My daughter is 21, and this is the book she so wanted. She got it Christmas day, and began to read, and write footnotes in the book -- THANKS!!

Juan Mascaro's masterful translation is the most moving and the most fulfilling of them all.

The Gita provides the subtle soul medicine to enable you to aspire to the moral heights invoked by the Sermon on the Mount. You read the wonderful, infinitely compassionate words of Christ, and you think, "Yes - but how can I live like that?" The Gita tells you how.

The Gita is a song, and a philosophy, and a spiritual tract; it is all of these and far more than these: it is the fundamental substance, the absolute bedrock of all true spirituality which is crystalised in our language at the highest pitch by Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Keats. These poetic geniuses, though indisputably sublime at their heights, were relatively haphazard in their spiritual effects: whereas the steady, quietly relentless focus of the Gita is simply overwhelming. It is the deepest and richest of all mines: and its ore is the most perfect ore.

To read the Gita with a will, and to reflect on it continually, is to change your life forever. When the mind beholds truth, the heart leaps....

in writing this review, i realise that the Ghita is from the Mahabarata and is seen as a great classic of hinduism. however it does not have detailed advice on how to practice the life transforming yoga of hinduism. you would learn far more from a guru than from reading this. though i am sure there is much merit in reading the Ghita, which no doubt transcends concept and logic.

i have not read this book for about six months and so am going from memory. it is a jewel in the sense that it points towards mystical experience... the primary experience aimed for in hinduism would seem to be blissful union.

each element has corresponding experiences. bliss is beautiful and highly stable, as is gold. however at heart bliss is cold, or numb. it has its role, it plays its function.

water is matched with balance and peace... the water of life, the cleansing water of truth. water soothes and levels, like air it is empty. empty of taste, flavour or colour, it is clear, but has a zing to it.

air is matched with freedom and as is water is a state of clarity and empty. mental freedom, awareness and perception.

water is penetrated by gold, air is penetrated by fire. fire is the highest of the immanent spiritual elements representing the emotion of love... warmth and burning.

one should not focus too much on the emptiness of air and water to the exclusion of the passions of love and beauty of gold.

each of the elements has a gender... the penetrated and the penetrators, and yet each element depends on the others for its presence. the obviously penetrating sometimes penetrated by that which is penetrated.

though the receivers are penetrated on an obvious level, on a subtle level the receivers penetrate the penetrators.

every element is interconnected and interdependent and yet discrete, unique in its own way. in some states an obviously male element may become
or be female. take earth for example. earth is penetrated... a womb for the seed, though plain and 'common', earth is most important and the female side of the gold/earth element. fire produces light, which penetrates darkness. the seed again into the womb. darkness is humble and receding. light penetrating and joyful.

it is not certain what the fith element is... some say it is the common 'i', others that it is pure awareness, but i tend to see air as being awareness, clear like the sky... the i however is an elusive subject.

in a sense the i, is like a cloud that penetrates the clarity of skys awareness. it can come and go, can be created and destroyed. though i have heard it said that the 'i' is indestructible, i know this not to be true.

anyway, enough musing... bliss is not everything.

as an aside, i think that 'consciousness' is a big word in hinduism, and so it should be. i have been looking at consicousness today, it should not be confused with perception, which requires judgement and thought. so consciousness...

in simplest terms is understood as 'this', i present here four formulations for the reader to consider, formulations of consciousness:
1. time + function + being.
2. life + truth + goodness.
3. truth + speed + understanding. (understanding/perception).
my favourite and simplest expression of consciousness is found in 4.
4. this + truth + life.

the only item that is not totally necessary for consciousness is time, but in temporal reality time is an important factor. we as humans however will one day go beyond the time dimension as it is. i think it is clear that unlike perception, consciousness is wholly a good thing, pure; whilst perception may be tainted by unhealthy judgement or emotion. pure perception however represents 'truth'. consciousness is at the very root of our life/being. consciousness is in part direct truth and cannot exist without life/being. (my favourite definition of truth is 'this + that + love', my favourite definition of life is 'movement + function + attraction'). though i say that life is 'movement + function + attraction' this is on an obvious level, infact everything even the letters on this page are alive, even death is a form of life. you will notice however that the letters on this page are attracted towards each other, serve a function and encourage movement of the mind. therefore the letters are in symbiotic relationship with the mind of the reader!

i was just talking about consciousness (being) with a doctor last week and we both felt that is is amazingly mundane, taken for granted. the plainest thing and yet most remarkable. yet without truth perception we cannot say "'this' is it" (the life changing medium).

in retrospect, the one element that is totally transcendent and beyond the mundane is the fith element 'void', this is dark and though fundamentally empty contains all other elements. the void is the womb from which all things emerge and is impregnated by the fire of love.

anyway, have a nice day.

love, snow-flake. xxx

This religious work from Hindu culture is translated with clarity and grace. It is poetic but simple. the introduction by the translator is a must read. He not only presents the Bhagavad Gita, but places it in context with other spiritual Hindu and Christian literature. The best part is you do not have to be a scholar or a genius to understand the introduction or the book.

full of mistranslations of key concepts..

there is just so much of this that it forms an underlying structural
orientation of the translation, starting with the [long] introduction
with bible quotes to justify translation choices..

the last words of krishna are changed to "thy will be done"
lifted straight from mathew, luke and the lords prayer..

a translation by an academic bible scholar, shows its origins..
and ruins the subtleties of this timeless discourse..

carl
namaste