1. Start with Ahankaar

The Bhagavad Gita is a seven hundred verse conversation between Lord Krishna and the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

In the final moments before the war, Arjuna felt that the war would kill many of his friends, teachers and relatives. He concluded that this has many harmful and undesirable effects.

Arjuna is perceiving both himself and others on the battlefield as karta (doers). This perception is nothing but ahankaar, a combination of aham (I) and karta (doer), literally meaning ‘I am the doer’. Though we are all part of the same oneness, ahankaar keeps giving us the impression that we are distinct and separate. Usually, ego is taken as the meaning of ahankaar, but ego can be taken as one of the many manifestations of ahankaar.

The entire conversation revolves around ahankaar, whether addressed directly or indirectly, and Krishna offers multiple paths, milestones, and yardsticks to help us transcend it. If we view the Kurukshetra war as a metaphor, each of us repeatedly finds ourselves in similar situations in our daily lives -within the family, the workplace, and in matters of health, wealth, and relationships. As long as we live, such dilemmas continue to arise, until ahankaar is truly understood.

The Gita is all about our being, not about our knowing or doing. No amount of theory alone can teach us to ride a bicycle or swim. Similarly, no amount of philosophy can help us unless we experience life with awareness. The guiding principles of the Gita help us reach the eternal state of our inner self, free from ahankaar.

From the surface, it appears that times have changed since the Gita was given to Arjuna by Lord Krishna. Certainly, there is a lot of change brought about by developments in science in the past couple of centuries. But in reality, from an evolutionary standpoint, humans didn’t evolve any further. The internal side of the dilemma remains the same. In essence, the external appearances might look different, but the inner foundation is the same oneness.