I. Relevance of the Bhagavad Gita to American culture and history

A. Tolstoy and Gandhi

B. Gandhi and Martin Luther King

II. The Gita in its own historical context

A. Declining popularity of Hinduism: caste system, spiritual dryness

B. Rise of alternative belief systems: Jainism, Buddhism

C. How the Gita addresses these problems

III. What the Gita says

A. The Second Teaching

1. Background: Arjuna reveres his “enemies,” does not want to fight them; fears karma.

2. Krishna explains samsāra (12-13)

a. More or less like “reincarnation” – cycle of life and death

b. The self is embodied in one body after another

c. Elsewhere: successive reincarnations take one closer to escape from the cycle

3. “Endure fleeting things” (13-15)

a. Whatever changes is unimportant, is nonbeing

b. Avoid attachment, just “endure”

4. “The presence that pervades” (16-17)

a. The Brahman

b. It is one with the self

c. Each of us is one with all other “self”s (viz. Gandhi’s comment)

5. The self or ātman (18-30)

a. It persists

b. Not affected by matter (23, 24)

c. “Unmanifest, inconceivable, immutable” (25a)

d. Therefore “no cause to grieve”

6. Dharma (31-34)

a. “Duty”

b. Krishna starts with less worthy motives for pursuing one’s dharma: fame, spirit of emulation

c. He hints at what will be seen more clearly later: It is your own duty

d. Dharma is “what holds you up”: glowworms glow, mothers mother, students study, etc.

7. Krishna’s puzzling explanation of action and understanding

a. “Be intent on action” (47, 48)

b. But action is inferior to understanding (49)

i. “Understanding” or “insight”: what you see in a flash, without plodding through logical steps

ii. Understanding makes one indifferent to the “fruits of action” (52)

iii. Krishna explains the fundamentals: give up desires (55, 56) or even preferences (57)

B. The Sixth Teaching

1. Methodology, seating, etc (10-15)

2. Discipline as opposed to either self-denial (Jainism) or self-indulgence (16-20)

3. The goal of this discipline: “see identity in everything” (21-32)

C. The Eleventh Teaching: the theophany

IV. How the Gita can relate to people of other faiths

A. Defining the problem of desire (cf. James 4:1-3)

B. Emphasizing the unity of all persons in God

C. Encouragement to get past the superficial and temporary

1. Things advertised on TV

2. Celebrity and empty esteem