{"id":3486,"date":"2018-02-10T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T07:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theophilelancien.org\/?p=3486\/"},"modified":"2024-03-06T10:07:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T09:07:24","slug":"understanding-teachings-bhagavad-gita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theophilelancien.org\/en\/understanding-teachings-bhagavad-gita\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita"},"content":{"rendered":"
Here, Theophile the Elder calls on us to understand the symbolism of the Bhagavad Gita and to relate it to our own difficulties. The dialogue between Arjuna and Lord Krishna is a sacred and symbolical teaching that will shed some light onto our current life. <\/em><\/h5>\n
This epic unrolls the whole Yoga Way whose essential keys Theophile the Elder proposes to give us.<\/em><\/h5>\n
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Arjuna’s doubts and his relationship with Lord Krishna.<\/h3>\n

The Bhagavad Gita is a wonderful spiritual piece, consisting of a dialogue between Lord Krishna and his disciple and friend Arjuna, one of the five Pandavas.<\/p>\n

Krishna takes Arjuna to the battlefield to let him see and appreciate the strength of the Kauravas’ army the Pandavas’ army will have to face. The fight is about to start and Arjuna, as a true prince and warrior as well as the best archer, one who will always hit his target right at the core, wants to give up such a fight that opposes him to members of his own family and to the very teachers who have guided him all along his life. He thinks his position is unacceptable and, though he is known for being fearless, he’d rather be killed than fight his relatives for a mere question of power conquest. Suddenly, that quarrel seems to be totally absurd and unfair. He wants to renounce it, but that does not include his friend and Master, Krishna, whom he has entrusted with his own life and guidance.<\/p>\n

Krishna reminds Arjuna of his duty as a prince and a warrior.\u00a0 Dharma<\/em> must be restored on the earth. The Kurukshetra battle must be fought, as it is the only means to see fairness prevail again. The Lord had called for negotiations between the cousins, indeed, but Duryodhana, at the head of the Kauravas, was uncompromising. He would not give a sheer pinhead to his Pandava cousins. He envies what they are and anger and hatred haunt him. He has lost all sense of dharma<\/em>, so that his attitude could only lead to the conflict the epic tale of the Mahabharata relates.<\/p>\n

The battle is worth being considered as an inner battle.<\/p>\n

War is the only means, because the Kauravas, the Pandavas’ one hundred cousins, dominate over the whole territory – a symbol for our inner territory – and they won’t give it up. Should they win the battle, any sort of spiritual life will be excluded. So, there is no choice for Arjuna. He must fight. The lord puts him in a position where he will be able to observe his inner weaknesses, face them and raise his spirit up to a higher level of his being. His feelings, his emotions made him lose all sense of discrimination (viveka<\/em>). He is attached to his tendencies, represented here by his cousins and their father, the blind king who has abandoned the management of his kingdom to the harmful ambitions of his sons. Later on, we shall evoke what each character stands for within Arjuna’s personality.<\/p>\n

The Lord asks him to face his inner enemies, his family, and to fight them. Hence he must give up all his tendencies and desires and restore the Divine within him. His attachments are blurring his reason and they lead him to argue: how could I fight those who are so close to me, my cousins, my uncle, my masters, and the very emperor who reigns over the entire land? But the Divine, not the blind emperor and his henchmen, is supposed to guide him. So Arjuna elaborates on his apparently sensible claims: how could we fight our own family and kill in order to reign?<\/p>\n

All that may seem vain and unfair; yet the fight, here, concerns him and only him. He was born a prince and a warrior in order to fight his egotistic tendencies and restore within him whatever was right. If he does not do it, the whole territory is at risk, which is unacceptable. Arjuna will have to fight, but the Lord in him won’t force him, because love can never constrain. The Lord puts Arjuna in such a position to make him realize what he really is and to awaken his consciousness, then his super-consciousness, so that the Divine may regain His place by right, at the core of his life; otherwise, disorder and unfairness will go on reigning over him. The Lord gradually puts his disciple in touch with Truth. He helps him open his eyes and, through teaching and transmitting, he gives him the means to advance spiritually and to amend and adjust his character.<\/p>\n

So, the Lord will transmit to him the required knowledge and its related practices, so that he may let his soul be completely free. He will expose the raja-yoga <\/em>and the three chapters it includes: karma-yoga, jnana-yoga <\/em>and the bahkti- yoga <\/em>that binds them both, as it is underlying and omnipresent in all the Lord’s teachings. It seems that nothing can be really done within us if there is no love and no devotion.<\/p>\n

In a very subtle way, the Lord will teach his disciple how to act correctly. He will gradually reinstall in him a sense of discrimination. He removes all the illusory veils, one after the other, so that the light of Truth may illuminate his mind again. The Lord does not impose anything on him. He makes his disciple face reality, face his own self, and he helps him take his own responsibilities and decisions in order to change and evolve towards being what he has to be.<\/p>\n

As will everyone else, Arjuna resists facing his fate, facing his soul and facing himself. He’d rather renounce any inner combat. The Lord calls him a coward if he is to shun a fight that would free all the territories within him. Does he want to deny his soul a glorious destiny? He is a prince of blood, born to rule over his self, and not to let a bandit rule over him and lead him to ruin.<\/p>\n

Isn’t that how we feel when trying to correct some deep and active tendencies within us? It often seems to be insurmountable. The result is unconvincing and superficial, and it doses not last long. Those inner tendencies are powerful and even regarded as being inherited. We count ourselves as victims, since there is nothing we can do about what comes from our parents, from our ancestors or just from our “society”.<\/p>\n

The Lord takes us back to ourself. Did not our soul choose our family, our environment, the proper times and circumstances for a new birth and lifetime? The lord gently reminds us of it. He is there to help us, to guide us, just as he does with Arjuna.<\/p>\n

Arjuna is no ordinary human being. His masters have taught and trained him throughout his life. He is back from a thirteen-year exile, from a retreat into the woods. He has stepped aside while going on working upon himself. It \u00a0was a lifelong training, for him and for his four brothers, who had all decided to surrender to Lord Krishna, the guide who will lead them but not fight. Arjuna has only got the Lord’s presence to guide him, whatever happens. He has entrusted Him with guiding his life – a life that the chariot and its five horses represent – in order to face the biggest army in the world, an army that is apparently invincible.<\/p>\n

Let us have a short break and look at the symbolic signification of Arjuna’s chariot:<\/p>\n