"Sri Krishna's message in the Bhagavad Gita is the perfect answer for the modern age, and any age: Yoga of dutiful action, of nonattachment, and of meditation for God-realization. To work without the inner peace of God is Hades; and to work with His joy ever bubbling through the soul is to carry a portable paradise within, wherever one goes."
-Paramahansa Yogananda
For centuries, the Bhagavad Gita has been regarded as one of the very greatest expressions of the universal spiritual wisdom that is the unifying legacy of all humanity. It is India's most beloved scripture of yoga, the science of divine communion-and a timeless prescription for happiness and balanced success in everyday life.
Numerous translations of the Bhagavad Gita have been made from the original Sanskrit into English and other European languages-some by linguists or scholars of philosophy, others by literary figures, many by spiritual teachers or yogis. Among the well-known translations in English, some readers have enjoyed the more poetic renderings (such as that of Sir Edwin Arnold, for example); other versions are noteworthy for their literal presentation and linguistic analysis of the Sanskrit terminology.
What distinguishes the original translation by Paramahansa Yogananda is that, for the first time, the English rendering was done with an understanding of the profound inner symbology hidden in the Sanskrit verses-symbology which, rightly under-stood, reveals previously undisclosed depths in the Gita as a con-summate guidebook to the science of yoga and the art of spiritual living in the material world.
In its own words, the Gita is described as "the scripture of yoga and the science of God-realization" (brahmavidyayam yogasastre). Yogananda's translation eminently fulfils the promise of this description, as well as revealing the Gita's consonance with the other ancient masterpiece on yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
The historical battle portrayed in the Bhagavad Gita, he states, is an allegory of the inner conflict between man's base materialistic instincts and his innate yearning to attain the blissful spiritual consciousness of oneness with the Divine. "In support of this analogy," he writes, "there is shown an exact correspondence between the material and spiritual attributes of man as described by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras and the warring contestants cited in the Gita."
In addition to the symbology hidden in the Sanskrit names of the principal characters, an understanding of many spiritual terms and concepts pertinent to yoga is implicit in the original Sanskrit of the verses. These would have been automatically understood by the sages who passed the Gita's wisdom down the ages, and their disciples-even though not specifically mentioned in the wording of a given verse. To facilitate an accurate and complete understanding of the ancient Sanskrit verses by modern readers, Paramahansa Yogananda incorporated these implicit meanings in his translation and in the related commentary.
To accomplish a translation that is fully expressive of the intent of the Gita's author surely requires that the translator have a personal, experiential realization of the profound truths and high states of spiritual consciousness that the Gita elucidates.
Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi and justly celebrated as "the Father of Yoga in the West," was uniquely qualified to penetrate the deepest meanings of the Gita. Recognized worldwide as a God-knowing sage of the highest degree, he was also the chosen representative of a renowned lineage of divinely illumined masters: his own
Vedas (1196)
Upanishads (501)
Puranas (633)
Ramayana (747)
Mahabharata (362)
Dharmasastras (167)
Goddess (503)
Bhakti (243)
Saints (1513)
Gods (1295)
Shiva (379)
Journal (184)
Fiction (60)
Vedanta (365)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist