Being born into Sanātana Dharma, I felt that I should have the knowledge imparted in Srimad Bhagavad Gitā, which is being revered as the most sacred philosophical teaching, in our belief. But when I started reading Gitā from various sources, I found that there is a certain pattern of variation among each version of Gitā’s interpretation. The explanations varied among different philosophers for the same śloka. This was a bit mind-boggling for a nascent observer like me. I could neither understand the reason behind different school of thought, nor the age-old saying - ‘ślokas are so intricate that many meanings could be derived’ could justify these variations to me. Actually this is where youngsters like me get bored and confused as to how to proceed further and get de-motivated and disinterested and ultimately lose faith in our own scriptures. But something rather strange occurred to me one day.
I was lying down and thinking about how to proceed in cultivating Gitā for my own good. I suddenly struck upon an idea that if I will be able to understand each word of a śloka in English, then recreate the Sanśkrt śloka into English sentences without any additional adjectives or adverb or preposition or conjunction and keeping certain words like Yajña, Yoga, Karma, Dharma, Ātmā, Brahma as it is, until their meanings are explained by the Lord; then this could be a start. I felt that every word conveys a particular meaning in a sentence/verse. So as far as possible, I kept a one-to-one word match of Sanskrit words with English.
e.g.: ‘cetanā’ will always mean ‘consciousness’ for me, and never ‘mind’; as the word ‘manah’ interprets ‘mind’ for me.
Even though this path might be incorrect according to some, but as of now this method makes so much sense to me, rather than following blindly one path of a particular sect and then opposing the rest. Saying so, I am also open and whenever I will genuinely feel that this way of approaching towards the truth is wrong, I will accept and mend my ways without any ego hassles as my main aim is not to build a revolting path or to undermine other paths, but to attain Jñāna.
- Śatyanveśi Bhāradwāja
