The Bhagwada Geeta redefined…
Everyone in my family is very much aware and has a lot of knowledge about the Hindu mythology. They all used to have long discussions on Arjuna, and Krishna and Ram-Seeta, and even ‘Ravana’ where most of the times I felt out of the place. To tell you the truth, I was never too inclined to know more about unless someone talked to me into it. I used to see my cousin(who is younger to me by 14 years…) talk about what happened in that era and how it is also prevalent and relevant even in the present time. She really inspired me to read books like Jaya by Devdutta Patnaik which actually left me in awe of these wonderful scriptures. Post this, I found a spark of curiosity in me and that’s when I finally decided to join the Geeta classes.
The questions that came to my mind were, what is Bhagwada Geeta? What does it teach? Why do we need to imbibe the learning of Geeta into our lives? Is it really helpful? The list was endless… The Geeta classes were a revelation. They were nothing that I imagined but everything I needed. It was not the mythological version that Gagan sir was about to share with us but the contemporary modern day version which we could make connections and bring about changes to our life with.
The Geeta classes began with an interesting story from Mahabharata about Arjuna. Guruji narrated a fairly detailed version of the story where Arjuna is not ready to fight. He doesn’t understand why he has to shed his family’s blood for a kingdom that he doesn’t even necessarily want. In his eyes, killing his family is the greatest sin of all. He puts down his weapons and tells Krishna he will not fight. Krishna, then, begins the systematic process of explaining why it is Arjuna’s dharmic duty to fight and how he must fight in order to restore his karma. Here we learnt about dharma-karma, destiny, raga-dwesha, and how it all unfolded.
Many a times guruji would take what he would call a ‘detour’ and tell us about his life in America. He would pick out variable Sanskrit words/verses and tell us stories about his life in America and how he came back to India to learn Sanskrit from his gurus in Southern India. He would often use american phrases like ‘Catch 22’ and elaborate what they meant by giving lovely examples. He said, “Have you ever visited the T3 Delhi airport? The airport is so huge that you have to walk a lot to reach your boarding gates. Due to this they’ve kept number of moving walkways to make it easier. You always see children playing at the airports. They really enjoy walking on these walkways in the opposite direction. Many a times when we find that things are not going right in our lives. It’s all because our ‘Dharma’ and ‘Karma’ are both going in opposite directions just like the children on the walkway. This simply states that there are always two factors in every situation and they are both equally dependant on each other and that’s what we mean by a ‘Catch 22’ situation.” Phrases and stories like these made me want to hear more from guruji.
I had never got the opportunity to learn ‘Sanskrit’ in school so was not really aware how to go about it. Many a times I would try to read the old ‘Hindola’ verses at my home but to my despair I was unable to do so. Guruji shed light on how the ‘sandhis’ and the ‘aksharas’ are written in a way but they are pronounced in a very different way & how we should emphasise speak up every single letter while reading sanskrit verses. Somehow, I got a sort of hang of how to chant a sanskrit verse after chanting them wrongly number of times. Embarrassing as much as it was, but somehow I overcame my errors and accepted and embraced my limitations and tried to learn from them instead of whining about it.
I am just listing down my takeaways from all the sessions till now:
- Geeta is a blueprint; a plan to help a person lead their life.
- ‘Dharma’ is choosing the difficult, longer and correct path instead of the easier, shorter and wrong part which is ‘Adharma’.
- ‘Raaga’ is the thing that I want out of my life and ‘Dwesha’ is something that we don’t want in our lives. We should put ‘raaga’ and ‘dwesha’ on a hold and concentrate on your dharma.
- Success and failure is how we take it. We should accept it as a ‘prasada’ from ‘eeshwara’ and move ahead in life.
- You should never give advice to to people. By giving advice, you suggest that the other person is not capable of handling the situation himself.
- Destiny and free will both play an equally important role when it comes to ‘karma’.
- You should take care of only 2 emotions, anger and fear and all the other emotions will follow.
- A child is a ‘prasada’ from ‘eeshwara’, you don’t create a child. You are simply a trustee.
- ‘Dhrishta’ are the things that you can see and ‘Adhrishta’ are things which are existent but are not visible.
- You leave home in order to go somewhere and you reach safely, it’s because there is a lot of ‘Adhrishta’ and ‘punya’ which is protecting you. If you meet up with an accident, it is when two ‘paapa’ have crossed and collided with each other.
- Keep yourself happy to help others to be happy.
I never used to enjoy meditation, but ironically it became my biggest takeaway from the Essence of Bhagwada Geeta. I look forward to learning more from guruji and hope that I can apply my learning in my life.
Fingers crossed!