1 · Learn1 of 6 · 10 min
The essence of Śrīla Prabhupāda's Introduction in a few minutes, then begin. Everything else is folded below for when you want more.
In one line
Read the Gītā the way its speaker, Kṛṣṇa, directs, like a medicine taken by the directions on the label.
“If we want to take a particular medicine, then we have to follow the directions written on the label. We cannot take the medicine according to our own whim or the direction of a friend. It must be taken according to the directions on the label or the directions given by a physician. Similarly, Bhagavad-gītā should be taken or accepted as it is directed by the speaker Himself.”
1 · The essence
Arjuna's trouble on the battlefield is the trouble every one of us carries. The Gītā was spoken to answer it.
“The purpose of Bhagavad-gītā is to deliver mankind from the nescience of material existence. Every man is in difficulty in so many ways, as Arjuna also was in difficulty in having to fight the Battle of Kurukṣetra.”
Not some verses and not others, and no meaning of our own laid on top.
“One is not allowed to accept one portion of Bhagavad-gītā and not another. No. We must accept Bhagavad-gītā without interpretation, without deletion and without our own whimsical participation in the matter.”
This is what all the reading leads to, while you keep doing your duty.
“This is the art, and this is also the secret of Bhagavad-gītā: total absorption in the thought of Śrī Kṛṣṇa.”
2 · One verse in six steps
Every Gītā verse page on this site follows this order. One verse studied well is better than many read quickly.
Kṛṣṇa is speaking. Take the verse as He directs.
Read the Sanskrit, then each word with its meaning.
Let the translation say what it says, without adding your own meaning.
Hear the verse through the disciplic succession.
Ask: where does this verse meet my life, my trouble, my doubt?
Carry one instruction into your work today.
3 · Start now
Begin with one verse today, at a fixed time you can keep tomorrow.
Go deeper
Each of these opens to more of the Introduction in Śrīla Prabhupāda's own words. You do not need them to start.
Arjuna's trouble on the battlefield is the trouble every one of us carries. The Gītā was spoken to answer it.
“The purpose of Bhagavad-gītā is to deliver mankind from the nescience of material existence. Every man is in difficulty in so many ways, as Arjuna also was in difficulty in having to fight the Battle of Kurukṣetra.”
Not to stop acting, but to act in a pure way.
“The Bhagavad-gītā teaches that we have to purify this materially contaminated consciousness. In pure consciousness, our actions will be dovetailed to the will of the īśvara, and that will make us happy. It is not that we have to cease all activities. Rather, our activities are to be purified, and purified activities are called bhakti.”
Our eternal nature is to serve. The Gītā brings it back to life.
“…the whole purpose of Bhagavad-gītā is to revive our sanātana occupation, or sanātana-dharma, which is the eternal occupation of the living entity.”
This world is temporary. The Gītā tells of the eternal world and how to reach it.
“All of this information is given in Bhagavad-gītā, and we are given through its instruction information how to leave the material world and begin a truly blissful life in the spiritual sky.”
Kṛṣṇa is speaking on every page. Read it to hear what He means, not what we would like Him to mean.
“The speaker of Bhagavad-gītā is Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. He is mentioned on every page of Bhagavad-gītā as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Bhagavān.”
The Gītā comes down from teacher to student, as Kṛṣṇa Himself describes in 4.1–3.
“We have to receive knowledge from the proper source in disciplic succession beginning with the supreme spiritual master, the Lord Himself, and handed down to a succession of spiritual masters.”
Not some verses and not others, and no meaning of our own laid on top.
“One is not allowed to accept one portion of Bhagavad-gītā and not another. No. We must accept Bhagavad-gītā without interpretation, without deletion and without our own whimsical participation in the matter.”
Words from someone of this world carry four defects. Kṛṣṇa's words do not.
“Vedic knowledge is not a question of research. Our research work is imperfect because we are researching things with imperfect senses.”
Evaṁ paramparā-prāptam (BG 4.2).
“Here the Lord informs Arjuna that this system of yoga, the Bhagavad-gītā, was first spoken to the sun-god, and the sun-god explained it to Manu, and Manu explained it to Ikṣvāku, and in that way, by disciplic succession, one speaker after another, this yoga system has been coming down.”
This Bhagavad-gītā As It Is is received through this disciplic succession:
Kṛṣṇa · Brahmā · Nārada · Vyāsa · Madhva · Padmanābha · Nṛhari · Mādhava · Akṣobhya · Jaya Tīrtha · Jñānasindhu · Dayānidhi · Vidyānidhi · Rājendra · Jayadharma · Puruṣottama · Brahmaṇya Tīrtha · Vyāsa Tīrtha · Lakṣmīpati · Mādhavendra Purī · Īśvara Purī, (Nityānanda, Advaita) · Lord Caitanya · Rūpa, (Svarūpa, Sanātana) · Raghunātha, Jīva · Kṛṣṇadāsa · Narottama · Viśvanātha · (Baladeva), Jagannātha · Bhaktivinoda · Gaurakiśora · Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī · A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
bhakto ’si me sakhā ca
you are My devotee and My friend
Come to the Gītā the way Arjuna did: as a devotee and friend of Kṛṣṇa, not as a critic.
“Therefore Bhagavad-gītā is best understood by a person who has qualities similar to Arjuna’s.”
brahma-jijñāsā
inquiry into the Absolute
Bring your real questions: why do I suffer, where did I come from, where will I go?
“Therefore those who begin to question why they are suffering or where they came from and where they shall go after death are proper students for understanding Bhagavad-gītā.”
Brahma-sūtra, quoted in the Introduction
sarvam etad ṛtaṁ manye
I accept all that You say as true
Accept Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, at least in theory to begin with, and read in a humble mood.
“Unless one reads the Bhagavad-gītā in a submissive spirit, it is very difficult to understand Bhagavad-gītā, because it is a great mystery.”
sa gurum evābhigacchet
one must approach a spiritual master
Learn from someone already living it, and hear the Gītā from those who have realized it.
“Tad-vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum evābhigacchet: one must approach a person who is already in the practice.”
Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, quoted in the Introduction
kariṣye vacanaṁ tava
I shall act according to Your word
The reading is complete when it changes what you do. Arjuna began the Gītā refusing to act and ended it ready to follow Kṛṣṇa.
“Purified consciousness means acting in accordance with the instructions of the Lord. This is the whole sum and substance of purified consciousness.”
“Arjuna said: You are the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the ultimate abode, the purest, the Absolute Truth. You are the eternal, transcendental, original person, the unborn, the greatest. All the great sages such as Nārada, Asita, Devala and Vyāsa confirm this truth about You, and now You Yourself are declaring it to me. O Kṛṣṇa, I totally accept as truth all that You have told me. Neither the demigods nor the demons, O Lord, can understand Your personality.”
“The subject of the Bhagavad-gītā entails the comprehension of five basic truths.”
Īśvara
God
“Similarly, the Supreme Lord is the driver under whose direction everything is working.”
Jīva
The soul
“A particle of gold is also gold, a drop of water from the ocean is also salty, and similarly we the living entities, being part and parcel of the supreme controller, īśvara, or Bhagavān, Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, have all the qualities of the Supreme Lord in minute quantity because we are minute īśvaras, subordinate īśvaras.”
Prakṛti
Material nature
“The manifestation of the world is not accepted as false; it is accepted as real, but temporary.”
Karma
Action
“We are suffering or enjoying the results of our activities from time immemorial, but we can change the results of our karma, or our activity, and this change depends on the perfection of our knowledge.”
Kāla
Time
“Above these modes there is eternal time, and by a combination of these modes of nature and under the control and purview of eternal time there are activities, which are called karma.”
Our karma is not our fate forever.
“Therefore we stated that of the five items (īśvara, jīva, prakṛti, time and karma) four are eternal, whereas karma is not eternal.”
Like the hands that feed the stomach, we are happy by serving the whole.
“The central figure of creation and of enjoyment is the Supreme Lord, and the living entities are cooperators. By cooperation they enjoy.”
What fills our reading fills our mind, and what fills our mind is what we remember at the end.
“Just as materialists engage their minds in reading newspapers, magazines and so many materialistic literatures, we must transfer our reading to these literatures which are given to us by Vyāsadeva; in that way it will be possible for us to remember the Supreme Lord at the time of death.”
Kṛṣṇa did not send Arjuna to the forest. He asked him to remember Him while he did his work.
“Therefore, Arjuna, you should always think of Me in the form of Kṛṣṇa and at the same time continue your prescribed duty of fighting. With your activities dedicated to Me and your mind and intelligence fixed on Me, you will attain Me without doubt.”
Of the nine ways of devotion, hearing is the easiest, and it is the door to all the rest.
“These nine processes, of which the easiest is śravaṇam, hearing the Bhagavad-gītā from the realized person, will turn one to the thought of the Supreme Being.”
Kṛṣṇa's “remember Me” and Lord Caitanya's “always chant” are the same instruction.
“Therefore we have to practice remembering the Lord always, twenty-four hours a day, by chanting His names and molding our life’s activities in such a way that we can remember Him always.”
Gītā-māhātmya 1
“…if one properly follows the instructions of Bhagavad-gītā, one can be freed from all the miseries and anxieties of life.”
Gītā-māhātmya 2
“If one reads Bhagavad-gītā very sincerely and with all seriousness, then by the grace of the Lord the reactions of his past misdeeds will not act upon him.”
Gītā-māhātmya 3
“One may cleanse himself daily by taking a bath in water, but if one takes a bath even once in the sacred Ganges water of Bhagavad-gītā, for him the dirt of material life is altogether vanquished.”
Gītā-māhātmya 4
“This one book, Bhagavad-gītā, will suffice, because it is the essence of all Vedic literatures and especially because it is spoken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead.”
Gītā-māhātmya 5
“Bhagavad-gītā is the essential nectar of the Mahābhārata, and it is spoken by Lord Kṛṣṇa Himself, the original Viṣṇu.”
Gītā-māhātmya 6
“This Gītopaniṣad, Bhagavad-gītā, the essence of all the Upaniṣads, is just like a cow, and Lord Kṛṣṇa, who is famous as a cowherd boy, is milking this cow. Arjuna is just like a calf, and learned scholars and pure devotees are to drink the nectarean milk of Bhagavad-gītā.”
Gītā-māhātmya 7
“…let there be one scripture only, one common scripture for the whole world – Bhagavad-gītā.”
Why read the Gītā “As It Is”? Aren't all editions the same?
Śrīla Prabhupāda gave this edition because the commentaries he had seen put forward their writers' own views instead of Kṛṣṇa's.
“…none of them can be strictly said to be authoritative because in almost every one of them the commentator has expressed his own opinions without touching the spirit of Bhagavad-gītā as it is.”
Is Kṛṣṇa a great teacher, or more than that?
Arjuna accepted Him as the Supreme, and so do the great ācāryas. Reading with that understanding is what opens the book.
“One should not think that he is equal to Kṛṣṇa, nor should he think that Kṛṣṇa is an ordinary personality or even a very great personality. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead.”
I'm not learned. Can I really understand it?
Yes. No one is barred. What matters is to take Kṛṣṇa as the goal of life.
“One does not need highly developed intelligence. The point is that anyone who accepts the principle of bhakti-yoga and accepts the Supreme Lord as the summum bonum of life, as the highest target, the ultimate goal, can approach the Lord in the spiritual sky.”
Do I have to give up my work or family?
No. The Gītā was spoken to a man in the middle of his duty, and it asks you to remember Kṛṣṇa in the middle of yours.
“He does not advise Arjuna simply to remember Him and give up his occupation. No, the Lord never suggests anything impractical.”
Is the Gītā only for Hindus?
It speaks about the eternal nature of every living being, which is service, not about belonging to a sect.
“Therefore, sanātana-dharma does not refer to any sectarian process of religion. It is the eternal function of the eternal living entities in relationship with the eternal Supreme Lord.”
Can I learn it on my own?
Read every day by yourself, and also learn from devotees who are already practising it.
“This is not a very difficult process. However, one must learn it from an experienced person.”
How should I read it?
Carefully, attentively and regularly. One verse a day at a fixed time is a good beginning.
“In conclusion, Bhagavad-gītā is a transcendental literature which one should read very carefully.”
The sum and substance
“If one adopts the principles enunciated in Bhagavad-gītā, he can make his life perfect and make a permanent solution to all the problems of life. This is the sum and substance of the entire Bhagavad-gītā.”
“Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear.”
Read the full Introduction on Vedabase.io