(RNS) — When Patita Pavana Das was a sophomore at Indiana State University, he considered his life pretty typical: geoscience student by day, partaker in the school’s party culture by night. But as he learned more about the Earth’s billion-year history, Das, now 28, felt a nagging sense of dissatisfaction — a feeling that “there’s been a fundamental error” in how humans coexist with the natural world and each other.
That feeling became a “determination,” he said recently, “that I was going to seek out what would make me happy before I was pushed into a life path I didn’t feel was being defined by myself.”
“I felt that life was much more simple than it was being made out to be.”
Everything clicked when a group of saffron-robed Hare Krishnas arrived on his college campus, sharing copies of the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu Scripture that teaches the way to a soulful, enlightened life. Though not religious, Das accepted the book and soon after started on the dharmic path it described.
On Wednesday (Dec. 11), Das celebrated Gita Jayanti, the day that many Hindus believe Lord Krishna spoke the words of the Bhagavad Gita to the Indian Prince Arjuna more than 5,000 years ago. The anniversary is especially revered by the more than 9 million members of ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, as the Hare Krishna organization is officially known.
Nowadays, Das is a full-time Brahmacharya, or monk, living at ISKON’s Houston temple who spends his days chanting, dancing and praying with other yogis. And he is the one distributing the Bhagavad Gita.
“It’s become my law book,” he said. “It’s the law book for human life. By going out, we’re acting as representatives of the Lord, and we’re coming in contact with these persons who are on their journey of self discovery, their journey of reawakening, their love for Krishna.”
It’s estimated that than 500 million copies of the “Bhagavad Gita As It Is,” a translation of the ancient text by ISKCON’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, have been passed out by devotees worldwide. Prabhupada’s version emphasizes Bhakti, or devotion to Krishna, and the chanting of his name as the ultimate path to spiritual realization, as understood in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism.
The Gita itself is a dialogue between Krishna and the warrior prince Arjuna in the midst of the Battle of Kurukshetra, which is also recounted in the ancient epic called the Mahabharata. Arjuna is paralyzed by moral doubts as he prepares to engage in a bloody war against friends, family and revered teachers. Krishna, serving as his charioteer, tells Arjuna, in 700 lines of verse, the importance of duty (dharma), the distinction between the body and the eternal soul (atma) and how to live a life of purpose and detachment.
This week ISKCON temples are hosting special events for the Gita. Das’ temple in Houston has a goal of distributing 4,500 copies of the book this month and recited its verses in Sanskrit all day Wednesday.
In Potomac, Maryland, congregants at one of the oldest ISKCON houses of worship recited the entire text of Prabhupada’s translation over Zoom, a feat that takes almost three hours. The experience, says temple president Ananda Bloch, is “like a dip in a sacred river.”
Bloch was already a vegetarian, a reader of philosophy and a practitioner of yoga when she arrived as an immigrant from Ireland in the 1980s. But the book “answered all of my questions,” she said. “It’s offering guidance, it’s offering insights, and it’s just offering a way to negotiate the world and figure out how to live the best life.”
“The Gita is, on many levels, a very technical book about the different kinds of yogas one can practice in life, but it’s also very much an emotional book about Krishna, about Arjuna having his breakdown, about Krishna being there for him,” she said. “Today, we are reminded again how this book is a companion. It’s a friend, and should always be close by.”
Like many longtime devotees, Bloch has seen the burgeoning of ISKCON as an organization over the years, but as the Gita itself teaches, she said, coming to a loving, intimate relationship with Krishna is a choice one makes individually. Proselytizing, or forcing a devotion to God on others, she added, is not the goal of distributing it.
“Education is ultimately about the ability to make the right choices in life, the choices that help you grow spiritually, and that’s what the Bhagavad Gita is about,” she said. “It’s important to share this information with everybody in the world and anybody who’s interested, not in a mood of religious conversion, but in a mood of ‘This is really lived wisdom that can add something beautiful to your life.’”
Nikhil Trivedi, the priest at ISKCON’s very first temple, in New York City, said the tradition preaches that “our deepest pleasure comes not from possessing, but from giving; not in controlling, but in sharing. It lies in making meaningful contributions by serving others and connecting to each other and to God through reciprocation of love.”
Pioneers in celebrating Giya Jayanti in the U.S., the members of Trivedi’s temple have hosted a full recitation of the Gita every year by the temple’s Sunday school students, who are of all ages and backgrounds, a reminder, he said, that “we come from diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds, but we share in an enthusiasm for life that comes by knowing the happiness that is found within.”
