Bhagavad Gita Teachings

Bhagavad Gita Distribution

INTERNATIONAL GITA SOCIETY

(Also known as American Gita Society)

Since year 2000 over 95,000 pocket size Bhagavad Gitas have been distributed.

Preface & An Appeal for Help...

Bhai Ramananda Prasad's desire to see the knowledge of Gita spread globally is a duty that should engage all mankind.

If this perennial philosophy can influence minds like those of Thoreau, Emerson, Gandhi, and Swami Vivekananda, then we must be more proactive by ensuring that all have access to its prescriptions for spiritual, cultural, and intellectual success.

World leaders today wrestle with numerous problems facing mankind. Notable among these are poverty, disease, injustice, and environmental disasters caused in part by human activities. Practitioners of gita knowledge can contribute to solutions to these and other problems in any country in which they reside by living a way of life guided by principles enshrined in this powerful text.

Lust, anger, and greed are to be avoided if one wants to achieve salvation. (Gita 16.21) This ancient message is still relevant today. Unless we practice austerity of thought, word, and deed (17.14-16) we may eventually be users of the legal system. This first course in anger management shows us how to avoid, reduce, or resolve conflicts.

Excessive demands on the health and legal systems will only cause the quality of service in these areas to deteriorate no matter how wealthy a nation. If therefore we can eat from the lower levels of the food chain, avoid harmful foods (17.10) and otherwise live a healthy and peaceful lifestyle by practicing yoga and meditation we can ease the financial burdens of the state.

If we recognize that every living being has a soul and that all of us are time travelers with an expiry date; if we can regard the earth as our mother and treat the environment with respect then the disasters caused by global warming may still be avoided.

Those of us who grew up in remote villages across the globe may have learnt from teachers, like my late mother, who could not read nor write but who taught by example. Their strength was a culture and a way of life that accompanied Indentured Servants when they first arrived in Guyana from India on May 5, 1838. The value-system that enabled them to survive continues to influence those of us who now reside in some of the most sophisticated and technological societies on earth. Today the need to teach is even greater.

We can fulfill our duties as citizens of any country we call home, honor our ancestors and prepare posterity for the challenges ahead by supplying every person with a copy of this enduring treasure.

Please support our efforts to make this world a better place by generously donating to more publications of this text and by distributing them as far as humans reside, because the gift of non-sectarian, spiritual knowledge of the Gita offers a hope for unity and salvation in our divided and challenged world.