Showing posts with label Sri Vishwanath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sri Vishwanath. Show all posts

"The Message of Bhagavad Gita. 8 Powerful Life Strategies to make your journey purposeful and fulfilling" by Sri Vishwanath

, 4 Oct 2014

The Bhagavad Gita -one of the Hindu sacred texts- is in my must-read list. You can get a cheap translation of the Gita (Kindle version for $0.99) at Amazon. Reading a spiritual text of the complexity of the Gita, as any other religious text, is always a burden on my shoulders. Sorry for the honesty. When I stumbled upon this book, I thought the cover was cheap and unappealing, naive in a way, but the title was appealing enough to download it, especially because it was, again, 0.99 cents.

I usually browse many of the "cheapies" or "freebies" I download for my Kindle searching for passages or chapters of interest, to quickly move on to more substantial readings. To my surprise, this book got me glued from beginning to end. 

Vishwanath is a former business consultant turned into New Age guru, something that would have made me run away from this book a priori. Ignorance is sometimes blissful. Thus, I was able to read the book without any prejudice, with intellectual curiosity and the detachment that any religious or spiritual book requires from me. This is not an academic exegesis of the Gita, done by a Gita expert or spiritual master (you should check Yogananda's edition for that), but a simple unpretentious book that uses the Gita in a practical way to extract practical advice to improve your life in general, no matter your religion or lack of it. In a way, is also a teacher's book to explain in simple words Hindu spiritual beliefs to non-Hindu people. 

Vishwanath is able to speak about very complex spiritual things using a very simple language. The book is full of metaphors and simple parables that will get you to understand some of the principles taught by the Gita or some obscure sayings by Krishna. You will learn about the nature of God, the age of the Universe, the Hindu heavens and reincarnation, why Hindu people need of many Gods and Godesses, and the spiritual principles that inspire Yoga among many other things. Some of the practical items of advice will help to bring peace to your mind (if you need of any), give you food for thought, and provide you with some amazing meditation exercises. I especially like the one about the Ocean, which I do sometimes and it is truly amazing.
 
It happens rarely, but, sometimes, a one-dollar investment produces a good revenue.

A very entertaining and thoughtful book.