The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita by Swami Krishnananda 3
CHAPTERI
THEUNIVERSALSCOPEOFTHEBHAGAVADGITA
The Bhagavadgita is a well-known gospel. Very few might have not heard the name,‘Bhagavadgita’, for it is almost universally accepted as a scripture, not merely in a senseof holiness or sanctity from the point of view of a religious outlook, but as what has beenregarded as a guide in our day-to-day life, which need not necessarily mean a so-calledreligious attitude of any particular denomination. Our life is vaster in its expanse than what we usually regard as a vocation of religion. And if religion remains just an aspect of our life and does not constitute the whole of life, the Bhagavadgita is not a religiousscripture, because its intention is not to cater to a side of our nature or a part of ourexpectation in life, but the whole of what we need, and what we are. This special featureof the Bhagavadgita makes it a little difficult for people to comprehend its significanceand message. While hundreds of expositions there are on this great gospel and severalcommentaries have been written and are being written on it even now, it is difficult to believe that its meaning has been completely grasped, as it becomes a novelty afternovelty as we go deeper and deeper into it. The more we read it, the fresher does itappear before our eyes, like the rise of the sun every morning. This speciality andcomprehensiveness which is the approach of the Gita is what makes it a little distinctfrom the other well-known religious guidelines. We have heard it often said that it is anepisode in a large epic of India, known as the Mahabharata, and we regard it as ateaching given by someone to someone else in some ancient times in a particular contextof those early days. We are likely to read this epic as a story, like a drama or a play, forour diversion and emotional satisfaction. But this epic of which the Bhagavadgita is anepisode is not a story come from a grandmother to a child, though it is narrated in thefashion of a dramatic performance with images and artistic touches of characters whichportray the various facets of human liking and attitude. What inspires us and stirs us when we read an epic of this kind is the sympathy that exists between these charactersand the various phases of our own personal lives. We find ourselves somehow in theseepic characters. We are drawn to these images of persons and situations on account of there being a representation, as it were, of what we ourselves are at different momentsof time or in the layers of our own personalities. All these people, the heroes andheroines, the dramatize personae of the Mahabharata, are present inside us, and weourselves are these at different occasions and times. We have layers of personality in usand these various layers correspond to the ideal images that are portrayed in thecharacters of this great epic, the Mahabharata. Why are we inspired when we read theplays of Shakespeare? Because we are present there. Everyone of these specialcharacters that Shakespeare, for instance, delineates with the masterly stroke of his pencorresponds to our own self in some manner or the other. Every character of Shakespeare is present in us and we are everyone of these. So, we are in sympathy within, we are in rapport with all these characters, and so we are stimulated by a study of his plays. It is human nature as such that is displayed in the dramas of Shakespeare,the epics of Homer or the Mahabharata. It is not the story of some people that livedsometime ago but a characterization of all people that may live at any time in the history of the world. They are not stories of certain people only; they are stories of people as
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