The Bhagavad Gita Comes Alive: A Radical Translation

The Bhagavad Gita is India’s most celebrated and enlightening spiritual text. Set over 7,500 years ago on the verge of an epic battle, the Gita is a unique and enthralling philosophical conversation between the Supreme Being Shri Krishna and his dear friend, the mighty warrior Arjuna.

Although there have been hundreds of English translations of the Bhagavad Gita since 1785, poet and scholar Jeffrey Armstrong’s The Bhagavad Gita Comes Alive: A Radical Translation is the first version to decolonize the language and bring this monumental text back to its Sanskrit roots and its deep spiritual intent.

The difference is transformative. It has not come easily.

For over a decade, Armstrong (Kavindra Rishi) has striven to free the Bhagavad Gita from the misuse and limitation of hundreds of English words that do not explain, let alone reveal, the text’s original breadth and meaning. A few of the translated words on trial are old standbys like God, Lord, heaven, hell, sin, religion, angel, demi-god, sacrifice, idol, faith, and charity, and on and on.

By exploring this ancient text in a new way, Armstrong’s goal with his radical translation of the Gita is to allow the reader—whether a devotee, scholar, or layperson—to come away with a deeper, nuanced, and celebratory understanding of what Shri Krishna was softly, beautifully, and clearly explaining to his great and devoted friend, Arjuna.

The conversation they share reveals in its original meaning an entirely different experience of the possible relationship between the Supreme Being and a devotee and offers powerful ideas on what it means to be human. In this way, The Bhagavad Gita Comes Alive: A Radical Translation is essential reading for all who want to understand the deeper truths of Vedic wisdom, the potential of eternal love and the mysteries of existence.