The Bhagavad Gita for yoga students

The Gita is short enough to read in an afternoon and long enough to occupy a lifetime. Most students meet it first as a few quoted verses and are surprised, when they finally sit with the whole thing, by how practical it is.

What the Gita is

The Bhagavad Gita — the Song of the Lord — is a section of the Mahabharata, the enormous Sanskrit epic. It runs to eighteen chapters and around seven hundred verses, and it is usually dated somewhere between the fifth and second centuries BCE.

It sits alongside the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras as one of the three foundational texts of Vedanta. Unlike the other two, it is a conversation rather than an argument, which is part of why it travels so well.

The situation

Two armies face each other. Arjuna, the finest archer of his generation, asks his charioteer to drive him into the gap between them so he can see who he is about to fight.

He sees cousins, teachers, grandfathers. He puts down his bow and says he will not do it — that no kingdom is worth this, that he would rather be killed unarmed.

His charioteer is Krishna. What follows is the answer to a man in genuine despair, and the reason the text has lasted is that the answer is not a slogan. It takes eighteen chapters.

The paths it describes

The Gita’s great contribution is that it describes yoga in the plural. Three paths run through it, and the four paths of yoga taught in most schools derive from them.

Karma yoga, the yoga of action. Act because the action is right, and release your grip on what it produces. The famous verse is 2.47: you have a right to your work, never to its fruits. This is not indifference — Arjuna is not told to stop caring — but the difference between doing something well and doing it for what it will get you.

Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion. Offer the action, and yourself, to something larger. The Gita gives this the most generous treatment of the three, and Chapter 12 is its clearest expression.

Jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge. Discriminate between what changes and what does not, and recognise the self as the part that does not. Chapter 2 opens this and it runs underneath everything after.

The text does not rank them permanently. It suggests, reasonably, that different people are suited to different approaches and that in practice they mix.

Verses you will meet

A handful come up constantly in classes and trainings, and it is worth knowing them before someone quotes them at you.

• 2.47 — on the right to action and not to its fruits. The single most quoted verse in the text.
• 2.48 — yoga defined as evenness of mind, samatvam yoga uchyate.
• 6.16–6.17 — on moderation: yoga is not for one who eats too much or too little, sleeps too much or too little. A useful corrective to enthusiasm.
• 6.19 — the mind of the practitioner as a lamp in a windless place, which is the image behind a great deal of later meditation teaching.
• 3.35 — better one’s own duty imperfectly done than another’s done well.

Why schools teach it

Partly tradition. But mostly because the Gita asks a question the mat cannot: what do you do when the right course of action is unclear and doing nothing is also a choice?

Students arrive at a training having read about the eight limbs and the yamas and niyamas, which describe conduct in the abstract. The Gita puts conduct in a situation, with a person in it who is frightened and unsure. That turns out to be more useful.

Chapter 6 is also, straightforwardly, a meditation manual — the seat, the posture, the gaze, the steadiness. Anyone who has been taught how to sit has been taught from it, whether or not it was named.

Where to start

Read Chapter 2 first. It contains the despair, the answer, and the definitions of yoga that the rest of the book elaborates. Then Chapter 12 for devotion and Chapter 6 for meditation. After that, begin again at the beginning.

For a first translation, Eknath Easwaran reads beautifully and assumes nothing. Swami Sivananda’s edition is the one used in schools of our lineage and carries commentary alongside the verses. Avoid heavily sectarian editions until you know the text well enough to notice what is being argued.

Read a little and slowly. Five verses considered properly do more than a chapter skimmed — which is, as it happens, roughly what the Gita says about everything else too.

Common questions

What is the Bhagavad Gita about?

A warrior, Arjuna, refuses to fight a battle against his own relatives and teachers. Krishna, his charioteer, answers his despair with a teaching on duty, detachment from results, devotion and the nature of the self. It runs to 700 verses across eighteen chapters.

Why do yoga schools teach the Bhagavad Gita?

Because it is the earliest text to set out yoga as more than practice on a mat — describing karma yoga, bhakti yoga and jnana yoga as distinct paths — and because its central question, how to act rightly without being ruled by the outcome, applies directly to how students live.

Do you need to be Hindu to read the Bhagavad Gita?

No. It is a religious text within Hinduism and is also read worldwide as philosophy. Yoga schools generally teach it as a guide to conduct and self-knowledge, and students of every background and none study it without difficulty.

Which translation of the Bhagavad Gita should a beginner read?

Eknath Easwaran’s is the most approachable in English. Swami Sivananda’s is the standard in schools of that lineage and includes commentary. Start with a readable translation rather than a scholarly one; you can always go deeper later.