Dancing Beyond Thought: Bhagavad Gita Verses and Dialogues on Awakening

"Dancing Beyond Thought: Bhagavad Gita Verses and Dialogues on Awakening", my new book, has manifested.  This book was done to expand on the earlier "Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening" (HBT).  

In HBT, in the "Texts" portion, three texts were offered which i found to be the most useful in explaining the practices, results and rationale for what unfolded in my own path of nondual awakening.  HBT covered Ramana Maharshi's "Upadesa Saram", and Shankara's "Nirvana Shatakam" in some detail, but only included 12 verses from the Bhagavad Gita w/some commentary.  The Gita is particularly important as i have been challenged by folk to produce some widely-recognized, historical, philosophical text that supports my work.    

"Dancing Beyond Thought" was designed to provide a manageable number of Gita verses, sixty, focused specifically on nondual awakening, rather than to give a comprehensive discussion of all 700 verses.  The "backbone" of the selection of these sixty comes from Ramana Maharshi's, "The Song Celestial: Verses from the Bhagavad Gita".  Other verses and insights manifested from many other sources.  

Robert Oppenheimer

Other sources were “The Bhagavad Gita” by Swami Sivananda, “Bhagavad Gita With the Commentary of Shankaracharya” by Swami Gambhirananda, “The Aruna Sanskrit Language Course: Unlock the Bhagavad Gita in its Sacred Tongue” by A. K. Aruna, “Bhagavad Gita Home Study Program by Swami Dayananda Saraswati”, “The Bhagavad Gita: A Selection” by Ramesh Balsekar and the Bhagavad Gita Sanskrit course at the American Sanskrit Institute by Vyaas Houston.  Shankara's Gita, as he was the codifier of advaita Vedanta, is the most useful "complete" Gita from a nondual perspective.

Henry David Thoreau

The Gita has been translated into virtually every language.  There are over 100 different translations in English.  Many well-known folk, including Robert Oppenheimer, Aldous Huxley, Henry David Thoreau (who had the largest collection of Sanskrit writings in America in his time), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Schopenhauer were serious readers of the Gita. 

The Gita is widely regarded as one of the great books.  Although some folk regard it as a "religious" text, it is clear from the range of folk cited that it is much more a secular, psychological, philosophical text, which is how/why i was drawn to it.  

Gandhi

Entire disciplines, philosophies and teachings arose, and lives were dramatically changed from just one verse of the Gita. The famous teacher, Swami Vivikenanda, had his entire life changed by Chapter 2, Verse 3; “O, Paartha, yield not to unmanliness. This does not benefit you. O scorcher of foes, arise, giving up the petty weakness of the heart.”.

The sixty Bhagavad Gita verses are arranged in a Q&A format.  The verses are given word-by-word in Sanskrit, transliteration, and translation into English, with summary sentences and commentary.


Some verse headings:        
                                        
                                        "If I fully surrender, will the body be safe?"
                                        "How often does someone reach the Self?"
                                        "What practice, what approach, should i use to reach the Self?"
                                        "How should I deal with changes in my moods?"
                                        "What if I decide that I'm just not going to do something?"
                                        "How can I get free of the results of my actions?"
                                         "How about when others dislike or disrespect me?"
                                        "Who is responsible for good deeds and bad deeds?"
                                        "What if i don't have faith in this process or the end result?"
                                        "Is there any hope for me, I have done some really bad things?"

Here's a sample:

                     "What practice, what approach, should I use to reach the Self?

VI, 25

  शनैः              शनैः        उपरमेत्            बुद्धया                      ध्रति          ग्र्हीतया  

  shanaiH     shanaiH    uparamet      buddhyaa                dhrti        grhiitayaa

   slowly       slowly       withdraw     with the intellect   steadiness   endowed

आत्म             संस्थं              मनः           क्रत्वा       न       किञ्चित्       अपि         चिन्तयेत् 

aatma        saMstham      manaH        krtvaa    na      kincit         api         cintayet

in the Self     fixed            mind         making    not   anything   whatsoever    think

One should gradually, gradually, attain stillness, with an intellect endowed with steadiness.  Fixing the mind in the Self, one should not think of anything whatsoever.

Shankara, the great codifier of Advaita Vedanta/nonduality, has said about this verse, “This is the highest instruction about Yoga.”   It is about as compact and “tight” as one could imagine for a description of the process used to accomplish nondual absorption and abiding in stillness without thoughts. 

Patanjali, the codifier of yoga w/his famous “Yoga Sutras”, defines “yoga” in the second of his 196 sutras, as “yogash citta vrtti nirodhaH”.  This is frequently translated as “yoga is the stilling of the modifications of the mind”, almost identical to Shankara’s interpretation of this verse in the Gita.  It is so very simple, just “make the mind fixed in the Self without thinking of anything”.  Simple, as we all know, is not the same as easy..."

 

The second half is "Dialogues", which gives dialogues in a Q&A format with practitioners on key elements of the Bhagavad Gita as it applies to nondual awakening, abstracted from some popular blogposts.  

Titles include:

                     "Stopping Thoughts"
                     "Quantum Theories About Reality"
                     "Dealing with Anger"
                     "Sin and Karma"
                     "Letting Go of the 'I' and Its Stories"
                     "The Illusion of Free Will and Control"
                     "Dialogues with Dominic - Everyday Practices for Awakening"


The back cover "comments" are:

Rich Doyle
Penn State

Layer by layer the self who “I” thought I was falls away in the sonic and semantic realm of the Gita.  Rather, “I” see, chanting, that these aspects of my self that I held so dear… were never there in the first place…

In the silence that ensues, there is space only for laughter.  By distilling the seven hundred Gita verses down to this deeply resonant quintessence of sixty,  Weber has remixed a potent brew into just the stuff for the infoquaked present in love with complexity… wondering about everything but the present moment… He shows us the treasure beneath our feet, the awareness right where we are.

                 Richard Doyle, Author of Darwin’s Pharmacy, Wetwares, and On Beyond Living

Robert Wright
Princeton

 I'm sure many people will find it a very valuable tool…it's a fascinating and very useful way to present the Bhagavad Gita.

                         Robert Wright, Author of The Evolution of God, Nonzero, The Moral Animal and Three Scientists and Their Gods

                

Husband, father, scientist, military officer, and senior executive in industry and academia, Gary Weber …relentlessly pursued a path of practice and inquiry…to achieve enlightenment.  It is rare to find one who has reached this goal, and rarer still to find such a one who has been so immersed in worldly life.

                                            

Gary Kraftsow
American Viniyoga Institute

            Gary Kraftsow, author of Yoga for Wellness and Yoga for Transformation

I’ve had the wonderful privilege of experiencing Gary in action over many years both as friend and teacher.  Gary is the rare gem who points directly to what we really are at the heart of our being—timeless Presence—ever-present Stillness that is always immediately available.

                                            

             Richard Miller, PhD author of Yoga Nidra: The Meditative Heart of Yoga

There is also a companion youTube video, "Dancing Beyond Thought: Bhagavad Gita Verses for Awakening" in which i chant the 60 Bhagavad Gita verses in the same order as they appear in "Dancing Beyond Thought", with annotated word-by-word transliteration and translation and a summary translation.   There is also a downloadable .mp3 of just the chanting which has been generated by Suzanne Winters. 

Note that some word endings you see in the book and hear on the youTube video are different, purposefully.  Sanskrit has rules, called sandhi, for combining words and when chanting, those rules come into play.  As the book has a word-by-word layout, sandhi doesn't come into play.  However, if you chant the book as written, you can feel the sandhi coming into play naturally.    

"Dancing Beyond Thought" is available as a hard copy and a Kindle version from Amazon.  It is also downloadable free from Scribd.   As w/"Happiness Beyond Thought", any profits from "Dancing Beyond Thought" will go to handicapped/orphaned kids in south India.

BTW1.  Because of great interest, the blog tripped some limits w/Google Blogger for the new magazine format, so comments aren't visible for any posts, although they still exist.  Google is supposedly working on a fix.  Meanwhile, will continue to post blog to FB and Google+, so comments can be made there. 

BTW2.  Folk have told me that Scribd was charging to download my "free" "Happiness Beyond Thought".  i was not aware of that, but have now "opted out" of their "subscription program", which i apparently was automatically in.  It should be fixed for both books now.  Any other problems, let me know.      

BTW3.   Will be presenting @ the EE Just Symposium @ Dartmouth in Hanover, NH on Oct. 5 @ 2:40 pm in Wilder Hall 104 on "Is it time for our new operating system?  A perspective from cognitive neuroscience, long term meditators, and psychedelics research".  Open to the public. 
           Also will be presenting "Happiness Beyond Thought: Meditation or Psychedelics" @ the Unitarian Universalist Church in Nashua, NH on Oct. 6th @ 7:00 pm.  Donations.
           Will be presenting @ the Science and NonDuality Conference in San Jose, CA on Oct. 27 @ 11:00 on "Psychedelics and Nondual Awakening Create Similar Perceptions of Reality".  Will be there for the whole conference - if you're around say hello.