“The central message - why the Gita is a text that changed the world - is it gives us the secret of how to act with discipline,” she said, “with hearts joined to God.” He said that the Gita would be “as if he stops the Humvee in the middle of our driving in this weird territory, and he idles the engine and he turns to me and says, ‘By the way, I’m God.’ ”īeyond the fact that her students can make personal connections to the Gita, Patton believes in the Gita at its core. The student was completing a munitions transfer from Kuwait to Iraq, in a car with an unknown soldier as his driver. She told a story about a student of hers, a Gulf War veteran, who experienced a moment of clarity upon realizing the similarities between the Gita and his own experiences in war. “When I was asked to do the 251st translation of the Gita into English, I said, ‘There are no good reasons to do the 251st translation into English.’ ”īut Patton finds solace in her unique perspective as a woman translating the text, as well as the perspectives of the adult students she instructs in the lessons of the Gita. “It has become a world classic, spawning over 250 translations, commentaries, renderings, paraphrases and synopses,” she said. Patton, who authored a translation of the Gita for Penguin Classics, admits she is certainly not the first to interpret the sacred text in a different language. Its contents include simple and moving poetry, dense philosophy, moral musing and an explosive description of God.” “A decision in great literature can be a prism through which a culture is refracted into different modes of expression,” she said. The friction between two difficult choices represented in the Gita is a conflict shared by many other pieces of classic literature, according to Patton, such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. “Arjuna must grasp the heartbreaking fact that his enemies are his uncles and teachers and cousins,” Patton said. The primary source of conflict in the Gita, according to Patton, is the tension between Arjuna’s desire to fulfill his duties as a warrior and his commitment to protecting his relatives. “Somewhere near the Ganges, in a wooden hut … someone whose job it was to tell stories decided to tell a story about despair,” Patton said. Patton said readers will never fully know the identity of the Gita’s author, but that their decision to tell the story of Arjuna and Krishna would ultimately change the world. The Bhagavad Gita is a 2,500-year-old sacred Hindu text, written originally in Sanskrit, that delves into the conversations between a prince named Arjuna, and Krishna, Arjuna’s driver and confidant. Monday, June 24 in the Hall of Philosophy, Patton, president of Middlebury College and Hindu scholar, kicked off Chautauqua’s Interfaith Lecture Series with “That Driver Must be God: How the Bhagavad Gita Changed the World.” The lecture was the first of Week One’s interfaith theme, “Religious Moments That Changed the World.” To Laurie Patton, the Bhagavad Gita - also known as “the song of God” - represents an antidote to indecision and despair.Īt 2 p.m. Patton speaks about the ancient Hindu text, Bhagvad Gita, and how it has shaped our world Monday, June 24, 2019, at the Hall of Philosophy. President of the Middlebury College and a leading authority on South Asian history and culture, Laurie L.
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