The Bhagavad-Gita

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INTRODUCTION
The Bhagavad-Gita: Context and Text
The Bhagavad-Gita has been the exemplary text of Hindu culture for centuries, both in India and in the West. The Sanskrit title Bhagavad-Gita has usually been interpreted to mean "Song of the Lord," but this is misleading. It is not a lyric but a philosophical poem, composed in the form of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and his charioteer, the god Krishna.
As we read the Bhagavad-Gita today we can understand the paralyzing conflict Arjuna suffers knowing that the enemies it is his warrior duty to destroy are his own kinsmen and teachers. We can sympathize with his impulse to shrink from the violence he sees in the human condition, and we can learn from the ways Krishna teaches him to understand his own and others' mortality. Krishna's exposition of the relationship between death, sacrifice, and devotion dramatizes the Hindu idea that one must heroically confront death in order to transcend the limits of worldly existence. We may not share Arjuna's developing faith in Krishna's authority or be convinced by Krishna's insistence that one must perform one's sacred duty, even when it requires violence. But if we listen carefully to the compelling arguments and imagery of the discourse, we cannot but hear the voice of a larger reality.
The dramatic moral crisis that is central to the Bhagavad-Gita has inspired centuries of Indian philosophers and practical men of wisdom, as well as Western thinkers such as Thoreau, Emerson, and Eliot. Interpretations of the Gita, as it is commonly referred to in India, Vissza