Oppenheimer: How he was influenced by a Hindu holy book

Robert Oppenheimer had a leading role in developing the atomic bomb, changing the course of World War IIOppenheimer, Christopher Nolan's sweeping new biographical thriller about the "father of the atomic bomb", has opened to a glowing reception around the world. In India, it's been a hit too but some have protested against a scene depicting the scientist reading the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism's holiest books, after sex.

Soon, Ryder was giving Oppenheimer private lessons in Sanskrit on Thursday evenings. "I am learning Sanskrit," the scientist wrote to his brother Frank, "enjoying it very much and enjoying again the sweet luxury of being taught". "He liked things that were difficult. And since almost everything was easy for him, the things that really would attract his attention were essentially the difficult," Cherniss said.

In spring of that year, Oppenheimer had written a rather florid letter to his brother explaining why discipline and work had always been his guiding principles. It pointed to the fact that he was enthralled by eastern philosophy. "He was not seeking to escape to a purely spiritual realm. He was not seeking religion. What he sought was peace of mind. The Gita seemed to provide precisely the right philosophy for an intellectual keenly attuned to the affairs of men and the pleasures of the senses."

To be sure, Oppenheimer was not alone in admiring the Hindu text. Henry David Thoreau wrote about immersing himself in the "stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial". Heinrich Himmler was an. Mahatma Gandhi was an ardent follower. And WB Yeats and TS Eliot, two poets Oppenheimer admired, had read the Mahabharata.

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