On the auspicious occasion of Gita Jayanthi, we share some excerpts from Vision of the Gita in Ten Essential Verses by Pujya Swami Dayananda Saraswati.
The Gita is Upanisad saram, the essence of the Upanisads..
‘Dharmah raksati, raksitah,’ dharma protects only when it is protected. Dharma cannot be saved without protecting the dharmis. If you protect a dharmi, dharma is protected. A dharmi is a person who follows a life of dharma. Therefore, dharma is handed over like a relay race, the baton is handed over to another person.
In India, the whole preservation of dharma is by its transmission from parents to children and that is how our tradition has so far been maintained. Thus, Hindus do not have an organisation structure which keeps the congregation going because the religious conscience is in fact, handed over by parents to children and again by gurus to the disciples.
Hinduism has always been a vertical flow and not lateral control. That is why we have maintained ourselves even though we have our own problems. This is a tradition which is handed over.