Find Your Inner Hero: Soul of the Bhagavad Gita

A Warm-up Gita Meditation

Before we go further, let's try out a short visualization exercise:

Imagine that you are facing the worst crisis of your life where you have to fight your own beloved friends, relatives, and mentors in a bloody battle, and if you don't, you will lose everything: your family, dignity, property, and your own life. And you have no escape route. Even though you tried avoiding this situation in every way possible, and resisted all conflict with every fiber of your being, you are now left with a choice you  deeply detest. You happen to be one of the world's most skillful warriors, but this time, your own loving grandfather is looking into your eyes, ready to engage you in battle, indifferent to your reluctance; he is a legendary warrior of an equal caliber himself. You were once the favorite student of your archery teacher, but now he is standing next to your grandfather, ready to draw arrows from his quiver, to draw your blood. And you see the friends you went to school with, and all your cousins you grew up with, your uncles, and your elders - but you see them with their weapons drawn at you. But you still love them. What would you do?  
As you witness your dearest loved ones as they prepare to face you in battle, you look back at your life and realize the very privilege of being born a prince puts you in perilous situations every moment of your waking life. Those on the opposing side of the field are trying to keep you and your siblings from inheriting your own kingdom, which they took away because you were orphaned young. Your cousins and elders took every advantage of your vulnerabilities despite your trust in them. You suddenly find out that as you were growing up, they tried poisoning your food so as to get you out of the way of their political ambitions. You furthermore realize that they arranged a vacation for you at a resort built of highly flammable materials, and tried burning your immediate family to ashes. And even though you and your family relinquished any claims to the kingdom, and just wanted some land on which to grow your own food and live a peaceful life, your extended family vowed to not even give you the land held at the tip of a needle without a fight. And there you were. You had done your very best in avoiding this war, and detested killing anyone because you believed that any violence must be used to uphold justice; despite being a trained warrior, you always choose peace. What would you do?
This was that crisis that Arjuna, the hero of Mahabharata, faced.
Left without answers, he turned to his closest friend, Krishna, who had refused to participate in the war except as Arjuna's chariot driver, and vowed to not pick up any weapons. Krishna was Arjuna's best friend since childhood, and warned him of his extended family's evil plans. And he spoke the Gita, counseling Arjuna at the most critical and defining moment of his life. But most importantly, Krishna, in the form of a human avatar, was the embodiment of divinity who had come to earth to spread a spiritual message through his own words and actions. He was like a director playing a role in his own drama, making a cameo appearance, and presenting a dialogue that would not only define Arjuna's life, but that of millions of others well beyond Arjuna's lifetime.
Here are seven things Krishna taught, the basis of the worldviews of the Gita.

Krishna's Teachings, in a Nutshell

Your true inner self - atman - is never born, and it never dies. It is the source of your awareness. You are not your body: nor your mind, identities, looks, emotions, thoughts, feelings, achievements, or your mistakes.
Everything you experience in your reality is interconnected through the matrix of matter, prakriti, in time.
Kaala, time, touches and transforms everything, with the exception of atman. Nothing you see around you right now, will remain forever as you see it. The only constant of this world is change.
Your mind maneuvers matter in three ways, gunas, to create your reality: lightness, exertion, and inertia. It is like the three primary colors of light - red, green, and blue - intermixing to become all the colors you see everyday.
Life is dynamic and everything you do will bring an equal and opposite reaction. This is karma or the law of cause and effect.
There is an ultimate source of everything - īśvara - the ultimate principle. Call it cosmic energy, universal consciousness, or a creator - your choice.
Self-realization, enlightened living, and reconnecting with īśvara, is real yoga, the aim of life, and you can do it by spiritualizing your thoughts, actions, and love. In other words, through the attainment of deeper insights into the expansive, luminous, and loving nature of reality, we can begin to reside there and embody this reality in our daily lives.
© Krishna Abhishek Ghosh 2023
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