Art of Living · Sadhana

The Bhagavad Gita

A Guide to the Song of the Lord

Karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana — your right is to the action alone, never to its fruits

Eighteen chapters spoken between two armies, addressed to one man who did not want to act and could not honourably refuse to. This is a guide, not a translation: each chapter of the Gita explained in flowing English as a teaching you can actually use — what it says, why it says it there, and how it changes the way an ordinary day is lived. Read in order, it is a single argument that begins in despair and ends in freedom.

19 of 19 chapters available

Before You Begin

Orientation

  1. How to Read the Gita · 9m Why a battlefield, why eighteen chapters, and how to use this guide.

Part One — The Way of Action (Karma)

Chapters 1–6 · Acting Without Attachment

  1. 1 · The Yoga of Arjuna's Despair · 11m The collapse that every honest teaching has to start from.
  2. 2 · The Yoga of Knowledge · 16m The whole Gita in miniature: the deathless self, and acting without grasping the result.
  3. 3 · The Yoga of Action · 13m Why doing nothing is not an option, and what work as offering means.
  4. 4 · Knowledge and the Renunciation of Action · 12m Acting while inwardly free — the renunciation that does not stop working.
  5. 5 · The Yoga of Renunciation · 10m Renouncing and acting shown to be the same path wearing two faces.
  6. 6 · The Yoga of Meditation · 13m The practical seat: steadying the mind, and what to do when you fail at it.

Part Two — The Way of Devotion (Bhakti)

Chapters 7–12 · Knowing and Loving the Divine

  1. 7 · Knowledge and Realization · 11m The difference between knowing about the divine and knowing it.
  2. 8 · The Imperishable · 10m What carries over, and why the last thought of a life matters.
  3. 9 · The Royal Knowledge and the Royal Secret · 12m The teaching's open secret: nothing offered with the heart is too small.
  4. 10 · The Divine Glories · 10m Learning to read the world as evidence rather than noise.
  5. 11 · The Vision of the Universal Form · 13m The terrifying centre — being shown more than a friend's face.
  6. 12 · The Yoga of Devotion · 9m The most reachable path, and the qualities it slowly produces.

Part Three — The Way of Knowledge (Jnana)

Chapters 13–18 · Seeing Clearly and Being Free

  1. 13 · The Field and the Knower of the Field · 12m Separating what you have from what you are.
  2. 14 · The Three Gunas · 11m The three forces that quietly run a life, and how to read which is acting.
  3. 15 · The Supreme Person · 9m The inverted tree, and the self beyond both the changing and the changeless.
  4. 16 · The Divine and the Demonic · 10m Two ways a human being can be organised — described without flattery.
  5. 17 · The Three Kinds of Faith · 10m You become what you trust — faith, food, speech, and giving.
  6. 18 · The Yoga of Liberation · 17m The gathering-up of everything, and the freedom handed back to you to choose.