bhagavad gita ~ the ancient indian philosophy of life

well, it is already more than 1 year ago we have been to rajasthan (india).
in order to learn more about hinduism / india i followed the idea our travel guide suggested and i've read the 800+ pages of bhagavad gita. the book describes a dialog between god krishna and prince arjuna on the historic battlefield at kurukshetra. the chariot driver krishna (krshna) answers his friend arjuna 100 questions and doing so explains the philosophy of life. the bhagavad gita (often just gita or geeta) is a part of the ancient indian vedas (knowledge texts). btw, in slovak language means the word 'veda' science, so it has s.th. to do with wisdom in every case :-)

my dears, my edition of bhagavad gita was the worst book ever i read and finished. what does it mean? well, it was somehow special so i couldn't drop it into a corner, but many parts of it made me really aggressive. i do not think the ancient sanskrit original would have similar impact on me. why? what made me crazy were the commentaries in this edition which simply did not comment the verses but in a highly manipulative way told the reader what is right and what is wrong. there was no space for own interpretation and own thinking as the book was full of commandments, beliefs, duties, hierarchies, did not respect the women and much more of such issues. i especially did not like the 'always right' advice, if only we would serve krishna and chant all day his name, everything would be fine [unfortunately, i read the edition by 'hare krishna' editor sri srimad a. c. bhaktivedanta swami prabhupada ~ hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare. hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare.]
if possible, choose a different edition to read that interesting stuff by yourself, will you? :o) of course, there were also many interesting ideas/explanations/beliefs about the sense of life, what is after physical death, about the soul and it was nice explained why we should not eat animals ...

vishnu, brahma + lakshmi (krishna is the 6th incarnation of vishnu ~ find this (wikipedia) picture and read more about the main hindu gods in my rajasthan (india) blog post)

let repeat first, what hinduism is according the knowledge/impressions i've collected last year in northern india:

hinduism is the wisdom, way of life, teaching about the circle of life which consists of millions of lives... originally was hindu the (wrong) persian name for the north indian river of sindhu (indus) and hindus all people who lived behind the river sindhu .... the term hinduism was used by the english occupiers for the religion which was not islam, christianity, buddhism, sikhism, jainism, ...

hinduism teaches that the result of former actions is our today's life and the result of today's actions is our future. btw, our body is the result of the food we have had before as well. if only mcdonald's and monsanto knew :-) ... doing good brings good future (good karma), etc. the goal of hindus is to step out of the karma cycle and thus the join of the current individual soul with the (higher) global collective soul ...

more coming soon or never ;-)

chakka, i've got a hint to better explained bhagavad gita wisdom ==> please read what sadhguru has to say:
http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/yoga-meditation/history-of-yoga/sadhguru-on-bhagavad-gita-action-to-yoga/

if you don't know sadhguru at all, here are 2-3 short videos of his teaching:
#1 fear

#2 (miracle of life, breathing, sense of life is to live, try to stop breathing,  .. i hope i will find this short+funny wisdom, too)

#3 ten quotes

eof