Getting Down with the Gita by Gabe Hopp

I am currently revisiting the Bhagavad Gita for our 300-hour yoga teacher training program. As a cohort, we are reading the book individually and will come together next month to discuss and study it collectively. I personally have studied the Gita in multiple contexts, including in a world literature course in college and through an intensive program at a yoga studio. I have read it on my own and have been guided through it by a master teacher over a 6-week intensive. I have spent enough time with the text to get a good feel for it and also to tell you that I have had a really hard time connecting to it. That is a nice way of putting it. Up to this point, I can honestly say that I have never really gotten it and I have never really liked it. (Eek! Yoga blasphemy??)

Until maybe….today? In my current reading of the text, I am studying with Eknath Easwaran’s translation and commentary. It is simultaneously scholarly and accessible; it feels easily readable and relatable but is clearly rooted in deep study of the texts and the teachings of yoga throughout the ages. Personally, when I understand the historical context of a text and how it fits into a larger scheme of study, I am better able to understand the teachings. Easwaran’s translation is making these connections for me and I am finally, for the first time, getting it and getting into it. Hooray!

Today as I was reading, I came across a shloka (verse) of the Bhagavad Gita that was quite familiar to me. This is because it is an almost exact replica of a yoga sutra. In chapter 6, verse 35, of the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, “It is true that the mind is restless and difficult to control. But, it can be conquered, Arjuna, through regular practice and detachment.” When I read this, a lightbulb went off for me. Wait a second, I know this teaching! It’s one of the most well-known of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a book that came (depending on who you ask) 200-500 years later. Patanjali’s take, in sutra 1.12 is this: “stillness of the mind develops through practice and non-identification.” It’s the same teaching! Both interpretations of this teaching suggest that in order to receive the benefit of a quiet mind, you should practice often and allow it to unfold without clinging to an end result. Smart stuff.

In his commentary, Easwaran talks about how later teachings naturally develop from philosophies that came before. “The Gita is a halfway point between the spontaneous insights of the Upanishads and the later, highly formalized philosophical systems. In the Gita we find an organized presentation of these and other key concepts without a cumbersome technical explanation.” (The Bhagavad Gita, p. 151)

Just today, in a real sense, it finally struck me that the Gita and the Sutras are rooted in the same philosophy. While they are wildly different in almost every way, they are both guide books for this practice that I love. And I love love love the Yoga Sutras. So, can I maybe make the right brain connections to also love the Gita? It is yet to be determined, but I have a good feeling about it. If you’re interested in studying the Gita, (as you should, it’s one of the most important texts in the yoga tradition!), I highly recommend the Eknath Easwaran translation.