Sri Ramakrishna

19th-century Bengali mystic whose compressed teachings on the Gita frame the entire lecture series.

Overview

Sri Ramakrishna, a 19th-century Bengali saint, is cited at the very opening of Ep 1: the goal of human life is God-realization. Swami Sarvapriyananda returns to him throughout.

Ramakrishna on the Gita. Ramakrishna was famously unimpressed with scholarship and “mere book learning,” but he admired the Gita intensely. His Bengali one-liner — Gita khub boi — means “the Gita is a great book.” His compressed summary is the pun that gives us the concept of tyaga: if you repeat “Gita, Gita, Gita” quickly, the sound collapses into tagi — the renouncer. Renunciation is the essence of the text.

The gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. The Gospel’s author, M (Mahashaya), asks Ramakrishna two questions at their second meeting — how do I keep my mind on God, and how do I live in this world? Swami frames these as the two essential questions of spiritual life, and the answers as the structure of the Gita’s chapter 2: jnana-yoga answers the first, karma-yoga the second.

Narendranath’s first question. Ramakrishna’s disciple Narendranath (later Swami Vivekananda) came to him asking, “Have you seen God?” Swami links this to Arjuna’s later demand in chapter 11: “I believe you are an incarnation of God, but I would like to see for myself.” In the Indian tradition, religion is realization, not belief.

Related concepts and entities

• Teacher of vivekananda
• tyaga — his compressed summary of the Gita
• His teachings: two central questions structure jnana-yoga and karma-yoga
• Treated as an avatara in the Ramakrishna tradition

Lecture evidence

• Ep. 1 [00:22]: The goal of human life is God-realization.
• Ep. 1 [17:20]: Gita khub boi — the Gita is a great book; say “Gita” ten times and it becomes tagi.
• Ep. 1 [11:14]: M’s two questions to Ramakrishna frame the essential themes of the Gita.