Ashvini Kumar mall

The Bhagavad Gita – a guidebook to life

The Bhagavad Gita is one of India’s ancient texts and is derived from the epic poem, The Mahabharata. This still stands as the longest poem ever written, with over 100,000 shlokas or over 200,000 verses. Though only a part of The Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita is perhaps one of the most important and highly revered yogic texts ever to have been written. 

Texts like The Upanishads and the Dhammapada are also part of this poem. But it’s the Bhagavad Gita that’s often cited as holding the key to personal transformation:

The Bhagavad Gita is a map and a guidebook. It gives us a systematic overview of the territory [of life], shows various approaches to the summit with their benefits and pitfalls, offers recommendations, tells us what to pack and what to leave behind. More than either of the others (the Upanishads and the Dhammapada), it gives the sense of a personal guide. It asks and answers the questions that you or I might ask.