One of my favorite books is a two-thousand-year-old text of Hindu scripture called the Bhagavad Gita.
I’ve known about the Gita since I was in high school. For example, I knew that Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, quoted the Gita when he saw the bomb tested for the first time: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
And as I read the biographies of great men throughout my adult life, I noticed that many of them counted the Bhagavad Gita as one of their favorite books. Henry David Thoreau was a fan. In fact, this neck-bearded 19th-century New Englander called himself a yogi. Thoreau’s pal Ralph Waldo Emerson was also a student of the Gita, and you can find the book’s fingerprints all over the Transcendental movement those two guys helped kickstart.
Martin Luther King Jr. read the Gita, as did Tolstoy and Beethoven. Alduous Huxley was a student of the Gita too, and said this about it:
The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.
Bestselling author and friend of the AoM podcast Steven Pressfield has written about how he reads the book every year and how it served as the inspiration for The Legend of Bagger Vance.
Despite seeing the Gita show up in so many notable men’s reading lists, until a few years ago, I had never read it myself.
Then I went to see a therapist who recommended that I check out a book called The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope. I bought it on Kindle and started reading it that day.
Guess what that book was about?
The Bhagavad Gita.
I figured that life was telling me that I needed to finally read the Gita myself, so I bought a copy.
I read it in one day and highlighted the heck out of it. As I said, it’s become one of my favorite books. And like Pressfield, I’ve made it a habit to read it at least once a year to help scrub the barnacles off my psyche and give myself an existential kick in the pants.
There are a lot of life lessons packed in the Gita. As Huxley observed, it’s one of the world’s best summaries of universally-applicable principles of philosophy. A person doesn’t have to be a Hindu to appreciate it. Individuals of any religion, or no religion at all, can also find insights from the book because, at its core, the Gita is simply about how to take action in a world of uncertainty. It is, in other words, all about the most timeless and human of problems.
I highly recommend picking up a copy of the Gita yourself. You won’t regret it. But to whet your appetite, I highlight a few of the lessons that I’ve taken from the text over the years.
Life Is Filled With Paralyzing Tension
The Bhagavad Gita begins in the middle of an apocalyptic war between families. A young warrior named Arjuna, along with his charioteer, Krishna (a god in disguise), rides up to a battle that’s about to unfold.
Arjuna asks Krishna to stop. What he sees is unnerving: his own kin is gathered together to fight him. As a warrior, Arjuna is duty-bound to take part in the war, but it feels immoral to raise a sword against his family. He cries out to Krishna, “Conflicting sacred duties confound my reason!” He continues his lament:
My limbs sink, My mouth is parched, My body trembles, The hair bristles on my flesh. The magic bow slips From my hand, my skin burns, I cannot stand still, My mind reels.
Arjuna sinks to the floor of his chariot, paralyzed by confusion as to what he should do.
Boy, I can relate. And I’m sure you can, too.
We all have moments where we just want to crumple into a ball because we feel pulled in two different directions. We don’t know the right choice to make, and feel paralzyed with confusion.
Should I take the better paying job, even though it will move us away from our extended family?
Should I blow the whistle on my employer, even though I risk my livelihood and reputation?
Should I continue to send my kid to school, even if he’s being bullied?
Should I leave my faith, even though I know it will disappoint my wife and parents
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