As humans contemplate on their meaning of existence, they embark upon a journey of transformation. This journey of transformation is a voyage embarked on to discover the true meaning to one’s own self, where the destination, or the transformation, occurs when one completes his journey. Each individual has a unique journey and destination to transformation that helps shape who they are. However, there is much debate about whether the journey of transformation is more about the transformation, or the journey itself. Although the transformation is the end result on who we are to be, the path that leads us there, the journey we humans take on is the most influential aspect of the journey of transformation, as seen through the ideas of action, devotion, and knowledge taken out from excerpts of the Bhagavad Gita.
The Bhagavad Gita is the song of the god Krishna, created in order to spread his eternal message. The ancient Sanskrit text is a seven hundred verse text that tells readers that in order to achieve nirvana, or eternal peace, one must rid themselves of evils and sins, selfishness and greed, and attractions. The Hindu god Krishna tells the Indian Prince Arjuna, that one must surrender to the god incarnates will in order to reach nirvana. When surrendering oneself to Krishna, they must void themselves of their egotistical nature. Krishna goes on and explains that although the body dies, “the soul never takes birth and never dies at any time nor does it come into being again when the body is created… (Bhagavad Gita ch. 2:20)” Krishna describes the soul as an eternal entity that is timeless, because a soul is neither born or can die, there for can last forever.
Krishna stresses that there are three yogas, or three paths, one mu...
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...anta. "Bhagavad-gita As It Is Chapter 3 Verse 19." Bhagavad-gita As It Is. The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. .
Swami Prabhupada, A. C. Bhaktivedanta. "Bhagavad-gita As It Is Chapter 3 Verse 30." Bhagavad-gita As It Is. The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. .
Swami Prabhupada, A. C. Bhaktivedanta. "Bhagavad-gita As It Is Chapter 4 Verse 10." Bhaktivedanta VedaBase Network. The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. .
Swami, Sridhara. "Bhagavad-Gita: Chapter 9, Verse 34." Srimad Bhagavad-Gita. Bhagavad-Gita Trust 1998-2009. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. .
Sridhara Swami's interpretation of Chapter 9, verse 34 of the Bhagavad Gita.
The statement "everyone is a Hindu" is an extremely broad one that is open to much interpretation. This owes partly to the fact that Hinduism itself is a broad and vast religion with many ways of following. In this paper I seek to explain that the statement "everyone is a Hindu" is a worthy one because Hindus have a sense of interconnectedness in all organisms and life on earth, and that the ultimate goal of a person is to join the rest of the universe in "moksha." Additionally, the attribute of the Hinduism that lends well to the statement is that Hinduism is a very hospitable religion that not only requires no specific adherence or conversion, it stresses the understanding of other religions as well.
The fourth noble truth, magga, is the path by which man comes to know nirvana. The way to
Fisher, Mary Pat. "Chapter 5: Buddhsim." Living Religions. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2005. 150-62. Print.
The Bhagavad Gita is concerned with the complex relationship between the concepts of duty and desire. Krishna’s counsel throughout the text speaks on the way that duty and desire cause conflict with each other in the minds of men. His views on their relationship are shown during the conversation with Arjuna before a great battle, when Krishna counsels,
Hooker, Richard. "Siddhartha Gautama." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington. 1996. Web. 23 Feb. 2011. .
The Bhagavad-Gita, a portion of the great epic the Mahabharata, is the “most typical expression of Hinduism.” It is eighteen chapters long and was composed around the first century BCE. The sage Samjaya recites the story to the blind king Dhrtarastra, the father of the Kaurava princes. While presenting ideas of wisdom, duty, and liberation in the midst of the rivalry between the Kauravas, the Bhagavad-Gita epitomizes the teachings of Krishna. Focusing specifically on the moral struggle of the Pandava prince Arjuna, the Bhagavad-Gita’s major themes include yoga, karma, dharma, and moksa. Yoga, being discipline or the strict and “attentive cultivation of mental character and meaningful action” , is crucial to the text because it is dharma yoga, acting properly according to one’s dharma, and bhakti yoga, a disciplined life of devotion that allows one to achieve moksa, or liberation, one of the four aims of li...
Readers may wonder why I translated ‘samudra’ in the mantra 42 as inspiration. Because the god of first line of the mantra is Speech; and of second line, Waters. This too supports the crucial...
This essay is my assertion of meditation in the verses of the ancient Hindu scripture of the Bhagavad-Gita. I will discuss the significant aspects of the Bhagavad-Gita and the journey Arjuna takes from the beginning of his ethical dilemma to his discovery of meditation and I will explain why the concept of meditation is still used today for coping with stressful circumstances.
Timpe, Eugene F. "Hesse's Siddhartha and the Bhagavad Gita." Comparative Literature 22.4 (Fall 1970): 346-357. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 196. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
The Bhagavad-Gita teaches many things, and amongst these, morality and moral law are developed for the Hindu religion. What Krishna, the primary Hindu god, declares in this somewhat epic poem to be the "basis of good in this world" (stanza 3, pg. 620 of text) is for people to take action. Action, as he goes on to state, is within the very nature of our beings to do. Krishna even states that "without action you even fail to sustain your own body" (stanza 8, pg. 620 of text). Thus, Krishna feels that action is very important and key. To take this concept as a relation to ethics, Krishna tells Arjuna, the warrior he is talking to in this poem, that "Action imprisons the world unless it is done as sacrifice; freed from attachment, Arjuna, perform action as sacrifice!" (stanza 9, pg. 620 of text). Thus, Krishna is prescribing that, in order for an action to be considered good, the good that he already declared to be the basis of all good in the world, one must detach himself from the action being performed and perform the action sacrificially. The detachment aspect is incredibly important to Krishna, for he proclaims that in "performing action with detachment, one achieves supreme good" (stanza 19, pg 620 of text). By doing this, Krishna believes that the world is preserved, for other people will follow the warrior's actions and imitate them in their own lives. A leader, such as a warrior or king, "sets the standard for the world to follow" (stanza 21, pg. 621 of text), as Krishna says and thus must take whatever action is necessary for the world to not be destroyed, to set examples of goodness and right in his own actions. By separating himself from these actions, thus becoming detached, he can achieve this. Another main reason that Krishna feels detachment is necessary is this: "You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty." (Bhagavad-Gita 2.47). Thus, so long as one does not profit from his own actions, the action itself is good. And, this is Krishna's prescription for leading a life of morality and duty is the moral law to follow in order to achieve this.
Miller, Barbara Stoler. The Bhagavad-gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War. New York: Bantam, 2004. Print.
This relates to absolute reality as the supreme spirit is the abode of the eternal. The self is also known as the soul within The Bhagavad-Gita and the soul is said to be immortal as it exists in one body and reenters another so a person’s soul never actually dies. The text says, “Our bodies are known to end, but the embodied self is enduring, indestructible, and immeasurable,” (2: 18). This quotes shows that our bodies may be destroyed by death, but the inner self is eternal and cannot end. The body dies, but if consciousness occurs then the self sees absolute reality. This leads back to the idea of lucidity since the soul can never die it gives the self a divine aspect and if the self is aware of the supreme self or Brahman then there is an ultimate reality. This is considered to be unattainable since humans are not perfect, but the idea is still present. Overall, the eternal aspect of the soul gives a divine notion to an ultimate reality shown in The
While examining different religious paths within Hinduism from the perspective of four patterns of transcendence (ancestral, cultural, mythical and experiential) it is interesting to see how each pattern found its dominance over four segments of Hinduism: Vedic sacrifice, the way of action, the way of devotion and the way of knowledge.
Sayings of the Buddha: A selection of suttas from the Pali Nikayas. Gethin, Rupert. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
In this paper I am looking on depiction of "self" in the Upanishads and the Baghavad Gita focusing on "self" and "devotion".