Bhagavad Gita Essay

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Shantel Confer Hist 1110/Dr. Laumann/Fall 2013 Second paper The Bhagavad Gita painted a vivid picture of religion, faith, and spirituality. It told the old tale of a prince; one who's true battle is not with others, but within himself. Although incomplete, in this excerpt we learn the way of the people, the time of which they lived, and the faith in which they believed. Throughout this story we learn the teachings and acts of Hinduism; not only as a religion, but as a way of life. The Bhagavad Gita is an excerpt of the single longest poem, Mahabharata, originating in ancient India around 1,000 and 700 B.C.E. Its main focus of a battle and dispute fought between two different sides of the same family. Although the poem over all is a myth, it is vital to Indian culture. “The intermingling of the great themes of life, death, family, warfare, duty, and power give the Mahabharata continuing universal appeal”. (Spodek, Chapter 8) Arjuna, the descendant of Bharata, was a great and noble warrior who throughout this text did a lot of soul searching trying to find his way to peace and righteousness; the supreme path. As Krishna's disciple and friend he asks him for help when he has to fight his own family in order to take command of a kingdom that is rightfully his brother Yudhishthira's. At first Arjuna is weak hearted, unsure how he can fight his own family over a kingdom; Krishna shows him that fighting and ruling is his cosmic duty. Krishna is a narcissistic god, for throughout the book he repeatedly states how he is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all man kind. Controversially he is a noble and humble god because he honorably receives the smallest of offerings as long it was purely from the heart. “He who offers to me with devotion only a leaf, or a flower, or a fruit, or even a little water, this I accept from the yearning soul, because
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