When Love Comes to Light
Bringing Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita to Modern Life
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- 16,99 €
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- 16,99 €
Publisher Description
Eminent yoga teachers Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor explore essential lessons from The Bhagavad Gita to reveal a practical guide for living in today's complex world.
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most influential and widely recognized ancient texts in Indian epic literature. Through the telling of the story and its many different philosophical teachings, the text provides deep insight into how to meet life's inevitable challenges while remaining open, clear, and compassionate. It offers modern day wisdom seekers a framework for understanding our core beliefs and who we really are--revealing the fact that healthy relationships to others and the world are essential to living a full, compassionate, balanced life. Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, both deeply respected yogic teachers, offer a practical, immediately relevant interpretation that emphasizes self-reflection and waking up in our modern world.
Following the traditional sequence of teachings in The Bhagavad Gita--from its opening scene in which Arjuna finds himself in the middle of a battlefield, hesitating and trapped between opposing sides, torn by his dharma and confused by the various paths of action he might choose in the process of awakening--Freeman and Taylor interweave insight into how these classic teachings are relevant for modern readers struggling with what it means to live responsibly in the twenty-first century. With quotes, citations, and a full translation of the original text, they look at the overall arc of the The Bhagavad Gita's teachings and how that relates to the turmoil that arises, not only for Arjuna, but for any of us in the face of crises of conscience, spirit, and form. Exploring the essential themes such as love, wisdom, and karma, and by offering embodiment exercises to apply the teachings, When Love Comes to Light guides readers in the step-by-step process of waking up their intelligence and finding a path toward compassionate action.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yoga teachers Freeman and Taylor (The Art of Vinyasa) offer a complex, demanding reflection on and translation of the Bhagavad Gita. They open by setting the scene of Arjuna questioning Krishna about correct action on the eve of battle and argue that the myth's purpose is to show love as "open acceptance and connection to everyone and everything." The authors uphold yoga as the path toward developing this love, and press against westernized adaptations of yoga that uphold alternatives like mindfulness as a "curiosity without a motive to solve." They also unpack paradoxes, such as that happiness arises not from clinging to stabilizing attachments but from letting go of those attachments. Freeman and Taylor's own translation of the Gita appears at the end. More advanced practitioners will be rewarded by this deep commentary on the Gita, but those new to the source material will find it too challenging.