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Friday, November 2, 2018

Book Reviewed: BhagavadGita by Graham Schweig

Finding Love in BhagavadGita

This English translation is focused on the meditational and spiritual significance of the holy book. The translation retains the original ideas and the poetical essence. The author suggests that the wisdom of BhagavadGita is focused on the practice of yoga. The holy book discusses several forms of yoga to attain a state of transcendental consciousness and ultimately be united with the divine. At the highest level, yoga is a secret state of the union within the supreme love, bestowed by divinity who is also sublimed in this union. It is the power of love and devotion that transforms the heart to which the divinity submits.

Primary forms of yoga for individual souls are the yoga of action, karma-yoga (Chapter 3); yoga of knowledge, jnana-yoga (Chapter 4); yoga of renunciation, sanyasa-yoga (Chapter 5); yoga of meditation, dhyana-yoga (Chapter 6), and yoga of love, bhakti-yoga (chapter 12). The primary forms of yoga for divinity the supreme soul is; the yoga of divine power, vibhuti-yoga (Chapter 10); yoga of the universal form, visva-rupa yoga (Chapter 11); and the yoga of ultimate person, purusottama-yoga.

Souls appear to be in a deterministic universe from which the qualities or gunas, such as, sattva, rajas, and tamas dominate their lives, but souls are influenced by the laws of dharma. BhagavadGita teaches that serving the Lord Krishna will liberate the soul. He reveals his manifestation of his omnipotence as the Vishwa Rupa in chapter 11.

The author concludes that Gita is the Lord Krishna’s love song. This is the blessed gift of the divine that preaches the love for god, and bhakti-yoga is one of the major paths to attain unification with the Supreme Lord. The rendering of Gita in English is graceful in illustrating the Lord’s love. The second half of this book gives the English transliteration, and in the last section, the author interprets the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of BhagavadGita. The highlight of the book is that the English translation reflects on the poetical essence of Gita; the author specifies verses; BhagavadGita 4.3; 6.5; 6.30; 7.17; and 18.64 to illustrate his uniqueness in translation. I have compared his translation with the translations of Sir Edwin Arnold, Sri Aurobindo, Mohini Chatterji, Swami Mukundananda, and Shri Purohit Swami. All of them have about the same level creativity. One example is given below:

1. BhagavadGita 6:30

(Graham Schweig Translation)
One who sees me everywhere
And sees all things in me,
To such a person I am never lost
Nor is such a person is ever lost to me

(Sir Edwin Arnold Translation)
And whoso thus Discerneth Me
in all, and all in Me,
I never let him go; nor looseneth
He Hold upon Me

(Swami Mukundananda Translation)
For those who see me everywhere
and see all things in me,
I am never lost,
nor are they ever lost to me.

(Mohini Chatterji Translation)
Who sees me everywhere,
And sees everything in me
for him I am not lost,
nor is he lost for me.

(Shri Purohit Swami Translation)
He who sees Me in everything
and everything in Me,
him shall I never forsake,
nor shall he lose Me

(Sri Aurobindo Translation)
He who sees Me everywhere
and sees all in Me. To him I
do not get lost, nor does
he get lost to me.

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