Reading The Bhagavad Gita Introduction

TITLE: Reading The Bhagavad Gita: Introduction CHANNEL: Wes Cecil DATE: 2026-04-24 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Thanks to our patron members for helping to make this episode possible and we’re now available on all the major podcasting platforms. You can find more information at the links below. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a new series, reading the Bhagavad Gita. So, what I want to do is have us read along through sections of the Bhagavad Gita as a means of exploring and having a place to begin our journey of understanding, a journey that will never be finished, of course, our understanding of the Hindu tradition, Hindu philosophical ideals, and the massive impact of Hindu conceptions of the universe on all kinds of philosophers in the West and so forth. And I thought of this because the the

[clears throat] Bhagavad Gita is a subsection, if you will, of the Mahabharata, the great one of the two great Indian epics, the other one being the Ramayana, of course. And it’s sort of a it’s a bite-sized, if you will. It’s It’s biggish. I think it’s about 240 pages in the Penguin edition, which I’m going to be reading from and which I suggest people look for because there many editions, of course, and some are longer and some are shorter, but the I think the Penguin is very readable. It’s got some nice notes and it’s readily available. It’s been out for a long, long time. And it’s uh very inexpensive. So, look for the Penguin edition if you would like to join us in this read along. But the the Mahabharata I mean, the Bhagavad Gita gives us a place to begin, or at least this is how I’d like to approach it. It gives us a place to begin thinking about exploring and getting a grounding for uh trying to discover Hinduism and and the ideals of philosoph- philosophical and religious ideals which Hinduism contains. And Hinduism is just so vast and so rich and so varied and so profound. I mean, it’s all I mean, it’s just it’s it’s just a universe unto itself and it’s great and subtle and distinct and enlightening. But it is difficult to get your hands on cuz there’s just so that so much of it. It’s never been boiled down. It’s never been reduced down to like, “Oh, here, read this one book.” or read this, you know, one poem or or read these, you know, eightfold path, right? It’s It’s difficult to articulate it in any kind of a quick way. It’s part of the magic of it. In fact, I think in some ways it may be one of the core insights of Hinduism is that you can’t boil the world down. It’s not a It’s not a reducible kind of thing. And so, one of the magics of Hinduism in general is that it doesn’t try to reduce, it tries to elaborate and explore and intensify and all these other goals that it has for itself rather than to articulate clearly and briefly, which it sounds good, but if you’re talking about the universe, perhaps that’s not the right path, right? And indeed, even in that moment as as I think about it right now, you recognize how wrong-headed a lot of philosophy is because it has that incredibly powerful drive to synthesize and to narrow and to focus and to find the equation, to find the sentence, the paragraph, the book that is going to explain everything. And Hinduism as a tradition sort of just doesn’t work that way. It’s It’s It’s not going to allow you. It’s going to say there’s a thousand paths, you know, pick one, knock yourself out and and and switch paths, that’s that’s great, too. You know, it’s just It’s It’s just so much richer uh its outlook and it’s as you experience it, not in any given passage, of course, cuz any given passage itself will be shorter and more or less succinct. But it it [clears throat] it’s part of this tradition that is just so overwhelming that you begin to realize like, “Oh, right, it is it’s trying to explain the universe by creating a map that’s as large as the universe, if you will. And it’s There’s something beautiful to me about that and it constantly reminds me to not fall in the trap of trying to oversimplify or to produce answers on too small of a scale for questions that simply don’t res- or clearly not answerable on small scale or with the kind of clarity and precision that we really seem to hunger for for some reason. So, this is what I’m hoping the Bhagavad Gita allows us to do. It gives us a place to start. It gives us questions to explore, not necessarily answer, but at least to explore, and it really does cover a huge amount of ground in a relatively short space, a few hundred pages in the Penguin edition. Longer editions that include more background material, more foreground material, etc. will run about 400, 500 pages. And then you just have the whole Mahabharata and it’s, you know, 20 volumes or whatever it is, thousands and thousands and thousands of pages. So, we’ll narrow it down a bit. And like I said, the Penguin edition is just 200-ish, if I remember correctly. So, why does this matter? What is important about it and why the Bhagavad Gita as a section of the Mahabharata? And what’s fascinating to me, and I’ll go into the background of the story itself, where it finds itself as Arjuna and Krishna roll out to battle, I’ll set the background narrative, which will be in the introduction in any case of the Penguin edition and any other edition, really. But I’ll set that scene for you next time. But now I want to set in the grander philosophical context of the Hindu tradition, in fact, in global philosophical history. And and the importance of this is so in um right around the writing of the Bhagavad Gita, of course, scholars will vary and argue as scholars do, um but the the Sanskrit is pre-classical in many passages. And so, it seems to have been written in the main, or at least orally reproduced over generations in the main, uh before 100. It was certainly collated and collected and sort of organized by 100. But probably early versions are coming out 400, 300-ish is the earliest. Again, some scholars will say it’s as late as 100-ish uh BC. By the way, this is BC. So, somewhere between, say, 300 and 100 BC, the oral tradition is launching and then it becomes increasingly formalized until it’s pretty well established by 100 BC. So, you know, 2,100 years ago. And these dates are important because this is coterminous with the time at which Buddhism, which of course grows out of the Hindu tradition and it is is a response to the Hindu tradition, is becoming increasingly popular and influential. And what’s important about this, and this is one of the reasons it just jumps to my mind as a as a great work to reflect upon, is when Buddhism begins to spread in India, it doesn’t simply um establish itself as a new religion, a new outlook, new thing. It’s It’s a fundamental challenge to the entire structure of Hindu society at the time. Indian society was based on a very clear structure. And Buddhism comes along and challenges that structure in several, not one, in several profound ways. So, if you think of the Reformation, the Reformation says, “Hey, you don’t need a pope. You don’t need priests between you and God.” What this means is, you know, an entire branch of society which was very powerful and very wealthy just became irrelevant. And of course, this is one of the defining moments in Western tradition is is the Reformation. I mean, this is the beginning of the change towards modernism as we understand it today because it overthrew the old system. Well, Buddhism is having a similar impact in the Hindu tradition, in the Indian subcontinent at the time as it spreads and becomes increasingly influential, and it begins to challenge quite directly the fundamental assumptions that Hindu society. The closest I can imagine today is if there was some really powerful central and popular and increasingly popular social movement or religious movement or spiritual movement, however you want to think about it, that uh just didn’t care about money. It made money irrelevant. But somehow it came up with this system of thought and reflection and outlook that’s money just stopped functioning. They’re like, “Yeah, we don’t We don’t do money anymore. Like, it’s not a thing.” And think of how powerfully undermining that would be on Hindu society. I mean, on our society. This is what Buddhism is doing on an earlier system of of Hindu society. And so, it does this challenge in several ways. So, at the time, this is the classic caste system, um which still exists in India today in a in a softened and much less [clears throat] uh rigorous and rigid and complex uh way that has existed in the past. But you have the the classic fourfold levels. You have the priests, the Brahmin at the top, the warrior kings, the uh um Also, by the way, I will apologize now because I’m going to mispronounce everything because Sanskrit is is just is just tough. Tough for me, at least. I’m I’m bad at all languages, so Sanskrit’s just another one I’m really bad at. So, I apologize for this, but it’s just the Kshatriya, which is the warrior kings, then you have the Vaishya, which is the merchants and the landowners, the Shudra, which are commoners, peasants, servants, sort of at the bottom. And then you have outcasts, which are untouchables, they’re just out of the system. So, your society is made up of four castes and one large group of not not even people, basically. But at the top are the Brahmin. And what the Brahmin do is they say uh everything they do, everything that’s important, is ritualized. And it’s ritualized ritualized through animal sacrifice. Kind of the way, if you’ve ever read the Old Testament, they do a lot of animal sacrificing in there. It it it has it’s shared very much with that. The ancient world, not just in India, but all over the ancient world, animal sacrifice was core. The Greeks did this. The the Hindus did this. You see this in Persia. You All these traditions These ancient ancient traditions had animal sacrifice as a core element. Not all, but many many of them did. Hinduism certainly, and it was formalized through the priests. [clears throat] And so one uh Buddhism said, uh no. Like it Do you everyone has access to God and everybody has access to self-improvement. You do not need the intermediary of a priest. This is sort of, you know, a bit resonant with the what happened during the Reformation with [clears throat] saying you don’t need a priest between you and God. And so that challenge rises again here with Buddhism, which says, “Hey hey, we don’t need all of this. The The cast hierarchy um is not necessary.” Well, the cast hierarchy was not incidental to uh Hindu society Indian society at the time. It was vastly more integrated than Catholicism was, if you can believe this, in the, you know, pre-Reformation society. I mean, Catholicism was really really central, but nothing like the way the caste system was built. And so first thing that Buddhism did is says, you know, uh everybody can participate. The untouchables can participate. The laborers can participate. We’re all in this together. There is no caste hierarchy. In function, you know, the heads of the monasteries tended to be from the Brahmin class, right? You You can see the problems, but nonetheless, there was this core social challenge to the entire like structure of the society. As part [clears throat] of that, the the Brahmins again were the priests. And the priests did the animal sacrifice. And Buddhism was specifically preaching non-violence, which is to say, “Hey, let’s not do these rituals. One, they don’t do anything for you. It’s a fruitless It’s a It’s a non-helpful activity. And two, even if it helped a little bit, we probably shouldn’t do it because it is cruel. It kills animals, and we’re not supposed to kill animals.” Now, [clears throat] once again, so you have an entire cast of people, the Brahmin, who get their livelihood, their power, and wealth, of which they had a lot um relative to their society, from the sacrificial process. So getting rid of animal sacrifice is equivalent of simply getting rid of um one of the wealthiest, most powerful, most influential, and most integrated part parts of your population. And so you’re just They’re just out of work. They just have no role anymore. And so you’re both getting rid of the hierarchy because you don’t recognize the distinctions of people in this way, and you’re getting rid of the function of the people who were at the top of the hierarchy. And so that’s two very unpopular steps, particularly if you’re a Brahmin. And then third, um the the the Hindu tradition at this point, particularly at this point, is very vested on the Vedas, which were Now we’re talking the some of the oldest texts and ritual texts in in the history of the world. I mean, these things go back thousands of years, uh passed down orally for a long time and then written down. And they, by undermining and rejecting the notion of the Vedic texts as, which also laid down how you’re supposed to do sacrifices and these kinds of things, and said rather that it’s a a tradition Buddhist tradition is one of inward seeking, that one looks inward for the truth, not to a text-based history for a truth, um that then interpreted and delivered by the uh priests in this case, which would be the Brahmin. So again, if we if we stick with the example of the Catholic Church during the Reformation, it would be as if Protestants didn’t just say we don’t need priests, they also said, “We don’t need Bibles, and we don’t need churches, and we don’t need basically any of the religious institutions that we have today whatsoever.” So get rid of the priests and the Bible. And so you’re like, “Wow, this is getting, you know, this is core. This is central to what was happening.” Um and then even the goal was uh powerfully resistant to this. Um and then eventually what you get is is not a desire for living within the Dharma, living within the Vedic tradition, but of a of a new goal of releasing oneself from the cycle of rebirth entirely. So not only have you got rid of priests, not only have you got rid of the Bible, not only have you all got rid enough sacrifices, which is what the priests do, even the goal you’re seeking is now different, right? This is This is really an entirely different tradition. Um and and eventually you got this um emperor um and two I want to say 250 uh let’s say 250. Um and he really started to promote uh Buddhist principles. And now we’re Now this is very threatening because this is coming from on high. And so what ends up happening here is there’s a strong response and within the Hindu tradition, which itself evolves and then absorbs reabsorbs Buddhism into it. And this one amazing things about Hinduism, it’s incredibly absorptive. It can absorb anything apparently. It’s just like It just If you If Hinduism disagrees with you, it’s like just like in 50 years you just become part of Hinduism somehow. It’s like, “Oh no, we just absorbed you. You thought you were changing things, but in fact, we’ve just absorbed you.” And so what you get in the Bhagavad Gita is part of the response to um this Buddhist threat. And so not only are you seeing an evolution and an introduction of Hindu ideas generally, you’re getting it within the context of an attempt to articulate and refute these quote unquote foreign ideas, these ideas that are threatening to the hierarchical structure the Vedic tradition and the ideals that had been promoted by Hinduism and in fact made the stabilized the society that everyone was inhabiting at the time. And so this makes the Bhagavad Gita just this absolutely fascinating, unbelievably rich text. Cuz it is both a key element in the evolution of the narrative of the Mahabharata. It presents powerfully and in series and pretty pretty clearly some core beliefs that are central to Hinduism and have been central to Hinduism at this point for, you know, centuries and centuries. It defends itself against the out the outside and growing threat of Buddhism. And it actually asks offers a response that and it’s the response that you get in the Bhagavad Gita that sort of starts allowing it to reabsorb Buddhism and to make it back into a part of the Hindu tradition while also actually evolving the Hindu tradition itself. And so it’s a it’s just a an amazingly rich and for me wonderful and evocative work that that works both as a historical text, as part of the one of the grand narratives. It’s a core turning point in the Mahabharata, as I mentioned. You know, Vishnu is there, an avatar of Krishna, which is, you know, crucial because Krishna is sort of central to a lot of the goings-on generally in Hinduism, I guess, if you can put it that way. I mean, you know, Krishna is all I mean, Krishna Vishnu is also in the Ramayana. He comes in as avatar Rama in the Ramayana. And so, you know, he’s he’s everywhere. Can you say he the God is everywhere um in these stories. And so it’s a great introduction to that sort of central element of of of Hindu thought. And so by the time we end up reading through these chapters and exploring, going on this little adventure together, you know, I I I don’t want to claim I’ll make anything clear because, you know, I that would be above my pay grade. There’s so many great Hindu scholars who have dedicated their lives and who lived have lived in the tradition. I’m definitely coming from the outside. That, you know, that, you know, they’re where to turn for the, you know, the deep, real, powerful insight. But to help us across that bridge, to help us get to that place where we can absorb those those that great thinking and begin to imbibe from this tradition, as someone who’s from the outside and and with us on the outside, hopefully we can, you know, make a little headway together and [clears throat] get closer to the source and get closer to understanding and being able to appreciate and have these ideas enrich our lives. So, I’ll leave it there for today. That’s a brief introduction and a bit of a teaser for the Mahabharata section of the Bhagavad Gita section of the Mahabharata. And so if you’ll just read the opening, you know, the introductory notes or whatever, and then the first chapter, which is where we’ll start, Krishna and Arjuna in their chariot heading out to war, when the story unfolds. We’ll start there, and I think, like I said, I think you’ll really enjoy this one because it is so fundamentally wonderful, and it’s such a central challenge to so many assumptions that come to us from Western philosophy. Thank you very much.