[Culled from: A Bhagavad Gita_A Walkthrough
for Westerners, by Jack Hawley]
I love the Gita’s basic goodness,
and how it pushes me beyond merely striving to be a good person, toward
becoming my own Divinity within. I love that it provides me with page after
page of methods for calling forth that extreme goodness. And I love how it
continually reminds me to do that.
I love my inner peacefulness whenever I enter the Gita’s teachings. I love how almost all my anger
has been eliminated, and how worldly agitations are largely things of the past
for me. I love the Gita for its depth, its breadth, and mostly its
height — the way it pulls me upward. I love it for its humanness as well as its
sublimity. I love the ultra-honesty in
the Gita
about religion — how it
lives in the open space beyond religious dogma and yet embraces a reverence for
the scriptural teachings of all faiths.
I love the Gita’s clarity about
how we have to live with the consequences of our actions, good or bad, but with
no hint of punishment. I love how it
neither excuses nor overlooks humanity’s dark side, and yet doesn’t dwell there.
Sanskrit, the precise, spiritual language of the Gita, has no word for damnation.
I love the antiquity of the Gita, appreciating that it precedes by thousands of years the societies we
Westerners think of as the cradles of civilization. This isn’t merely “older is
better” snobbery. The Bhagavad Gita has
passed the persistent tests of countless centuries, and yet it remains the
basis for all the spiritual teachings known in the world today.
I love the Gita’s teachings on acceptance — not mere compliance, but acceptance as an
overpowering state of mind and way of being, a receptiveness so elevated that
one’s life forever soars when touched by the magic of it. This all-embracing
acceptance is the most shining facet of love, the very essence of spiritual surrender.
I love the happiness in the Gita and thoroughly appreciate its careful explanation of how to attain real
bliss. I also appreciate that it lays out what happiness is not and is so clear
about the pitfalls in the way of lasting happiness.
I love that the all-powerful Divinity described in the Gita is loving and non-punitive.
Finally, I love the Gita’s
emphasis on application rather than
airy theology — insisting that putting the teachings into practice will lead to
a happier, more graceful life.
O0O
Courtesy: A Bhagavad Gita_A
Walkthrough for Westerners, by Jack Hawley. New World Library, Novato,
California. 2001
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