Gyan
It's amazing how knowledge can extinguish all negativity. 'Knowledge' ofcourse is called 'gyan' by the more philosophically inclined among us. When I was a kid, my mother told me that the Bhagwat Gita was read in houses where a beloved family member had just passed away. Now this was not something she specifically took me aside and instructed me on, but it's just something that stuck out in my head among all the other things we talked about that day. Naturally, I was curious as to why one could not read one's holy book, the Bhagwat Gita when one wanted to, but must wait for someone to die before he could read it. My notions were misplaced ofcourse, but I lived with only a midly skeptical acceptance of this belief for a long time.
The reason the Gita is specifically recommended to members of a family who have just lost someone dear relates to the content of Lord Krishna's address to Arjuna. Immortalised in the famous sanskrit shloka, Krishna asks Arjuna to perform his duty without worrying about the results of his actions. I haven't read the Gita myself but I am told that apart from this central (?) theme in Krishna's address, it holds a treasure of 'gyan' that tells man about the nature of the universe. In other words, it tells us about the truth. It is this truth thats brings peace to the troubled minds of those who read it. From this I inferred that assertion or realization of what one believes is the truth brings peace to the mind.
In the mahabharata war, Krishna serves as Arjuna's charioteer. In the physical world we live in, the setting of the Gita is a reflection of our lives. We, the mortal men are Arjuna, the war is the life that we lead, each one of us in our own war, and the Lord himself is our charioteer, guiding us through our war, from one point to the next.
This sounds almost like a poetic allusion set up specifically by Ved Vyasa to instruct the reader of the epic rather than to narrate true happenings. Still, if it really did happen, the allusion was probably set up by the Lord hiself so later, we could all see it clearly ! :)
I realised sometime later that the concept of reading the book in a mourning house had evolved as a superstition through distortion of the true idea behind the reading of the book, viz. to provide peace to the troubled minds of the mourners. Instead people had actually begun interpreting this as "if you read this book then it may cause a 'war' in your family or someone's death'. Ridiculous.
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The reason the Gita is specifically recommended to members of a family who have just lost someone dear relates to the content of Lord Krishna's address to Arjuna. Immortalised in the famous sanskrit shloka, Krishna asks Arjuna to perform his duty without worrying about the results of his actions. I haven't read the Gita myself but I am told that apart from this central (?) theme in Krishna's address, it holds a treasure of 'gyan' that tells man about the nature of the universe. In other words, it tells us about the truth. It is this truth thats brings peace to the troubled minds of those who read it. From this I inferred that assertion or realization of what one believes is the truth brings peace to the mind.
In the mahabharata war, Krishna serves as Arjuna's charioteer. In the physical world we live in, the setting of the Gita is a reflection of our lives. We, the mortal men are Arjuna, the war is the life that we lead, each one of us in our own war, and the Lord himself is our charioteer, guiding us through our war, from one point to the next.
This sounds almost like a poetic allusion set up specifically by Ved Vyasa to instruct the reader of the epic rather than to narrate true happenings. Still, if it really did happen, the allusion was probably set up by the Lord hiself so later, we could all see it clearly ! :)
I realised sometime later that the concept of reading the book in a mourning house had evolved as a superstition through distortion of the true idea behind the reading of the book, viz. to provide peace to the troubled minds of the mourners. Instead people had actually begun interpreting this as "if you read this book then it may cause a 'war' in your family or someone's death'. Ridiculous.
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