Sunday Satsang: Study of – Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita – 5 June 2016
June 5, 2016 – Bhagavad Gita Study (continues)
10 AM – 12 PM
The Meditation Center
This coming Sunday the study of Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita will continue with further background material on the Indian Epic of the Mahabharata, and also critical aspects of the first chapter of the Gita – “Arjuna’s Despondency.
Each session also features, hatha, meditation, recorded excerpts from Swami Veda’s commentaries on the Gita, and group discussions about practical elements of Swami Rama’s teachings which we can to apply to enrich our daily lives.
If you have not attended any of these sessions before, please feel welcome to join the study, and information and handouts will be provided to fill in what you might have missed.
Looking forward to sharing Sunday morning with you,
Jim and Michael
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The study of Swami Rama’s, Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita began on January 17, 2016, as the main text, supplemented by Swami Veda’s commentaries on the Gita, along with the commentaries of Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Shankarcharya, and the 16th century sage, Madhusudhana Sarasvati.
For those who would like to attend these sessions, it is highly recommended that they have a personal copy of Swami Rama’s, Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita.
The Bhagavad Gita, it is one of the world’s great spiritual treasures. Its 700 verses are part of the epic Mahabharata, and contain the teachings of the Lord Krishna to the warrior-hero, Arjuna, before the Battle of Kurukshetra.
This battle traditionally took place in 3102 BC, and is seen allegorically as “the field of action and virtue.” Eknath Easwaran wrote that the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita describe “the war within, and the struggle for self-mastery that every human must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious over the tyranny of the ego.”
The Bhagavad Gita has for thousands of years been the guidebook for literally billions of people over the centuries, providing spiritual counsel and spiritual solace.
“From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-Gita is the manifest quintessence of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures.” (Adi Sharkaracharya)
“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.” (Henry David Thoreau)
“I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“The Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.” (Aldous Huxley)
“The Gita is the universal mother. I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies – and my life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible, no indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad Gita.” (Gandhi)
“There are only two scriptures you need to know: “The Sermon on the Mount” and the Bhagavad Gita.” (Swami Rama)