"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.