A decade of The Bhagavad Gita study

 Bhagavad Gita: Teacher or Self-Study?

Should you find a teacher or scholar to study the Bhagavad Gita with, or should you embark on this journey alone? I just finished studying all 18 chapters with a teacher—a journey that took five years after spending another five years attempting to study it on my own. This is my honest and truthful experience of exploring this transformative text over a decade now. 

Confusion in Translation

When I first started learning yoga in American studios( about 15 years ago), I kept hearing conversations about sacrifice, surrender, letting go, attachment, detachment, bhakti, and karma. There was a disconnect between what I was hearing and what I had grown up with, and I thought I understood the Bhagavad Gita because these themes weren't new to me. I had watched Ramanand Sagar's Mahabharata on Doordarshan television and knew that the Bhagavad Gita was set within the great epic—so, I know BG , right !!! (Most of us raised in the 80s &90s felt our BG education was complete with that )

Like anyone beginning to learn a new text, I dove into the first couple of chapters. They were exciting—featuring Arjuna, Krishna, and the dramatic setup with characters like Dhritarashtra and Sanjaya. But it was hard to move beyond that initial drama because it kept me engaged for so long. I spent the first couple of years essentially stuck in the first chapter.

When I finally progressed to encounter deeper concepts—dharma, the self, bhakti, atman, moksha, and vairagya—I found myself going in circles. I would listen to different interpretations, read various texts and blog posts, and watch YouTube videos, but I didn't know where the journey was leading or what I was truly learning.

The Cultural Confusion

I grew up in India for the first 30 years of my life but my grandmother didn't read the Bhagavad Gita to me, nor did my mother. We are lower -lower-middle-class family in 80s and there was not much time for these contemplations.  What I absorbed from the culture and society came primarily from visiting temples, which were oriented toward prayer and rituals, along with a mixture of moral and ethical values that often got confused with ideas about sin, God, heaven, and hell. It was all very confusing.

Whether encountering this text in American yoga studios, where the language becomes very romantic around concepts of attachment, surrender, and devotion, or coming from a spiritual-religious background in India where it's treated as sacred text revolving around morality and social functioning, the result can be the same: confusion and a sense that you're being given a moral compass to make you behave better.

With a Teacher

About five years ago, I met my teacher in a 4-week online course. During those 4 classes, I realized, here is a teacher who will take me through this text in a pace comfortable to me, offering parallel connection with modern psychology, physiology ( he has a solid medical science background), and tolerance to ridiculous questioning. In my very first class,  I held up the translations and said to him, "Wherever I turn—whether it's a YouTube video, a book, or a blog post—everyone tells me that I need to have bhakti in my heart to understand the Bhagavad Gita. But I don't believe in God. I don't believe there is a single God. I don't think Krishna is a savior. If I don't believe in any of those things, can I still be a good candidate to study the Bhagavad Gita?" I wanted to appear honest, truthful, and perhaps somewhat self-righteous.

He is probably the most patient human being I've ever met in my life. He said to me, "Savitha, the way you're holding that book tells me you're interested in studying it. You've told me that for the last five years you've been trying to study it with different translations, so you've made an honest, sincere attempt. You've given it five years, and now you've found a teacher who might help you understand it. That sincerity, that longing that made you pick up this book—that is what is called bhakti. Bhakti is not surrendering everything to one being. It's the sincerity and truthfulness where you are open to putting something above your own ego. That is what the Bhagavad Gita refers to as bhakti."

The Value of Both Approaches

Based on my experience, I believe it's important to start by studying on your own. There are numerous beautiful explanations available now—YouTube videos, free resources, and various approaches. Some will explain it logically, others materialistically (like "Bhagavad Gita for understanding the corporate world"), and still others will present it as a tool to master your mind. All of these approaches are worth pursuing because they give you exposure to what's available, help you develop agency, form different opinions, and gather information in various ways.

When you feel ready to explore it further, finding a teacher becomes valuable. I don't know if I would have been so willing to give my time, effort, energy, and sincerity to studying and committing for five years if I hadn't tried everything else first.

The Bhagavad Gita is not an intellectual text designed to make you sound smart at cocktail parties or have total control of your life by playing mind games through meditation.  It's a life-changing text that will give you a lens to look at life in a completely different way—a way that is blissful, joyful, and deeply curious. It opens your mind and makes you contemplate things you've never considered before.

Maintaining Your Agency

All of this preliminary exploration is crucial for maintaining agency when you do find a teacher. You don't want to blindly follow and believe everything they say. You need enough information to question them, enough knowledge to maintain your truthfulness, and the ability to call out what seems like nonsense when you encounter it. 

I've rolled my eyes several times during these five years, thinking "this is ridiculous." Some concepts are still ridiculous in my mind but I am more comfortable with myself. My fears have reduced considerably. Most of the time I'm joyful, most of the time I'm compassionate, and most of the time—above all—I am loving to myself and others in a very non-intellectual, sweet, joyful way. That has opened many doors.

So the advice is this: start on your own. Take whatever sparks your interest, gather as much information as you can on the topics of karma(action/ actor), dharma ( passions, responsibilities, skillful work), bhakti ( different forms of love & surrender), moksha( freedom, liberation, nirvana), atman( Self, consciousness, spirit) and jiva  ( authentic self, individual self, true self ). None of this is to come to a conclusion, but to merely build context and a starting point to question.

Remember: The BG becomes this important text because Arjuna questions Krishna over and over again until the understandings sits in the heart viscerally. But don't limit yourself there. Then find a teacher. They might not resonate with you—find another one, and another, until you find a teacher who welcomes your curiosity, your questioning, your doubts, and who will say, "This is exactly what the Bhagavad Gita says. This is my opinion, and you should consider and think about it, then come up with your own understanding."

Fair warning: This journey is not blissful. It's deeply contemplative work—peeling away the veils the mind has constructed through years of conditioning for self-preservation.

Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.

The BG helps you viscerally understand what is truthful, what is eternal, and what is beautiful.

Namaste 

Savitha