Once when Rabindranath Tagore visited a large library in America, he expressed a desire to see the most prized books which were kept there. The officials there brought before him several books that were carefully wrapped in a cloth and delicately preserved. Among them, Tagore’s attention was drawn to a rare edition of the Bhagavad Gita.
When we recall that owing to special circumstances or perhaps due to various other reasons, numerous Western...
New Dimensions of Meaning
The qualities of poetry, song, and sastra are all infused in the Gita. In the view of the Three Acaryas [Adi Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva], it is evident that the Gita forms the foundation stone for Vedanta-Sastra. However, in the context of the Gita, the term “Sastra” has a deeper connotation than is commonly understood. Here, Sastra means those procedures or processes or methods that come in handy for the pursuit of...
The Bhagavad Gita’s Fame Rests on its Value
Over centuries, commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita have been composed in various languages. However, even today, the devout followers of the work continue to write newer commentaries on it thinking they have found a new insight. Such new commentaries attract their own unique readership which only shows the preeminence of the original work. In recent decades, we can say that the number of saints and...
Note: This is the English translation of Dr. S.R. Ramaswamy’s Kannada article titled “Giteya ananyate” published in the December 2018 edition of the “Utthana” magazine.
The world famous writer on spirituality, Paulo Coelho said the following on a recent occasion: “The moment I read the Bhagavad Gita, I fell in love with the book. It continues to be my book for all times. The Gita teaches you to understand the mystery, accept your destiny and...