Next week we have another special guest for Gita Talk.  Amy Champ will lead us through a discussion of Chapter 12 of the Bhagavad Gita, The Yoga of Devotion.

Amy is a yoga teacher finishing her PhD program at University of California, Davis. She is currently working on her dissertation about women yoga teachers and their activism.

Amy has a special affection for this subject and I’m very pleased that she has agreed to lead the next Gita Talk.

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For this week, I’d like to continue our discussion of the rhapsodic poetry of Chapters 10 & 11.  Here are some of my other favorite excerpts to get your mind going.  (Mitchell considers these chapters to be the climax of the entire Gita):

The whole universe, all things
animate or inanimate,
are gathered here—look!—enfolded
inside my infinite body.   (BG 11.7)

crowned with fire, wrapped
in pure light, with celestial fragrance,
he stood forth as the infinite
God, composed of all wonders.   (BG 11.11)

Arjuna saw the whole universe
enfolded, with its countless billions
of life-forms, gathered together
in the body of the God of gods.   (BG 11.13)

I see you everywhere, with billions
of arms, eyes, bellies, faces,
without end, middle, or beginning,
your body the whole universe, Lord.   (BG 11.16)

…You are both being and nonbeing,
and what is beyond them both.

the primal God, the primordial
Person, the ultimate place
of the universe, the knower and the known,
the presence that fills all things.   (BG 11.37-38)

…Majesty infinite in power,
you pervade—no, you are all things.   (BG 11.40)

He who acts for my sake,
loving me, free of attachment,
with benevolence toward all beings,
will come to me in the end.   (BG 11.55)

Please give us you thoughts.

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