Lecture Four Bhagavad Gita

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Lecture Four Bhagavad Gita

• Lecturer Wu Shiyu

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Outline

• I. This session begins with a review of the first
  three lectures.
• A. Great books are books that speak to us
  individually and represent books and authors that
  have made history. These books have lived past
  their time and can influence our lives and events
  today. Great books have a great theme, are
  written in noble language, and are able to speak
  across the ages.

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• B. The course is developed around eternal themes
  God, fate, good and evil, the meaning of life,
  and how people live their lives in pursuit of
  truth. The books discuss duty and responsibility
  law, justice, and government love and beauty
  courage, honor, and ambition our relationship to
  nature and our definition of education.

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• 1. Bonhoeffers Letters and Papers From Prison is
  the work of a man in search of truth who found
  the courage to resist evil and who gave his life
  in the pursuit of good. His ideas have lived on
  despite Hitlers attempt to crush them. The civil
  rights movement of the 1960s found special
  relevance in this work.

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• 2. Homers Iliad offers wisdom to us today in
  such central themes as God, fate, and the meaning
  of good and evil. It also teaches how to live
  life with courage while understanding the virtue
  of moderation. It is the first great work of
  classical Greek literature that has come down to
  us.

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• 3. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius represents
  the summation of Greek thought on God, fate, and
  good and evil. The Roman Empire of Marcus
  Aurelius, which was the Roman Empire of the 1st
  and 2nd centuries A.D., was the cultural heir of
  Greece, and Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations
  in Greek. The writings of Marcus Aurelius
  represent the culmination of the transformation
  of the god Zeus from the capricious and lecherous
  master found in the poetry of Homer to a god who
  is associated with absolute truth and good and
  who is equated with nature, is all-powerful,
  all-knowing, and all-seeing.

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• C. In the same way that the Romans were the
  cultural heirs of the Greeks, the United States
  of today is the cultural heir of Europe.

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• II. The culmination of an image of god as a
  vision of truth can be found perhaps as early as
  500 B.C. in the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of God.
  This work was a product of classical Indian
  civilization.

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• A. Around 1800 B.C., the flourishing
  civilizations around the Indus River were overrun
  by invaders from the west.
• B. The language of these invaders was Sanskrit,
  also the language of the Bhagavad Gita. Sanskrit
  was related to Persian and more distantly to
  Greek, Latin, and the Germanic languages.

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• C. These invaders, who called themselves Aryans,
  meaning nobles, imposed their rule by conquest.
  From warfare and destruction came a new
  civilization that produced rich poetry, including
  the Bhagavad Gita, in an epic form.

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• D. The religion of this people was Hinduism, a
  polytheistic religion that rejects the notion
  that the world of the gods is finite, but is
  willing to recognize any new divine power capable
  of rendering supernatural benefits to the
  community of worshipers. All nature was seen as a
  manifestation of the divine. Sacrifice is
  fundamental to this worship it can be used to
  offer homage to the gods in return for their
  blessings and to avert evil. Individual gods can
  take many forms. As in Homers Iliad and the
  writings of Marcus Aurelius, this polytheistic
  notion of the divine can foster an image of one
  all-powerful and universal god.

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• III. The Bhagavad Gita is part of a longer work,
  the Mahabharata
• A. It is a poem that presents an epic story of
  warfare.
• B. Its author is unknown
• C. The warfare in the Bhagavad Gita is a symbol
  of the ongoing conflict of life and the struggle
  for the wisdom to live life in a way that is
  meaningful to us as individuals. It is the
  struggle between two warring tribes it is also a
  struggle between right and wrong and between good
  and evil.
• D. At the beginning of the story, Arjuna, the
  hero, does not understand the nature of his
  struggle and wishes to withdraw from the war.

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• IV. Truth is a central idea of the Bhagavad Gita.
  
• A. The first word of the Bhagavad Gita is dharma,
  or truth.
• B. In this allegory, Krishna, the charioteer of
  Arjuna, is also the image of the supreme god of
  the universe Arjuna is everyman, the soul.
  Krishna explains to Arjuna how he must travel the
  battlefield of life.

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• C. Gandhis statements reflect the theme of the
  Bhagavad Gita. Gandhi said that it is more
  important to believe that truth is God than that
  God is truth. Truth comes first.
• D. Krishnas message to Arjuna is that Arjuna
  must be steadfast in the truth and must fight the
  battle of life understanding what truth is.

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• V. The Bhagavad Gita also explains that behind
  the changing formations of the divine, there is
  one underlying divine being who is all and that
  Krishna is one of his manifestations.
• A. Gods presence is everywhere throughout all
  things in the universe.
• B. In the Bhagavad Gita, God makes himself
  visible in his true form to Arjuna. This God is
  everywhere throughout the universe. The universe
  is contained in one atom of this divine being,
  and in every person, there is a part of this
  divine being.

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• VI. After this glimpse of the majesty of God and
  the understanding that God is all, an individual
  can come to an understanding of his or her role
  in the universe that God has created. That role
  is our soul.

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• A. This idea contrasts with the viewpoints seen
  in both the Iliad and the Mediations. Marcus
  Aurelius was unsure of the existence of the soul
  if it did exist, he believed that it came to an
  end at death. For Homer, this life is what we
  have and we must live it.
• B. In the Bhagavad Gita, the soul endures, is
  eternal, and is divine. The task of mankind is to
  purify the soul and gain wisdom and truth so that
  the soul can gain ultimate liberation.

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• C. This ultimate liberation is the next step. The
  body is seen as a prison bodily desires are the
  result of false knowledge and false wisdom (for
  example, the desire for power and wealth). Wisdom
  enables a person to begin to shed false desires.

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• 1. The path of wisdom is to lead us to a stage
  that frees the soul for eternity from the bondage
  of the body.
• 2. Power leads to no ultimate liberation after
  death, an individual becomes some other creature.
• 3. The fate an individual earns through making
  choices affects that individual for many cycles
  of death and rebirth.
• 4. The Bhagavad Gita is about making the correct
  choices through wisdom. Earthly actions are good
  or evil and have enduring consequences. Choices
  using true wisdom allow a person to ultimately
  gain eternal liberation.

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• D. Wisdom consists of understanding karma, which
  means the task that an individual has been
  assigned by God. Karma is the role and the task
  of the individual. The choice to accept karma
  must be made with full realization of the
  difficulty of performing ones duty. Krishna
  teaches Arjuna that his duty is to fight this
  war.

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1. A person who renounces his or her assigned task
   is doomed to eternal reincarnation and suffering.
   
2. Accepting the assigned task with fear also leads
   to endless cycles of reincarnation.
3. Accepting the task with a whole heart allows a
   being to rise a step or two.
4. Accepting the task with supreme spirit and a
   fully dutiful conscience and understanding can
   lead to ultimate liberation and the pure bliss of
   unification with God, which is ultimate freedom.
5. The decision to follow the assigned way can bring
   a being to liberation. Even the greatest sinner
   can be liberated by doing his or her task to the
   utmost.

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• VII. The religion of the Bhagavad Gita is not a
  renunciation of life. It is the call to learn the
  ultimate meaning of life. The Bhagavad Gita
  answers the questions of God, good and evil, and
  fate. It also deals with truth, duty, justice,
  and love.

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• A. God is all, God is eternal and everlasting,
  and God pervades the entire universe.
• B. Good is following the mission of ones life.
• C. On the subject of fate, the Bhagavad Gita
  indicates that every individual and particle of
  the universe has a destiny. An individual must
  have the wisdom to know his or her destiny.
• D. Truth is everything and all things.
• E. Duty and responsibility are assigned by God
  and may lead away from what other people
  recommend.

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• F. Ultimate justice lies in every particle of the
  universe willingly and joyfully carrying out the
  will of God. The Bhagavad Gita does not separate
  the world, God, fate, life, and government. They
  are all mingled in the total vision of the world
  and justice. Justice is not of men but is part of
  the divine order. The person of justice is
  unshakable and steadfast in the truth.

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• G. Love led Krishna to take form in this world so
  that Arjuna could see him. An individuals love
  is to become absolutely immersed in the divine
  to do that, one may forsake all things and put
  oneself on Gods path.

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• VIII. The ultimate message of the Bhagavad Gita
  is that God has created many roads to the truth
  each person must find his or her own road.

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• A. These roads may include ritual sacrifices, a
  life of religious piety, contemplation and study,
  or struggle for liberation. Gandhi understood
  that his path was to struggle for the liberation
  of his country.
• B. The Hindu never seeks to absolutely define the
  world of the gods. There are many different forms
  of God, and each one may have a role in leading
  one individual to an understanding of truth.
• C. The form or ceremonies of God are not
  important. What is important is the understanding
  that God is truth. That understanding gives one
  the courage to live life and follow karma.

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• IX. The Bhagavad Gita, like the Divine Comedy, is
  one of the greatest works of education ever
  composed. It leads from the darkness of a life
  without meaning to the clarity of Gods wisdom.

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• X. The civilizations of classical Greece and
  classical India may have had some contact with
  each other. However, classical Indian
  civilization has little regard for history or for
  concrete knowledge of the past. Although
  similarities exist between the vision of divine
  glory in Dantes Divine Comedy and the Bhagavad
  Gita, the classical Indian view would be that
  these similarities represent eternal and enduring
  wisdom that is deeper than history.

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