You may not know this, but the Bhagavad Gita is the most beloved story in India.  Millions of people treasure this story and revere is as their most sacred scripture.  And it's a remarkable story.  It's actually part of a larger epic, the Mahabharata, which is many times longer than the Bible and is said to contain all stories within it.  They say in India that there is no story which cannot be found within the Mahabharata.  And one of those stories is the Bhagavad Gita. 

Because it is part of a larger story, the Bhagavad Gita starts in medias res, in this case on the eve of a great battle.  The hero Arjuna is one of the generals of the invading army, one of five brothers fighting to claim a kingdom which was promised to them.  Unfortunately, the people who are refusing to hand over the kingdom are their cousins, so when Arjuna surveys the opposing forces, he sees relatives, friends and teachers.  The sight of these people arrayed as enemies against him, ready to do battle to the death, fills him with anguish.  He throws down his weapon and says to his charioteer, I can't fight these beloved people.  If I kill them, even if I am victorious, ever after my meat will taste as though it is smeared with the blood of my teachers.

As it happens, his charioteer is the god Krishna, so Arjuna will not be asking this question in vain.

Let's pause here a moment.  How do you think the Christian God would answer Arjuna's plea to be let off the hook?  Arjuna is arguing for mercy, the milk of human kindness, love of family rather than the pursuit of power.

Krishna answers, Get up and fight.  It is your duty as a warrior to fight for a just cause.

Isn't that remarkable?  The Bhagavad Gita is the only sacred text to set its message of living a meaningful life in the middle of a battlefield.  And the message!  No turning the other cheek here.

But this is in fact a scripture, no mere epic.  Krishna doesn't just urge bloody mayhem.  He provides a few hundred verses of stunning advice on how to live a meaningful life.  And then at the end he urges bloody mayhem, but for all the right reasons.

As it turns out, Arjuna's question is not merely - which is my greater duty, my duty as a warrior to fight for a just cause or my duty as a family member to hold the family sacred?  As you can see, that in itself is a far from simple question.  But there is a deeper question beneath his poignant moral dilemma.  The question is - if I am to be a committed member of society, a member with professional duty and familial duty, how can I live so that I feel supported by God?  How can I live a life that satisfies my soul?  What will bring my life meaning?

 In many ways, the Bhagavad Gita is a response to its contemporary religion, Buddhism.  At the time it was written, Buddhism was flourishing as a renunciate religion.  That is, the monks and nuns who practiced Buddhism turned their back on social duty and familial duty.  They did not have jobs or children.  They lived off the charity of society, but society supported them because to support the religious practitioner brought good religious vibes to the giver.  But see how it is in this system - the giver, the one who donated food or clothing, only gets secondary virtue.  Unless you are yourself the renunciate, you are not living the spiritual life.  The only way to be spiritual under that school of Buddhism was to turn your back on society and family.

One of America's most beautiful contributions to Buddhism today is the expansion of Buddhist practices into workplaces and homes.

But in the India of the Bhagavad Gita, that expansion was still thousands of years in the future, and people who wanted to live within society, raising their families, wondered what practices they could engage in that would bring meaning to their life.  How do I act, performing my social role and yet in a way that makes my life spiritually meaningful, was Arjuna's question and is the question of social animals everywhere.

You will hear Krishna's answers in Part II.