A Comprehensive Guide to Bhagavad-Gita with Literal Translation

By H.D. Goswami

In the late 18th century Bhagavad-gita became the first Sanskrit work to be rendered in a European tongue, and since that time it has generated countless translations and secondary analyses. Among these, however, H.D. Goswami's Comprehensive Guide with Literal Translation excels in its capacity to schematize and summar

• Language: English
• Publisher: Krishna West, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780986240379

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Praise for

A Comprehensive Guide to Bhagavad-gītā

"Anyone that has read one of the several English translations of the famed Bhagavad-gītā, with its richness of life-affirming truth, may have come away feeling spiritually refreshed yet vaguely uncertain as to whether or not the Gītā upholds a clearly developed system of thought. With its sophisticated thematic approach, this Comprehensive Guide brings clarity to the Gītā’s content in a most thorough and systematic way, inviting both first-time and seasoned readers to vigorously engage with the text while enjoying the rewards of deep understanding. Especially impressive is the fact that this volume not only provides the reader with a stimulating learning experience, but also serves as an exceptional reference book for specific topics. Thus, in terms of my own Gītā studies, I am happy to have the benefit of this Comprehensive Guide, as well as the excellent, highly literal, translation that comes with it. And I certainly will be recommending this book to my students of Indian philosophy."

– Kenneth Valpey Ph.D., Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

"H.D. Goswami’s Comprehensive Guide with Literal Translation provides readers with unique insight into the essential meaning of Bhagavad-gītā, with succinct, carefully crafted explications of complex philosophical themes. Concise yet thorough, this skillful exposition, containing hundreds upon hundreds of key Gītā references, affords a conceptual window into the core elements of Krishna’s teachings to Arjuna. Throughout this work we are graced by the knowledge, Sanskrit expertise and personal illuminations of one who is not only a highly trained scholar, but also a widely experienced spiritual teacher. Goswami is thus to be commended for so eloquently polishing the various facets of this most precious and rare jewel of sacred literature so that we, the readers, may perceive that much more of its unbounded brilliance."

– Graham M. Schweig Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy

and Religion, Christopher Newport University

"In the late 18th century Bhagavad-gītā became the first Sanskrit work to be rendered in a European tongue, and since that time it has generated countless translations and secondary analyses. Among these, however, H.D. Goswami’s Comprehensive Guide with Literal Translation excels in its capacity to schematize and summarize the Gītā’s powerful appeal as a source of perennial wisdom. The literal translation’s careful nuancing demonstrates the author’s Sanskrit mastery and philosophical expertise while the Guide’s focused precision and theological depth reflect the training of a Harvard doctorate as well as the spiritual insight of one dedicated to the sannyāsa (renounced) order. Thematically divided into twelve parts, each with multiple subsections that focus on major issues, the Guide’s strongest features are its expert pinpointing of verses that pertain to each theological topic and its contextual analysis, articulated in succinct crisp prose that eschew both academic jargon and sectarian rhetoric. It is an excellent resource not only for those approaching the Gītā as a spiritual manual, but also for those seeking a more systematic and rigorous understanding of its philosophical content. I look forward to using this work in my Hinduism courses."

– Edwin Bryant Ph.D., Professor of Hindu Religion

and Philosophy, Rutgers University

A Comprehensive Guide to

Bhagavad-gītā

With Literal Translation

A Comprehensive Guide to

Bhagavad-gītā

With Literal Translation

H.D. Goswami

Krishna West, Inc.

Gainesville, Florida

Copyright © 2015 by H.D. Goswami (Howard J. Resnick)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by

Krishna West, Inc.

1515 NW 7th Place

Gainesville, FL 32603

www.krishnawestinc.com

ISBN: 978-0-692-76171-7

ISBN: 978-0-986-24037-9 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958503

Second Edition

Readers interested in the subject matter of this book are invited to write to: [e-mail]

Text design and formatting by Mayapriya dasi, Bookwrights.com

Cover design by Danesha dasa

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note to the Readers

Comprehensive Guide

PART I: Introduction

Historical Context

The Origins of the Gītā

PART II: Individual Eternal Persons (Puruṣa)

PART III: Nature’s Three Modes (Guṇa)

PART IV: Action, Reaction, Bondage (Karma)

PART V: Sacrifice or Offering (Yajña)

PART VI: God (Kṛṣṇa)

Features of God

God’s Expansive Being (Vibhūti)

The Supreme Person (Parama-Puruṣaḥ)

Terms Reserved for Souls (Bhūta, Jīva, Dehī)

Kṛṣṇa’s Original Form (Rūpa)

PART VII: Yoga

The Power of Reason (Buddhi)

Spiritual Practice (Yoga)

Equality (Samatvam)

Renunciation (Sannyāsa)

PART VIII: Karma-yoga (Action-Yoga)

Arjuna’s Problem

The Need for Action

Action as Yoga and Yajña

Career as Yoga

Inaction in Action

PART IX: Jñāna-yoga (Knowledge-Yoga)

Knowledge as a Spiritual Path

True Principles of Life (Tattva)

Scripture (Veda, Śāstra, Gītā)

Spiritual Teachers

Sincere Students

Seeing the Truth (Dṛṣṭi)

Knowledge that Liberates

The Knowledge-Offering (Jñāna-yajña)

PART X: Dhyāna-yoga (Meditation-Yoga)

Meditation as Spiritual Practice

Meditation as Spiritual Offering

PART XI: Bhakti-yoga (The Yoga of Devotion)

Hierarchy of Yogas and Yogīs

Knowledge of Kṛṣṇa

How to Attain Kṛṣṇa

Constancy in Devotional Practice

Purity in Devotional Practice

Compassion Toward All Beings

The Offering of Pure Love

PART XII: Mukti (Liberation)

Negative Liberation (Freedom from)

Positive Liberation (Freedom to)

Brahman, the Supreme Imperishable

Reaching Kṛṣṇa

PART XIII: Conclusion

Literal Translation

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

¹

With deep gratitude, I acknowledge and thank those whose invaluable help made this book possible. I give here a partial list, with sincere apologies to those who may have been overlooked.

I first thank my spiritual master, Śrīla Prabhupāda, without whom I would know virtually nothing of the Bhagavad-gītā, nor of myself. His is the merit in this work, mine the deficiencies. I thank and esteem all his predecessor teachers, who preserved the sacred text through long centuries.

My thanks must go to Ali Krishna (Alysia Radder), who brilliantly and lovingly helped to found and develop our media team; Brahmatirtha (Bob Cohen), my alter ego, who rendered valuable help to this and every other project of mine; Aja (Allan Andersson), my dear spiritual brother, who lent his expert hand to the editing and production; my spiritual sister and old friend Mayapriya (Candace Long), who designed and formatted the book; Duhkha-hantri (Donna DeAngelis), an old friend and spiritual sister who did copy-editing, and who rendered invaluable help with all my previous books; Krishna Kshetra Swami (Kenneth Valpey), a dear spiritual brother and gifted scholar, who reviewed the translation; Giridhari (Gustavo Dauster), my dear disciple who always helps with everything; Advaita Candra (Alister Taylor), my old friend and walking partner, whose publishing house has gone out of its way to work with us on this book; and Danesha (Daniel Laflor) who designed the cover.

My thanks also to my Sanskrit mentor at Harvard, Dr. Michael Witzel, and to the Harvard experience, which helped me to translate not only for an insider audience, but for a general audience as well.

Finally I offer my heartfelt gratitude to my dear and departed parents, whose unstinting love and generosity made possible more things than I can recount; and I thank my brothers Allen and Robert for their generosity and support.

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¹ For personal Sanskrit names of the production staff, including the author, we chose to use the non-academic spelling that is familiar to most people.

A Note to the Readers

This Comprehensive Guide , with its many hundreds of systematic references to Bhagavad-gītā verses, is an ideal companion to the Literal Translation contained herein. Readers can approach this book in a variety of rewarding ways. For example, one can begin by reading the Guide straight through, or toggle back and forth between the Guide and the translation, or first read the translation and then the Guide . Some will prefer reading the book from beginning to end, while others may enjoy browsing the topics at their pleasure. Regardless of how one chooses to approach this unique book, many wonders are here to be discovered.

It is also important to note that in translating the Gītā the author has chosen to keep ambiguities in Sanskrit ambiguous in English as well. The Gītā clearly contains an explicit central message, but it also at times contains mystic and mysterious language, dense and intense philosophy and unique ways of self-expression, all of which the author has tried to retain in the English. The purpose of this elaborate Comprehensive Guide is to unpack, disambiguate and explain the literal translation such that the clear central meaning shines through.

Please note that bracketed numbers in the Guide indicate a Gītā chapter and verse. Thus [2.26] indicates Chapter 2, Verse 26.

Comprehensive Guide to

Bhagavad-gītā

PART I

Introduction

The words Bhagavad-gītā literally mean The Lord’s Song , and today a billion people around the world accept it as such. This elegant, ancient text addresses life’s biggest issues: Who am I? What is the universe? How can I be happy? Where does it all come from? Where is it all going? Who are real teachers and how do we recognize them? The Gītā , as it is often called, excels in its calm, reasonable, satisfying responses to these perennial questions.

A brief Sanskrit work of seven hundred verses, Bhagavad-gītā forms part of the Bhīṣma-parva, the sixth book of Mahā-bharata, a vast sacred history. The Gītā shines as the spiritual beacon and summit of that far larger work, which for untold centuries has played a central cultural role in South Asia and beyond.

Originally, this comprehensive guide to the Gītā’s content was intended to be only a short introduction to my literal Gītā translation. But like Kṛṣṇa’s fabled fish incarnation, which appeared in tiny form and then grew to vast proportions, what began as a mere introduction, grew by necessity to become a book in itself. Having read, studied and cherished the Gītā for decades at the feet of my teacher Śrīla Prabhupāda, I could not help but share the profound conceptual connections that make this Sanskrit text so magical. The Gītā is widely recognized as a work of spiritual and philosophical genius, and early on I fell in love with its Sanskrit text. My sincere wish here, through explication and translation, is to bring the general reader deep within that original Sanskrit. I hope you enjoy the journey.¹

Historical Context

Bhagavad-gītā opens on a battlefield moments before justice and injustice (dharma and a-dharma), personified by Pāṇḍava and Kuru warriors, burst into war.² Kṛṣṇa drives the chariot of Arjuna, His close friend and cousin, who fights for right. But just as the battle is about to begin, Arjuna falls into confusion. Claiming compassion for cruel usurpers with whom he shares family bonds, he refuses to fight for justice. Arjuna recognizes this emotion as weakness [2.7],³ yet it paralyzes him. He cannot act. After trying to defend his retreat with socio-moral arguments and pleas, Arjuna nearly collapses in anxiety, and here ends the Gītā’s first chapter.

In Chapter Two, Kṛṣṇa begins to revive, teach and enlighten Arjuna, insisting on moral, social and spiritual grounds that Arjuna should indeed fight. Some readers question the spirituality of Kṛṣṇa urging Arjuna to battle. To understand what is going on, we must turn to the Gītā’s historical setting within the epic Mahā-bhārata.

Imagine you awake one day to shocking news: usurpers have seized your government, suspended the constitution, driven out the legitimate rulers and violently imposed martial law. You pray that the legitimate government, the military and all loyal citizens will oppose the aggressors and restore the rule of law and tradition.

Mahā-bhārata teaches that a similar crisis erupted in India thousands of years ago. Kṛṣṇa, God, came to Earth to help His devotees—Arjuna, his brothers and others—to restore dharma (justice, Law, legitimate rule) on earth. Thus, in Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa urges Arjuna to oppose the Kurus, led by Duryodhana, who unjustly usurped power. Kṛṣṇa states that He expressly comes to earth to restore dharma [4.7–8], and here we see Him in action.

Legitimate rulers expect their generals to defend the law. So Kṛṣṇa expected Arjuna to fight at Kuru-kṣetra rather than to allow rule by fraud, coercion and usurpation.

The events of this sacred history occur on three levels: earthly, cosmic and spiritual:

1.Earthly: we briefly spoke of this above.

2.Cosmic: the teachings of Bhagavad-gītā, and the encompassing history of Mahā-bhārata, unfold within a personal, multi-layered cosmos of upper, middle and lower worlds. Justice and injustice (dharma and a-dharma) contend in higher worlds as they do on earth. On the Kuru-kṣetra battlefield, where Kṛṣṇa speaks Bhagavad-gītā, the Kurus, Pāṇḍavas and all other leading warriors fought as empowered incarnations of cosmic heroes and villains (Devas and Asuras). Earth had become a battleground for a cosmic struggle.

3.Spiritual: when Kṛṣṇa, God, descends to this world, He designs His deeds, such as speaking Bhagavad-gītā, to awaken sleeping souls to their eternal, blissful nature and ecstatic relationship with Him. The entire history that frames the Gītā is a planned spiritual drama wherein Kṛṣṇa saves the virtuous, removes the wicked and restores dharma, the sacred Law that sustains the universe [4.8].

The Origins of the Gītā

What has scholarship said about the origin of Bhagavad-gītā? About fifteen hundred years ago, the great mathematician-astronomer Arya-bhata⁴ concluded from archeo-astronomical data in the Mahā-bhārata that the Kuru-kṣetra War, the setting of Bhagavad-gītā, took place approximately 5,100 years ago.

Some modern scholars, especially from the West, have resisted such antiquity, speculating that the Gītā was composed roughly between the fifth and second centuries BCE.⁵ Such scholars also often doubt the historicity of most Mahā-bhārata events, whereas other scholars (East and West), and most Hindus, accept both their antiquity and historicity⁶. Who is right?

Limited empirical evidence does not allow worldly scholarship to definitively affirm or deny such claims, and much less to speak authoritatively about Kṛṣṇa’s divinity. Just as declaring an algebraic equation right or wrong is to make an algebraic claim, so also declaring a metaphysical statement right or wrong is to make a metaphysical claim. And the ground rules of worldly scholarship do not smile upon metaphysical claims.

The conclusion is that despite the plethora of learned best guesses, worldly scholarship lacks sufficient evidence to prove the date and origin of Bhagavad-gītā beyond reasonable doubt. Other extraordinary claims, such as Kṛṣṇa’s assertion that He originally spoke the Gītā to a sun deity [4.1], entail no internal contradiction or other logical absurdity, and thus must remain sacred claims, also beyond the power of worldly scholarship to mark right or wrong.

Scholars often wonder whether the Gītā formed part of the original Mahā-bhārata or was added later. Again, a lack of historiographic evidence precludes a definitive academic response. In the twentieth century, the world’s most distinguished Sanskritists attempted to reconstruct the original Mahā-bhārata from dozens of surviving recensions. After a half-century of brilliant assiduous study, they admitted that it is beyond the powers of worldly scholarship to recreate, and thus conclusively identify, an original version of this text. Thus scholarship can hardly determine whether the Gītā is part of an original text that no one can clearly reconstruct.

Scholarly controversies often burn hottest precisely where evidence is weakest and leaves the largest space for conflicting opinions. Questions of the Gītā’s original date and formation provide ample opportunity for just this sort of endless academic debate—which I intend to avoid here.

What we do know beyond doubt is that the Bhagavad-gītā has inspired and illumined a huge and growing number of souls. Kṛṣṇa’s devotees claim that we have the very Gītā that Lord Kṛṣṇa intended for us. In their view, rather than battling over the Gītā’s provenance, we should take advantage of its profound wisdom, which has long lightened loads, gladdened hearts, excited intelligences and guided souls in their quest for ultimate meaning.

In Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa teaches that there are three fundamental real things: souls, nature and God. He also teaches that God’s relationship with fallen souls is mediated by the laws of karma and that awakened souls approach and relate to God through yajña, the process of devoted offerings. All this will be explained in the next five sections.

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¹ A note to my readers: italics are used throughout my Gītā translation to emphasize key words and phrases as well as to highlight English words that are jargon or symbolic in their Sanskrit original.

² The Gītā’s first chapter, arcane to most with its long lists of warrior names, is thrilling to one who knows all the Mahā-bhārata history that came before.

³ Numbers in brackets indicate Gītā verse numbers; thus [2.7] indicates Chapter 2, Verse 7.

⁴ In addition to helping found trigonometry, Arya-bhata [476–550 CE] wrote astronomy books (such as an ephemeris) that were considered authoritative for centuries by both European and Islamic scientists and mathematicians. India’s first satellite as well as a lunar crater were named after him, as were a university and a scientific institute.

⁵ These scholars invariably date the Gītā after the time of Buddha, whose birth is believed to be in the 6th century BCE. Their reason: the Gītā five times [2.72; 5.24,25,26; 6.15] uses the word nirvāṇa, a term often used by Gautama Buddha. Clearly we have three possibilities here: 1) Kṛṣṇa borrowed the term from Buddha; 2) Buddha borrowed the term from Kṛṣṇa; and, 3) Kṛṣṇa and Buddha independently used the same word. On a prominent academic forum that includes many of the world’s leading Indologists, I recently asked whether there is definitive evidence for possibility one—i.e., that Kṛṣṇa borrowed the term nirvāṇa from Buddha. No one was able to supply any such evidence, and one senior scholar wrote: I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that the term is pre-Buddhist. This notwithstanding, most Western scholars continue to assume, write and teach that the Gītā must be later than Buddhism because it uses the term nirvāṇa. Oh well . . .

⁶ The task of dating the Maha-bharata is vexed by the fact that the text began as an oral tradition, subject to interpolations and extrapolations, and only later, say between 400 BCE and 400 CE, became a more stable written text. In that sense, one may accept that the written form of the epic’s various recensions does reflect Hindu society at that later time. However scholars realize that the original story (itself a disputed term) may be much older.

PART II

Individual Eternal Persons (Puruṣa)

The Gītā teaches