Listening in the Spaces Between the Words
What the Bhagavad Gita's splendid pause means for busy modern people
Last week I pulled the curtains back on this renovated newsletter, now called Quiet Reading with Tara Penry. For American Thanksgiving week, we heard a snippet from Sarah Josepha Hale, the nineteenth-century “editress” who wrote letters and columns in support of a national Thanksgiving in the U.S. In that example, “quiet reading” meant suspending criticism of the past long enough to admire words still worthy of attention.
This week I offer you a second meaning of Quiet Reading. The word “quiet” might conjure up images of peaceful, wordless silence — let’s say, the moment after the kids leave for school following a week-long family holiday, or the hush in hats and scarves while November’s Beaver moon crosses the sky tonight. It’s easy to think of times when “quiet” and “words” are opposites. But sometimes, by a strange paradox of poetry, little marvels of language help to create the generative silences we humans need.
That’s right: the utterance of words can expand the space of quiet. How can this be?
I’ll show you with a stanza. Listen to the interplay between words, taking hold of our attention, and silences, leaving space for our creative contribution. Marvelous words inspire listeners to think and feel for ourselves on subjects of the poet’s choice. I recommend you listen to the voiceover at the top of the post. (This stanza is at 2:05-2:30.)
What mental images and associations come up in the silences for you?
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The brilliance of the moon, of fire,
the brilliance that flames from the sun
to illumine the entire world—
this brilliance in truth is mine.
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Did you hear some silences? Between the words, did the poem hold your attention, or did distractions enter? Did you participate in the poem creatively by adding any images in your mind’s eye — a moon, a sun, or fire?
Readers will answer these questions differently precisely because the silent spaces are not prescriptive; they leave room for you.
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![A full moon A full moon](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F468fdc80-48b5-4fd9-ab29-228872e184ad_2240x1260.webp)
The passage I quoted is spoken by Krishna, the incarnate Lord of the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient Sanskrit Song of the Blessed One.
The Bhagavad Gita is a productive text for quiet reading because the whole poem is offered as a pause in the action of the epic Mahabharata, the story of a battle between the small, virtuous, dispossessed side of a royal family and the larger branch of the family, in power through trickery and deceit. The fate of the kingdom hangs on the decision that Arjuna makes after the long pause of the Gita, to surrender or fight.
For approximately 150 pages in Stephen Mitchell’s modern English verse translation, the reluctant warrior Arjuna asks the Lord of All, Krishna, whether it is right to go into battle against his relatives. The dialogue ranges over body and spirit, life and death, the rules of conduct, purpose of life, the visible form of God, and more.
All this takes place on the battlefield where a deadly fight will begin as soon as Arjuna’s divine consultation ends.
Like the character George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, pausing to review the story of his life in a desperate scene on the bridge of Bedford Falls, Arjuna needs the space opened by verbal art to help him make a decision about life and death. This is no “emotion recollected in tranquility”—William Wordsworth’s idea about the origin of poetry. With lives in his care, including that of his 16-year-old son, Arjuna enters the hallowed space of Krishna’s blessed song as a retreat from the unquiet battlefield that awaits his decision.
The quiet reader thrills to find history waiting in its boots for the utterance of a poem.
Lord Krishna’s difficult lessons require amplitude of time and silence. For example, roughly midway into the dialogue, he shows Arjuna how to be free of all suffering and death. Listen to how much silence is needed between these translated words to give them proper stateliness (5:08-5:55 in the voiceover). It is impossible to rush them without falling into parody:
Because you trust me, Arjuna,
I will tell you what wisdom is,
the secret of life: know it
and be free of suffering, forever.
. . .
Whatever you do, Arjuna,
do it as an offering to me—
whatever you say or eat
or pray or enjoy or suffer.
. . .
Concentrate your mind on me,
fill your heart with my presence,
love me, serve me, worship me,
and you will attain me at last.1
Even in translation, the counsel of Krishna’s words and the spaces between them combine to give Arjuna the quiet-time-apart that helps him determine right action, even in a setting (the battlefield) where quiet-time-apart appears absurd.
Krishna teaches that a pause is not only useful; it is beautiful. “Listen further, Arjuna,” says the Blessed Lord, “to these words that delight your heart” (p. 121, stanza 10.1). Delight and awe are bound together, as when Arjuna asks to see the Lord’s “ultimate form” (p. 132, stanza 11.3). Krishna grants the wish (6:45-7:15 in the voiceover), as
With innumerable mouths and eyes,
faces too marvelous to stare at,
dazzling ornaments, innumerable
weapons uplifted, flaming —
crowned with fire, wrapped
in pure light, with celestial fragrance,
he stood forth as the infinite
God, composed of all wonders. (p. 133, stanzas 11.10-11)
Most of us, in the midst of action, feel too busy to slow down and read stanzas plump with pauses. In our usual rush, we might not ask all of Arjuna’s probing questions. But Arjuna needs these pauses to decide against his inclination.
Like few other poems, the Bhagavad Gita demonstrates how the generative spaces of poetry and song can help to quiet and focus anxious brains.
Quiet reading recognizes how language arrays its God in “all wonders,” and also how the spaces between the words open onto the mysterium from which creativity springs.
This week, pay attention to what creates generative silence for you. If every space seems full of images, words, or urgency, reach for a poem, listen to its silences, and let me know what happens.
The Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation, translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harmony Books, 2000), pp. 113, 118, 120, stanzas 9.1, 27, and 34. (The earlier stanza is from p. 166, stanza 15.12.) Mitchell’s “translation” relies on the texts of other scholars. I choose it for its accessibility as English poetry. Mitchell tried multiple verse forms before settling on one both formal and imitating natural speech.
Mitchell’s most essential guides are Winthrop Sargent’s English translation of The Bhagavad Gita (SUNY Press, 1984) and Robert N. Minor’s line-by-line commentary in Bhagavad-Gita: An Exegetical Commentary (South Asia Books, 1982), as well as seven other translations he names in his introduction (p. 31).
I started reading this book in the summer after years of having it in my wish list. I read it in small chunks. I’ll use the expression you have used in from now on. It will be my quiet reading book.
Love the Gita. I don’t know if I was ready before I turned 40, but the pandemic slowed me down enough to read philosophy and (shudder) poetry. I most likely also needed some distance from the fundamentalism of my youth before being willing to read a Hindu text. But oh man! I haven’t read the Mitchell translation but I’ll check it out. Thanks!🙏