Introduction

Moving beyond Suffering to Self-Realization
THIS SMALL VOLUME presents a selection of the most pertinent and important teachings from my earlier book The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners.

People who have not yet read that book will find this book a good entry to the teachings. Those who have read it will, I hope, enjoy seeing its essence distilled in this special, rearranged format. Both books present spiritual principles too multi-layered to be dealt with in a single reading, so I encourage you to return to the books again and again.

Although sometimes referred to as scripture, the Gita is not a religious doctrine. It's an ancient epic poem, a love song sung to us by Krishna, a timely personification of Divinity itself, the supreme universal soul that many refer to as God.

Imagine two lone figures parked in their war chariot in the open field between the armies of good and evil, all-out war about to explode around them. One is the renowned prince Arjuna, the greatest hero of those times. The other is Krishna, Arjuna's chariot driver and best friend from boyhood, who has not yet revealed that he is God incarnated.

Prince Arjuna suddenly buckles under the burdens and pressures he faces. His eyes fill with tears. "Why am I doing this, Krishna?" he asks. "Life is so cruel, so demanding. I just can't fight again. Please, please help me understand!" Krishna's twenty-minute response to his friend's tearful plea for the meaning of life comprises the Gita's timeless dialogue.

In these pages, I have restructured the Gita's messages under five chapter headings inspired by the five big questions spiritual seekers have been grappling with for ages:

• Who am I?
• Why am I here?
• Who, or what, is the Divinity many call "God"
• What is my relationship to that Divinity?
• Is it even possible to live a spiritual life, and if so, how?

Each chapter begins with a brief passage from the Gita that gets to the heart of the chapter's exploration, followed by an overture to the chapter. In the overtures, I introduce the teachings contained in the chapter and offer some interpretation and thoughts. The rest of the chapters consist of teachings taken from the Gita.

Please note that except for my voice here in the introduction and in the overture to each chapter, the voice you hear throughout the book is mainly that of Krishna, the God figure of the text. But though the words in this book are in essence Krishna's, I take responsibility for selecting, combining, and in some cases paraphrasing them. Enjoy and learn from the teachings, and lay any omissions on my shoulders.

Also please note that the apparent repetition in the Gita's teachings is deliberate. Many of the ideas are extraordinarily profound and powerful or are related to other ideas in the text. Like a mother repeating lessons to her child, Krishna restates some of these truths to present them in various contexts and imageries and draw parallels between them. To accurately reflect the Gita's teachings, several of its repetitions are repeated in this book as well.

Along the same lines, there are some cases where the delicate variations between similar ideas are so extremely subtle they may seem repetitious. But rest assured that the distinctions will emerge through repeated readings and contemplation.

That which is Divine within each of us can hear the Gita's celestial song regardless of our personal beliefs. Indeed, these ancient spiritual teachings are by now universal values and cannot be confined by any prescribed creed.

Like water that gradually filters down through earth and comes out fresh and pure, important ideas also pass down through the sands of time and get cleansed in the process, eventually emerging, eons later, as pure truth. The Gita is by now a veritable fountain of pure truth.

This is a book on soaring above the anguish and attachments of the world. It's a primer for moving toward a truly spiritual life, toward the Divinity that resides in your heart. It doesn't offer definitive answers to the five big questions it addresses; the Gita is not about dogma or closure - it's an opening up. Its nature is to help readers fill in their own spiritual stories and move forward.

Most amazing to me is the modern relevance of the Gita. Although the teachings were voiced long ago in a land far away, its blunt commentary on people who lack peace of mind could just as easily apply to spiritually bereft present-day Westerners. In the words of Krishna,

People today, because they are driven by insatiable desires, have become tightly bound by scheming and anger. They spend their lives grabbing for riches and amassing wealth. Stuffed until choking with pride and conceit, drunk with their own affluence and assets, they have given themselves to the dark forces of insolence and cruelty. Thus they sink deeper into their despondency.

(From The Bhagavad Gita, chapter 16, slokas 4-16)

Indeed, many of us in the twenty-first century continue to sink into a sense of futility and defeat. We can see no way out. We feel disappointed and demoralized, and we ache with longing for what we seem to have lost. We are overcome by a sense of poverty of the self.

We find plenty of fake ways to escape this suffering - working, eating, drinking, taking drugs, finding new relationships or a new dogma, seeking community. The problem is that these tunnels we dig don't reach beyond the walls of our dreadful prisons; we don't escape, we just burrow into new cells.

So, the question we need to ask ourselves is How? How does one actually change one's own mind and rediscover contentment? How on earth can we even imagine, no less actually achieve, such an extreme shift in consciousness?

The answer, according to the Gita, is that you must spiritualize your life - be not more religious, but more spiritual. The Gita's whole and sole purpose, the only reason it was given to humanity five or six thousand years ago, is to help people make this stupendous transition.

Instead of continuing to try to rearrange your external world, you need to turn inward, toward spirit, toward the truth of the self deep within you. The result will be a mind-set (and heart-set) that embraces kindness, love, and generosity.

This is the cosmic bliss that comes with experiencing not mere happiness but complete satisfaction with the way things are. These are our moments of supreme quiet, total acceptance, and non-judgment - the wondrous intervals when we know we are in the right place doing precisely what we're supposed to be doing.

The Bhagavad Gita is especially appealing because it contains the tried-and-true methods for gradually and carefully reaching these higher planes of consciousness. It's not at all about religion or church; it's about our own transcendence. It's about rising above our worldly woes, about being greater than our troubles.

The Gita dialogue steers us in this direction, but Krishna is extremely clear that it is our choice whether to live a life of freedom or of suffering. We seal our own fate. We have to decide for ourselves whether to live an essentially contented life or a life bereft of happiness.

From the start it is clear which way Krishna wants us to head, but he's ever careful not to preach. Whether we suffer is indeed in our own hands. At the end of the dialogue his final advice is, "Reflect upon this daringly and fully. Inquire deeply into these teachings, and then act as you choose."

The choice is ours.

Chapter One

Rediscovering the Self
Who am I?

"But Krishna," Arjuna moans, "My arms and legs
suddenly feel heavy. My mouth is dry,
and the hairs on my arms stand on end.
My body is shaking. My skin burns all over.
My mind whirls in sadness. I can barely stand!
God, I don't even know myself anymore!"

Overture
In this chapter, Krishna (the embodiment of Divine intelligence) informs us that the warrior's anguished pleading arises from the fundamental misconception that the individual is this physical body. Krishna teaches us that we are far more than the body.

This is startling because we tend to go through life believing and behaving as if our body is who we are. Along the way, however, we intuit that we've got to be more than this leather bag with nine or ten holes in it. At funerals, for example, we understand that the true essence of the person whose remains we're viewing has gone elsewhere and is no longer there. At times of life-and-death importance, we know what reality is.

Krishna's immediate response to the warrior-prince's overwhelming despondency is to soar high above it, to lift the dialogue toward the Atma, the soul, the life force. The Atma is the true self within, the very core, the highest spiritual truth. Krishna reminds Arjuna that one's spirit is above and quite distinct from the body and that it is imperative to distinguish between the two if we are to overcome our worldly despondency.

To help us rise to these heights of comprehension, Krishna presents three key teachings: One, we must learn the truth of the Atma, the mysterious soul-self inside. Two, we have to embrace this elusive principle of Atma and live at a higher level of awareness. Three, we need to eventually grasp the even more breathtaking reality that the self in the individual is the same self in all!

"This," Krishna tells us, "is true knowledge. To seek anything else is to seek ignorance."

And now, Krishna's teachings...

Being the Real You
"You may grieve sincerely, but it is without cause. Your words, thoughts, and feelings may seem wise to you, but the truly wise person grieves neither for the living nor the dead. Let me explain.

"Real, in spirituality, means that which is eternal, indestructible, and never changing. Anything impermanent, even if it lasts a long time, eventually changes - and thus does not have true reality.

"Your body, according to this logic, is not real, and neither is your grief. But there is something that dwells within your body that is real - it's the Atma, your soul. Atma is existence itself. It is awareness itself, pure consciousness and your conscience as well. It pervades the entire cosmos.

"The real you, this Atma, was never born, nor will it ever die. In fact, this indwelling reality never undergoes any changes; it is never-ending and can never be destroyed. Just as clouds appear in the sky but do not cause the sky to grow apart to make room for them, so too grief and sadness cannot touch the Atma.

"Getting to know the Atma, this mysterious soul-reality within, is the fundamental goal of spirituality."

Grasping Soul
"Your physical self will end someday, beloved friend, but the true self within will never cease to exist! The Atma does not die, and the body does not stay.

"Do not identify yourself merely with this mortal body. Things in the material universe come and go, appear and disappear, but the soul, the Atma, the very life force within you, remains ever itself! As a person sheds a worn-out garment, the soul casts aside its timeworn human frame and dons a new one.

"It is not easy to fathom this mysterious concept. Some see the Atma as wondrous, others speak of its glory, and many listen but do not comprehend it at all. Few even think of inquiring into what is beyond the physical world.

"The ones who understand this elusive principle of Atma realize that they are at a rare plane of comprehension, a level of consciousness where no worldly agitation or suffering can exist!

"The sages say that the mysterious Atma is 'subtler than the subtlest.' Water in its steam state (its subtlest form) is never soiled. Similarly, the Atma, though it dwells in every being, can never be tainted by any negativity - nor even by optimism.

"The darkness of night vanishes when the sun rises. Similarly, the darkness of ignorance, delusion, and anguish is dispelled when you gain knowledge and experience of the true self, the Atma."

Seeing the Self in All
"Even highly evolved, cultured persons who are supposedly living a truth-based life miss this reality of the Atma. The confused, suffering mind cannot know the real truth.

"Get to know the breathtaking, staggering truth that the self in the individual is the self in all! When you finally come to live in this constant spiritual awareness, you will never lose your feeling of oneness with the Divine, nor will the Divine ever lose you.

"There is only one truth: the Divinity within all beings is the one truth - and the Atma, your soul, is truly Divinity! This I declare to be true knowledge. To seek anything else is to seek ignorance."

Excerpted from Essential Wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. © Copyright 2006, Jack Hawley
Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. 800-972-6657 ext. 52.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jack Hawley, Ph.D., has emerged as one of the preeminent teachers of The Bhagavad Gita in the world today. Each year, he spends six months in India studying and lecturing at a spiritual community, and six months in the U.S., living and teaching the wisdom of the Gita. Hawley is also a business consultant and president of Jack A. Hawley Associates.