Reading Notes: Arnold's Bhagavad Gita Part B

• Thanks to Dr. Gibbs pointing it out I found Arnold's version of J. Robert Oppenheimer's famous quote!  It is much more different in this version, but I like how poetic it is.  Would have been much harder for him to quote though.
• This half of the Bhagavad Gita intrigued me a lot more than the first half.  I liked how it delved deeper into the differences between a good person and a bad person and the different types of qualities.
• I was especially interested in the difference between sattva, rajas, and tamas.  I think it's rather interesting that Hinduism regards doing things for pleasure and passion to be worse than doing things without attachment or emotion.  In Christian and Western culture, people typically prefer doing things with passion and for their happiness.  Tamas seems to be more similar to the Christian idea of a "bad person."
• I also think it's interesting that Hindus regard people trying to get material wealth to be one of the worst kinds of people while most Americans and Westerners wholeheartedly believe in this path; it's even the American Dream.
• The justification for the caste system was very interesting.  Krishna says that it's better to do the job that you were assigned poorly than to do something that you shouldn't do well.  That is very against most Western ideals, and my own opinions too, but it's a very interesting viewpoint either way.
• I kind of just flipped through most of the pictures when I was reading, but at the end I discovered that they had an appendix that went through each of the pictures in detail and described the symbolism in each one.  It was so helpful!  I had no idea of all of the nuances present in the positioning of the people or the borders and it helped me understand the Bhagavad Gita a lot more.

First frontispiece in the book.  It is Dhritarashtra asking Sanjaya to tell him what happens in the battle.  Web Source.

Bibliography:  Bhagavad Gita:  The Song Celestial translated by Edwin Arnold.  Reading Guide.