The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics) by Anonymous
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Book Reviews of The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: SUBTLE SOUL MEDICINE
Summary: 5 Stars
Juan Mascaro's masterful translation is the most moving and the most fulfilling of them all.
The Gita provides the subtle soul medicine to enable you to aspire to the moral heights invoked by the Sermon on the Mount. You read the wonderful, infinitely compassionate words of Christ, and you think, "Yes - but how can I live like that?" The Gita tells you how.
The Gita is a song, and a philosophy, and a spiritual tract; it is all of these and far more than these: it is the fundamental substance, the absolute bedrock of all true spirituality which is crystalised in our language at the highest pitch by Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Keats. These poetic geniuses, though indisputably sublime at their heights, were relatively haphazard in their spiritual effects: whereas the steady, quietly relentless focus of the Gita is simply overwhelming. It is the deepest and richest of all mines: and its ore is the most perfect ore.
To read the Gita with a will, and to reflect on it continually, is to change your life forever. When the mind beholds truth, the heart leaps....
Book Review: Outstanding
Summary: 5 Stars
This book contains a very excellent introduction that helps a novice such as myself understand the historical and theological context of this great work. Perhaps an individual more well-acquainted with the subject would find the lengthy introduction unhelpful, but then such a person would probably not be in need of the material in this book at all. If one is just looking for a copy of the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna (that is, the Bhagavad Gita itself), this book contains far more than is necessary.
I found the entire work to be wonderful, and maybe even a learned student in the subject would find some of the comments in the introduction thought-provoking.
Book Review: A delightful find
Summary: 5 Stars
This religious work from Hindu culture is translated with clarity and grace. It is poetic but simple. the introduction by the translator is a must read. He not only presents the Bhagavad Gita, but places it in context with other spiritual Hindu and Christian literature. The best part is you do not have to be a scholar or a genius to understand the introduction or the book.Book Review: Not Read Yet
Summary: 5 Stars
The book arrived in a timely manner and in good shape. I have not read it yet. Just skimmed it and read a little of the introduction.Book Review: The Classic of Religious Deception
Summary: 4 Stars
Always be wary of the academic edition in which the introduction rivals the feature. That's the case here, with Juan Mascaro's introduction coming in at 30 pages and the actual Bhagavad-Gita coming in at 83. I'm no Sanskrit scholar, so I've got nowhere near the knowledge and background Mascaro has, but at the same time, it doesn't take 30 pages to convince me this is a classic worth reading.
Once through the introduction, I enjoyed the smooth, easy flow of the actual text. The Arjuna-Krishna dialog on the nature of God, devotion and faith truly are classic. But then again, this was not written--not so much written as cobbled together from centuries of oral tradition and variation--in a period when most folks were illiterate, and it's so plain to see that this is an object lesson to the masses in how to be a good follower. It's clear and direct instruction, disguised as an enlightened discussion between mortal and divine.
But all in all, it was nothing but the millennia-old claptrap of religious dogma, playing on fears of death, the inherent longing for meaning and purpose, showing man's cynical manipulation of others for personal and institutional dominance. It's the same old garbage that the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning; death is life and life is death. God is many, and the many are one. "I am what is and I am what is not." And so much of it is a "sacred mystery," imparted to a chosen, select few. It's the instruction to accept what the Great Wheel has dealt you, be you rich, or much more importantly, poor and dispossessed: just keep your head down, work hard, toil and suffer in pain, hunger and servitude and do not complain because that is questioning what the gods want for you, and your reward for unquestioning service is the sweet, sweet rapture of death; Krishna coos, "...whatever you suffer, suffer it for me." The required "unshakeable faith" is absolute, and the slightest doubt is sacrilege. Have no attachments, to belongings, family, or your own belief and opinions, because all that does is cloud your mind. And fear not, for the slaughter of thousands in war, if directed by the king, is really the will of god and therefore is not only excusable but is laudable and is to be sought, in abundance.
This is easily digestible pablum for the uneducated, beautiful words exchanged between the divine and the divinely-appointed royal. It is lush and deep prose, telling interesting, mystical, fascinating stories that answered the most basic questions of life and death for those living 25 centuries ago.
This is the same garbage extremists are feeding their hollow, foolish and ignorant followers today, so they can serve their god in the cowardly murder of noncombatants, by developing chemical weapons, by eliminating all questions, all competition, anything other than their own one and only possible way.
By the end of this I was just depressed. The writing is indeed beautiful, artful and evocative, flowing beautifully, and I realize that a great part of the credit for this goes to translator Mascaro, his work 50 years old this year. But all my reading of this classic served to do was remind me that 2500 years ago, before Christianity and Islam, all of those concepts of religious stricture and doctrine and unquestioned obedience were already fully developed, and were being delivered to serfs, servants, peasants and slaves.
Bottom line: This is a classic of world literature, and everyone should read it. But, it served to remind me of man's inhumanity to man, and man's innate ability to play deeply on the fears, insecurities and ignorance of others.
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