Facilitator – David Walker
Date and Time – Saturdays, 10:00am – 12:00pm, January 9, 16, 23, 30
Location – Howard Room, Blue Hill Public Library
The Bhagavad Gita (“Song of God”) is considered the holiest written expression of Divine guidance by much of India’s population. Wendy Doniger writes in the New York Review (December 4, 2014 “War and Peace in the Bhagavad Gita”), that India’s Prime Minister Modi recently made a gift of the Gita to the Japanese Emperor, remarking, “I don’t think that I have anything more to give and the world also does not have anything more to get than this.” Mahatma Gandhi turned throughout his life to the Gita as his primary spiritual guide, yet his assassin Nathram Godse used it as his inspiration. The Gita also contains a trove of practical and esoteric Yogic practices, and inspired Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman who praised it’s wisdom and cosmic perspective. Drawing from Richard H. Davis’s book, The Bhagavad Gita: A biography, we will explore the Gita history and spiritual teachings.
David R. Walker, founder of the Blue Hill Center for Yoga and Wellness in 1990, teaches Spirituality, Ethics, and Lifestyle in the Om Land Yoga Teacher Training and Advanced Studies Program in Bangor Maine. A free-lance journalist published in the Maine Times, David graduated from the University of Maine with a degree in Journalism and Philosophy, and has been an Editor for the Maine Association of Handicapped People as well as the Arts weekly Preview!