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Welcome to Gita Talk: Self-Paced Online Seminar
Welcome! We’re glad you’re here. Gita Talk started as an online discussion of the Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell. That blog has now become this Self-paced Online Seminar. (While the Mitchell version is highly recommended, readers have found that it is possible to follow along with a different translation.)
Just dive in, go at your own pace. Tell us what’s on your mind. Ask us the questions you were asking yourself as you were reading. Read other readers comments. You will always get a personal response from me. I’m alway anxious to talk to anyone about the Gita!
For an overview of Gita Talk, a good place to start is at the end:
Gita Talk #16: In a Nutshell: The Big Ideas and Best Quotations
Please be sure to let me know if I can help you in any way.
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The Complete Gita Talk
(All remain open for further discussion)
Top Ten Reasons to read the Bhagavad Gita
Gita Talk–An Experiment in Online Book Discussion
Gita Talk #1: First Assignment–Read the Introduction
Gita Talk #2: Greetings, Gita Geeks. How is your reading coming?
Gita Talk #3: It’s Showtime. Please Start Talking All At Once!
Gita Talk #4: Why Is the Gita So Upsetting At First?
Gita Talk #4a: Gandhi’s Bible or a Call to War?
Highlights (Gita Talk #4): “What is God to You?” & “Dealing with Our Emotions”
Gita Talk #5: Sublimely Simple, Profound and Livable
Gita Talk #6: And Now for Something Completely Different
Gita Talk #7: What’s Your Favorite Passage?
Graham Schweig’s Rapturous Vision of the Gita
Gita Talk #8: Very Special Guest Graham Schweig
Gita Talk #9: First Date with the Gita? If Not, Remember Yours?
Gita Talk #10: Pretend We’re All Just Sitting Around In My Living Room Together
Gita Talk #11: Different Yoga Strokes for Different Yoga Folks
Gita Talk #12: Does the Infinitely Wondrous Universe
Give a Damn About You and Me?
Gita Talk #13: “The Infinite God, Composed of All Wonders”
Gita Talk #14: A Warm and Wonderful Article by Special Guest Amy Champ
Gita Talk #15: Nearing the Conclusion of Gita Talk / How are We Doing?
Gita Talk #16: In a Nutshell: The Big Ideas and Best Quotations
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A Little Background Material
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the “big three” ancient Yoga texts, along with the Upanishads and the Yoga Sutra. The Yoga Sutra gets 95% of the attention, but it is quite incomplete without the other two. The three together are nothing short of astounding.
My own feelings about the Bhagavad Gita are well expressed in my review last year of Mitchell’s version:
Falling Head-Over-Heals In Love with the Universe
For those of you who have always wanted to absorb the spectacular wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, but have found it difficult, I highly recommend Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell. This is my fourth version and sixth reading of the Bhagavad Gita. I have gotten a lot from all four versions, but Mitchell’s is clearly the most accessible and enjoyable, without sacrificing any of the meaning.
The Bhagavad Gita is quite literally about falling in love with the indescribable wonder of the universe, that is to say, God. These two are synonymous in the Gita. (Believe it or not, the text itself says that you can approach God as either an unfathomable cosmic life-force or as an intimate personal diety. Either leads you to the same boundless love and joy.)
The Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra are two of the most important ancient texts of Yoga. They could not be more different. The Yoga Sutra is mostly secular in nature, and mentions God only briefly and perfunctorily. The Bhagavad Gita, in contrast, is literally “The Song of the Beloved Lord”, and most of the text is the voice of the awesome life-force of the universe itself.
The Yoga Sutra is a cookbook for achieving inner peace. The Bhagavad Gita, in contrast, won’t settle for anything less than ecstatic union with the divine. Put them together and you have the astounding whole of Yoga philosophy in two relatively short texts.
Try Mitchell’s version of the Bhagavad Gita. You’ll be glad you did.
(We also talk to each other on our Facebook site and at #GitaTalk on Twitter.)
I'm not going to give up!!
Great to have you here, Lorraine.
what is the meaning of the war within?
Hi, dawn. Could you remind me where that phrase occurs so I can see it in context?
I want to say it means all the ways in which our minds and emotions pull us in different directions, and our inner struggle to resolve them. But I would really like to see it in context first.
Thanks for writing.
Bob Weisenberg
Hi Bob!
Thanks for your invitation in response to my earlier comment, to write a bit about how I work with the Bhagavad-Gita from the perspective of Buddha-Dharma. I will definitely take you up on your invite.
I thought though, that I'd check in on the discussions you've been having to see if perhaps that may provide me a working entry into the discussion.
With that said, in all friendliness, I'd like to take issue with your following statement: "The Yoga Sutra is a cookbook for achieving inner peace." Especially as contrasted with your next statement about the Gita ("The Bhagavad Gita, in contrast, won’t settle for anything less than ecstatic union with the divine"), "inner peace" sounds a bit tepid and anemic!
I think though that the soteriological purpose of Patanjali's Yoga — kaivalya — is a LOT more than mere 'inner peace.' However one wishes to interpret the 'liberation' that is referred to by the term, I think it shares much in the way of ecstasy. Even if one takes it to refer to a dualistic metaphysic of the nature of realization as distinct from nature, it is clear to me that for Patanjali, we are not speaking of the mere psychological state of 'inner peace.'
From my non-theistic perspective, I see Patanjali offering a method to achieve liberation from conditioned patterns of reactivity (physical and mental) into a state of unconditional creativity. Again, a bit more powerfully transformative than the term "inner peace" conveys, don't you think?
in metta,
frank jude
Hi, Frank. Thanks for this very interesting question.
My thoughts on this are heavily influenced by Buddhist writer Chip Hartranft, who asserts that the Yoga Sutra is much closer to Buddhism than the ecstatic Yoga of the Gita. In his opinion, any Brahman like interpretations of the Sutra are the result of centuries of Tantra-oriented and Hatha-oriented writers reading that into the text to suit their own preferences, whereas the text itself is clearly, in his opinion, much closer the the Godless "no mind" ultimate state of relaxed inner peace of most (but not all, of course) varieties of Buddhism.
This was pretty convincing to me. Hartranft has been questioned by other prominent Yoga writers, but they all seem to greatly admire the purity and accuracy of his translation regardless, and many recommend it.
It doesn't really matter to me. I meant no diminishment of the Yoga Sutra by my characterization. I felt I was just stating a fact of how the two texts vary in content and tone. You have to admit the Yoga Sutra has very little of the soaring cosmic poetry of the Gita and the Upanishads. My current point of view is that's because Patanjali could assume his students were familiar with that already, and that they needed to be brought more down to earth with some more practical methodology than you can find in either of those. This would be closer to Shearer's point of view, and probably yours, I suspect.
Those are my thoughts. I'm going to stop there so this can be a dialog. You have tons more experience at this than I do, so I'm very anxious to see how your ideas might reshape mine!
Thanks again for taking the time to write.
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
Regarding your catching up on Elephant background, here's something you'll enjoy that's highly related to this Yoga Sutra discussion we're having: http://bit.ly/7xlWXA
Hi Bob,
Oh, I TOTALLY agree with Chip regarding the all-too-common reading in of Vedantic and Tantric notions into Patanjali's text. This is something we have discussed so I know we agree on this. (For what it's worth, as long as the commentators acknowledge what position they are writing from, I don't think it's a problem. For instance, in Swami Prabhavananda and Chistopher Isherwood's "How To Know God," they acknowledge upfront that they are offering a Vedantic/bhakti interpretation. What I do take issue with are folks like Shearer and Geshe Roach — the former bringing in talk of "Cosmic Consciousness" and the latter a Vajrayana Tantric view of emptiness that is not authentic to Patanjali, but speaking as if this is what Patanjali's text is actually offering).
AND of course the tone of the two texts (YS and BG) are incredibly different. Patanjali's is a very technical 'manual' of practice, which is embedded in a very integrated and comprehensive philosophy/ontology and metaphysic. Note only that, but it's like lecture notes, it's so terse! I think we make a fundamental error in seeking a comprehensive, coherent philosophy in the Gita. That text is — as you point out somewhere — a LOVE POEM! Trying to express one's love for a person is hard enough! AND like most love poetry, will be replete with hyperbole and metaphors that often contradict each other: "What is it, are your lover's eyes like limpid pools OR like bottomless wells?" Such questions are beside the point!. If the object of your devotion is god, well, how could one hope to avoid contradiction and paradox?!
BUT, what I am trying to distinguish here is that early Buddhism sees a tremendous distinction and gap between samsara and nirvana as does Patanjali between purusha and prakriti. Nirvana/Pusuha are categorically beyond any conceptualization or imagination (which are both of mind which is samsaric/prakritic). Ontologically and metaphysically, whatever the state of being nirvana/purusha is, it is beyond mind. The concept 'inner peace' is one that only makes sense in samsara/prakriti. I think we cannot 'grok' just how transcendent that state is thought to be by the early Buddhists and Patanjali.
Again, I am not speaking of this as if this is my personal belief. I reject such dualism. In fact, I'm a bit of a 'radical' in that I teach a form of Zen Naturalism that rejects all literal transcendent phenomena more akin to what Stephen Batchelor presents. But what I present above is, I think, a fairly accurate assessment of how followers of Theravada Buddhism and Classical Yoga would put it.
To summarize: "inner peace" sounds like a psychological state. The very phrase 'inner' implies a sense of self that both the Buddha and Patanjali say is absent in the state of liberation. I hear that you weren't out to diminish the Yoga-Sutra in your characterization, but I think that's just what happens when one reduces kaivalya to the state of 'inner peace.' I understand that you may not see it that way, and that's fine!
metta,
frank jude
Thank you for your very thoughtful analysis, Frank.
I'm not convinced that anyone knows exactly what Patanjali meant, which is why he is subject to such diverse interpretations. I would argue that most of the fine distinctions you make above are based on interpretations that came centuries later, and thus are subject to the fashionable elaborations of those times. We don't even know when Patanjali lived, much less exactly what was going on in his head beyond the spare words of the Sutra themselves.
That doesn't mean the analyses are invalid, but ultimately it does make sense for each individual to take from the Sutra what's meaningful to him. For me, that means I see the Sutra as an elaboration on the meditation part of the Gita, which is the central text of Yoga for me. Likewise, I see the Upanishads as an elaboration on the "wonder of the universe" part of the Gita.
For me it would be a waste of spiritual time and energy to fantasize about some secret and probably unattainable end state of meditative nothingness. It's way beyond the relevant range of experience for most people, and I'm sure was in Patanjali's time, too. I'm convinced it's often part fraudulent or hallucinogenic even for those who claim to have reached it.
So I guess that's why I feel comfortable with the general term "inner peace". I agree that the ultimate state Patanjali describes is something other than that. But who cares? No one ever gets there anyway, and it's pretty much the same as death if you do, as far as I can tell. But since it's beyond all understanding and words, who knows? I'm talking about the intermediate stages Patanjali describes, the ones that are relevant to you and me in our daily lives, the stages that reduce our suffering and expand our joy, without shutting off our humanness completely.
Like you, I enjoy studying all these competing Yogas and Buddhisms, but none of them hold any authority for me over my own direct experience and my own highly personal direct relationship with the ancient Yoga texts.
I'm enjoying this interchange immensely. I hope you are, too.
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
Your response above is so interesting I've been reading it over again a few times.
Wait until you see my Grand Finale Gita Talk on Monday, in which I try to do exactly what you say shouldn't be attempted: I think we make a fundamental error in seeking a comprehensive, coherent philosophy in the Gita.
I so vehemently disagree with this, Frank. In fact, that's why I like the Gita over most other ancient texts, including the Torah, the Bible and the Dhammapada, the Tao Te Ching, just to mention a few. To me the Gita is utterly coherent, logical, even rational, with I admit making a few allowances for 2500 year old anachronisms and your love poetry analogy above.
I will try to bring this idea to a ringing conclusion on Monday, with full textual support in the form of a kind of thematic index. It's my tour de Gita Force! I don't know if you'll be convinced or not, but I sure am.
I hope and trust you'll tell me exactly how you feel about it. I expect nothing less from you, and, in case you haven't noticed this already, it's that kind of direct debate I really enjoy.
Thanks again for writing. This is fun. Invite your friends and relatives.
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
RIght on Bob. Perhaps I should be clearer because, as I mentioned, my Zen Naturalism argues that such an 'unconditional' or 'unmediated' state (whether it's called 'nirvana' or 'purusha') is ultimately meaningless. As biological/neural creatures, I think it is impossible to ever have such an 'unmediated' knowledge/experience of some unmediated "absolute." I tend, as you seem to, rest on phenomenological experience.
And so, again, I agree we cannot 'know' what Patanjali meant. What I was sharing, is my understanding of how Patanjali's teachings were understood and used for most of the post-classical tradition. I think it's important to recognize that in the history of Indian philosophy, all the various schools of philosophical thought arose gradually, often centuries after the seminal teacher. The teachings of Samhkya, Yoga, Vedanta, Mimamsa etc. were diffused throughout centuries, until texts and commentaries built up a 'school' of thought. In that sense, what is called Yoga-Darshana, referring to one of the six 'orthodox' or Vedic philosophical systems of thought, though based upon Patanjali's Yoga-Sutra, was not the 'creation' of Patanjali, but of others over time.
Within my own tradition, I recognize that how things were understood had great impact on the continuance of the tradition, even if I don't accept the traditional understandings. An example I see we agree on is the whole concept of literal reincarnation (or rebirth, as the Buddhists put it). As a naturalist, I do not see any convincing evidence for the continuation of consciousness after brain death, so I do not accept literal rebirth. BUT, as a teacher, I do not foist my understanding on students. I share how the tradition understands such a concept, and then I share my understanding.
So, enough from me on this! I too enjoy the dialogue, and am sure to want to check out how you pull coherence out of a text that has 'god' speaking of his nature as personal, impersonal, transpersonal, transcendent, and immanent — among other contradictions — that I see throughout the text.
metta,
frank jude
Wow, Frank. We appear to have reached near total agreement through very different paths, even on things we hadn't discussed yet, like reincarnation. Exciting to find an apparent spiritual soulmate.
The answer to your last paragraph is simple–all those different forms of "God", even the very concept of "God" itself, are just layers of metaphor for what I'm fond of calling the "infinitely wondrous unfathomable life-force of the universe", i.e. Brahman. In my reading of the Gita, and to me it's absolutely explicit about this, all of those other concepts dissolve into Brahman, and that's the whole point of the Gita.
You'll see all my textual support on Monday. What I've done that's unusual is to rearrange the key passages of the Gita by theme, as opposed to the order in which it's written. The farther along I got on this major project, the more convinced I became of the complete logic of the whole.
(One of my goals in reading the ancient Yoga texts has been to get far enough along that I can form my own opinions about the meaning, as opposed to relying entirely on the expert commentators and scholars.)
Thanks again for your long reply above. We will have a lot of interesting discussions, I can see.
Bob Weisenberg
YogaDemystified.com
[...] not to do stupid things we hadn’t come up with yet. Nowhere in the Vedas, the Yoga Sutras or the Bhagavad Gita do you have someone spell [...]