My Spiritual Journey with Karma Yoga

I don’t know about you, but the spirit of sacrifice and service has never come easy for me. In the early days of my spiritual journey, due to my self-absorption in “taking care of Number 1,” I used to cringe whenever Swami Satchidananda (Gurudev) talked about Karma...

The Bhagavad Gita in Daily Life: Part 6, The Inner Battlefield

In Part 5 of this series, we went over the first verse of the first chapter. I’d like to skip ahead now to the twentieth verse of the first chapter where Arjuna says to Sri Krishna: “Place my chariot in the middle of the two armies, O Krishna, so that I may behold...

The Bhagavad Gita in Daily Life: Part 5, Unclouding Our Judgment

In part 4 of this series, we talked about Dhritarāśhtra, the blind king. We can consider him to be manas, the lower mind. And we also talked about Sanjaya, his minister, who we said could be considered our conscience. The king is blind, but he is not deaf. He does...

The Bhagavad Gita in Daily Life: Part 4, The Inner Voice

In Part 3 of this series, we read the first verse of the first chapter, and we were introduced to the blind King Dhritarāśhtra. This week I’d like to introduce us to Sanjaya. Let me share the first verse again: “Dhritarāśhtra asked, What did the Pāndavās and my sons...

The Bhagavad Gita in Daily Life: Part 3, Spiritual Blindness

This series continues with part 3, in which we’re going to start at the very beginning. I remember, growing up, Julie Andrews singing in the film The Sound of Music, “A very good place to start . . .” So we’ll start with chapter 1, verse 1 of the Bhagavad Gita. Take a...