Teitsworth - The path to the guru : the science of self-realization according to the Bhagavad Gita

To the three gurus whose wisdominspires me every day:Narayana Guru, Nataraja Guru,and Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati

THE PATH TO THE GURU

I am delighted with Scott Teitsworths The Path to the Guru. It is an exceptional approach to concentrate on just two chapters! Scotts interpretation is well suited for the modern day. I would highly recommend this book to spiritual seekers of all faiths.

BILL ROBINSON, PH.D., COMPOSER AND LECTURER
OF PHYSICS AT NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

The Bhagavad Gita is a multifaceted jewel shedding multicolored lights. The author has caught quite a few of these lights and thus has shed more light on this ancient classic that will prove to be of immense help to all lovers of the book.

VANAMALI MATAJI, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF
VANAMALI GITA YOGA ASHRAM TRUST AND AUTHOR OF
SEVEN BOOKS INCLUDING THE COMPLETE LIFE OF KRISHNA

Scott Teitsworths relevant and in-depth analysis of its first two sections of the Bhagavad Gita skillfully balances a perspective that is both accessible and true to the heart of the original text.

JASON BOWMAN, VINYASA YOGA TEACHER

The mission of the contemplative in this world of massive conflict and collective unreason is to seek the true way of unity and peace, without succumbing to the illusion of withdrawal into a realm of abstraction from which unpleasant realities are simply excluded by the force of will. In facing the world with a totally different viewpoint, he maintains alive in the world the presence of a spiritual and intelligent consciousness which is the root of true peace and true unity among men.

THOMAS MERTON,
FAITH AND VIOLENCE

PROLOGUE

The Bhagavad Gita has just two protagonists, a flawed human named Arjuna and a wise elder named Krishna. Their conversation is an ideal way to describe problems and offer solutions. They hold their discussion in the midst of a great war, symbolic of the pressures of life we all encounter.

In the buildup to the war, powerful interests stripped Arjuna and his four brothers of their princely birthright, took their lands, and banished them to a wilderness, while promising to permit their return in the distant future. When the time came for them to reclaim their legitimate station, they were treated as outcasts. They had to slip back into the royal city in disguise. When they made their claim, it was denied, and war was declared, with threats to take from them the last shreds of their dignity.

This is a magnificent image of the human condition. From birth we begin to compromise with our environment. Other people and institutions are to be placated, so we suppress our own desires in hopes of achieving peace and amity. We assume a social mask to obscure our naked face. Before long we have given up all our personal predilections and entered a wilderness of dissociation from our true nature. Religious tracts assure us of restoration only after death, and we try to believe them. These ruses may work for a while, allowing us to fit in to a pitiless society, but there is a vital urge in us that never stops trying to be actualized. It often comes in conflict with what is expected of us. We are taught that our vital urge is an evil to be done away with, but it feels like our authentic self. It seeks a means of expression. Expressing it is the reason we were born. The more it is suppressed, the more the pressure builds, until it explodes or is medicated away.

Arjuna and his brothers, the Pandavas, symbolize our authentic nature. In the face of greed and selfishness, symbolized by the Kauravas, they continually gave ground. Like well-behaved children they went along with every requirement, even allowing themselves to be cheated. And now they find themselves with nothing, standing on a postage-stamp-sized plot of land that is about to be taken from them.

We, too, have surrendered our legitimacy to external forces, for the most part unwittingly. The Gita addresses the crucial moment when we must wake up to our abandoned inner truth or spiritually die. Ordinary responses are to throw ourselves back into the futility of battle or run away and hide. Neither of these options allows for the expression of our finest abilities. Krishna is standing by to teach Arjuna how to extricate himself from this universal predicament, thereby demonstrating how each of us can reclaim our authenticity. It will be a long and fascinating process.

We intuitively sense that we are divine, princesses and princes who have been deposed from our thrones and banished to the wilderness. Regaining our rightful place is a mystical, rather than a political, accomplishment. Escape wont do it, nor will fighting against the apparent usurpers. They suffer from the same malady that we do, so they couldnt restore us to our true nature if they wanted to. Petitioning or combating them is a waste of time. The Bhagavad Gita is a broad template of what really needs to happen to reacquaint us with our inner genius.

INTRODUCTION

THE GLOBAL GITA

Once upon a time, the worlds longest and arguably its greatest epic, the Mahabharata, was written down. It contains a compendium of myriad types of human beings, from the sublime to the grotesque, the wise to the ridiculous, almost as if it were a summary of all life on Earth intended for the cosmic library at the center of the universe.

Nestled right on the verge of the titanic war that forms a major climax of the epic is a jewel of wisdom that puts the entire panoply in perspective. Lifted out of its context it has come to be known as the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of the Guru. A guru is that which removes the darkness of ignorance, and the dawning of the light of understanding is the sweetest song of all. The Bhagavad Gitafondly referred to simply as the Gitais nothing more or less than a textbook of enlightenment applicable to all humanity, bestowed by the great teachers of old, who were called rishis.

Nothing is known for certain about the origins of the Bhagavad Gita. Linguistic analysis points to the written version appearing somewhere around the first century CE, but it is obviously taken from a far older oral tradition. An astounding amount of philosophical ferment peaked around 500 BCE, with Buddha and Mahaviras Jainism, and the Gita speaks to it as a contemporary. After hundreds of years as spoken wisdom it was gathered together in written form by an anonymous author, more or less as we know it today. The author is traditionally referred to as Vyasa, a word meaning simply compiler or editor.

While few scriptures have enjoyedor suffered fromas many explications and commentaries as the Gita has, the work is perhaps more mysterious today than it was when it first appeared. This is partly due to the subject matter itself and not to any limitation of the minds that have lent themselves to the task. The meaning of life, epitomized in terms like God or the Absolute, is an eternal mystery, not a fact, and as such will defy description for all eternity. But the attempt to pin meaning down does throw light on it, light which can improve and illuminate our lives. At the same time, the wildly misleading ideas that have sprung up have obscured the intended meaning like a jungle engulfing an ancient temple. Periodically it is essential to hack away the undergrowth.

Most Gita commentaries pursue a religious tack or deal in abstruse and outdated philosophies. Some even assume that the Gita was originally written to present the very detritus of orthodox beliefs that have grown up around it. Not at all! The material itself rejects orthodoxy in no uncertain terms, defining itself clearly as an absolutist mystical text. Unearthing its buried wisdom is the goal of the present commentary. The intention is to present the work stripped of all excess, so that it can touch those who wish to benefit from the application of its very practical wisdom.