About Swami Sivananda’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita One of the most powerful lessons my father taught me was that religion is merely a human practice of giving different names to the same Divinity. He used the comparison that his Identity Documents said Loganathan, his friends and family called him Selva or Uncle Selva, and I called him Dad. Our relationships with him may be different and defined by what we call him but the essence of who he is remains unchanged by how he is approached. It is the same with the Divine. Regardless of whether we call them God, Shiva, Shakti, Christ, Mohammed, Yahweh... Whatever other names we use, the essence of their divinity and their teaching remain the same. This gave me the freedom to attend church services and even Catechism with my Christian cousins and friends. We celebrated Eid with Muslim friends but I only went to Mosque once as a child. I turned 21 on a kibbutz in Israel. Zikim was the base from which I explored the rest of the country. This included Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, walking the 18 Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem, seeing the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and visiting both the sites where the burial and resurrection of Christ are believed to have occurred. It is interesting for me now to see how the focus of the Middle East conflict is often misunderstood as a religious war between Jews and Muslims. Having spent time exploring shuls and mosques equally, the similarities were mind boggling. Both always has headscarves at the entrances for women who were not of the faith and didn’t know to wear our own. The requirements for foods to be halaal or kosher are also not very different. Fridays are significant days in both religions. You get the point. My Dad’s teaching that the essence of Divinity transcends religion was being proved yet again. This is possibly the reason I glossed over the details of the deities, ritual practice, and Holy Books of individual religions. At some point I realized that they were all fighting each other about which Messiah was the true voice of God when all the teachers said the same thing, “Go out and practise love above all else.” The last three years in Greece have been my first experience of a monotheistic culture. The Greek Orthodox Church dominates all other forms of Christianity. I have not seen a single Mosque, Temple or Shul since I’ve been here. Interestingly enough that seems to make people want to know more about my culture. In the process of trying to explain Hinduism, I became embarrassingly aware of how little I actually know. It feels appropriate that my decision to study the Bhagavad Gita was made on 21 October 2023. It is the 7th day of Navratri (a nine day celebration of the different manifestations of the Goddess Durga). Apparently the focus of today is the victory of knowledge over ignorance. Navratri 2023 I have vague recollections of Navratri prayers as a child. There was a group of 9 statues at the entrance to the temple we attended. I don’t remember ever having learned the names of all her avatars. This is what I found when I heard mention of Navratri in a global peace initiative Whatsapp group. Nine Forms Of Goddess Durga
Pratipada (October 15, 2023) – Orange The first day, devoted to Goddess Shailputri, brings wealth and wishes. Orange is worn on this day to bring luck and blessings. Dwitiya (October 16, 2023) – White Goddess Brahmacharini is worshipped for wisdom and understanding on the second day. Her favorite color is white, which represents purity and enlightenment. Tritiya (October 17, 2023) – Red On day three, grace and valour goddess Chandraghanta is adored. Red symbolizes power and defense. This color is said to offer positivity, power, and courage on Tritiya Tithi. Chaturthi (Oct 18, 2023) – Blue (Royal blue) On the fourth day, Goddess Kushmanda is worshipped for her darkness-eliminating force. Royal blue represents power and wealth, invoking Goddess Kushmanda for health and fortune. Panchami (October 19, 2023) – Yellow On the fifth day, devotees worship Skandamata for happiness, peace, and wealth. Her favorite color, yellow, brings happiness and abundance to houses. Sashti (October 20, 2023) – Green Goddess Katyayani, worshipped on day six, symbolizes peace. Her favorite color is nature’s green. It represents balance and progress, bringing harmony to life. Saptami (October 21, 2023) – Grey Kalaratri, the ferocious aspect of Durga, is celebrated on the seventh day. Grey represents strength and resilience, symbolizing knowledge’s victory over ignorance. Ashtami (October 22, 2023) – Purple On day eight, Mahagauri is worshipped. She is said to grant her followers tranquility and endurance. Her favorite color is purple, which represents purity, peace, and divinity. Navami (October 23, 2023) – Peacock Green The spiritual power caretaker Goddess Siddhidatri is honored on the ninth day. She is adored for success and wealth. Her favorite color, peacock green, symbolizes knowledge, wisdom, and the end of ignorance. I’m putting in citations and hyperlinks immediately after the research throughout this article for ease of reference. The above is quoted from Neha – 2023. You can find the full article here. Neha. “9 Colours of Navratri 2023: Check the Date-Wise Colours List!” RajNeetUG, 16 Oct. 2023, rajneetug2022.in/9-colours-of-navratri/. Accessed 21 Oct. 2023. The Bhagavad Gita My relationship with the Gita Let’s start with an embarrassing confession. I have never read the Bhagavad Gita. You would think that growing up in a Hindu household it would be compulsory reading but it wasn’t. There was an awareness of the vast collection of Upanishads and Vedas. My paternal extended family gathered once a year to discuss the predictions and teachings of Shree Veerabogavasinthryar. Every child grew up with a basic understanding of the decline in human values and morality in the age of Kaliyuga. The specific patriarchal slant and equating blind obedience with respect coloured the tone of these readings and discussions for me. I wish my Dad had made the effort to translate the Tamil scripture and have real conversations with me about it in English. My childhood experience of the Gita was similar I suppose to the average Christian child’s experience of the Bible. The morals of the scripture are interpreted by adults and condensed into stories for children. The entirety of original text becomes almost irrelevant in the practice of the beliefs as a religion. (I’ll resist the urge to go off on a tangent here.) The point is that while I was familiar with the gist of the story, I had never read an entire translation. Thanks to the pressures of the apartheid government very few people of my generation are fluent in any of the Indian languages. I understand the conversational Tamil spoken by my gran and her siblings but the only word I can read or write is AUM. My Dad looked at an English translation once and made some disparaging comments about white people trying to understand Eastern Philosophy. This was in the 1980s. On Wednesday the 23rd of August 2000, I went down to the smoking area outside my office for a break. Two drags into the cigarette I felt light headed and dizzy. I co-worker helped me back to into the building and called my husband to take me home. My next conscious memory is waking up on Saturday the 26th and asking my husband about the Greek Goddess Athena. Somewhere in the days of drifting between levels of consciousness came the clarity that I was pregnant and the being growing inside me was Athena. My husband was sceptical as I had only missed one of my birth control injections. It should have been at least a year (more likely two) before I was able to get pregnant. A visit to the gynaecologist on the 28th (my Dad’s birthday) confirmed that there was indeed a human growing in my womb. I was 4 weeks pregnant. Most women would not have even started worrying about a missed period yet. People showed varying levels of disbelief in my absolute conviction that she was a girl and would be named Athena. I never even considered boys names. The day she was born my grandmother went to the temple to find out what letter her name was meant to start with according to the time of her birth. You guessed it – A or E. My gran was ecstatic that she had a great granddaughter who could take her name (Elma) Interestingly my mother-in-law’s name was Evangeline. So our daughter is officially Athena Elma Evangeline Siokos. Our son made his presence known with even more confidence. Athena had been saying for years that she wanted to be an older sister. The awareness slowly grew that there was another child who was meant for us. His name would be Arjuna. On my 35th birthday I told Costa that if we were going to do anything about this it would have to be that year (2009) because 35 was my cut off point for a second pregnancy. He said that we could stop trying not to get pregnant. Less than a month later we were at a gynaecologist again. There was a tiny dot on the ultra sound that he said, “could possibly be a yolk sac but it was too soon to tell” Arjuna Constantine Logan Siokos was born on the 11th October 2009. You would think that having a soul called Arjuna communicate with me before birth to let me know that I was going to carry him into this world would be enough to get me to read the damn book. I tried. Honestly, I did. The language was too flowery. The obsequiousness of the devotees was irritating. I just couldn’t get past the first few pages. This morning I had a conversation with Costa about how I’ve learned more about the depth of Hindu culture in the last three years than I had in an entire childhood of practising the rituals. He suggested that maybe it was time for me to give the Gita another try. The copy of a translation that I am reading now was given to my husband more than 30 years ago. It turns out that it was printed at a Divine Life Society ashram in Durban where I spent a week at a retreat when I was teenager. Perhaps the personal experience of having sat in meditation with Swami Sahajananda, the Founder of the Divine Life Society in Durban, (who was asked by Swami Sivananda himself to print and share this translation and commentary of the Bhagavad Gita) will make it easier to read the book this time. Find out more about the Divine Life Society here. “Home.” Www.sivananda.dls.org.za, www.sivananda.dls.org.za/. Accessed 21 Oct. 2023. If you would like to read along with me – here is a link to a free online edition. www.dlshq.org/download2/bgita.pdf Update: I have just looked at the online version. If we decide to start a group discussion I may have to post pics of the 1968 first edition by Swami Sivananda. Starting the conversation
I have read the all of the front pieces (publisher's note, foreword, preface, and introduction) and done some research into the history of this particular edition. Please let me know if you are interested in reading and discussing the discourses with me. Who know where it could lead?
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