The Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is Krishna's battlefield teaching to the warrior Arjuna, set within the epic Mahabharata and generally dated by scholars to between the second century BCE and the second century CE. Krishna, charioteer and counselor, is presented here as the scriptural teacher rather than a documented historical figure, and his discourse reconciles action, devotion and knowledge into a single path of liberation.

Its liberating instruction is to act with full commitment while surrendering attachment to the fruit of action, the discipline of karma yoga. To this it joins bhakti yoga, the path of wholehearted devotion and surrender, and jnana yoga, the discriminating knowledge that distinguishes the eternal witness from the changing field. Underlying all three is the teaching of the deathless Self, the imperishable dweller in the body, untouched by birth and death.

The Gita has shaped Indian spirituality for two millennia and traveled widely into Western metaphysical circles. For a study of the mind it grounds the conviction that consciousness is prior to and more fundamental than the body, and it offers in non-attached, intention-led action a discipline of inner orientation that anticipates much later thought on faith and focused conviction.