Gita on the Green: The Mystical Tradition Behind Bagger Vance

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**Use copy in Blurb1Deep 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.

Steven J. Rosen is the author of fifteen books on East-Indian philosophy and spirituality. For the last eight years he has been the editor of The Journal of Vaishnavi Studies (an interdisciplinary quarterly). He is currently part of an editorial team working to complete The Encyclopedia of Hinduism, an eighteen volume compendium of Indian thought (forthcoming, 2003, University of South Carolina Press). He lives in Nyack, NY.

"There have been hundreds of commentaries on the Bhagavad-Gita; this one manages to cut to the chase....a fresh and fun approach to studying this monumental work of the Hindu faith."-NAPRA ReView "Rosen's exegesis is delightful for its Gita scholarship, for the fun he has integrating the language of golf with the language of yoga ('"yoga means "to link"'), and especially for his deconstruction of the novel in light of the Gita. Those of us who love this kind of literary-spiritual excavation will find great satisfaction in curling up with the quasi-holy trinity of the Gita, the Pressfield novel, and Rosen's Gita on the Green."-Yoga Journal "Gita on the Green shows how a long-honored spiritual substance can be...made viable for a modern-day audience....For those of us who have been long in the Ramakrishna Vedanta tradition, Gita on the Green provides a fresh approach."-American Vedantist "Gita on the Green does for the Bhagavad-Gita what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance did for Zen Buddhism. It takes a philosophically elaborate Eastern tradition and makes it accessible for a Western audience....Enjoyable enlightenment,"-Tamal Krishna Goswami "Very readable....Rosen is truly one of those rare writers who is qualified to depict this epic treatise of a man facing his own nature and arising victorious in this battle of life over the 'lower self.'"-Hare Krishna World "In the Bhagavad-gita, the heroic if spiritually challenged Arjuna asks his charioteer Krishna for good advice. He discovers half-way through their exchange that all the while he had been receiving God-advice. . . . Hmmm . . . Now what if Arjuna were a golfer, and God was his caddie? That would no doubt transform the classic text into something more readable for Westerners. This was accomplished in The Legend of Bagger Vance and taken further by Steven Rosen, who, in Gita on the Green, puts us all on the playing field with Bagger and Bhagavan Sri Krishna. The result is indeed edifying!"-Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion, McGill University, and author of The Hindu Gita "Gita on the Green does for the Bhagavad-gita what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance did for Zen Buddhism. It takes a philosophically elaborate Eastern tradition and makes it accessible for a Western audience. . . . Enjoyable enlightenment!"-Tamal Krishna Goswami, University of Cambridge "A fresh and fun approach to studying this monumental work of the Hindu faith [the Bhagavad-gita]."-NAPRA ReView Titled mentioned in article by author in Yoga Magazine, 2008.