The Bhagavad Gita, the 700-verse jewel of Hindu Scripture from the epic Mahabharata, gifts us Lord Krishna’s counsel to warrior prince Arjuna in time of war.
This philosophical poem is endlessly instructive to us today and can aid us in times of war and conflict.
In this episode of the Hardcore Literature Podcast, we’re learning to accept the blessings of the Bhagavad Gita together. We’re talking about dark inertia, following one’s sacred duty, exercising our discipline without attachment to the fruits of action, the entropic nature of the universe (and what to do about it), and much more.
We’ll also spend time relishing and savouring some of the most powerful poetry in human history – a literary banquet worthy of Shakespeare and the Bible.
The Bhagavad Gita Podcast
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You may also enjoy the deep dives into Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Joseph Campbell, Cervantes, Hesse, Austen, Freud, and many more over at the Hardcore Literature Book Club.
Timestamps:
- 0:00 what is the Bhagavad Gita?
- 2:45 what if you don’t know Sanskrit?
- 3:00 how to read the Bhagavad Gita as a Westerner
- 3:30 who are Lord Krishna and Arjuna?
- 4:00 how to read other cultures
- 4:30 the trouble with translation
- 7:00 the untranslatable art of the haiku
- 7:30 the importance of cultural fluency
- 10:00 the difficulty for Westerners approaching Hindu Literature
- 10:40 the significance of dharma
- 12:00 Arjuna’s appeal to Lord Krishna in time of war
- 12:00 how Proust is your autobiography
- 13:00 how to give a sermon (the art of preaching)
- 13:45 Hermann Hesse’s Siddharta
- 15:00 when was the Mahabharata composed?
- 15:30 the Hindu idea of heroically confronting death
- 15:50 sacred duty, chaos, discipline (yoga), action (karma), knowledge, devotion
- 16:00 dark inertia and action without attachment to the fruits of action (karmaphalasanga)
- 16:40 the opening of the Bhagavad Gita
- 17:00 why Arjuna does not wish to kill in battle
- 17:30 what if your enemy actually is the aggressor?
- 17:52 the trauma of civil wars
- 18:00 what if the war is just?
- 18:30 ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’
- 19:00 ‘don’t yield to impotence!’
- 20:00 is it better to be conquerer or conquered?
- 20:00 Krishna energises the Buddhist tenet of “the one contains the many”
- 21:30 rebirth as a call to war in the face of injustice
- 22:00 dukkha (suffering) vs sukha (pleasure)
- 22:50 eternal ecstasy/bliss (ananda)
- 23:00 the indestructible embodied self (atman)
- 24:00 eternal recurrence and the warrior strain in Nietzsche
- 24:30 removing the shackles of shame in preparation for war
- 25:40 the problem of Plato’s cave
- 27:00 ‘nothing is better for a warrior than a battle of sacred duty’
- 29:00 ‘if you are killed, you win heaven’
- 30:00 go down in a blaze of glory
- 30:30 ‘arm yourself for the battle, lest you fall into evil’
- 31:50 ‘be intent on action, not the fruits of action’
- 33:00 Aristotle on ethics, actions, and virtues
- 34:00 ‘he should focus on me’
- 34:30 taking scripture too literally, mistaking metaphor for meaning
- 36:00 the body and blood of Christ (‘do this in memory of me’)
- 37:00 desire, anger, confusion, loss of understanding
- 38:15 renouncing craving, thirst, trishna, clinging onto life
- 38:45 the ego death (Freud, Jung, Joseph Campbell)
- 39:00 Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov and carrying a spiritual cross
- 39:30 the twofold basis of good in this world
- 40:00 neutrality is not an option – you must take a side (WW2 example)
- 41:30 the universe is entropic (doing nothing leads to decay)
- 42:00 ‘perform action as sacrifice’ (Ernest Becker and Viktor Frankl)
- 44:30 the sacred syllable ‘om’ in Hesse’s Siddharta
- 48:00 what makes a person commit evil as if compelled?
- 49:00 becoming a conduit for the lord’s work
- 50:00 answering or refusing the call to adventure
- 51:00 the learned do not separate philosophy and discipline
- 52:30 parallels with Milton’s Satan
- 53:30 appreciating the poetry of the Bhagavad Gita
- 55:00 learning to love the questions
- 56:30 focus on your vital breath (prana) to attain nirvana
- 58:00 ‘the unborn beginningless lord’
- 58:30 Shelley’s implication for us to add ourselves to the tapestry
- 59:30 the significance of the fit tree/bodhi tree
- 1:00:00 relishing the poetry of the Bhagavad Gita
- 1:00:30 Nietzsche, Hamlet, and the totality of Krishna’s vision
- 1:03:00 Rimbaud, Flaubert, and Joseph Conrad
- 1:04:00 the dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna that ends the Bhagavad Gita
- 1:07:00 symptoms of dark inertia
- 1:08:00 deep reading Don Quixote in light of chivalry and knighthood
- 1:09:00 it is better to do your duty imperfectly that another man’s well
- 1:10:00 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and E.M. Forster