The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary: Vols 1–3 (The End of Sorrow, Like a Thousand Suns, To Love Is to Know Me) (The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, 1)

samsara, ‘that which is moving intensely’ – being born, dying, being born again, dying again.

The purpose of visiting a spiritual teacher is to be reminded that there is a destination, there is a supreme goal in life, and we all have the innate capacity to undertake the journey.

as long as our knowledge is limited to intellectual analysis, we will not have the capacity to make the world more peaceful;

advaita, ‘not two.’

The Gita is a forceful call to action – but to action in which the right goal is pursued by the right means.

The language of battle is often found in the scriptures, for it conveys the strenuous, long-drawn-out campaign we must wage to free ourselves from the tyranny of the ego, the cause of all our suffering and sorrow.

One of the Shiva mantrams is called pancakshara, the ‘five-lettered’ mantram, and for me the five pebbles that David was carrying were a five-lettered mantram with which he was able to defeat his own ego.

The family has always been a symbol of unity and selfless love in spite of the serious problems that have afflicted it from time to time.

We are all granted a reasonable margin in life to make our experimentation with personal pleasure, but one day we must begin to suspect that it is not going to fulfill our deepest need, which is for Self-realization.