Mahabharata

Their stories have shaped literature, sculpture, mathematics, dance, astronomy, philosophy and governance.

The Mahabharata, one of the great epics born from this tradition, is the longest poem ever written.

Ten times the combined length of the Iliad and the Odyssey, its embedded text, the Bhagavad Gita, a conversation between a warrior and a god on the eve of a battle that will destroy the world, has been read by soldiers, scientists, statesmen, and seekers for over 2,000 years.

So as we move through this documentary, through the birth of the cosmos, the great wars between gods and demons, the love stories that bend fate, and the philosophical questions that have never fully been answered, We are not simply reviewing mythology.

Your experience of God is not a fraction of God's attention, it is the whole of it.

The most beloved of the gopis is Radha.

whose name does not appear in the Mahabharata, but who grows in importance across centuries of devotional poetry until she becomes, in many traditions, inseparable from Krishna Himself.

Radha and Krishna are understood as the original polarity, the divine feminine and the divine masculine.

In this pastime, Janami Rishi, he's educating Arjuna's grandson.

He's teaching him the Mahabharata.

But what we learn from the scriptures is the book is not just the story.

In other words, we teach the Bhagavatam.

So you can take the same subject and repackage it according to the audience.

So there's many Mahabharats.

So he's hearing this Mahabharata that we haven't heard before, where it presents Krishna, not just on the battlefield, but a little bit of the sweetness of Krishna.

And Janamejaya becomes blown away.

What's the timeframe for that? I mean, that's like, that's like a famous story.

Well, I mean, if you want to think of it as mythology, they go back thousands of years, about 2,000 years or more, right? Going back to the time of Mahabharata, about 5,500 years, okay? But what you read in the textbooks there, it's only about 2,000 years.

Historians kind of like to say, again, you know, they don't want to think that, you know, there was like a union between a human and a Naga, which... sparked off this race of ancient builders and so on.

But the oldest of the Khmer Empire itself is only about 1,200 years.

mean, that's not that old.

It's not like Younger Dryas, 9,500 B.C., when there was this big catastrophic event.

And you just mentioned the Mahabharata.

That is always a curiosity to me because then we're talking about Vamana.

Right.

So let's just do a bit of like, what the hell? bug about what um all right so if we think about um the two primary epic texts um that we that we the the go-to's in yoga we've got the ramayana which is the story of sita and ram and then we have which has hanuman in it and has more mythical creatures right more um more non-humans um and then we have the Mahabharata which is more humans uh and it's the conflict between the Pandavas and the Kauravas who are two sets of cousins so there was two brothers sets of cousins and because of like seriously if you think your family has drama look at these guys because of some complicated circumstances um there was a dispute on which side of the family was to inherit the kingdom.

And, um, that's fundamental.

That's what makes up the majority of the whole book, the Mahabharata and, um, It influences wildly as we'll get to the Bhagavad Gita itself.

So it's attributed to Vyasa, the sage Vyasa, as the author of the text.

However, what we know is that it was composed over centuries and it probably has multiple authors and has been...

So, and it's...

I was going to say it's different to the rest of the text.

The Ramayana is one of India's two great Sanskrit epics.

The other is the Mahabharata, which includes the Bhagavad Gita.

And one day we'll talk about that.

There is not just one Ramayana.

But 11 lines in between, I skipped from this.

So if I look at the original Mahabharata text, it's much longer, but I learned it like this from one of the teachers.

So now it is part of how I learned it from my teacher.

That's the thing.

Many devotees of Lord Chaitanya like Srila Vrindavan Das Thakur, Srila Lodhan Das Thakur, Srila Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami, Sri Kavi Karnapur, Sri Prabodhananda Saraswati, Sri Rupa Goswami, Sri Sanatan Goswami, Sri Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami, Sri Jiva Goswami, Sri Gopal Bhatta Goswami, Sri Raghunath Das Goswami, and in this latter age, later, latter age, within 200 years, Sri Vishwanath Chakravarti, Sri Balade Vidyabhushan, Sri Shamananda Goswami, Shri Narottam Das Thakur, Shri Bhaktivedanta Thakur, and at last Shri Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, our spiritual master, and many other great renowned scholars and devotees of the Lord have prepared voluminous books and literatures on the life and precepts of the Lord.

Such literatures are all based on the Shastras like the Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and other histories and authentic literatures approved by the recognized acharyas.

They are unique in composition and unrivaled in presentation.

And they're full of transcendental knowledge.