Bhagavad Gita I atiG davagahB

Bhagavad Gita I atiG davagahB

(Get it? It's a reflection!)

Reading the Bhagavad Gita has been a very interesting and eye-opening experience. Whenever I saw that we had to read the Bhagavad Gita for the class, I was somewhat dreading it. I knew that, especially as a yoga instructor, I needed to read this text and have knowledge of it. However, I expected that I was going to have to struggle through very dense and confusing text. Philosophy has never been my strong point, especially with studying classic texts like Plato, so I figured that this was going to be the same thing. I was very pleasantly surprised. The text was not hard to read, and the concepts were not that hard to understand.

One of the things that stuck out to me while reading the Bhagavad Gita was something that reflected what is, in my opinion, one of the most central ideas in Christian theology. "Being devoted to loving God in loving worship leads to the performance of one's sacred duty" (9.30-31). This immediately made me think of my own Catholic faith and The Bible. This is very close to the verse of Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” In both of these it shows that we are called to love and serve our God, and that is our ultimate purpose. In my own walk with God, I have fallen in and out of an intimate relationship with Him. However, each time that I come back, I feel a sense of belonging and that this is my ultimate job. I feel that we, as Christians, are called to serve God and exonerate Him in everything we do, whether it is bagging someone’s groceries at the local Walmart or practicing as a clinical psychologist. Between these two quotes, it really became apparent how similar the roots of Hinduism and Christianity are.

While finishing the Bhagavad Gita, there was one thing that I cannot stop thinking about that made me doubt this newfound similarity between Hinduism and Christianity. One of the final warnings that Krishna gives Arjuna is about telling others about the knowledge that he has of God. Krishna says, “ “Do not share this wisdom with anyone who lacks in devotion or self-control, lacks the desire to learn, or scoffs at me” (18. 67-68).  Whenever I first read this, it was almost a knee-jerk reaction. This is basically the opposite of what we are taught as Christians. In Mark 16:15, we see God’s ultimate plan for us, “And He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.'” From here, we see that we need to spread the Good News to every person we come in contact to because the only way to Salvation is through God’s never-ending love for us and knowledge of the Scripture to guide our lives. Without knowing this, we cannot live to the full potential that God has in store for us. When following Krishna’s demand, we are possibly denying other people the knowledge of God. It might be that through being first introduced to The Bible, someone cleans up their act and reforms to follow Christ’s example. This is something that I do not fully understand in the Bhagavad Gita. 

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this text because it was an essential piece of yoga philosophy that I needed to understand both as a yogi and as a Christian. 

Until next time, my fellow yogis and yoginis,

Namasté,

Upward-facing Bear