Deep in India's past, Lord Krishna revealed the 700 verse Bhagavad-Gita, a spiritual poem containing universal, nonsectarian truths. In 1995, Steven Pressfield decided to introduce the Bhagavad-Gita to a contemporary audience, so he restructured the Gita in terms of a golf novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance. As he says, "In the Gita the troubled warrior Arjuna receives instruction from Krishna, Supreme Lord of the Universe, who has assumed human form as Arjuna's charioteer. Instead of a troubled warrior, it's a troubled golf champion (Ranulph Junah); instead of his charioteer, it's his caddie Bagger Vance." Now a major motion picture directed by Robert Redford and starring Matt Damon and Will Smith, The Legend of Bagger Vance is loosely based on the ancient Hindu epic. Steven Rosen, in Gita on the Green: The Mystical Tradition Behind Bagger Vance, draws the story out further using some thirty years of Gita scholarship and a writing style that is both eloquent and thorough. Rosen takes us on a colorful journey into the golf world of Bagger Vance, as well as into the spiritual realm of Bhagavan Sri Krishna. By the end of the journey, one realizes that one has just read a commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita while hitting a hole in one.
​The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)PG-13 | 2h 6min | Drama, Fantasy, Sport | 3 November 2000 (USA)

A down-and-out golfer attempts to recover his game and his life with help from a mystical caddy.
Director:
 Robert Redford
Writers:
 Steven Pressfield (novel), Jeremy Leven (screenplay)
Stars:
 Will Smith, Matt Damon, Charlize Theron |
The Legend of Bagger Vance

"The story of this golf match is a metaphor," Redford reflects. "No one knows better than a golfer that in the game of golf are contained all the lessons of life. But 'The Legend of Bagger Vance' is not just a golf story. It's about a character who loses his swing his authentic swing and has to find it again. And in that sense, it's universal because we all lose our swing in one way or another at some point in our lives. We're all tested by adversity and I suspect that all of us have at times hoped for someone like Bagger to come along and help us through."


​
Is based on the story of Bhagavan Krishna, and Arjuna...In The Bhagavad Gita/The song of God
5000 years ago
Will Smith is the character Bagger/God/That
Matt Damon is the character Juna/King

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Begin at 14:50...Accordingly, there is no death other than death of the body only...For the SOUL there is neither birth nor death...for the soul is eternal...such is the NOW...The NOW is eternal...eternally the NOW...We are eternally this present moment...without past or future!


http://www.gradesaver.com/bhagavad-gita

Bhagavad-Gita Summary and Analysis of 1-2 Summary
The blind king Dhritarashtra asks Sanjaya, who has the ability to see all, to tell him about the battle between his family and the Pandavas. The Pandavas include Arjuna and his brothers, who have come to take back the kingdom from Dhritarashtra, who means to bequeath it to his son Duryodhana, even though the crown rightfully belongs to Arjuna's brother Yudhishthira.

Prince Duroydhana, considered the nemesis for our protagonist Arjuna, approaches his teacher Drona, and lists out the key members of each side. He notes that his own army is unlimited, while the Pandavas is small. Each side blows their divine conchs, signaling the war is about to begin. Arjuna asks Krishna, who has taken the form of his charioteer, to drive them into the battle.

But as the chariot moves, Arjuna sees in the two armies the equal presence of his family, for Duryodhana, despite being his enemy, is also his cousin, and thus both sides are littered with "fathers, grandfathers, teachers, brothers, uncles, grandsons, in-laws and friends." Arjuna is overcome with despair and tells Krishna that he has no desire to fight if it means killing his kin. He has no need for a kingdom if it means destroying a family. He casts away his bow and arrows and sits in the chariot in the middle of the battlefield.

Krishna tells Arjuna to arise with a brave heart and push forward to destroy the enemy. When Arjuna questions how he can support such sin, Krishna says there is no such thing as the killer and the killed, that the body is merely flesh -- and that at the time of death he attains another body. These limits of the superficial body should not stop someone from doing what he must do, namely defeating evil and restoring the power of good.

The true master, says Krishna, realizes that reality lies in the eternal; such people are not affected by the temporary changes that come with the senses. Instead, as a warrior, he must follow his dharma, or duty, where nothing is higher than the war against evil. If he shirks from this battle, however, then Arjuna will incur sin, violating his dharma and his honor.

In Krishna's eyes, death means the attainment of heaven, and victory the enjoyment of earth, so there will be no pain in fighting. Krishna also extols the notion of yoga -- or skill in action -- as a path towards finding resoluteness, focus. He encourages Arjuna to not see the results of action, but rather focus on the work itself -- as a man within himself, without selfish attachments, alike in success and defeat.

Krishna tells Arjuna that the definition of a wise man is one who is unconcerned with whether things are "good or bad," but rather abandon attachments to the fruits of labor, allowing them to attain a state beyond evil. When a man is unmoved by the confusion of ideas, and is united simply in the peace of action without thoughts of results, he can attain perfect yoga. Arjuna asks what a man who has achieved perfect yoga acts like -- how he sits, how he moves, how he can be recognized.

Krishna says this kind of man is not agitated by negative emotions -- lust, fear, anger. They are naturally meditative, and do not respond to good fortune or bad fortune. They have no attachment to the material, and live not in the senses, but in the self. They are free from ego -- the 'I, me, mine' which cause pain.

Some Analysis:
The opening of the Bhagavad Gita can be intimidating because of the sheer number of names and terms that come out of Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra that will be unfamiliar to those not well-versed in Hinduism. But the new reader should see the first chapter merely as historical context for what is to follow, which is essentially a two-person conversation about philosophy and yogic principles, as opposed to a treatise of battle, which the first chapter seems to lay out. Indeed, all we really need to understand in this first chapter is the background of the conflict -- that Arjuna must avenge Dhritarashtra's passing of the kingdom to his own son, rather than to Arjuna's brother Yudhishthira, the rightful king -- and the nature of Arjuna's inner turmoil over the fact he must kill his own family members.

Arjuna, then, finds himself in a similar position as Hamlet -- having to fight his uncle for the control of a crown that he doesn't necessarily want. Krishna, as the divine voice of yoga, dharma, and karma, must not only convince Arjuna to fight, but to fight with the will to win -- to restore good, to restore balance, to fulfill his duty as a warrior. In the process of convincing him, Krishna will lay out essentially a philosophy for living, and the basic tenets of Hinduism.

A few key terms must be understood in order to move forward. Dharma is the Hindu concept of 'duty.' In each life, we are reborn in accordance with our karma - which is simply the cumulative effect of our actions. Hinduism sees our life as a series of actions which have consequences - everything we do is part of a web of consequences which affects others, and thus every action has a 'reaction.' Our life is about living out the effects of these reactions, and we are reborn having to continually live out the debts that come with negative actions, until we end the cycle of birth and death by bearing out our karma. Dharma, then, or 'duty,' is simply that which we must do in each life in order to restore the rightful balance of karma.

Accordingly, then, Krishna tells Arjuna that his dharma in this life is to be a warrior and rightfully fight against Duryodhana for the kingdom so that he may restore good -- his karma requires this grand staging of good vs. evil to right the balance. It is not his duty to see myopically, to simply see the boundaries of life and death, but rather to live beyond results and in the larger cycle of samsara, or the karmic circle.

Arjuna asks Krishna what a man who is freed from mundane concerns is like, what a wise man does in life on a daily basis. It is a truly wonderful question, for it hits at why most laymen are afraid of pursuing a spiritual path -- namely the idea that they have to give up the world in order to find peace. Arjuna says that such a man lives in the world, but simply has no concern for results. He finds peace in the work, peace in the universe, because he has found himself. There is no such thing as good or bad, there is no such thing as life and death. There is what he sees and nothing more.

Important quotes from
Gita on the Green
by Steven Pressfield
  • True intelligence does not reside in the brain, but in the hands.

  • In the final analysis, aren't all our diseases mental?

  • You could change the universe, or your own situation at any time...by transcending time...go beyond past and future

  • When a man's foes are worthy, every match is at championship level.

  • I believe that each of us possesses, inside ourselves, one true Authentic Swing that is ours alone. It is folly to try to teach us another, or mold us to some ideal version of the perfect swing. Each player possesses only that one swing that he was born with, that swing which existed within him before he ever picked up a club. Like the statue of David, our Authentic Swing already exists, concealed within the stone, so to speak.

  • I believe this is the reason for the endless fascination of golf. The game is a metaphor for the soul's search for its true ground and identity.

  • We enter onto this material plane, as Wordsworth said, 'not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.' In other words, already possessing a highly refined and individuated soul. Our job here is to recall that soul and become it. To form a union with it, a yoga as they say in India.
  • For in the end, grace comes from God, from the Authentic Self...

  • The Swing/Soul is never learned or obtained...It's remembered.
  • What is ever gained by 'defeating' others?
  • Life is action. Even choosing not to act, we act.

  • There can be no cheating in the dimension in which the Self resides. There every action inexorably produces its result, every thought its consequence.

  • The rain falls, with no though of watering the land. The clouds roll, not seeking to bring shade. They simply do. And we must too.

  • Why did God give us a brain if not to think?

  • Don't they, the animals, seem closer to God than we?

    Don't they seem automatically tuned to His will, guided flawlessly by instinct?

  • The Knowing is everything. It is the Knowing alone that survives the death of the body. You are your Knowing.

  • In sensed that every aspect of the gull's life, of the storm's life, of the planet's itself, was play. Hunting and killing included. It was all play. Only we humans broke this natural law.

  • There's no tonic like youth for a quick recovery!

  • The human being at his current level is incapable of perceiving Reality, except in rare ecstatic bursts. In earlier eras, men could hold that consciousness longer. In future ages, they will again.

  • He had destroyed himself by his own arrogance. With his own hand he had crushed the Grace that had been granted him.

  • You are never alone.

  • Those who seek lesser teachers go unto them.

  • Play is the activity most pleasing to me. Because it is authentic.

  • A day will come for you when play becomes torment.

  • How can any of us know another person's grief?

Bobby Jones

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Walter Hagen