Live Online Bhagavad Gita Course Part 1

Practical Advice for the Modern Times

The course will take place over two sessions:

• Sunday March 30th
• Sunday April 6th

8.00 am – 10.30 am UK Time

Recordings will be sent out within 24 hours of the session and will be available to view for at least one year. If you can't join live, register below to automatically receive the recordings.

Cost €35

Over our two sessions, we will focus on chapters of the text, we will read through it together, picking out the significant quotes and ones that grab or speak to us.

In doing so, we will tackle the fundamental themes together in a way that is guided and facilitated by Adam, but that gives the potential for group discussion.

These are the themes we shall cover over the 2 days:

• The aim of life – happiness redefined as a lack of suffering.
• Why seeking pleasure in life ultimately doesn’t work for us
• Dharma, its various meanings as well as the problems with its application in the modern context
• Karma, its meaning, as well as its problem in the modern context.
• Individual autonomy and social conservatism
• Bhakti and a further look at the yoga of devotion
• The role of asana
• Versions of God, dualism and non-dualism

Session One Sunday March 30th

• Overview of the text and its central themes.

Chapter 1: The problem

• Material action is irredeemably flawed in terms of producing our happiness.

Chapter 2: The solution

• Narrow viewpoint of life
• Our need to be socialy valued
• Equanmity through karma yoga
• Happiness redefined as peace

Chapter 5

• Practice and contemplation are the same
• Non-attached action is for the sake of karma purification
• Knowledge as absence of ignorance
• Knowledge as lack of individuation
• A portrait of practice

Session 2 Sunday April 6th

Chapter 6

• The importance of following a method
  Higher and lower selves
  A further portrait of the yogi
  Yoga as ‘the middle way’
  Definition of yoga as absence of pain

Chapter 7

• Illusion of maya (dualism/monism confusion)
• Suffering as a path to clarity
• Our innate ignorance as the basis of human condition

Chapter 11

• Krishna reveals himself as Time the destroyer
• Metaphysical view of reality explained
• Devotional aspect emphasised