{
  "metadata": {
    "schema": "org.dharma-open-school.open-study-pack.v1",
    "publisher": "Dharma Open School by Aniruddha Dāsa",
    "canonicalUrl": "https://dharmaopenschool.com",
    "contentLastModified": "2026-08-26",
    "edition": "school research edition",
    "collection": "Source-mapped topic studies",
    "recordCount": 14,
    "provenance": "SCHOOL_RESEARCH_EDITION",
    "reuseNotice": "Free to download for personal study and teaching preparation. No separate open licence is asserted for editorial research-edition text; retain provenance and check permissions before redistribution or adaptation."
  },
  "studies": [
    {
      "slug": "soul",
      "question": "What does the Gītā distinguish from the changing body?",
      "plain": "Begin with the text’s distinction between the embodied knower and bodily change. Do not jump from the word “self” to every later claim about identity; establish what each passage actually adds.",
      "distinction": "“Body”, “embodied one”, “knower of the field” and “Supreme knower” are related expressions, not interchangeable labels. A careful study maps their grammatical and argumentative roles.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 2.13",
          "role": "Introduces continuity through bodily stages and another embodiment."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 2.20",
          "role": "Collects negations about birth, death and destruction."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 13.2",
          "role": "Distinguishes field and knower and introduces a further theological claim."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What changes in each passage?",
        "What is said not to change?",
        "Which conclusion is text and which is inference?"
      ],
      "practice": "Draw a two-column map: claims about the body and claims about the knower. Add the exact verse beside every line.",
      "teachBack": "Explain the distinction in 90 seconds without using the word “soul”, then reopen the verses and correct your language."
    },
    {
      "slug": "krishna",
      "question": "How does Kṛṣṇa identify Himself within the dialogue?",
      "plain": "Study first-person claims in sequence rather than collecting honorifics. Ask what Kṛṣṇa says about appearance, relation to the world, knowledge and the origin of what exists.",
      "distinction": "A speaker’s self-description, Arjuna’s response and a commentator’s theological synthesis are three layers. Keep them visible so conviction does not erase provenance.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 4.6–8",
          "role": "Connects divine appearance with protection, correction and dharma."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 7.7",
          "role": "States a relation of dependence using the image of gems on a thread."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 10.8",
          "role": "Begins the four-verse core with a claim about origin and response."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "Who is speaking?",
        "What first-person claim is made?",
        "How does the listener respond?"
      ],
      "practice": "Build a claim–evidence table using only first-person statements and their immediate context.",
      "teachBack": "Present one claim, its textual evidence and one limit on what that passage alone establishes."
    },
    {
      "slug": "bhakti",
      "question": "What actions, dispositions and relationships constitute bhakti in the Gītā?",
      "plain": "Treat bhakti as a patterned orientation expressed through remembering, offering, worship, dependence and action - not as a mood word detached from the dialogue.",
      "distinction": "The text uses related terms such as bhakti, bhaj, man-manā and mad-yājī in different grammatical settings. A translation may smooth those differences; the study notebook should preserve them.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 9.26",
          "role": "Links a simple offering with bhakti and the person who offers."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 9.34",
          "role": "Sequences attention, devotion, worship and orientation."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 12.6–7",
          "role": "Describes practices and divine response in relationship."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What does the person do?",
        "What inner orientation is named?",
        "What response is promised or described?"
      ],
      "practice": "Turn each action word into an observable weekly practice while keeping the verse reference attached.",
      "teachBack": "Explain why bhakti in these passages is more specific than “feeling spiritual”."
    },
    {
      "slug": "karma",
      "question": "Why is karma more than a slogan about consequences?",
      "plain": "The Gītā’s discussion moves among action, duty, attachment, sacrifice, inaction and the result of action. Begin by identifying which problem a verse is answering.",
      "distinction": "Karma can name action, prescribed action or the binding consequence of action depending on context. “Do your duty” is therefore not a complete explanation.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 2.47",
          "role": "Distinguishes entitlement to action from control of its fruits."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 3.9",
          "role": "Contrasts action for sacrifice with action that binds."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 4.17",
          "role": "Requires inquiry into action, wrong action and inaction."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "Which sense of action is active?",
        "What produces bondage?",
        "What relationship to results is prescribed?"
      ],
      "practice": "Analyse one ordinary decision under four headings: action, motive, attachment to result and responsibility.",
      "teachBack": "Answer “Does the Gītā say results do not matter?” in two sourced sentences."
    },
    {
      "slug": "reincarnation",
      "question": "How does the text connect continuity, remembrance and future embodiment?",
      "plain": "Study the argument as several connected claims rather than treating a single verse as the whole doctrine. Bodily continuity, another embodiment, consciousness at death and destinations appear in different contexts.",
      "distinction": "A comparison can support continuity without explaining every mechanism. Later passages add conditions and destinations; label each addition rather than reading it backward into the first verse.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 2.13",
          "role": "Uses bodily stages as the near side of a comparison."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 8.6",
          "role": "Connects remembrance at death with a reached state."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 14.14–15",
          "role": "Relates death under different guṇas to differing destinations."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What continuity is asserted?",
        "What condition is added?",
        "What mechanism remains unexplained here?"
      ],
      "practice": "Create a three-verse argument map and mark every arrow “explicit” or “inferred”.",
      "teachBack": "Explain the doctrine without pretending BG 2.13 answers every question about the process."
    },
    {
      "slug": "three-modes",
      "question": "How do sattva, rajas and tamas explain patterned experience and action?",
      "plain": "The three guṇas are presented as qualities of material nature that bind, produce characteristic knowledge and action, and can be observed without reducing a person to a permanent label.",
      "distinction": "A diagnostic description is not a licence for social ranking. The text also describes one who sees the modes operating and is not destabilised by their appearance.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 14.5",
          "role": "Introduces the three guṇas as arising from prakṛti and binding the embodied."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 14.17–18",
          "role": "Connects the modes with characteristic results and trajectories."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 14.22–25",
          "role": "Describes a response that is not simply another personality label."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What quality is described?",
        "What effect follows?",
        "What response transcends simple identification?"
      ],
      "practice": "Observe one decision for a week and record clarity, agitation and inertia as changing influences - not identities.",
      "teachBack": "Use one example to explain the modes without labelling another person."
    },
    {
      "slug": "guru",
      "question": "What makes learning from a teacher different from collecting information?",
      "plain": "The Gītā places approach, inquiry and service beside the teacher’s seeing of truth. The learner is neither passive nor self-authorising: questions and disciplined reception work together.",
      "distinction": "A textual description of learning does not verify every person who claims authority. Identity, lineage, conduct, competence and accountability require evidence beyond a title.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 4.34",
          "role": "Connects approach, inquiry and service with instruction by seers."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 13.8",
          "role": "Includes approach to a teacher within a wider discipline of knowledge."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 18.63",
          "role": "Shows instruction followed by reflection and responsible choice."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What is asked of the learner?",
        "What qualifies the teacher in the verse?",
        "Where does responsibility remain?"
      ],
      "practice": "Rewrite one vague question into a precise inquiry with context, prior study and the decision it affects.",
      "teachBack": "Explain why inquiry and service need not be opposites."
    },
    {
      "slug": "holy-name",
      "question": "Where does vocal remembrance appear in the Gītā’s practice language?",
      "plain": "The Gītā repeatedly describes glorifying, remembering and speaking of Kṛṣṇa. A Gauḍīya study can connect this with a wider theology of the holy name while clearly labelling which claims come from later or other sources.",
      "distinction": "The Gītā passages provide a foundation for constant glorification and remembrance; a complete doctrine of nāma-tattva requires additional identified texts and teachers.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 9.14",
          "role": "Describes continual glorification and disciplined devotion."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 10.9",
          "role": "Describes devotees speaking and enlightening one another."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 10.25",
          "role": "Names japa among sacrifices in a list of representative excellences."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What vocal act is named?",
        "Is it individual or shared?",
        "What further doctrine would require another source?"
      ],
      "practice": "Keep a seven-day record of a short vocal practice: time, attention barrier and one adjustment.",
      "teachBack": "State what these verses support and one nāma claim they do not establish alone."
    },
    {
      "slug": "maya",
      "question": "How are divine energy, material nature and difficulty of crossing described?",
      "plain": "Māyā should be studied as part of the text’s account of divine energies and material nature, not as a casual synonym for “nothing is real”. The world’s operations and the difficulty of crossing are both affirmed.",
      "distinction": "Illusion, material nature and divine potency overlap in some teaching contexts but are not identical English concepts. Preserve the Sanskrit term and its immediate verbs.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 7.14",
          "role": "Describes a divine guṇa-made māyā as difficult to cross and names a response."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 9.10",
          "role": "Places material nature under divine supervision in cosmic activity."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 18.61",
          "role": "Uses māyā in an image of beings moved as if mounted on a machine."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "Whose potency is named?",
        "What action does it perform?",
        "What way of crossing or reorientation is given?"
      ],
      "practice": "Replace three casual uses of “illusion” with the more exact relationship described by the cited verse.",
      "teachBack": "Explain why māyā does not mean that lived experience is simply nonexistent."
    },
    {
      "slug": "paramatma",
      "question": "How is the accompanying and governing presence within described?",
      "plain": "The Gītā describes an inner witness, permitter, supporter and knower, while also distinguishing the individual knower. Map each title to its verse before combining them into a systematic account.",
      "distinction": "The individual self and the Supreme Self are discussed in close relation. Similar vocabulary does not erase the distinction the passages themselves make.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 13.23",
          "role": "Collects the titles witness, permitter, supporter, enjoyer and Supreme Self."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 15.15",
          "role": "Links presence in the heart with memory, knowledge and forgetting."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 18.61",
          "role": "Describes the Lord situated in the heart of all beings."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "Which title is used?",
        "What relation to the individual is described?",
        "What action is attributed?"
      ],
      "practice": "Create a five-title glossary and attach only the function supplied by its immediate verse.",
      "teachBack": "Explain the distinction between “knower of this field” and “knower in all fields”."
    },
    {
      "slug": "surrender",
      "question": "What movement does śaraṇāgati describe in the Gītā?",
      "plain": "Surrender appears as taking refuge, reorienting action and trusting a promised response. Read the culminating instruction with the dialogue that prepares it, not as an isolated slogan.",
      "distinction": "Surrender is not permission for coercion by another human being. The object, speaker, promise and preceding deliberation remain essential to the passage.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 7.14",
          "role": "Connects taking refuge with crossing divine māyā."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 18.62",
          "role": "Directs refuge with one’s whole being and names peace and destination."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 18.66",
          "role": "Gives the culminating refuge instruction and promise."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "Who is the object of refuge?",
        "What is relinquished or reoriented?",
        "What response is promised?"
      ],
      "practice": "Choose one contested decision and distinguish responsibility, control of outcome and the refuge orientation you can actually practise.",
      "teachBack": "Explain surrender without using it to remove another person’s agency."
    },
    {
      "slug": "death",
      "question": "How does the Gītā move from inevitability to preparation?",
      "plain": "The text treats death as certain for the born, but it does not stop at inevitability. Attention, remembrance, action and knowledge shape its practical response to mortality.",
      "distinction": "A statement about inevitability is not a dismissal of grief, medical care or ethical responsibility. Read philosophical claims and human context together.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 2.27",
          "role": "States the cycle of death for the born and birth for the dead."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 8.5",
          "role": "Connects remembrance at death with destination."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 8.6",
          "role": "Generalises the relation between remembered state and what is reached."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What fact is asserted?",
        "What practice is prescribed?",
        "What pastoral question remains?"
      ],
      "practice": "Write a one-page mortality reflection with one source claim, one personal response and one concrete responsibility today.",
      "teachBack": "Offer a two-minute explanation that leaves room for grief rather than arguing against it."
    },
    {
      "slug": "liberation",
      "question": "What is liberation from, and what positive condition is described?",
      "plain": "Mokṣa and brahma-nirvāṇa appear alongside freedom from binding action, inner steadiness, equality and devotion. Avoid reducing liberation to mere disappearance or escape.",
      "distinction": "Different passages emphasise freedom, realisation, peace, devotion or destination. A systematic conclusion should show which verse supplies each element.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 2.51",
          "role": "Connects relinquishing action-fruits with freedom from birth’s bondage."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 5.24–26",
          "role": "Describes inner happiness, self-mastery and brahma-nirvāṇa."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 18.54",
          "role": "Describes brahma-bhūta equanimity and entry into higher bhakti."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What bondage ends?",
        "What positive capacity appears?",
        "How is devotion related?"
      ],
      "practice": "Make a freedom-for/freedom-from table and attach a verse to every cell.",
      "teachBack": "Explain why liberation in these passages is more than “getting out”."
    },
    {
      "slug": "humility",
      "question": "How does humility function as knowledge and communication?",
      "plain": "Humility is listed among the qualities of knowledge and divine character, and it also appears in disciplined speech. It is not self-erasure; it changes how truth is pursued and expressed.",
      "distinction": "Humility does not require accepting falsehood, abuse or manufactured status. Pair freedom from pride with truthfulness, courage and nonviolence from the surrounding lists.",
      "references": [
        {
          "reference": "BG 13.8",
          "role": "Begins the qualities of knowledge with freedom from pride and pretence."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 16.1–3",
          "role": "Places humility among a broad set of divine qualities."
        },
        {
          "reference": "BG 17.15",
          "role": "Defines discipline of speech through truth, benefit and non-agitation."
        }
      ],
      "inquiry": [
        "What is absent?",
        "What positive conduct accompanies it?",
        "How does speech reveal it?"
      ],
      "practice": "Rewrite one corrective statement so it remains true, useful, non-agitating and specific.",
      "teachBack": "Explain the difference between humility and making oneself falsely small."
    }
  ]
}