Congratulations To Satyaraja For His "Gita On The Green"

July 10, 2003

Dear Godbrothers and Godsisters,

It gives me great pleasure to inform all of you that our Godbrother Satyaraja Prabhu has reached a new level of achievement in his preaching work. And I was privileged to watch his most recent project evolve into its final form, a publication with one of the major scholarly and mass market publishers out there.

GITA ON THE GREEN: THE MYSTICAL TRADITION BEHIND BAGGER VANCE published by the Continuum International Publishing Group (ISBN 0-8264 1301-3) The book is available (hardcover for 18.95) by visiting www.continuum.com http://www.continuum.com .

Get this! Continuum has hired a publicist just for Satyaraja's book, who has been getting him on major radio talk shows. Moreover, the book will be reviewed in NAPRA, Hinduism Today, and in Yoga journal (all in March). All this is very exciting to me. It just came out, and at the recent American Academy of Religion, the Continuum booth sold over 100 copies!

This book is a scholarly and personal presentation on the meaning of the Bhagavad Gita. It all began when Steven Pressfield wrote a book in 1995 entitled, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," which introduces some of the Bhagavad Gita's over-arching themes through the metaphor of the game of golf. Even the name "Bagger Vance" is to emulate the sound of "bhagavan," and the name of the golfer "R. Junah" is obviously you know who! This book came to the attention to the movie director Robert Redford who then produced a film based on his book, but with, I understand, literally no obvious allusions or credits to the Bhagavad Gita from which Pressfield's book was originally inspired. (I also hear that the movie is quite boring, and nothing worth seeing.)

When Satyaraja read Pressfield's book, and subsequently heard that a movie was to come out in just several months, he was clearly troubled that a NON-devotee had written such a work based on the Gita which inspired Hollywood. "Why didn't one of us write this book?" he asked himself, and me, over and over. Out of his deep disappointment and troubled mind over our lack of devotee presence in this whole conversation, emerged a volcanic inspiration on his part that poured out the text for his 150 page book in about a month!!!

It is a must read! He's capitalized on all this recent attention given to the Gita and it is written in a very readable and personal style that brings out the Gita like twenty times better than Pressfield or Redford, resurrecting the real Gita, openly presenting essential themes from Prabhupada's Gita as well as his own important observations for an intelligent lay reader and spiritual seeker. Many scholars have also appreciated his work and have mentioned that they will use it in the classroom! I will be as well, when it comes out in a softcover edition.

A JOB WELL DONE!!! MAY YOU SELL MILLIONS SATYARAJA!

Those of us who are scholars in the field of Vaishnava Studies and related fields, must not let the popular market go unaddressed. The important lesson we can learn from Satyaraja's glorious success here is that our work must be accessible to a range of audiences, as much as possible.

All glories to Satyaraja!

Your servant, Garuda das

Graham M. Schweig, PhD

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies

Christopher Newport University

Newport News, Virginia