Unit 6 · Hinduism: Dharma, Karma and the Gita

Ask a Hindu in Chicago, in Mumbai and in Bali to describe their religion, and you may hear three different answers. One may speak mostly of the god Vishnu. Another may center her life on the goddess Durga. A third may talk about meditation and the self, with little mention of any deity. Scholars therefore describe Hinduism as a family of traditions, not a single church. It has no founder, no single sacred book and no central authority that speaks for everyone.

The word itself came from outside. Ancient Persians used the name of the Sindhu, the Indus River, for the people who lived beyond it. Over centuries, Hindu became a label for the people and traditions of India. Many Hindus prefer an older name from their own texts: Sanatana Dharma, often translated as the eternal way or the eternal order. The name suggests a truth that was not invented at one moment but has always been there.

What holds the family together? Most Hindus share certain things. They honor the Vedas as sacred, even if few read them. They share ideas such as karma, rebirth and dharma. They worship in homes and temples through offerings called puja. And they tell the same great stories, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Within that shared frame, the variety is enormous, and adherents often see that variety as a strength.

Today there are about 1.2 billion Hindus, according to common estimates. Most live in India, where Hindus make up roughly four in five people, and in Nepal. Large communities also live in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia’s island of Bali, Mauritius, the Caribbean, Britain and the United States. The Chicago area is home to many Hindu families, temples and cultural centers.

Picture a boy in a traditional school in South India, sitting cross-legged in front of his teacher. The teacher chants a line in Sanskrit, and the boy repeats it exactly, with the same rise and fall of pitch. They do this for hours a day, for years. This is how the Vedas have been kept alive. For many centuries they were not written at all. They were memorized and chanted, with methods so careful that scholars think the wording changed very little.

The word Veda means knowledge. There are four Vedas: the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda. The oldest, the Rig Veda, holds more than a thousand hymns. Scholars date its earliest parts to roughly 1500 to 1200 BCE, though estimates vary. Many hymns praise deities of nature and ritual, such as Agni, the god of fire, and Indra, a god of storm and war. Priests chanted them at fire sacrifices.

Hindus divide their sacred texts into two kinds. The word shruti means what is heard. It refers to the Vedas, which many Hindus believe ancient seers heard or perceived rather than composed. The word smriti means what is remembered. It includes later texts written by human authors, such as the great epics, the law books and the Puranas. For many Hindus, shruti carries the highest authority, even though smriti texts are far more widely read.

Few Hindus today read the Vedas cover to cover. Yet Vedic verses are still chanted at weddings, at the thread ceremony that marks a boy’s entry into study in some families, and at funerals. One famous verse, the Gayatri mantra from the Rig Veda, is recited daily by many Hindus as a prayer for light and understanding.

The Upanishads are later texts attached to the Vedas, many composed around 800 to 300 BCE. Their name suggests sitting down near a teacher. Many are dialogues, in which a student questions a teacher about the deepest things: What is real? What am I? What remains when everything changes? Because they come at the end of the Vedas, they are also called Vedanta, the end or goal of the Veda.

One famous scene appears in the Chandogya Upanishad. A father, Uddalaka, tells his son Shvetaketu to drop salt into a cup of water and come back the next morning. The salt has vanished from sight, but every sip tastes salty. So it is, the father says, with the subtle essence of the world. You cannot see it, yet it is in everything. Then he adds the line that later teachers made famous: you are that.

That essence is Brahman, the one ultimate reality behind all things. The self at the core of each person is called atman. The Upanishads teach that atman is not the body, the thoughts or the personality, which all change. Many passages hold that atman and Brahman are, at bottom, the same. To realize this truth is to be freed from ignorance.

Hindu thinkers have read these texts in different ways. The teacher Shankara, around the 8th century CE, taught Advaita, or non-dualism: atman and Brahman are one, and separateness is an illusion. Later teachers such as Ramanuja held that the soul is real and distinct but depends wholly on a personal God. Both schools claim the Upanishads as their source.

At a Hindu funeral, the body is usually cremated, and the family may later scatter the ashes in a river, ideally the Ganges. Mourners often say that the soul has moved on, not that it has ended. Many Hindus believe the atman sheds a body the way a person sheds worn-out clothes, then takes a new one. This round of birth, death and rebirth is called samsara, which means wandering or flowing on.

What decides the next life? The answer is karma. The word means action, and it also means the result that action brings. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, a teacher says that as a person acts, so that person becomes: good actions make one good, harmful actions make one harmful. Karma is not seen as reward and punishment handed out by a judge. Many Hindus describe it more like a law of nature, the way a seed grows into its own kind of plant.

Karma includes thoughts and intentions, not only deeds. It can shape the circumstances of a future life, and many believe it also shapes character in this life. Hindus do not all agree on every detail. Some stress that a gracious God can soften or remove karma. Others stress personal effort. But most agree that each person’s choices matter, because they carry forward.

Samsara is not usually seen as a happy endless adventure. Even good rebirths end in death and more rebirth. For that reason, many Hindu texts describe samsara as something to be escaped. The next two lessons explain the ideas of right living and final release that answer this problem. Together, samsara, karma, dharma and moksha form a framework most Hindus share.

A young woman in Chicago must decide whether to take a job across the country or stay near her aging parents. A Hindu grandmother might ask her a question: what is your dharma here? Dharma is one of the richest words in Hindu thought. It can mean duty, law, right conduct, religion and the order that holds the world together. In daily life, it usually means doing what is right for your role and situation.

Classical Hindu texts teach that dharma is not the same for everyone. A parent, a student, a ruler and a teacher each have different duties. Some texts also describe four stages of life, called ashramas: student, householder, forest dweller, who steps back from worldly life, and renunciant, who gives up possessions to seek release. Few Hindus today follow all four stages strictly, but the ideal of life as a journey with changing duties remains.

The same texts name four goals of life, the purusharthas. Dharma is right living. Artha is prosperity and success. Kama is pleasure, love and beauty. Moksha is final release from rebirth. The first three are seen as good when they are pursued within dharma. Wealth and love are not condemned, but they are meant to serve a well-ordered life.

Hindus also speak of general duties that apply to everyone, such as truthfulness, self-control and ahimsa, not harming living beings. Many Hindus are vegetarian partly because of ahimsa. When personal duty and general duty seem to clash, the question becomes hard. That is exactly the problem Arjuna faces in the Bhagavad Gita, as the next chapter shows.

In the holy city of Varanasi, on the Ganges River, cremation fires burn day and night on stone steps called ghats. Many elderly Hindus travel there hoping to die in the city, because tradition holds that dying in Varanasi brings release. That release has a name: moksha, freedom from samsara. Moksha means liberation. It is the fourth and highest of the four goals of life.

What is moksha like? Hindu schools answer differently. In the Advaita tradition, moksha is the realization that atman and Brahman were always one, like a drop of water returning to the sea. In devotional traditions, moksha is often pictured as eternal loving closeness to a personal God, such as Vishnu or Shiva, while the soul remains itself. Both agree that moksha ends rebirth and suffering.

How does one reach moksha? Again, Hindus describe several ways, which later lessons call paths or yogas. Some stress knowledge and insight. Some stress devotion and the grace of God. Some stress selfless action. Some stress meditation. Many Hindus combine them. Most also believe that moksha may take many lifetimes, which is why living well now still matters.

Not every Hindu thinks about moksha daily. Many focus on good karma, family duty, worship and a good rebirth. Scholars sometimes note that the tradition holds both goals side by side: living well within the world, and seeking release from it. Each family and teacher balances the two in its own way.

In a Hindu temple in Aurora, west of Chicago, the central image shows a standing, dark-skinned figure crowned with gold. He is Venkateswara, a form of Vishnu widely worshiped in South India. Devotees line up to see him, a moment of worship called darshan, seeing and being seen by the deity. Worshipers of Vishnu are called Vaishnavas, and they form one of the largest groups of Hindus.

Hindu texts often describe three great functions of the divine: Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves and Shiva destroys so that renewal can come. Scholars call this grouping the Trimurti. In practice, few Hindus worship Brahma, and many see either Vishnu or Shiva as the supreme God who performs all three roles.

Vaishnavas believe that when goodness weakens and evil grows, Vishnu descends to earth to restore order. Each descent is an avatar. Tradition often lists ten, including a fish, a boar and a man-lion. The two most beloved are Rama, the ideal king of the Ramayana, and Krishna, the divine teacher of the Bhagavad Gita and the playful cowherd of many stories.

Many Hindus see no contradiction in honoring several deities. A common teaching, drawn from a Rig Veda verse, holds that truth is one, though the wise call it by many names. Some Hindus understand the deities as many faces of one divine reality. Others worship one supreme God and see the other deities as powerful beings under that God.

A famous bronze sculpture from South India shows Shiva dancing inside a ring of flames. One foot stands on a small figure representing ignorance. One hand holds a drum, the sound of creation. Another holds fire, the force of destruction. Shiva’s worshipers, called Shaivas, see him as the supreme God who creates, preserves and destroys in an endless cosmic dance. He is also pictured as a great yogi meditating on a mountain.

Other Hindus center their worship on the Goddess, often called Devi or Shakti, meaning divine power. Her followers are called Shaktas. She takes many forms. Durga rides a lion and defeats a buffalo demon. Kali, dark and fierce, destroys evil and ego. Lakshmi brings good fortune, and Saraswati brings learning and music. For Shaktas, the Goddess is the supreme power behind the universe.

Ganesha, with his elephant head, is honored by nearly all Hindus, whatever deity they worship most. In one well-known story, he is the son of Shiva and the goddess Parvati. He is called the remover of obstacles, so many Hindus pray to him before starting anything new: a trip, an exam, a wedding or a business. His image often stands near the doorway of homes and temples.

These traditions overlap. A family may keep images of Ganesha, Krishna and Durga on the same shelf. Some Hindus, called Smartas, worship several deities as equal forms of the one Brahman. The tradition makes room for devotion to one chosen deity while respecting others.

Four people might all be walking toward the same goal. One sits with a teacher, studying the Upanishads and asking who she truly is. One sings devotional songs to Krishna every evening. One runs a free clinic and tries to work without seeking praise. One wakes before dawn to sit still and quiet the mind. Hindu tradition would say all four are practicing yoga, a word that means joining or discipline.

The path of knowledge is jnana yoga. It uses study, reflection and insight to see through ignorance and recognize the true self. It is closely tied to the Upanishads and to Advaita teachers such as Shankara. A student on this path might ask, again and again, who am I, and set aside every answer that names only the body or the mind.

The path of devotion is bhakti yoga: love and surrender to a personal God. Bhakti movements spread across India from about the 6th century CE onward, carried by poet-saints who sang in everyday languages instead of Sanskrit. The 16th-century poet Mirabai, a devotee of Krishna, is still sung today. Many scholars describe bhakti as the most widely practiced path today. The path of action is karma yoga: doing one’s duty without selfish attachment to results, a teaching at the heart of the Bhagavad Gita.

The path of meditation is often called raja yoga, the royal path. It trains the body, breath and mind to reach deep stillness. It draws on the Yoga Sutras attributed to Patanjali. Many Hindus see these paths as suited to different temperaments, and most mix them. The Gita itself teaches all of them.

Early in the morning, a woman in a Chicago suburb bathes, then stands before a small shrine in her kitchen. She lights a lamp and a stick of incense. She offers a flower and a little rice to an image of Ganesha, and quietly recites a prayer. This takes five minutes. It is puja, worship through offerings, and in many Hindu homes it happens every day.

In a temple, puja is larger. A priest bathes, dresses and adorns the murti, the sacred image of the deity. Many Hindus believe the deity is truly present in the murti once it has been consecrated. During arati, the priest waves a lamp in circles before the image while worshipers sing. Food offered to the deity is then shared among worshipers as prasad, a blessed gift. Worshipers remove their shoes before entering, as a sign of respect.

The Bhagavad Gita offers a line many Hindus quote about puja: Krishna says that whoever offers him even a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water with devotion, he accepts it. The point is the love behind the offering, not its cost. This helps explain why puja can be simple or grand.

Hindu temples are called mandirs. The Chicago area has many, including the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago in Lemont and the Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Aurora. For many families in the United States, the temple is also a community center with language classes, dance lessons and festival meals.

Hindu festivals follow a lunar calendar, so their dates on the Western calendar shift each year. Diwali usually falls in October or November, on the new moon of the month of Kartik. It lasts about five days. Families clean their homes, light rows of diyas, set off fireworks, share sweets and wear new clothes. Many worship Lakshmi, goddess of good fortune, and many business owners begin a new account book.

Diwali carries several stories. In northern India, many remember Rama’s return to Ayodhya after his exile and his victory over the demon king Ravana. In parts of South India, many recall Krishna’s defeat of the demon Narakasura. The shared theme is light overcoming darkness and good overcoming evil. Jains observe Diwali as the day their teacher Mahavira reached liberation, and Sikhs celebrate Bandi Chhor Divas on the same days.

Holi comes in early spring, on the full moon of the month of Phalguna. On the night before, many communities light bonfires recalling the story of Prahlad, a young devotee of Vishnu saved from the fire, while his wicked aunt Holika burned. The next morning, people throw colored powder and water at each other in the streets. Many connect the colors to Krishna’s playful youth.

For a day, Holi loosens social rules. Old and young, rich and poor, may all end up covered in pink and green. In Chicago, Holi gatherings at temples, parks and universities often welcome people of any background, and many non-Hindu students join in the colors.

Caste is one of the most debated subjects in the study of Hinduism, and it should be described carefully. Ancient Hindu texts describe four varnas, or classes (each one a varna): Brahmins, priests and teachers; Kshatriyas, rulers and warriors; Vaishyas, merchants and farmers; and Shudras, laborers and servants. One Rig Veda hymn pictures these classes coming from different parts of a cosmic being. In practice, daily life was organized by thousands of smaller birth groups, each called a jati, often tied to an occupation and a region.

Over centuries, some groups were placed outside the varnas and treated as untouchable. They faced exclusion from temples, wells and schools. Many members of these communities today use the name Dalit, meaning broken or oppressed, as a name of dignity and protest. Caste also affected other religious communities in South Asia, not only Hindus.

Criticism of caste is old. Many bhakti poet-saints taught that God welcomes every devotee, whatever their birth. In the 19th and 20th centuries, reformers pushed harder. Gandhi campaigned against untouchability. B. R. Ambedkar, a Dalit lawyer and scholar, fought caste discrimination, chaired the committee that drafted India’s Constitution, and in 1956 converted to Buddhism with a large number of followers. The Constitution, which took effect in 1950, abolished untouchability and banned caste discrimination.

Today caste is still a live issue. Many Hindus say it is a social custom, not a core religious teaching, and point to the Upanishads’ claim that the same atman lives in every being. Others argue that religious texts helped support the system. Caste discrimination has also become a public issue in some American workplaces and universities. A fair student of religion describes both the history and the reform.

The Mahabharata is one of the longest poems ever composed. In its fullest versions it runs to about 100,000 couplets, many times longer than Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey together. Tradition names the sage Vyasa as its author. Scholars think it grew over many centuries, roughly from 400 BCE to 400 CE, as generations of storytellers added to it. It belongs to the smriti texts, the remembered tradition.

At its heart is a quarrel between cousins. The five Pandava brothers, sons of King Pandu, are rivals of the hundred Kaurava brothers, led by Duryodhana, son of the blind king Dhritarashtra. In a rigged game of dice, the Pandavas lose everything, including their kingdom. Their shared wife, Draupadi, is dragged before the court and humiliated. The Pandavas are sent into exile for thirteen years.

When they return, Duryodhana refuses to give back even five villages. Both sides gather allies, and the war at Kurukshetra lasts eighteen days. Nearly every warrior dies. The Pandavas win, but the victory is full of grief. The epic asks hard questions about dharma: what is right when every choice causes harm?

The Bhagavad Gita sits in the sixth of the epic’s eighteen books, just before the fighting begins. It has 700 verses in eighteen chapters. Because so many Hindus treat it as scripture on its own, it is often printed and read by itself, apart from the larger epic.

The Ramayana, credited to the poet Valmiki, is shorter than the Mahabharata but still long: about 24,000 couplets. Its hero is Rama, prince of the city of Ayodhya, whom many Hindus worship as an avatar of Vishnu. Just before Rama is to be crowned, a promise his father once made to a queen forces the king to send Rama into exile for fourteen years. Rama goes without complaint, because obeying his father is his dharma.

His wife, Sita, and his brother Lakshmana choose to go with him. In the forest, the demon king Ravana of Lanka kidnaps Sita. Rama searches for her with the help of Hanuman, a devoted and powerful monkey hero, and an army of monkeys and bears. They build a bridge to Lanka, defeat Ravana and rescue Sita. Rama returns home and is crowned, and the city is lit with lamps.

For many Hindus, Rama is the ideal son, husband and king, and Sita is a model of loyalty and courage. The epic also raises hard questions. After the rescue, Rama makes Sita prove her faithfulness by walking through fire, and in some versions he later sends her away because of public gossip. Hindus, including many Hindu women writers, have discussed and debated these scenes for centuries.

The Ramayana exists in many versions. The 16th-century poet Tulsidas retold it in Awadhi, an early form of Hindi, as the Ramcharitmanas, still recited daily in many homes. Versions spread across Southeast Asia, including Thailand and Indonesia. Hanuman became a beloved figure of devotion in his own right.

Each autumn, in towns across northern India, a stage goes up in an open field. For ten nights, local actors perform the Ram Lila, the play of Rama, scene by scene. On the tenth day, the festival of Dussehra, huge paper figures of Ravana, stuffed with fireworks, are set alight while crowds cheer. The story ends where Diwali begins: Rama’s return home a few weeks later.

Most Hindus first learn the epics this way: from grandparents, festivals, temple dance, comic books and film. In 1987 and 1988, a television series of the Ramayana aired weekly on India’s national channel. Accounts from the time describe streets emptying while it played, and some families garlanding their television sets. A Mahabharata series followed. Both have been rebroadcast many times.

This matters for how we study these texts. An oral tradition keeps a story alive through telling, singing and acting, not only through a book. The same scene can be performed differently in Kerala and in Bengal, in Bali and in Chicago. When scholars say the epics are living texts, they mean that each retelling is part of the tradition, not a copy of it.

In the Chicago area, temples and cultural groups hold Ram Lila performances and Dussehra celebrations, and children learn the epics in weekend classes. For many families in the diaspora, these stories are a way of passing on language, values and identity.

The Gita does not begin with Krishna or Arjuna. It begins with a question from the blind king Dhritarashtra, father of the Kauravas, who is far from the battlefield. His advisor Sanjaya has been granted divine sight, so he can see and hear everything at Kurukshetra. The king asks what his sons and the sons of Pandu are doing on the field of dharma. Sanjaya’s answer is the whole Gita.

This frame matters. The king is literally blind, and many readers see his blindness as a symbol of his refusal to see that his sons are in the wrong. Sanjaya, by contrast, sees clearly. The story reminds readers that the Gita is a report, told within a story, told within a larger epic.

The first chapter describes the armies, then Arjuna’s despair. He lists the kinds of harm war will bring: families destroyed, traditions lost, social order broken. He argues that killing his teachers and relatives would be a grave wrong, even if they are the aggressors. Arjuna’s reasons are serious ones. He is not only afraid; he is thinking about ethics.

Arjuna is also a kshatriya, a member of the warrior class, whose dharma in the epic is to protect the people and fight a righteous war. So he is caught between two claims of dharma: his duty to his family and his duty as a warrior. The Gita is the answer to that dilemma. Chapter 1 ends with Arjuna sitting down in the chariot, his bow cast aside.

Krishna’s first response is sharp. He tells Arjuna to shake off this weakness and stand up. Then his tone changes, and he begins to teach. The wise, he says, do not grieve for the living or the dead. Why? Because the real self, the atman, was never born and will never die. Bodies come and go, but the self that lives in them is eternal.

Krishna compares death to changing clothes. As a person throws away worn-out garments and puts on new ones, the embodied self casts off worn-out bodies and enters new ones. This is the Upanishads’ teaching about atman and samsara, now spoken on a battlefield. Arjuna’s grief, Krishna argues, rests on a mistake: confusing the body with the self.

Krishna then adds a second argument, from dharma. For a kshatriya, he says, nothing is better than a righteous war. To walk away would bring dishonor and would abandon his duty. Readers have long noticed that these two arguments work on different levels. One is about the eternal nature of the self. The other is about Arjuna’s role in society.

Many readers find this teaching troubling as well as comforting. Can it be used to excuse violence? Hindu teachers have answered in different ways, and later lessons show how Gandhi read these verses. What is clear is that the Gita presents the self as something no weapon can touch.

Think of a doctor who gives every patient her best effort. Some recover and some do not. If she measured herself only by results, she might burn out, or cut corners to protect her record. The Gita offers another way. In chapter 2, Krishna tells Arjuna that he has a right to his action, but never to its fruits. Do not let the fruit of action be your motive, he says, and do not cling to doing nothing.

This is the heart of karma yoga, the path of action. Krishna does not tell Arjuna to withdraw from the world. He tells him to act, and to act well, but without selfish desire for a particular outcome. The Gita calls this nishkama karma, desireless action. Krishna says that yoga is evenness of mind in success and failure, and also that yoga is skill in action.

Why does this matter? In Hindu thought, action done from selfish desire binds a person to karma and rebirth. Action done without attachment, as an offering to God, does not bind. So the Gita turns ordinary work into a spiritual path. A farmer, a parent, a soldier or a student can walk toward liberation through daily duties.

The Gita also warns against doing someone else’s duty. It is better, Krishna says, to do one’s own dharma imperfectly than another’s well. Readers debate how to apply this. Some see it as support for traditional roles. Others read it as a call to find and do one’s true work.

In chapter 11, Arjuna asks to see Krishna’s divine form. Krishna grants him divine sight. Arjuna then sees the vishvarupa, the universal form: countless faces, arms and eyes, blazing like a thousand suns, holding all the worlds and all the gods. He sees the warriors of both armies rushing into Krishna’s mouths. Terrified, Arjuna begs to see his friend’s familiar human form again, and Krishna returns to it.

This vision shows what many Hindus believe about Krishna: that the friendly charioteer is the supreme God, source and end of all things. It also shows how overwhelming the divine can be. After the vision, the Gita’s tone grows warmer. Krishna says that those who worship him with love are dear to him, and that he quickly lifts them out of the ocean of death and rebirth.

This is bhakti, loving devotion. The Gita teaches that anyone can take this path, whatever their birth, gender or learning. Near the end, in chapter 18, Krishna gives what many devotees call his final word: let go of all other duties, take refuge in me alone, and I will free you from all wrongs; do not grieve.

The Gita does not reject the paths of knowledge and action. It weaves them together: know the eternal self, act without attachment, and offer everything to God with love. Different schools weigh the three differently. Devotional movements such as the Vaishnava traditions often see bhakti as the crown of the Gita.

Arjuna asks a practical question in chapter 2: how does a person of steady wisdom speak, sit and walk? Krishna’s answer paints a portrait of the sthitaprajna, the one whose wisdom is steady. Such a person is not shaken by sorrow and does not crave pleasure. Fear and anger have fallen away. Success and failure, praise and blame, leave the mind level.

Krishna uses two images. Such a person draws the senses back from their objects, the way a tortoise draws in its limbs. And such a person is like the ocean: rivers pour into it from every side, yet it stays within its shores. Desires still arise, but they do not overflow the mind.

Krishna also explains how a mind falls apart. Dwelling on things creates attachment. Attachment breeds desire, and desire, when blocked, turns to anger. Anger clouds judgment, and confused judgment ruins a person. This chain of cause and effect is one of the Gita’s best-known psychological teachings.

Notice that the steady person is not someone who has left the world. Arjuna is still asked to fight, and householders are still asked to work. The Gita’s ideal is equanimity, inner calm, joined to action. Many modern readers, Hindu and not, value this part of the Gita for dealing with stress and pressure.

As a young law student in London in the late 1880s, Mohandas Gandhi was invited by two English friends to read the Gita with them. They read Edwin Arnold’s translation, The Song Celestial. Gandhi later wrote that he was embarrassed to have not yet read it in Sanskrit or Gujarati. The book became central to his life. He called it his mother and turned to it whenever he faced doubt.

Gandhi did not read the Gita as approval of war. He read the battle at Kurukshetra as an allegory, a story in which characters and events stand for deeper meanings. For him, the war was the struggle inside every human heart between good and evil impulses. The Pandavas and Kauravas were forces within the self. Krishna was the voice of truth guiding the person.

From the Gita’s teaching of action without attachment, Gandhi drew his idea of selfless service. He translated the Gita into Gujarati, his native language, with commentary he titled Anasakti Yoga, the yoga of non-attachment. Joined with ahimsa, nonviolence, this reading shaped his method of satyagraha, holding firmly to truth through nonviolent resistance.

Not all readers agree with Gandhi. Some Hindu thinkers of his time, such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, read the Gita as a call to energetic action in the world, including political struggle against British rule. Scholars note that the text itself is set on a real battlefield. The Gita’s openness to both readings is part of why it has mattered to so many people.

Hindu philosophers have written commentaries on the Gita for centuries. The 8th-century teacher Shankara read it through Advaita: knowledge of the one Brahman is the key to liberation. The teacher Ramanuja, around the 11th and 12th centuries, read it as a text of devotion to a personal God. Each found his own school’s teaching in the same 700 verses.

The Gita reached the English-speaking world in 1785, when Charles Wilkins, working in India, published the first English translation. American writers soon took notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau both read it. In Walden, published in 1854, Thoreau wrote about bathing his intellect each morning in the philosophy of the Gita. Edwin Arnold’s poetic translation followed in 1885.

In 1893, the Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda spoke at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, opening with the words Sisters and Brothers of America. He drew on the Gita and the Upanishads to present Hindu ideas to American audiences. Later teachers brought the Gita to new groups. In 1966, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in New York, which spread a devotional reading of the Gita worldwide.

Today the Gita is read in schools, temples, business books and hospitals. Hindus recite it at funerals and in daily prayer. Its many readings show the point this course made in unit 1: every translation and commentary is also an interpretation, shaped by its reader’s time and tradition.

Walk into a yoga class at a Chicago gym, and you will see mats, stretching and breathing exercises. The teacher may say namaste at the end. Most people there are not thinking about moksha. Yet the word yoga comes from Indian religious traditions, where it meant a discipline that joins a person to the divine or frees the self.

A key early text is the Yoga Sutras attributed to the sage Patanjali, compiled perhaps 1,600 to 2,000 years ago; scholars debate the date. It defines yoga as stilling the movements of the mind. It lays out eight limbs, or steps: ethical restraints such as nonviolence and truthfulness, personal disciplines, posture, breath control, withdrawing the senses, concentration, meditation and samadhi, complete absorption. Postures are only one limb, and in Patanjali they mostly mean a steady seat for meditation.

Later hatha yoga texts, from around the 11th to 15th centuries, developed more physical postures and breathing methods. In the late 1800s and 1900s, Indian teachers adapted yoga for modern audiences. Vivekananda’s book Raja Yoga (1896) presented meditation to Western readers. The teacher T. Krishnamacharya and his students, including B. K. S. Iyengar, developed the posture-based styles now practiced worldwide.

Modern yoga raises questions. Some Hindu groups ask that yoga’s Hindu roots be acknowledged, not erased. Some Christian parents have objected to yoga in schools, and courts have looked at whether particular school programs were religious. The United Nations declared June 21 the International Day of Yoga in 2014. The history shows a practice that is both ancient and constantly changing.