One of the reasons why the Bhagavad Gita has such a universal appeal is the setting and atmosphere in which the dialogue between the coach and the student takes place. No other text in the world, in my view, with the exception of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, is set on the battlefield—the most intense and violent place one can imagine. A battlefield is hardly conducive to any dialogue, let alone a spiritual discourse. There, in that atmosphere, where decision-making, spontaneity, and precise skills are most critical, Krishna, the coach, administers wisdom to Arjuna—a student tottering on the verge of indecision, mental resignation, and everything a man of action shouldn’t be. Somehow, the dialogue resonates with us. Agreed, most of us are not on battlefields, but in our day-to-day lives, we do fight inner battles almost constantly. Philosophy (love of wisdom) in the West and Darshanas (ways of seeing/experiencing in the Hindu religious tradition) are both attempts to answer deep questions about oneself and one’s relationship to the world. However, if the setting for the transfer of wisdom is not correct, the answers we get from philosophy and its wisdom become dogmatic, which can quickly turn into fanaticism. There is an old saying that a man must be ripe to receive wisdom. Otherwise, any wisdom shared will end up becoming pedantic, artificial, and not valued. Merely reading all the six systems of Indian philosophy or poring over Kant’s or Schopenhauer’s worldview without any reference to what the individual is currently going through cannot lead to wisdom. At best, such knowledge can help anesthetize your questions, divert them, and give a false sense of comfort of having found answers when, in reality, such undigested knowledge is just a tenuous facade easily ruptured when faced with reality.
The Bhagavad Gita removes the ground from our feet. It says: if you want wisdom, okay, I will give it to you right in the middle of whatever you are doing and going through. Krishna, the coach, could have shared all the wisdom with Arjuna before the battle. After all, Arjuna was his favorite nephew. But that wouldn’t have solved anything; he wouldn’t have understood any of it. Arjuna had to come to the battlefield, stand in the middle of two armies, and realize the gravity of what he was about to do. Only then would his concerns, anxiety, and trepidation be his and meaningful to him. In my professional world of learning and development, we call this immersive pedagogy. We don’t teach skills in the abstract; we ground them in real-time. For instance, to become a coder, you must first feel the need to code and why coding is required. Once that realization dawns, then the student can be shown that coding not only requires programming skills but a whole lot of other things, such as attitude, behavior, tenacity, patience, and discipline. Coaching will turn into learning only when the student is ripe within—when they are not looking at problems from a distance and watching others talk about them but actually facing them right in front of them. Only then, a solution, when pointed out, not only clarifies the confusion but, mysteriously, that clarification becomes an inseparable part of oneself. In short, such learning becomes wisdom—never to be forgotten and ready to be applied in multiple contexts.
The authors of the Mahabharata understood this pedagogy well. The Indian epics flowered in ancient India during a time when philosophy was becoming abstract, codified, and distant from life. Therefore, epics ground timeless wisdom in specific stories. The setting of the song-celestial (as Matthew Arnold called the Bhagavad Gita), in the middle of the battlefield, couldn’t have been more appropriate. People all over the world relate to the Gita because of this unique setting. It immediately touches a chord. Even if large portions of the Gita (18 chapters) may not be immediately relevant, the fact that this dialogue is couched in a beautiful story whose central character—supposed to be the foremost warrior of his age—is shivering at the knees and seeks help keeps us engaged. Deep down, we recognize in ourselves a little bit of the predicament Arjuna is in when he puts down his bow and arrows, just as we identify the suffering of fellow human beings by their symptoms: that nervousness, that rumbling in the stomach, that feeling of inadequacy, that unnecessary projection into the future, and attempts to reason our way out of inaction—these are familiar symptoms. We see in Arjuna a kindred spirit. While Arjuna’s anxiety is located on a mythical battlefield, ours manifests in our modern-day workplaces and relationships. That’s the difference. However, like Arjuna, we would like to know, too, how to find meaning in our lives and our actions and how to find our true calling in this life—the only one there is.
Underlying the many nuggets of wisdom the Bhagavad Gita expounds, there are two underlying themes: find your authentic self and understand the relationship of that self to the world around you. Gita calls it Svadharma and Yoga, respectively. Svadharma is the discovery of an authentic self. And Yoga means union. The strong emphasis of the Gita is that anyone who can anchor themselves in their authentic selves will automatically tune into the rhythm of the cosmos. For such a man, there is no right or wrong, good or bad, because whatever he does will be in accord with the harmony of life. However, the issue is to find that state of naturality behind the palimpsest of accumulated notions about who one is—often obscured by acquired personality and experiences.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a renowned psychologist, calls this state of Svadharma a “flow” experience. All of us have moments when we are in a state of flow—when we are in our zone—and it feels as if, for that duration, actions get effortlessly done through us. These are rare moments, no doubt, but we are not strangers to them. Whether working in an office, writing a piece of code, playing a game, cooking, watering plants, listening to music, practicing an art form, cleaning your home, doing scientific experiments, or conversing with someone—things that we like to do—we could accidentally stumble upon such moments of pure bliss or the state of Svadharma. During that period, everything about the world looks alright. We stop worrying about outcomes, and we effortlessly focus on the present, which, to our surprise, leads to outcomes that are just appropriate in the scheme of things. That is Svadharma in action. The message of the Gita is to learn to return to this zone of action as often as we can, and if possible, permanently. Yoga is the process to get there.
In Steven Pressfield’s 1995 novel The Legend of Bagger Vance, he captures in poetic prose the essence of the Gita through the game of golf. The relationship between the caddie Bagger Vance (if you say the name Bagger Vance loudly twice or thrice, it will sound like “Bhagawan”) and the out-of-form golfer Ralph Junuh (again, Junuh rhymes with Arjuna) is that of coach and student. Of all the sports, golf is the only game where you cannot isolate yourself from your surroundings. Every blade of grass has a say in how the golf ball moves. Every undulation in the course, each tree, every cloud in the sky influences the shot, the trajectory of the ball, and its final destination. A golfer doesn’t really compete against anyone but against himself. The more important characteristic of golf is that the role of a referee is minimal. Referees interpret rules from a distance and do not scrutinize the game up close. Golf is perhaps the only game ( I know of) where a player calls a penalty on themselves. If a ball moves an inch away from the designated spot because of something the golfer did when preparing to play the shot, players voluntarily report that violation, even though there is nobody around, and chances are that no one has noticed it either. There is no buzzing electronic Hawk-Eye in golf to catch transgressions. Integrity is baked into golf DNA. That is why it is considered a gentleman’s sport and a fit game to bring out the principles of the Bhagavad Gita.
The story is set in Savannah, Georgia, during the Great Depression. Once a natural golfer, Junuh returns from the war a changed man. He is disillusioned and purposeless. A wealthy heiress in Savannah fulfills her father’s dream of building a golf course in Savannah and invites two of the best golfers in the country to an invitation match. The locals insist that Junuh should also participate. After much persuasion, Junuh agrees. His caddie Bagger Vance (a mysterious man about whom nobody knows anything) appears as Junuh’s friend and guide. During the competition, Junuh is drunk and distraught and struggles to find meaning in the game he once loved. He tries hard to find his authentic and natural swing, which is his greatest strength. But nothing seems to work for him. The more he tries, the worse his performance gets. Baggar Vance allows him to vent his anger and frustration before stepping in like Krishna in the Gita to guide Junuh to find his swing. The swing is central to golf because it is the primary motion that determines the outcome of every shot. A golfer’s ability to consistently and effectively execute a swing impacts the distance, direction, trajectory, and accuracy of his performance. Every golfer has a different grip, swing, and style, and the art is to find the right swing—that authentic swing that works for a particular golfer. After playing eighteen disastrous holes, swinging wildly and without focus, Junuh begins to find his swing on the second day. Bagger Vance helps him break through his shell, peeling away layer after layer of negativity until his authentic swing returns to Junuh and not the other way around.
Steven Pressfield’s limpid lyrical prose, beautiful descriptions of golfing nuances, and deep reading of the Bhagavad Gita shine through each page. It is a work of fiction but powerful. In 2000, Robert Redford made a film from the book starring Matt Damon as Junuh and Will Smith as Bagger Vance. It is a well-made film. It captured the essence of the book, especially the transformation of Junuh from a troubled and nervous man on the brink of collapse to a golfer who finds himself again. Robert Redford adapted the book well without making it too sentimental for Western audiences (The movie is available on YouTube for free).
The crux of this book and my essay is that every human being is good at something. Often, they don’t realize it is a special skill. For instance, a person who can run fast without much training or a person with perfect musical pitch or skill – since these capacities come naturally, they don’t take it very seriously. On the contrary, they lose these skills or forget that they even have them. The key thing is to find your authentic self and return to that which you are good at doing. The Gita beautifully says: ” Your karma badly lived is better than someone else’s Karma lived well.” Karma here means your skills and actions. In the modern world, the greatest challenge is that everyone wants to live like someone else and, in the process, forget who they are. The message of the Gita is to return to yourself. There is a stark simplicity to this message that frightens people just like Einstein E= MC2 did – so simple yet tremendously powerful.
I recommend ” The Legend of Bagger Vance” for its lyrical beauty and the beautifully constructed allegorical tale, and once you have read the book, pls do watch the movie. Both will remain with you for a long time and even trigger a change.
I wish my readers an authentic and joyful 2025 and beyond.