Sons of Gods: The Mahabharata Retold

As it is for many people, the Gita was my first real introduction to the Hindu faith and philosophy -- or Sanatana Dharma, which is the more accurate term. Yesterday I wrote on another blog, Sadhana Day by Day (sorry - no longer live) about the experience that turned my life around forty (fifty now!) years ago, and set me on my spiritual path. The aftermath of that experience was that I returned home and turned over a new leaf completely; and the lifeline that straightened out my oh so crooked life was this little book: the Bhagavad Gita. In retrospect it seems that that path was already predetermined, and that everything was all planned out in advance that I should end up devouring the Gita as if I were starving and it was living water. Before my trip through South America I had already discovered the miracle of Hatha Yoga, and diligent practice  had sorted out many of my more pressing, physical problems: drinking, smoking and an eating disorder that had made me so fat I’d f...

As promised, I've published Chapter 58: The Song of God as a blog page above. To understand what is happening here one really needs to have read the Mahabharata, but the Gita is important  that it has taken on a life as its own: 18 chapters of sublime wisdom, known  as a major world scripture in its own right. For Hindus it's the equivalent of the Bible. There are many translations, of course, and I certainly have not read them all in order to make a choice as to which is the best. The version I own is a translation by W. J. Johnson published by the Oxford University Press. The chapter 58 of Sons of Gods is a much condensed version of the Gita, and not a translation of a selection of verses: it's what I believe to be the essence of Krishna's message to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Much as I would have loved to include the entire Gita, doing so would have broken the word limit I had set for myself and held...