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Teaching of the Gita

CHENNAI : The Bhagavad Gita is without doubt the most important spiritual text. Just as Veda Vyasa incorporated the hymn Vishnu Sahasranama with which Bhishma eulogised Lord Krishna into his Mahabharata, the sage also had the insight to include the teaching of Lord Krishna to Arjuna in this epic. To appreciate how he could have reproduced His teaching so well it must be remembered that Vyasa is revered in tradition as a manifestation of the Lord.

In his discourse on the occasion of the teaching of the Gita (Gita Jayanthi), Natteri Sri V.Rajagopalachariyar said it was essential to understand the circumstances in which Lord Krishna gave this sermon to Arjuna in the battlefield to comprehend the import of His teachings. One would naturally not associate instruction of spiritual knowledge with a war. Besides, it was not as if Krishna and Arjuna did not have an occasion to engage in philosophical dialectics earlier for they had been together for the best part of their lives, and Arjuna was His dearest friend.

Ramanuja in the prelude to his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the Gita Bhashya, pinpoints the rationale of the Lord's teaching during this incarnation, "Under the pretext of removing the burden of the Earth (but really) for the purpose of becoming the object of refuge even to (unworthy) people like us, He descended to the Earth and made Himself visible to the eyes of all men... Under the pretext of encouraging the son of Pandu to fight, He promulgated the way of realising God through love (Bhakti yoga), which is fostered by the ways of knowledge and work (namely, Jnana yoga and Karma yoga), which has Himself for its object and which is declared in the Vedanta as the means for the attainment of the emancipation of the soul, the highest of human ends."

His overwhelming compassion for humanity, which made Him assume a mortal frame during His advents, is equally matched by His inimitable quality of easy accessibility (Saulabhya). This was made manifest when He became Arjuna's charioteer in the war and waited for an opportunity when he would surrender to Him to teach him.

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