Gems from the Gita
One verse of the Bhagavad Gita, read for what it asks of an ordinary week. Every Sunday, live on Zoom, taught by Vyasa Dass. Join any week; no reading is needed beforehand.
- When
- Sundays, 15:00 SAST · 60 minutes In your time: Sunday 15:00 SAST
- Next class
- Sunday, 15:00 SAST
- Where
- Live on Zoom, from anywhere The link arrives by email once you register.
- Cost
- Free Voluntary contributions keep the classes free.
- Teacher
- Vyasa Dass, Principal Faculty
- Language
- English. Open to all; no prior reading of Vedanta is needed.
Vyasa reads one verse, then puts it beside a scene from the week: a staff theft, a fuel price rise that changes the numbers, a doctor looking at fifteen patients in the waiting room. The verse gets one plain definition, the Sanskrit word gets its literal meaning, and the class ends with a minute of silence and one reflection to carry into the week. Questions are welcome throughout.
The class is an interactive place to discuss, question and analyse the philosophy. Its teachers are graduates of the three-year residential course at the Vedanta Academy in India. After you register you can join the WhatsApp group, where the week’s key points are shared the next day.
Every Sunday, in your own time zone
The class is taught at 15:00 South African time. The calendar reads your device’s time zone and shows every class in it, including the day, so a Sunday afternoon in Durban shows as Sunday morning in Los Angeles.
Classes and cohorts
Gems from the Gita every Sunday, the short course on Fridays, and the retreat in Bhutan.
About the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita means “song of the Lord”. The text begins with the word dharma, essential nature, and ends with the word mama, mine. Put together, they name its theme: my essential Being. The purpose of life is to realise it.
Along the way the Gita brings to light the higher aspirations and lower desires that live in every one of us, and gives practical ways to let the first govern the second. The class reads Swami A. Parthasarathy’s commentary, which carries the text, a transliteration, word meanings, a translation and a topic-wise division of each chapter, so you can follow the flow of thought from one verse to the next.
Aldous Huxley called the Gita one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed. You can buy the commentary on our books page, and you can attend without it.
Chapter 18, verses 54 to 56: devotion and pure love
Chapter 18 is called the yoga of liberation through renunciation. Liberation means freedom. We are bound by everything and everyone, and we cannot escape from the world, so the chapter explains how freedom is found inside a full life. Three of its verses are about devotion and love, which Vedanta treats as the true nature of a human being, now clouded by attachment and personal motive.
Becoming Brahman, serene in the Self, he neither grieves nor desires; alike to all beings, he attains the supreme devotion to Me.
By devotion he knows Me in essence, what and who I am; then, knowing Me in essence, he forthwith enters into That.
Performing all actions, always taking refuge in Me, by My grace he reaches the eternal, indestructible abode.
Translations from Swami A. Parthasarathy’s commentary. In class, each verse gets one scene and one question before the next one is read.
One idea you can explain to someone else, and one thing to try before next week
In an hour you will see why the mind grabs what is pleasant and puts off what is good for you, and you will leave with one practice for the morning and one for the end of the day. Come for a few weeks and the verses start to join up into a way of reading your own week.
Register once, and the link comes every week
Tell us your name and email, and we send the Zoom link. If you cannot make a week, nothing is lost; the next verse waits.