The Bhagavad-gita has been my go-to book for wisdom, devotion, and overall spiritual rejuvenation for nearly three decades.
Many of its verses feel like close personal friends to me. Just as we get to know more about our friends when we interact with them in different situations, similarly, looking at the verses of the Gita from different perspectives has been one of the most intellectually and spiritually rewarding activities of my life.
The over 5,000 articles I have written reflecting on the Gita's verses published on Gitadaily.com are the fruits of this multidimensional approach to the Gita.
How I wrote Prayers Inspired by Bhagavad Gita
This book is the result of a prayerful approach to the Gita's verses. Over the last few years especially in recent months-I have increasingly felt that my approach to scripture had become overly analytical, leading to a deficiency in the devotional dimension of my scriptural study and teaching.
Therefore, I resolved to deliberately cultivate an overall attitude of prayerfulness, enriching my devotional side.
While I love memorizing Sanskrit and Bengali verses and find them deeply enriching, I also felt the need to articulate prayers in my own words, expressing my understanding, concerns, and aspirations. Nothing, at least in my experience, expresses one's heart as much as words that come from the heart-contrasted with words that merely come from the head.
Thus, I decided to explore a prayerful approach to the Bhagavad-gita. This approach has emerged from three distinct contexts: practical, scriptural, and traditional.
Practical Context: Whenever I am asked to give japa talks
to inspire devotees to chant more attentively, I tend to connect my reflections on chanting with a prayerful reference to a verse from the Bhagavad-gita. Several of those who heard the talks found the connection between devotional chanting and a philosophical Gita verse intriguing. Many mentioned that they had never considered such a connection before, and I, in turn, found it intriguing that they found it intriguing. This led me to feel that exploring such a connection would be a valuable and tangible way to both expand my own exploration of the Gita and share my appreciation of its multifaceted nature.
Scriptural Context: While I have read many commentaries
and books on the Gita, the one that has influenced me the most is Bhagavad-gita As It Is by Srila Prabhupada. His commentary adopts a consistently devotional approach, even to verses that don't seem explicitly devotional. I sought to explore this devotional emphasis by approaching the Gita through prayers.
Traditional Context: I found a direct precedent for composing prayers on Gita verses in the devotional prayer compilation Mukunda-mala Stotra (Text 49). In that verse, the devotee calls upon the Lord to lift them out of the ocean of material existence-a sentiment that closely parallels Krishna's assurance in the Gita (12.7) that he will swiftly deliver those who fix their mind and heart on him.
Five Components of Each Prayer-Reflection Having described how I came to write this book, I now describe its contents and how readers may find it useful. This book contains 122 prayers based on the first six chapters of the Bhagavad-gita.
I plan to create similar sets of 122 reflections on the middle six chapters and the final six chapters, so that eventually, there will be 366 prayers one for each day of the year.
Vedas (1182)
Upanishads (493)
Puranas (624)
Ramayana (741)
Mahabharata (354)
Dharmasastras (165)
Goddess (496)
Bhakti (242)
Saints (1503)
Gods (1290)
Shiva (370)
Journal (187)
Fiction (60)
Vedanta (362)
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