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have thought that language could do so much? Who would have thought that grunts would so recall the miracle of the world?
    Yours truly,
    Yann Martel
    P.S. Please thank Susan Ross, from your office, for replying to me on your behalf about the first book I sent you. Perhaps you could lend Ms. Ross your copy of
Ivan Ilych
once you’ve finished with it?
    E LIZABETH S MART (1913–1986) was a Canadian novelist and poet. She was born into an influential family in Ottawa, and travelled extensively, working in the United States and the United Kingdom. While in London, she read a book of George Barker’s poetry and fell in love, first with the writing and then with the man. Their relationship is the basis of her best-known work,
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
, which she wrote in British Columbia. She settled in England and continued a long-term affair with the married Barker, with whom she had four children. She worked as a copywriter for thirteen years, then as an editor for
Queen
magazine, and retired to a cottage in Suffolk.

BOOK 5:

THE BHAGAVAD GITA
Translated from the Sanskrit by Juan Mascaró
June
11, 2007
    To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
This book of Hindu wisdom,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel
    Dear Mr. Harper,
    With this fifth book, I am taking you in a direction you might find surprising: Hindu scripture. There is much Hindu scripture about, into the thousands of pages. You might have heard of the Vedas, especially the Rigveda, or of the Upanishads, or of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, among many others. In their lengthy and varied entirety, they are the sum total of the thinking about life of an ancient and still thriving civilization, that which started in the Indus Valley, the place that today we call India. It’s all quite dizzying. If you feel that you know nothing, that you are paralyzed with fear and ignorance, don’t worry: we all feel that way. I’m sure even devout Hindus feel that way at times.
    That feeling of fear and ignorance is in fact a good starting place, because it’s exactly how Arjuna feels at the beginning of the
Bhagavad Gita
, the book you now have in your hands. The
Gita
is one short part of the Mahabharata, a much longer text, and it is thebest known of Hindu scriptures, certainly the most widely read, and because of that arguably the most important. What Arjuna needs, what I need, what you need, what we all need, is a lesson in dharma, in proper conduct. And that is the lesson that Arjuna receives from Krishna, who is Arjuna’s charioteer and friend but who also happens to be the Lord Supreme God of All Things.
    Arjuna is on the eve of a great battle. He has asked Krishna to drive their chariot between the two facing armies and he surveys the assembled mass of soldiers. He sees that he has friends and enemies on both sides and he knows that many will die. That is when he loses heart.
    Arjuna’s battle may have its origins in a real, historical event, but in the
Bhagavad Gita
we are to read it as a metaphor. The true battle here is the battle of life and each one of us is an Arjuna facing his or her life, with all its daunting challenges.
    I suggest you read neither the introduction by the scholar nor that by the translator, though Juan Mascaró’s translation is excellent; that’s why I chose it for you. It’s clear and poetic, uncluttered by jargon or pedantry. Read it aloud and you will feel the cosmic wind blowing through the words. But the introductions, leave aside, I suggest, because it is the same thing with Hinduism as with every religion: there are matters of history and there are matters of faith. The Jesus of history is one thing, the Jesus of faith another. Search too far into the Jesus of history and you will lose yourself in anthropology and miss the point. The
Gita
of faith—much like the Jesus of faith—will have its greatest influence on you if you take it entirely on its own terms,