The Bhagavad-Gita, initial thoughts

As I was reading the recent blogs and preparing to blog about The Bhagavad-Gita, I read Nick San Souci's blog... and I feel the familiar anxiety of influence and performance anxiety that often comes with reading Nick's blogs before I blog. But here it goes anyway:

I'm sure others noticed this too, but in The Bhagavad-Gita translation by Barbara Stoler Miller, after the introduction and translator's note is a quote from T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" III, The Four Quartets:

"This is the use of memory:
For liberation-not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past."

In the Tenth Teaching of Krishna, Lord Krishna says the following, and i interpret this as Krishna is Brahman, and thus everywhere and everything.....he is infinite. and when he says he is "the beginning, the middle and the end of creations" it reminds me of The Four Quartets, "In my beginning is my end...":

"I am the thunderbolt among weapons,

among cattle, the magical wish-granting cow;
I am the procreative god of love,

the king of the snakes.

I am the endless cosmic serpent,
the lord of all sea creatures;
I am chief of the ancestral fathers;
of restraints, I am death.

I am the pious son of demons;
of measures, I am times;
I am the lion among wild animals,
the eagle among birds.

I am the purifying wind,
the warrior Rama bearing arms,
the sea-monster crocodile,
the flowing river Ganges.

I am the beginning, the middle,
and the end of creations, Arjuna;
of sciences, I am the science of the self;
I am the dispute of orators.

...

I am Krishna among my mighty kinsmen;
I am Arjuna amon the Pandava princes;
i am the epic poet Vyasa among sages,
the inspired singer among bards."

Thus again I am reminded of, Atman is Brahman. The self is the divine, the Absolute. Ajuna is Krishna.

The Eleventh Teaching, The Vision of Krishna's Totality, Lord Krishna reveals himself, his true image to Arjuna,
"It was a multiform, wonderous vision,
with countless mouths and eyes
and celestial ornaments,
brandishing many divine weapons.

...

Arjuna saw all the universe
in its many ways and parts,
standing as one in the body

of the god of gods.

Then filled with amazment,

his hair bristling on his flesh,

Arjuna bowed his head to the god,
joined his hands in homage, and spoke."

Then towards the end of the 11th Teaching Arjuna says:
"Seeing your gentle human form,
Krishna, I recover
my own nature,
and my reason is restored."

The terrified Arjuna must regain his breath. This theophany and epiphany are nearly too much for the warrior to handle. The introductions says that the sight of Krishna's horrific power is too much for Arjuna to bear, Arjuna begs to see him in his calmer aspect. This is where Arjua has his realization, epiphany: "Overwhelmed by the vision of time's inexorable violence embodied in his charioteer, Arjuna sees the inevitablility of his actions. He realizes that by performing his warrior duty with absolute devotion to Krishna, he can unite with Krishna's cosmic purpose and free himself from the crippling attatchments that bind mortals to eternal suffering." I couldn't help think of maya, cosmic illusion on account of which the One appears as many, the Absolute as the relative world. Arjuna realizes that everything is maya. And, if I understand this correctly, it is his dharma to be a warrior.