What is Krishna?
Krishna (Kṛṣṇa) is one of the most widely worshipped deities in Hinduism. He is revered as the eighth avatāra (divine descent) of Vishnu, the preserver in the Hindu cosmic trinity, and in the Vaishnava traditions that center on him, he is the Supreme God himself rather than a subordinate figure. His conversation with the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra is the Bhagavad Gita, composed within the Mahabharata epic. Scholars date the Gita to roughly 200 BCE to 200 CE. Hundreds of millions of people consider it the most important text in Hinduism.
Krishna vs Vishnu, Shiva, and the Bhagavad Gita as text
The relationship between Krishna and Vishnu is not a simple hierarchy. Mainstream Vaishnavism holds that Vishnu is the supreme being and Krishna his most complete avatar. The Gaudiya school founded by Caitanya Mahaprabhu reverses this: Krishna is the original, Vishnu a form through which he operates. Both positions are live within contemporary Hindu practice. Krishna and Shiva represent different streams within Hinduism. Vaishnavas center devotion on Vishnu and Krishna; Shaivas center it on Shiva. The Bhagavad Gita as a text is often discussed separately from Krishna as a figure, because the Gita can be read philosophically without a devotional relationship to Krishna as a person.
The Bhagavad Gita and the teaching on dharma
The Gita opens at a crisis. Arjuna, a warrior prince, refuses to fight a battle against his own kinsmen. Krishna, acting as his charioteer, does not urge him to avoid the conflict. He teaches him instead to act without attachment to outcomes, to see the self as distinct from the body, and to perform his [dharma](lexicon:dharma) without ego-investment in the result. This is the teaching of [karma yoga](lexicon:karma-yoga): action as an offering, not as a project of self-advancement. The Gita also presents the paths of [bhakti yoga](lexicon:bhakti-yoga) (devotion) and [jnana yoga](lexicon:jnana-yoga) as equally valid routes to liberation. The text's final chapter returns to Arjuna's dilemma and resolves it: act, but as an instrument of something larger than yourself. Sadhguru's longer-form teachings on the Gita, and his book *Inner Engineering*, bring this material into a contemporary frame.
Bhakti, Caitanya, and the Hare Krishna movement
Caitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) was a Bengali saint who taught that devotion to Krishna is the highest spiritual path and that kirtan, communal chanting of Krishna's names, is its most accessible form. His followers developed the Gaudiya Vaishnava school, which became the theological backbone of ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, founded by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1966. The movement brought the name Hare Krishna into global circulation and established kirtan practice in Western cities. Ram Dass's early account of encountering Indian spirituality, documented in Be Here Now, reflects the same current of devotional bhakti yoga the Krishna movement introduced to the West. Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi represents a parallel stream rooted in the same Vaishnava-inflected Hindu framework.
Historical and scholarly questions
The historicity of Krishna is genuinely contested. The Mahabharata places him in a period associated with the dvapara yuga, the third of the four cosmic ages. Some scholars treat Krishna as a mythological composite of several figures. Others argue for a historical person, perhaps a chieftain of the Yadava clan, whose biography was later elaborated in the epics and the Puranas. The Gita's date and authorship are also debated: whether it was an integral part of the original Mahabharata or a later insertion, and whether its philosophical synthesis reflects one period or several layers of composition. The debate is ongoing in academic literature and no consensus has been reached.
Krishna in the index
Several items in the index approach Krishna's teaching through contemporary teachers. Sadhguru's lectures on the Bhagavad Gita address its core teaching on dharma, karma yoga, and non-attachment in accessible terms. His book *Inner Engineering* situates yogic philosophy, much of which flows from the same Vaishnava tradition, in practical language. Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi documents the Kriya yoga lineage that traced its transmission back through Krishna's teaching. Ram Dass arrived at bhakti yoga through his own encounter with the devotional tradition, and his work documents what it can look like for a Western seeker.
