice game the oldest of pandas is addicted to gambling it's a dice game and everybody knows the game is rigged the pond ofas end up losing the whole Kingdom and they get exiled for 13 years with the understanding that when they return the kingdom will be given back to them the bonda Brothers Go off into the forest for 13 years and their Exile and when they come back to town their cousin dioda said screw you I'm not giving you anything at one point he put him in a in a palace and he tried to burn them alive Krishna who according to the Gita is the Supreme Divine being the Creator God says listen there yodan this was part of the plan you really should hand over the kingdom to the pivas and theodan he says I Won't Give Them Enough land to drive a needle through at that point it was clear that war was inevitable when you read the futility of these repeated embassies and you finally reach the G you understand something about the ter Terror of the moment that is now upon us it's kind of fitting that Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the babad Gita when he saw the first nuclear explosion because really this story is a story of a nuclear meltdown it is going to be the end of civilization as we know it and the characters know it themselves Civil War is the end of all rationality in Civil Life and that's where we are lined up our cousin fighting cousin brother fighting brother on the secret Battlefield of kuruk shra the bugles the drums they've all sounded that means there's no more need for words it's time for battle they've marshaled for War and the greatest of all the Warriors Arjuna for the first time in the Epic expresses hesitation the great champion of the good guys of the pandab of Brothers Arjuna comes on the field with his charioteer Krishna and at the moment they enter the field the battle's about to start but Arjuna stops he wants to think he wants to pause he doesn't know if he can possibly go through with slaughtering his cousins on the other side arj is the all-around Warrior when it comes to military strategy and bravery and decisiveness Arjuna always takes the lead he's rumored to be the best Bowman in the world Arjuna just surpassed everyone his dedication was phenomenal he would even go to such length as practicing in the night in the dark there's a great moment earlier in the Epic uh where Arjun wanders into a forest Kingdom uh and the local King wants to test his ability and he has a bird tied up to a branch on the far side of a clearing on a tree he says AR okay I've got this bird there can you see this branch that he's on AR says no your mag say I don't see the branch and the King says well how good an Archer are you um can you see the tree I mean and Archer says no I'm sorry your M I don't see any tree over there and and the King says you're supposed to be the greatest in the world ARA what do you see arj says I see only the bird there is Arjun and he faces this Army on the other side and Krishna is his Chariot keeper according to the Hindus Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu Vishnu is the embodiment of God force and Krishna steps on stage as this deity who is also human at the same time as far as Arjuna knows Krishna is just someone who showed up one day and said I remember you from a past life um but you won't remember me AR takes that at face value all arjin knows is that Krishna is a man who is blue and soon they become fast friends this concept is I think very fascinating because we see the Supreme Divine being the Supreme Creator coming down to this earth and in a very humble mood taking the role of serving his dear devote Arjuna he's his charioteer he's his pal there something about their intimacy that allows for these secrets to be communicated [Music] Arjuna makes a strange request Krishna can you please take my Chariot into the middle of the battlefield because I'd like to see who I have to contend with and so Krishna does that and Arjuna goes into a real dilemma here upon seeing his family members it's at that moment that Arjuna threw throws down the weapons and says I can't fight this is stupid look what's going to happen it's utter genocide both from their side and from ours what is the point ARA sat dejected filled with pity his sad eyes blurred by tears and he asked for help from his charioteer chrishna Krishna how can I fight against bisma and drona with arrows when they deserve My Worship it's better in this world to beg for scraps of food than to eat meals smeared with the blood of Elders I killed at the height of their power while their gold goals were still [Music] desires the first big singing that Arjuna does in my piece is at the moment of Crisis he says I know this must be wrong to do [Music] this in setting that I thought a lot about what the psychology of arjuno was in that moment and what he was going through emotionally and how he was in fact almost paralyzed so that I made the music very still and almost motionless and arjuno is singing in a way that he's terrified by what he sees but in a way that he's also almost kind of stunned by [Music] it he decides to kind of just sit there and wait for something and he says Krishna you instruct me you tell me what is best for me I'm totally confused the GAA is basically the dialogue between Arjun and Krishna you know Krishna opening arj and convincing him to fight this battle that's what it is it's like the Deeper Self convincing the ego and the emotions and all the fears to overcome and to face life because Arjun is the ultimate warrior that's what makes his crisis so important if Argin can have a crisis about doing his duty and can Wonder is it all worth it then maybe the rest of us can too so it goes to the very question of existence you can call the philosophy if you want or you can call it poetry if there is such a thing as a lord or a a sovereign or some kind of universal who knows I have no idea the act of imagination of the people who wrote the Gita was to believe that if there were such a person these were the words he would say conveniently Krishna has the ability to freeze time um which is how he can deliver this book um in the midst of a battlefield um while everyone else patiently Waits on the side essentially what what Krishna does is walks Arjuna through the nature of life and how to live it Arjuna has the challenge of trying to figure out how he should ready himself for whatever is coming how he should become disciplined there's the discipline of knowledge Gana there's the discipline of action Karma and there's the discipline of love bti the idea of Karma Yoga I mean I was brought up on that principle the way I crystallize that do your best forget about the rest empty yourself and just focus on the action itself be intent on action not on the fruits of action avoid attraction to the fruits and attachment to inaction Krishna say action you can't escape it even if you sit down and do nothing for a thousand years that very doing of nothing is its own form of action what you can do is to detach yourself from your desires and what you think you can get by acting that's what you have to learn to be [Music] Beyond there's a Path of Knowledge Nana yoga the teaching here concerns the nature of the self and its relationship to external reality as the embodied Soul continuously passes in this body from Boyhood to youth to old age the soul similarly passes into another body at death a sober person is not bewildered by such a change Krishna is trying to help Arjuna understand the soul is Ageless it's deathless so be relieved of this fear and anxiety that you're going to kill somebody one of the fundamental character istics I believe of religions that emerge out of India is this belief that somehow this life on Earth is only one piece of a much larger cycle in which your soul has Travelers once you accept that death is just a part of life you start to understand the nature of the universe the nature of life itself and then you can actually live Arjun is looking for what is right and the word he uses to talk about what is right is the word Dharma Dharma is the biggest idea in Hinduism it means Duty it also means truth it also is a synonym for God so he's asking in a deeper way how do I play my role in the universe the way I need to play that role so that's what the G is Krishna trying to bring Arjun into the action so that this major story of world history can go forward chrishna gives a third way to think about being a good Hindu and that's bakti or devotion he urges Arjuna when you do action you should do it as a form of worship you do it as sacrifice to me um you dedicate your actions to me so these three ways um through action through knowledge and through devotion are still three very popular ways um that Hindus access spiritual truth and none of these ways is is better than any other way I'll never forget this you know my father never talked to me about what it meant to be Hindu or not and it was really up to me and then one day we watched Star Wars for the first time I was a young boy and outside in the parking lot he he got all teod eyed and he just told me you know if if you want to know what it means to be Hindu just think of obiwan Kenobi and the force the force is what gives the Jedi is power it binds the Galaxy together when you realize that you are basically light and matter there's nothing that you can't do that's what the Jedi Knights are they live in a state of action knowledge and devotion here's a book a condensed version of Hindu philosophy condensed into 700 short verses which the average person you and me can open up read understand and apply into our lives with ease Zita is certainly not a prizing uh text what most westerners who are attracted to it see in it is that there are tools for how they might live their lives in a daily way what comes through um for all my students is that the gaita gives them a perspective that what matters maybe isn't what is exactly in front of them at the moment the gaita can be an antidote to the intense focus on results to help bring us back to feeling satisfaction about doing one's best even when um the results may not be all that one wished they would be you read that teaching about the self you read about discipline and then all of a sudden Arjuna gets tired of it or maybe Krishna thinks that he's understood enough and he says well all right if I'm going to take all of this seriously I want to see you I want to see you the way you really are and then you get this explosion of imagery on the page where Krishna reveals himself in forms that we can't begin to understand howling storms Sun Gods bright gods and gods of ritual gods of the universe twin gods of dawn wind Gods Vapor drinking ghosts throngs of celestial musicians demigods demons and Saints the worlds tremble and so do I finally Arjuna says stop I can't stand it stop go back to what's familiar to me return to that form that I know how to relate to you and go back to there this Cosmic vision is actually partly to describe the Divinity of this very human being in the Gita itself he is the self behind all gods he is deity he shows himself to be everything Shiva Vishnu and all the rest so he's more than just a figure in the pantheon from the point of view of this text he is the pantheon represented in one person one of the things that I think is so special about the G is sanskrit Sanskrit is a very ancient language it is understood but it's not so much a spoken language it's a language of Reading literature recitation and rituals the gaita has been a cortex Indian philosophers probably since the middle of the first Millennium ad but when Charles Wilkins arrives in India in the last quarter of the 18th century I don't think anybody really knew about the Bhagavad Gita in the western world that Wilkins translation set Europe on fire the German intelligen of the early 19th century was obsessed with the the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita really arrived in the states at the same time the transcendentalist movement was taking off thorough had GA at Walden in the morning I bathed my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the bav Gita since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial Henry was willing to withdraw from the world for the sake of engaging with it well that's what the G is about it's all about engagement with the world and then Krishna stops the action at a certain point because the action won't go on unless he does and say let's withdraw for a moment let's look at what's behind this and then proceed that I think is what thorough was doing when he took the G to Walden Pond I was approached by an Opera Company it was the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam and um they asked me if I wanted to write a Opera said well what about an opera about Gandhi I discovered that the gaita was the book that he based most of his life on he had actually memorized the text I was stunned by this because he was a man who was active in social change and they think that guided him his mentor in a sense had been a book Gandhi was the leader of the Indian National Congress and the person who was largely responsible through his own personal Charisma of orchestrating that fight in India which meant that the British finally did quit India how can a person dedicated to nonviolence enter into battle and that is the question and that's the question of the ga and answer for Gandhi becomes a movement of social change through nonviolence that becomes the answer now what is a person whose entire political philosophy is based on nonviolence what does he do with the ethical teaching of the Gita I mean what does chrisna actually say do your duty be unattached but do your duty and get out there in the battlefield and kill these people how did he manage to get nonviolence out of the Gita he says say about the G that to him it seems as if the text is really about selfhood and that the battle he sees being waged in the G therefore is a battle that all of us face inside and it's a battle between good and evil Krishna is not telling Arjuna to go and kill some person in real life but this is a this is an account of an interior battle and that doing your duty within this Waring self is what's critical for Gandhi actually reading this text was also about moral Clarity and it is about defining the notion of one's moral duty it is that idea that he takes on rather than it's just about the war so it's how do you find the moral compass for yourself and in the end he became the victim of violence himself he was assassinated in 1947 and assassinated by people who claimed that they were also following the the tenant of the Bakita at the very end of the Opera it's the night before the first big March Krishna is kind of summing things up forun and he said when virtue has withered has died down I come into the world and become a man among men and live to put virtue on its seat again Krishna says well you know you know how this world works you know the law of karma I've explained everything to you but now ultimately you have to walk through the door you have to make the choice Krishna says to Arjuna Arjuna Have you listened with your full powers of Reason has the delusion of ignorance now been destroyed and Arjuna replies Krishna my delusion is destroyed and by your grace I have regained memory I stand here my doubt dispelled ready to act on your words Arjuna stands up and says I'll do it I'll fight that's how the G ends and the Mahabharat continues the G to me is a really simple idea anytime you feel a lack of faith in yourself or how things are going on just remember son universes are consuming your universes it's going to keep going there's nothing you can do to stop it get on with it move go live enjoy it and fight through life breathe through life Breathe It things that people thought about uh 3,000 years ago are still interesting to us and store well to us these ideas were debated and thought about and raised questions and now here we are and we're still finding it interesting the secret purpose of this battle is kind of to reveal who Arjuna actually is Arjuna as the self standing for all ourselves and so Flyers were reflective people that's what all of our situations actually are we're the ones out there fighting oh [Music] [Music] [Music] funding for this program is provided by annenburg media for information about this and other anenberg media programs call 1 1800 learner and visit us at www.learner.org [Music]