scholarly journals The Bhagavad Gita and the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Author(s):  
Deepak Tirkey

The Bhagavad Gita like the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola leading to spiritual enrichment points out of a meeting of heart and mind between two texts. The essence of the spirituality of the Bhagavad Gita, like the spirituality of Ignatius is the vision of God. Its spirituality is oriented towards God above the world as well as within it. Both texts offer a parallel insight for deep and authentic happiness building up a life towards God and in God. Even though the Bhagavad Gita and the Spiritual Exercises play different qualitative rolls in its own traditions, both agree that only those who have God above the visible world are able to experience God vice-versa. The quest to have God experience is an exercise involving conscious effort and constant attentiveness.

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1029
Author(s):  
Jessica Frazier

The idea of a univocal property of ‘goodness’ is not clearly found in classical Sanskrit sources; instead, a common ethical strategy was to clarify the ontological nature of the self or world in such a way that ethical implications naturally flow from the adjustment in our thinking. This article gives a synoptic reading of sources that treat features of ethics—dispositions, agents, causal systems of effect, and even values themselves—as emergent phenomena grounded in complex, shifting, porous configurations. One conclusion of this was that what ‘goodness’ entails varies according to the scope and context of our concern. Firstly, we examine how the Bhagavad Gītā fashions a utilitarianism that assumes no universal intrinsically valuable goal or Good, but aims only to sustain the world as a prerequisite for choice. Recognising that this pushes problems of identifying the Good onto the individual; secondly, we look at accounts of malleable personhood in the Caraka Saṃhitā and Book 12 of the Mahābhārata. Finally, the aesthetic theory of the Nāṭya Śāstra hints at a context-constituted conception of value itself, reminding us that evaluative emotions are themselves complex, curate-able, and can expand beyond egoism to encompass interpersonal concerns. Together these sources show aspects of an ethical worldview for which each case is a nexus in a larger ethical fabric. Each tries to pry us away from our most personal concerns, so we can reach beyond the ego to do what is of value for a wider province of which we are a part.


2019 ◽  
pp. 168-184
Author(s):  
Fred Dallmayr

The chapter reflects a redemptive hope which is sometimes called a “grounded expectation” or chaosmos, which stresses the tension between order and disorder, concord and conflict. To explicate this conundrum, the chapter turns again to Heidegger as a thinker of “difference,” for whom chaos and cosmos both inhabit the “world,” triggering a transformative struggle. To exemplify the meaning of this struggle, the chapter invokes the task of “world-maintenance” upheld, in the Indian Bhagavad Gita, in the midst of an epic battle in the Mahabharata. In the Chinese tradition, world-maintenance involves the striving for a differentiated holism of “all under heaven,” in opposition to an imperially imposed “world order” from above, and urging the cultivation of mutual learning and understanding, fostering genuine mutual respect between cultures and peoples. Heidegger’s “being-in-the-world” from this angle means a wager in favor of a peaceful cosmopolis.


2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW SARTORI

Aurobindo Ghose was a major nationalist intellectual of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who rose to prominence as one of the most radical leaders of the Swadeshi movement before retreating to the French colony of Pondicherry to dedicate his life to spiritual exercises and experiments. Aurobindo, like so many others of the nationalist period, produced a major commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. I will argue that his appeal to the Gita in the late 1910s represented, however, not a continuation of his nationalist project, but rather a radical reformulation of it in the wake of the defeat of the Swadeshi mobilization of 1905–8.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-249
Author(s):  
Jatin Bishoyi

For Bhagavad-Gita, both individual and society as a whole is dependent on three principal conditions for their existence such as Niskama karma, Svadharma and Loksamgrah.  Loksamgrah is used in a very comprehensive connotation as it not only looks at the collective well-being of this world but the universe as a whole. It is because in Loksamgrah the word ‘Loko’ does not mean only people of this world but all the beings of satyaloka, pitruloka, devaloka, bhurloka and other loka. In Gitarahasya Tilak points out, “The word ‘Loksamgrah’ has been used in the Bhagavad-Gita to mean the maintenance, not only of human beings, but that the human and all others spheres, such as of the Gods etc. should be maintained, and that they should become mutually beneficial”. True to say the recommendation of Loksamgrah on our public life have triggered concerns that public services, ranging from physical world to metaphysical world could become more imperative but in fact, it only would have minimal impact on public life i.e. it only attempts to minimize distress and problems both at individual and society levels. As a whole it could only attempt to inculcate the values of public service and integrity attitude. Radhakrishnan points out that, “Loksamgrah stands for the unity of the world, the interconnectedness of society.  If the world is not to sink into a condition of physical misery and moral degradation, if the common life is to be decent and dignified, religious ethics must control social action”.


2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. BAYLY

This essay considers the relationship between the Bhagavad Gita as a transnational text and its changing role in Indian political thought. Indian liberals used it to mark out the boundaries between the public sphere they desired and a reformed Hinduism. Indian intellectuals also used the image of Krishna to construct an all-wise founder figure for the new India. Meanwhile, in the transnational sphere of debate, the Gita came to represent India itself in the works of theosophists, spiritual relativists and a variety of intellectual radicals, who approved of the text's ambivalent view of the relationship between political action and the World Spirit. After the First World War, Indian liberals, notably Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher and later India's second president, used Krishna's words to urge a new and humane international politics infused with the ideal of “detached action”.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaunak A. Ajinkya ◽  
Deepali S. Ajinkya ◽  
Gurvinder Kalra

Indian history is one of the most ancient in the world; replete with many wars, teachings and religious beginnings. Hinduism is one of India‟s most prominent religions with the Bhagavad Gita being one of its most significant scriptures. Many authors have postulated that different psychotherapeutic methods have been used and described in Bhagavad Gita. In this article, we have explored regarding descriptions of the possible use of hypnotherapy in this holy text.


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