Purpose of Gita2

Bhagwat Gita (also spelt in English as Bhagawat/Bhagavad Gita/Geeta) is arguably the most read and respected book in Indian philosophy. Not surprisingly, thousands of saints and scholars have written about it.

Most of the existing translations or treatises on Gita are written from a theistic point of view, explicitly or implicitly assuming the presence of God. However, from my own limited understanding of the book, you don't have to be believer-in-God to really appreciate it. I am an atheist, yet the book makes a lot of sense to me. For me, Gita is not a message of the God or anything like that, but simply a good philosophical book. A very good one actually, that makes me think and say "wow" every time I pick it up. This blog is an attempt to discuss Gita from this atheistic perspective, relying not on the authority of the book, but on the rationality of its arguments.

I am by no means an expert on the subject. But having read the book a few times along with some other literature on Vedanta, I wanted to move beyond mere reading the texts. In this website, I will try to write what I understand from the verses of Gita, hoping to clarify my thoughts in the process of writing, as well as learn other points of view through the discussions here. I hope you will not be shy in expressing your views.

About the name Gita2? to signify that we are taking a second (or an alternative) look at Gita (besides the fact that I happen to be a computer scientist who is getting used to putting 2.0 behind everything)! Like the name or not, one thing that you can feel good about is its relatively small size (gita2.blogspot.com) compared to most other names available now, so that you can easily type it in the address bar :)

This site is very much a work in progress, and I will keep updating the content, and look forward to the discussions. Here are RSS feeds for posts and comments.

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