How to use this book
This book was written to be a companion to the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is by Srila Prabhupada, helping you to understand the original text. This is how to make the best of it.
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This book was written to be a companion to the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is by Srila Prabhupada, helping you to understand the original text, but it is not a replacement for it.
Prabhupada organized his commentary on the Bhagavad-gītā in a system where he starts with the verses in the original Devanagari script, the way they were written by Vyasadeva.
In the Devanagari script, each letter represents a sound. For example, क is ka, ग is ga, ध is dha, and so on. Most of the time, each character represents a consonant and a vowel together. For example: ka क, ke के, ki कि, ko को, ku कु. The letters representing the sounds are them combined into words, like योग (यो + ग = yoga), अर्जुन (अ + र्जु + न = Arjuna), पुरुष (पु + रु + ष = purusa), and so on. You can find a short guide of the alphabet at the end of the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is.
Learning the Devanagari alphabet is not necessary to understand the Gita, but practicing the individual sounds of the letters can help you to better pronounce the Sanskrit verses. The reason is that unlike English, Sanskrit is a phonetic language. In other words, each syllable in the words is written in the way it sounds. In English, we have to get used to reading each word as a unit, because trying to individually pronounce each syllable will most of the time make us grossly mispronounce. You can try to say "is-land" instead of "island" for example.
Sanskrit however was made to be pronounced syllable by syllable. We say dhar-ma, kar-ma, āt-mā, saṃ-sā-ra, and so on. Once we learn the individual sounds, even the most complicated words can be easily pronounced if we just take our time and go syllable by syllable. Studying the individual sounds of the letters that compose the Devanagari alphabet can help us with that.
Prabhupada then gives the transliteration (the same verse represented in English letters, with diacritics), the word-for-word translation, and then the complete translation followed by the purport. One purpose of that is to make the book more authentic since we can see for yourselves the whole process of translating the verse into English, but there is another reason for this, that is to allow us to go deeper into the meaning of the verses, by studying the meaning of each individual word and then how they go on together. Just like in English, the words in the verses of the Gita (or any other scripture) have primary and secondary meanings, and the correct meaning of a word in a particular verse is dependent on the context. In the word-for-word, Prabhupada gives usually the dictionary meaning of the words, but in the translation, words are often translated differently, because the translation takes into consideration the full context of the verse and the deeper meaning of the words, which is then explained in the purports.
In this way, this system of giving first the word-for-word and then the complete translation helps us to better understand the meaning of the verses and serves also as a crash course in Sanskrit translation. According to memories of his disciples, once Prabhupada said that if one studies attentively the word-for-word, translation and purports of an entire chapter every day, at the end of a year he or she will acquire a level of understanding similar to a Sanskrit scholar.
In this book, I break the chapters of the Bhagavad-gītā into groups of verses dealing with distinct topics and give additional explanations to the ideas explored by Srila Prabhupada in his purports, with the idea of helping you to understand all the details of the text.
One difficulty of studying the Bhagavad-gītā is that we have to understand each individual verse, but at the same time keep track of the relationship between one verse and the others and the general flow of the text. In this book, I try to reach a compromise between these two aspects by adopting this organization into topics. Each topic includes a few verses that encompass a certain topic, so you can understand not only the meaning but also the relationship between them.
The idea is that you can read my explanations of each topic as you would read a novel, just trying to understand the underlying logic of the different philosophical points explained, and then, if you so desire, go deep into each topic by studying more thoroughly the purports of Srila Prabhupada on the specific verses. To facilitate that, I also provide lists of points explored by Srila Prabhupada in each purport after the general explanation of each topic.
Just like learning a new language, learning the Bhagavad-gītā requires learning a huge number of philosophical concepts and the way they relate to each other. There are two different strategies for learning such a huge volume of information that may work better for different types of people. One strategy is to just read, and read again, without trying to memorize specific information and another is to go methodically, studying each topic before moving to the next. Both strategies can work, provided you dedicate enough time to it. The main consideration should be to do what is interesting for you. If it is interesting, you will find the taste to keep studying and eventually, you will learn. Developing taste is thus the main consideration, the specific study strategy is secondary.
In this way, when it comes to this specific book, there are two ways to use it:
a) You can just read it sequentially, to get a general understanding of the Bhagavad-gītā, like you would read a novel. Just read and let your mind remember what is important for you. No pressure. This is what is going to be effective for most. After finishing reading this book, you can try to read the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is again, and hopefully, you will have a better understanding of it.
b) You can use it as a study guide, keeping the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is in hand and studying thoroughly the purports of Srila Prabhupada for each section after reading the general explanations and the lists of points I give here. By consulting the word for word while studying each individual verse and studying the purports connected with each section you may be able to go much deeper in the meanings given by Srila Prabhupada in his work. This is a slower and more methodical way, but it can give good results if this style is interesting for you.
Although the Bhagavad-gītā is considered a foundational book in Krsna Consciousness, it is not an easy book to read because of all the knowledge it contains. Just like the Vedanta-sutra, the Bhagavad-gītā contains the conclusions of all Vedic literature, which is not a trivial matter. Each verse thus includes almost unlimited meanings, and we go deeper into these meanings as we enter into the details of the text. Most of the time we just skim the surface while reading the Bhagavad-gītā, and thus often we come to the end of the book with a sense of dissatisfaction, feeling that despite the time and effort we are still far from understanding it. It is not possible for any conditioned soul to fully understand all the mysteries of the Bhagavad-gītā, but I hope this work can help you to come closer.
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