Message of the Gita

By

Sri Swami Sivananda

This article is from the book Ethics of the Bhagavad Gita.

Blessed Immortal Souls!

My amiable friends! Many Gita Jayantis have come and gone and yet the darkness of your heart has not disappeared. Become a practical man. Live in the spirit of the teachings of the Gita daily. Aspire fervently. Lead a pure life. Watch the evil Vrittis of the mind carefully and nip them in the bud. Introspect and remove your defects. Cultivate good and sublime thoughts. Do daily virtuous actions. Serve the society with a disinterested spirit. Constantly remember those Slokas of the Gita which will help you daily to lead a virtuous and divine life. Repeat them daily.

Stick to your Dharma and truthfulness. Do selfless service. Surrender yourself to the Lord. Have equal vision and balanced mind in success and failure, honour and dishonour, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow. Give the mind to the Lord and hands to the service of humanity. Be established in the vow of Brahmacharya. Give up selfishness, meanness, attachment and egoism. You will free yourself from the wheel of births and deaths, from the bonds of Karma and attain Supreme peace, eternal bliss and immortality. This is the Message of the Gita.

You may know the whole Gita by heart. You may deliver lectures on the Gita for hours together and yet you may not have a ray of the wisdom of the Gita. What is wanted is actual living a life with mental non-attachment following the teachings of the Gita.

Gita gives two Mantras for constant repetition. They are “OM” in eighth chapter and “OM TAT SAT” in the seventeenth chapter. Live in OM or OM TAT SAT, the symbol of Para Brahman or Para Brahman Itself.

Practise the three vows given in the sixteenth chapter. Develop the virtues that are enumerated in the thirteenth and the sixteenth chapters which are aids for the attainment of the Knowledge of the Self. You may fail several times and fall down but again stand up as a hero and march forward fearlessly in the spiritual path and reach the goal of life.

Srimad Bhagavad Gita is the cream of the Vedas. It is the quintessence of the Upanishads. It is an unique book for all times. The teachings of the Gita are universal and sublime. It has a message for the solace, peace, freedom and perfection of all human beings. Dive deep in the ocean of the Gita, bring out the most precious pearls of Knowledge and attain Immortality.

May the Lord grant you strength to stick to your vows, resolves, truth and Dharma. May you ever abide in Lord Krishna and His precious teachings. May you all become like Arjuna. May the life of Arjuna inspire you all with noble instincts, noble ideals. Glory to Lord Krishna! Glory to the Gita! Glory to Arjuna! Glory to those who follow the valuable teachings of the Gita.

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