British Army Given a talk on the Bhagavad Gita

On this auspicious and historic occasion, Acharya Dhruv Chhatralia gives a 3.5 hour non-stop talk on the Bhagavad Gita to seven different regiments of the British Army without taking a single break.

Over 5,000 years ago ShreeKrushna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. On 15 March 2014, Acharya Dhruv Chhatralia made history by teaching the very same scripture to the British Army during a 3.5 hour ‘super talk’. Dhruv Chhatralia spoke non-stop for 3.5 hours without a break to seven different audiences of regiments from the British Army.

He spoke on the key concepts of the Bhagavad Gita including the immortality of the soul and the mortality of the body, the concept of Svadharma and our duty, the importance of Lokasamgrahan (the maintenance of the world), practical methods to attain self-mastery and to control the mind, how we can discriminate between right and wrong, meditation, battle strategies from the Mahabharata and why we worship different forms of God and cows. During the discourse, Acharya Dhruv Chhatralia also answered the questions of the soldiers and was able to change the topic of his talk based on any one question by a soldier.
He told the soldiers that the Bhagavad Gita is a guide as to how to make decisions in difficult situations, when the decision is often not clear cut and when we do not know what is right and what is wrong.

He said it was not a religious scripture but a book of psychology where ShreeKrushna removes Arjuna’s delusion and makes him stand ready to perform his duty.

He said that the soldiers should meditate upon the fact that their essence was Atman, not matter, that we are not our physical bodies, and therefore we do not need to worry about death because we know that we will continue to exist and we know where we are going to go.

The soldiers took a lot of interest in the leadership qualities we can learn from Lord Ganesh including: intelligence (elephant’s head); foresight (small eyes); discrimination of the right and wrong (ears shaped like a winnowing basket); stability and database (large stomach); the ability to do both small and large tasks (the elephant’s trunk); accepting the limited intellect (half-tusk); and 100% faith (full tusk).

Acharya Dhruv Chhatralia also explained the ten fundamental principles that define a Hindu: belief in the varna system; belief in the ashram system; we worship cows are our mother; we worship the Vedas as our mother; we do not undermine any form of God; we give equal respect to all ways of thinking and ways of life; we believe in rebirth; we believe that we can be liberated from the cycle of birth and death; our heart melts at the thought of violence; and we wish well for all living-beings (even animals and plants).

FULL REPORT