Mahabharata Tales: East Meets West – Reflections on Epic Wisdom

Join A.Y Oza and Kirk Barbera for a thought-provoking discussion that bridges ancient Indian epic storytelling with the timeless insights of Western literature. We explore how the Mahabharata’s themes of duty, philosophy, and cosmic order resonate across cultures—inviting you to discover epic wisdom in a modern light.

Transcript

Ok 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:06
Unknown
AUI Oza. Welcome to my podcast studio. You are playing the role of Arjuna? Yes. In Mahabharata plays. Yes. Which I have did not get in my last podcast. With Kumar, husband of who plays Bhishma, I think I always called it and I was trying to get it with him here, the pronunciation.

00:00:22:06 - 00:00:46:01
Unknown
But I finally got it Mahabharata to basically. Yeah. So you're in the cast today? I wanted to talk, so I want to do a little bit of an overview of the story. For people who didn't watch the first one, but very brief, because I want to focus with you on talking about the character of Arjuna. You know, some background, maybe a little bit of Bhima.

00:00:46:03 - 00:01:14:15
Unknown
You know, the kind of character or logical understanding, the meaning behind them, their character, their influence. I'm also very interested in the kind of, influence they had on you as an individual, like, you know, as because you grew up with these stories and, yeah, that's their kind of overall meaning and things like that, and just kind of go into stories and maybe any comparisons with Western literature, which we've already kind of offline talked about.

00:01:14:15 - 00:01:36:12
Unknown
So I'd love to thank you for having me. Yeah, of course I love that. Genesis just a bit, but delights. So first off, let's give the audience an overview. We're doing Mahabharata of Tales for, Austin Shakespeare at the Long Center. We're recording this on, let's say, the seventh. Yeah. So this is the seventh. We're recording this now on the.

00:01:36:15 - 00:01:58:04
Unknown
So a week from today, the 14th, we are having our first preview performance. And then we are, you know, going two weekends, four weekends in well a week from today we open our premises. Yeah yeah. Previews on the Thursday. Right. Okay. Not we'll check on that for you. I'm pretty sure I'm opening night is the one of us is wrong.

00:01:58:05 - 00:02:20:00
Unknown
I don't know which one. It might be me. Yeah. I thought we opened on Valentine's Day. Yeah. Which is. So that's Friday and then Thursday's preview. Okay. Well, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Thursday. Oh my gosh. But but but preview is sold out. So it's a really. Yeah. We've got a waitlist for previews okay. Sold out and there are some deals.

00:02:20:21 - 00:02:43:21
Unknown
But we'll be getting the new links up on social media. But we've got some, specials running. Yeah. So far. Get your tickets. Yeah. So only two weekends. Now, if you're watching this before, hopefully this encourages you to buy if you're watching it after the play. You know, I hope you will learn something and go check out the Mahabharata, because I'm learning a lot.

00:02:43:22 - 00:03:19:04
Unknown
I mean, this is really fast, and I've studied, you know, Greek mythology. I actually have I've written my own translation of the Iliad, like, I really am interested in mythology, and particularly I'm very interested in, you know, world world stories and literature and art and how they influence individual societies and us today. Yeah. Like I you know, for instance, I have a theory that we're all romanticist today, whether we realize it or not, the English romantics in the 18th century and the German Romantics, they kind of shaped the world culturally in a way that's still prevalent to us today.

00:03:19:06 - 00:03:42:01
Unknown
Yeah. And, you know, I think in learning about Mahabharata, and there's some other classical Indian stories I've just, you know, I'm really new when I mean new, I mean, like a couple weeks. Yeah. Like, I've, I've, I heard of the bug. I have bug Bhagavad gita. Yeah. Before, but I hadn't really read about it. I've known that it's very influential.

00:03:42:01 - 00:04:06:07
Unknown
Like, I think, Walden took it to Walden Pond and, like, it's the philosophy has definitely been the most influential thing, but it's in the West. I think I'll just. Huxley did, like, a, you know, version of it or something in, But in Indian, in, like the certain areas of the world, Mahabharata is extremely influential.

00:04:06:09 - 00:04:27:10
Unknown
Yeah. And, you know, and as that culture grows now, I think in our modern world it's growing and expanding. I think that's becoming more it's it'll become more relevant more, you know, part of the story that's happened. So I'm just very interested in that whole idea, not just of Mahabharata, but just broader literary stories and how they shape individuals and cultures.

00:04:27:12 - 00:04:47:20
Unknown
Kudos and thank you for you men for the like the least, you know, bringing it on your platform. That's really cool. And and you and all the other members of the cast and a couple weeks to become such a far way and, it's it's given me like I, I did grow up with the story, like you said, but it's given me such and like a renewed take on it.

00:04:47:22 - 00:05:23:00
Unknown
Yeah, it does. Yeah. It's not just I'm a beginner's mind acting it, but it's coming at it from all of these different, perspectives. Everyone's bringing their own unique perspective to it. Yeah. Outside of all of this cultural and, you know, propaganda, a lot of it is, some, some kind of old thinking, you know, but for all of the all of the things that come along with the story, you know, because because it has such a religious significance and such a cultural significance, I mean, it is our epic somehow, I imagine.

00:05:23:00 - 00:05:42:02
Unknown
So it's something that that if you were a Greek, you would have such a pride also in, you know, those. So it's it's yeah, it's, it's one of those interesting. You know what I mean. It's one of those things that we grow up with. So to, to be working with folks that are coming from an outside perspective, it gives such like a renewed.

00:05:42:04 - 00:06:07:01
Unknown
You know, understanding, you know, it's certainly it gives you it gives you such room for thought and growth, which is, which is, you know, such a blessing because this is such a such a philosophical epic poem. Yeah. You know. Yeah, yeah. So let's give a quick overview of it, like just gist of the story, particularly the facets of what we are covering.

00:06:07:03 - 00:06:26:22
Unknown
Yeah. So somewhat because my so again if you're interested in more like a overview that's longer and more in depth, I think I did one with Kumar Abhinav who's playing Bhishma. But I wanted to get into individual characters with you a little bit more. But I do want to give people an overview just quickly. So do you want to help us with a a quick overview of the story?

00:06:27:00 - 00:06:44:23
Unknown
You know, yeah. We don't have to go into every plot point in our story. But, you know, keep it succinct. Yeah. It starts with the poet Vassa, and he's kind of talking to a young girl, and then they're telling the story of the Pandavas and the core of us. Right. So what's going on? Yeah. And that in particularly with us.

00:06:44:23 - 00:07:12:03
Unknown
And what does the audience need to know going into this? So this is like the story of, of a particular dynasty, the Kuru dynasty. And these characters that are these central characters. You mentioned Bhishma, they're all members of this Kuru dynasty. And it's a story about how, they are they're both kuru. They're both kuru. So, yeah, they're both part of the Kuru dynasty, the Kuru dynasty.

00:07:12:05 - 00:07:34:01
Unknown
So it goes all the way as part of their brothers. And now. Yeah, Pondo by just means sons of Pandu. Yeah, sons of Pandit. Yeah, but they're also called Coras Kouros. Yeah. And the sort of the confusing things. Yeah, but they are called Corvus because at the time. So let me just finish the overview. So it's just this, this is a very complicated thing.

00:07:34:01 - 00:07:52:17
Unknown
So the Kuru dynasty is really what we're like focused on. You have some characters that are not in that dynasty like Krishna. Krishna is on the like, Yadav dynasty from a different area. And he's a, he's a character that we're going to see. He's a character we're going to see. He's the first cousin of of the Pandavas.

00:07:52:19 - 00:08:16:04
Unknown
Pandavas. Yeah. So Kunti, the point of his mother and realize that you know the universe, mother her, her brother is is coming to you is a guy named Vasudev. And he was a king in the Yalu dynasty. And his son is Krishna. Got it? Yeah. Just like Pandu was a king. Yeah. And he had to abdicate because he had this curse.

00:08:16:05 - 00:08:45:08
Unknown
Yes. And so that it really is. Adds the Kuru dynasty. It's it's the, the various decisions and vows and mistakes of the ancestors and how that plays out in the great civil wars, because they're these two brothers. One, is Pandu the pale when we think that it's probably, you know, something like tuberculosis or some sort of something like hepatitis, something that hit his liver and made him this jaundice kind of color.

00:08:45:10 - 00:09:12:06
Unknown
But he was also kind of sick man, remember, these were all like royal folks. Yes. So they they did things to maintain a royal blood, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, just watch the watch, Gladys. Yeah. And so the story. Yeah, the story is that he had a curse. And so because of the curse, he had to go and stay focused and control his desires, because if he entered into some sort of, sexual relationship with his wife, the curse would take hold and he would die.

00:09:12:08 - 00:09:38:00
Unknown
So he took his family. He took he was king. He took his kids and his his wives. And they left, and then his blind brother, who was older, then became king. But what's important here is that that's that's crushed it. Yeah. So the tragedy is the older brother. But he was blind. Yeah. And so Bhishma, who was the at at the time of the sword, the eldest Kuru, we call him Kuru, stressed.

00:09:38:01 - 00:09:55:11
Unknown
Stretched means the eldest. Okay. I think the what we could call it is, I think the grandsire, but he's the eldest relative of all these folks. And so that guy he was, is involved in a lot of these stories. He decided that, you know, it's better that the blind man cannot be king, and that's that's relevant.

00:09:55:13 - 00:10:22:04
Unknown
Yeah. In our play. So that's sort of that's sort of the fodder for these two cousins fighting because you there is the son of the abdicated king. Ponder upon ponder. Yeah. The younger brother. Yeah. The current king. Okay. And then and then the older now is the younger, slightly younger cousin of you this year. Okay. And so there's, there's rights to the throne or not.

00:10:22:04 - 00:10:43:03
Unknown
And this and that. Now some, some of that is not like we're not getting into the nitty gritty in our play. We have you could see that there's a obvious conflict between the two and that's really stressed. But the epic poem gets into the more nitty gritty and you get a lot more information, I'm sure about.

00:10:43:04 - 00:11:06:22
Unknown
And the fodder. Yeah, the fodder of how this I mean, it's a beautiful story of how this sort of civil war takes root and how the adults in the children's lives can corrupt it. Because this you know, one of the characters that we have as Shakuni, Shakuni is, is the king of Gondor, present day Kandahar. That whole that whole giant land that was Gandhari consuming.

00:11:06:23 - 00:11:31:19
Unknown
Yeah, that whole giant landmass was what we call Bharat. And Bharat was a King Bharat who unified all these kingdoms. He was in the same dynasty. So if most people start this Mahabharat story, they go back to Bharat. Because Bharath was a king in this same dynasty, Kuru dynasty, but many, many generations before Shantanu. So before Bhishma is father.

00:11:31:20 - 00:11:48:21
Unknown
Oh, that's right. Okay, right. And this guy was a great unifier. He unified all these kingdoms from all the way from like, you know, Bengal on one side and then all the way to like Afghanistan on the other side. Modern day. And that whole thing was this is like Priya, this is Priya. But yeah, that from Troy. And.

00:11:49:03 - 00:12:10:09
Unknown
Exactly. And that guy decided his birth son wasn't worthy. So he he he it was such a noble man and such a noble king that he said, all right, my, my own son is not worthy. And I am going to pick someone else who's outside of the caste system. You know, this is that also comes into play there.

00:12:10:12 - 00:12:31:09
Unknown
Sure. And so that decision sort of set in, in, you know, set in balance, all of these are set in motion, all of these unbalanced things. And then Bhishma came, who abdicated because he wanted for a reason that we'll find in the play. But he took a this great vow so that his father can have offspring with another person.

00:12:31:11 - 00:12:50:18
Unknown
And then that person died. And so they had to bring Vyasa in. Who is who is related? I mean, that person died as in, so let me just get this straight because for my own remembrance, so Bhishma, I know he abdicate or he says you have to get. He says he won't have children. Bhishma is, half brother.

00:12:50:20 - 00:13:13:07
Unknown
Okay, Vishwas, half brother dies. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's. He allows his father to or doesn't allow it. He encourages his father because I remember this. We have a little scene of this. Yeah. So the go back there. So like that's this is the beginning. Almost violent. So the eldest in this Kuru dynasty, we just take a snapshot of what this Kuru dynasty is.

00:13:13:08 - 00:13:36:18
Unknown
The story extends on both sides, but for our purposes, it starts with this guy Shantanu, who's a king. Yep. In the Kuru dynasty, in the Kingdom of Huston. I pause the name of it. And he has a son with the goddess Ganga. With a goddess, which is important. And that son should be, by all rights, king.

00:13:36:19 - 00:14:03:09
Unknown
But his his father falls in love with another woman and and in order to make that marriage work, he said, I will never take children. I won't produce an heir, and I will only serve the kingdom as a sire. I will never take the kingdom. That's me. That's Bhishma. That was his vow. And he did that so that the second wife of Shantanu, Satya Bharti, who was the fisherman's daughter.

00:14:03:11 - 00:14:31:06
Unknown
They could have offspring. And those offspring? Would we have right to the throne? Yes. Now those offspring. One was, a woman and we have a patrilineal society back then, children. And she she was there. And then the revered was, his half brother who's, Bhishma. Yeah. So that was the offspring of the offspring, the son of Shantanu in and sublimity.

00:14:31:10 - 00:14:52:00
Unknown
Okay. Yeah. He was sickly, born sickly, was sickly. Is this panda? This is Victor Veer. Vicious. Yeah. So this is not in our story. This isn't our story. We have a vision of the two. He dies. And because of. Because that that. Yes. Okay. Something about these. Yeah. Other son. Yeah. Out of like she had another son.

00:14:52:00 - 00:15:16:08
Unknown
Okay. That son comes and produces Pandu and they're thrashed. Yeah, but because this guy's an ascetic and he's covered with mud and he's, he's living in the mountains and meditating. He's not. He's in a loincloth. He's he's not a he's not a prince by any means. And then these, these three princesses from Kashi, two princes from Kashi.

00:15:16:10 - 00:15:41:04
Unknown
They were. Oh, this is Ambar umbilical. And. Yeah. So this is Ambika and umbilical aka umbilical. Yeah. And then the Zomba. Yeah. And, But. Yeah, it's another character that look. Okay. But now, Yeah. So again, like you're saying, there's these snapshots we have to set up the overall dynastic dynastic story before we get into our tale, which is mostly about the core of us in the.

00:15:41:10 - 00:15:59:17
Unknown
Yeah. So that's interesting. Actually, don't think I had all the details of what because like, it's a snapshot like it's a real snapshot. Yes. Like a couple lines for this, a couple of lines for that. And there's like little movements and, and it's a really complex interesting story. I really hope everyone goes to see it. Yeah. Because like I know what he's talking about because I've seen it.

00:16:00:05 - 00:16:28:02
Unknown
And so it's a really I think our plays a really good starting point for learning more about the Mahabharata and exploring it more. The main conflict, I think that's relevant to our story is really between these two cousins. Yeah. And how how how their rivalry was born and how how it was fighting and relevant to our story is, is, you know, exploring gambling addiction and violence and, but there's but there's this rivalry that goes all the way back.

00:16:28:02 - 00:16:44:14
Unknown
We can even dive into deeper if we want to talk about the characters. I do want to talk about the characters and the deeper meaning you might think of. Yeah, but it culminates in this giant war. Yeah. And then the war ends and and as many wars do, there's devastation. But in devastation especially, it's like a civil war.

00:16:44:17 - 00:17:12:01
Unknown
It's a it's a kind of civil war because it's over one kingdom and it's who's going to rule it, and it devastates the entire, the entire, dynasty. There's only one surviving ancestor. So, Arjuna, Arjuna son is the only, only ancestor that survived. Arjun's grandson. Who's. Sorry. I'll be mine. Yeah, okay. I was like, I thought I was like, I don't want to spoil too much, but we can talk about it.

00:17:12:01 - 00:17:33:11
Unknown
It's for me, like, if these things are spoiled, it's okay because the dramas, the the acting, the performances, you know, like, I like to go into these with some even. It's not actually in body. There's no baby on stage. There's no yeah, I mean baby actors, but you know what? But the idea is that the Civil War, you know, some of the themes that are there that, you know, the Civil War will annihilate a family.

00:17:33:12 - 00:17:56:09
Unknown
Well, that's I mean, it's so, like I said, so reminiscent of, Western like Greek mythology and so much because it really reminds me not just of Troy, but of, like, Thebes. Yeah. So Thebes is often portrayed as this, you know, it's kind of like a mythological but historic, possibly historical city. And, you know, you see it playing out.

00:17:56:10 - 00:18:20:13
Unknown
I mean, this is Oedipus is the leader of this, and, he's the king at one point. And it often is playing out these, stories about stasis and lack of and antithesis, and it's how the Greeks might have put it, which is like, you know, order and chaos in a city. And my understanding is Dharma plays almost a similar role.

00:18:20:13 - 00:18:51:01
Unknown
The, the idea of am I saying it correctly, Dharma is playing a similar role, because what I'm learning about the Mahabharata is that is probably the core of what it's about in a sense. Yeah. Is is about like the status and order. And the center of it is the Bhagavad Gita. Yeah. Which is the internal conflict of Arjuna as he's coming to an understanding of his duty, his relationship to God in the society that he's had.

00:18:51:03 - 00:19:17:17
Unknown
And we do have a couple pages of this, like 4000 page thing or whatever. So it's obviously injustice. I think. We think we do. Yeah, yeah, we do it. But it's it's like, you know, it's obviously a very involved philosophical text. Yeah. It's very influential. And not just in the East, but in the West, actually. Yeah. And so and we are portraying it, you do get a little snippets of some important ideas within that.

00:19:18:01 - 00:19:47:07
Unknown
But I'm just saying, like that's the center of it is, is almost like Arjuna as like the hero kind of coming to terms and understanding this cosmic, this, this cosmic reality. Because that to me as well, we could talk about distinctions between what Western mythology is, I know it and the what I'm learning about this. There are also pretty significant distinctions that are interesting, but we could stick with this of like, so you think that's a core part of the, if not the core theme?

00:19:47:07 - 00:19:53:21
Unknown
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's so like, you know, it.

00:19:53:22 - 00:20:15:21
Unknown
What it represents like from a story perspective, Kurukshetra really is just the battlefield. It sits outside of just a part of the kingdom. And that's where they would fight battle. It's called Kurukshetra now. And that's where the tales take place. That's what that tells us. And that's a real place. You can go there, you can see it. They say that the sword, it's got a high iron and clay content in the soil.

00:20:15:23 - 00:20:39:20
Unknown
So it's a red soil. But they say the blood, the blood that fell in the battle soaked it red for generations. Yeah, but so. So it's it's a real place. Yeah, yeah. But what it represents in the story is this sort of mental battlefield and the concept of dharma. Dharma. It's pronounced dharma dharma in, in the West also.

00:20:39:20 - 00:21:10:13
Unknown
But that concept is first, it's central in Hinduism and yoga and that then it's, you know, it's central to then all the offshoots like Jainism, Buddhism, all the different types of Buddhism. But it's, it's in Sanskrit, there's no real direct translation, but it can translate kind of into the cosmic reality. Yeah. The cosmic order of things and a noble, righteous way of engaging with it.

00:21:10:13 - 00:21:40:07
Unknown
That's how I understand it. Yeah, it's like righteous duty, but in a cosmic sense, cosmic sense is there's you can engage with it in many ways, but there's there's a way to do it with an order that that, imparts the least amount of karma. You're you're being neutral at best. Yeah. You know, you say someone's got, like, a warm energy or someone's got a negative energy, but if you're neutral at the worst and you're just sort of like a neutral person, that's a great way to be because you don't affect anything, but you don't hurt anything.

00:21:40:07 - 00:21:59:08
Unknown
You just sort of. So I'm not saying that, but it it's not to be passive in the story like disturbs that, you know, explores that sort of distinction between what's passive and action. And it's also exploring this themes of at the time, you know, it was like a story that really did read redefine the sort of cultural landscape.

00:21:59:08 - 00:22:27:12
Unknown
Yes. Because, you know, moving away from these gods like Indra, the god, the god of gods and the god of the sun and the god of this, all of our characters like Arjuna, Karana. Even on the other side, they're born of demigods and mortal women. So like Achilles, he's like a a half breed. Yeah. You know, divine, but not really divine has he's limited by what's human, but he's divine in his mortal in the mind, but divine in his powers kind of thing.

00:22:27:12 - 00:22:53:13
Unknown
You know what I mean? Yeah. So those are make make great fertile ground for great war epics, right? Yes. So there, you know, they represent and so this like this battlefield and you know Krishna again you're right. This this snapshot again, this certain section of like the prequel or like the prequel preface to the War. That's what we call the Bhagavad Gita.

00:22:53:18 - 00:23:13:11
Unknown
And Krishna is just the preface. Oh yeah. That he stopped in the middle of the battle. No, no, no, he's at the beginning of the battle. He's supposed to start the battle and he drives his chariot. His chariot is driven by Christian, I remember and what I said. Yeah. And what's unique about Krishna is chariot. And this is Arjuna.

00:23:13:15 - 00:23:38:08
Unknown
Arjuna will ride on a special chariot. Yeah, okay. It's a chariot of the gods. Yeah. It's drawn by five horses that represent your five senses. And God or Krishna is holding the reins. Kind of like allowing it to move. It is blessed by Hanuman who is Bheem as god, older brother, son of the wind. Also from the, from the remind epic so that it cannot be moved.

00:23:38:08 - 00:23:58:17
Unknown
It's stable. Unlike unlike Kano's wrath, who gets stuck in the earth? Arjuna. His wrath is invulnerable. Yeah, it's chosen by God. And Arjuna had to win all of these things. So he goes on this 12 year journey where he lives alone as a warrior monk and goes and conquers all the gods and gets all the weapons.

00:23:58:19 - 00:24:27:04
Unknown
Because he's a hero, he can't be, you know, other other characters in our tale, they there's a theme that comes up that you pray to these certain gods, these lesser gods or these demigods, and if you please them, they'll bless you with knowledge and a weapon, especially if you're a warrior. But because Arjuna is destined and born this divine, you know, Prince, his tests are different.

00:24:27:06 - 00:24:48:23
Unknown
Like Hercules had these tests of strength that he has to actually fight Shiva. He has to actually fight Indra. Yes. To actually fight these people and get. That's why he's. He's like the Achilles character. He's the only character has defeated all the gods. You know, it's one of, you know, Arjuna has ten names and one of his name is Vijay, the, you know, the one that origin of defeats gods all of once.

00:24:49:00 - 00:25:12:22
Unknown
Yeah. And that's how he gets his US terms. Like. Like the partial. So that we talk about Shiva's Ultra. He. You know, Arjuna is in the posture. He's in an austere meditation trying to think if there's any Greeks that defeated all the gods. I mean, there is a kind of later tradition of Hercules doing something like that. But not not like Zeus.

00:25:12:22 - 00:25:31:15
Unknown
And, I mean, it's always. There is a separation. Yeah. Where the gods are often battling or bickering or fighting, but the, you know, kids aren't really, you know, yeah, aren't really fighting the gods much. And there's, there's like a so that's an interesting distinction. It's a very interesting I have heard of other again I don't know when it starts.

00:25:31:15 - 00:25:48:15
Unknown
There is a point where it's like okay, they do mess with the gods. And I think that bug with Geetha, that's the distinction point, because if you look at the court of Indra, it's very much like the court of Zeus. Indra can control lightning bolts. He's the, you know, he's the Zeus and he has all the traits. He's a womanizer.

00:25:48:15 - 00:26:03:16
Unknown
He's he's he has all these different, like all the Greek. The gods are kind of womanizer. Yeah, yeah. And they. And he has all those little traits. And in his, he's got a god of war. He's got a God of dance, he's got goddesses and he's got a whole court of these folks. Yeah. And that's also what the Greek mythology has.

00:26:03:16 - 00:26:29:11
Unknown
But that was like the penultimate, those levels of gods. What what the what the whole story of Mahabharat, like Krishna, the whole story of Krishna and the whole is in defiance of those gods and in service of dharma. Dharma is like this cosmic force that which existed before the Big Bang. So you're saying that it's in defiance of the gods is what the Mahabharata is kind of showing Krishna the character of Christian.

00:26:29:17 - 00:26:53:02
Unknown
But what the what the, the spiritual significance or the religious significance, if you will, of the book with Geeta, is that what really is God is not Krishna, it's it's indivisible. It's that which is in you, that which is in me. That's why in in our in Indian language, we say Namaste. You know, in Hindi we say Namaste means I bow to the divinity in you.

00:26:53:02 - 00:27:13:18
Unknown
I recognize that same life force. And Krishna says, this is all Maya. This is all for Dharma. You know, the Buddhist talk, a concept that the Buddha say about Dharma is all of the Dharma is our emptiness. Yeah. You know, there's no there's no there's it's all emptiness in this form. You exist, but you are no different from.

00:27:13:18 - 00:27:34:06
Unknown
And we know that like in molecular science, that really the atoms that are flowing in you and me and all of this are really there's no difference between, you know, it's like, you know, yes. It's there's no even the space between us and the space that that we are, it's all of this atomic stuff. And so the ancients were just talking about it that way.

00:27:34:08 - 00:27:54:13
Unknown
But that is very much in, in defiance of having individual gods, because individual gods, they, they control your harvest. They control everything about society, sociology. Every time you have the rain, you know, a drought, you're going to pray to the water gods. Sorry. Every time you have a drought, you're going to pray to the water gods because you want rain.

00:27:54:15 - 00:28:14:08
Unknown
Yeah. And if it doesn't, if you go to the temples and you give money and then they can tax the temples and all, it's a whole infrastructure around these. But these gods and the one of the stories of Krishna is that he defies Indra and he's like, no, you might as well why are you worshiping Indra in there is not the cosmic reality, and Indra doesn't care.

00:28:14:08 - 00:28:33:14
Unknown
That's about it. This is this is a childhood story of. Oh, yeah. And so he defies Indra and in there makes brings the rain. Yeah. Brings the rain. He's angry. How did you defy me? You're supposed to be worshiping me. This is the season where you should be worshiping me. And Krishna said, listen, this is what if it's.

00:28:33:16 - 00:28:56:03
Unknown
No, no, no. I just want to make sure I'm keeping in a good vocal range. Yeah, you're good to have some good warmth. Yeah. You're a great man. You. So he he defied this. This demigod. The demigod got angry, of course. Because it has. The demigod has the personality of a man. But what is God is exists beyond any of those forms.

00:28:56:08 - 00:29:14:18
Unknown
This is what's purported by Krishna. Krishna says instead of praying to this deity Indra, that does nothing for you. It's just an idea. Might as well venerate the cow because you're vegetarian. Everything comes from it. Your butter comes from it, your milk comes from it, your hide comes from it. Your bones and tools come from it. I mean, everything comes from the cow.

00:29:14:18 - 00:29:32:03
Unknown
And that's how this idea of venerating cows and Krishna comes. Interesting because it was it was really a plan. So you might this is when I knew there had to be a religious element. Yeah. That's like Catholicism has like some weird. Oh yeah, it goes to dogma now, now, now if you go to India and someone's going down the street on a bicycle and he sees a cow, he's like, yeah.

00:29:32:03 - 00:29:51:20
Unknown
So it's translated into these things. But that's was a story. But okay, I have a question because you're getting into the religious aspect. Keep it, keep it. No, no, no. But I have a question because we will go I don't know, since we're there. So when because this this really makes me think of the transition in Greek Rome.

00:29:51:22 - 00:30:17:19
Unknown
Like you, if you read from Homer, if you read all like a lot of the major texts from Homer to Dante, you actually see the same kind of this is Christianity basically, where it's it becomes this many gods and then the gods, like in Virgil, the gods become really, you know, they're still kind of human ish, but they don't have near as much foibles as they do in Homer and Virgil.

00:30:17:19 - 00:30:51:02
Unknown
And that is, you know, like the first century BC or C.E., you know, it's right at the turn of the you know, it's right around the time of Christ, like right after that. And, and so, you know, so you start the is they start kind of almost coalescing the gods in literature and in the stories being told, until, until the point where I think you start getting arguments by the Christians who had already come and they are kind of preaching this one God type, this, you know, monotheism type idea that there's this one super god.

00:30:51:04 - 00:31:10:20
Unknown
And, you know, why are you praying to, you know, your crops, right? It's the same kind of argument they made. Yeah, I think, but it's so like, go ahead. But the distinction is, is not monotheistic. So the god in the monotheistic sense is that it's an entity. It's like a knowing entity can have action. Well, the god in like the.

00:31:10:22 - 00:31:32:18
Unknown
Yeah. Like the like what Aristotle's metaphor. You're saying different from an. Yeah. So what the Hindus are saying with here is that they're not saying it's a embody. It's not an embodied. It has no personality. It's just it's just it's that's why dharma just means cosmic order. But I mean, I just from my perspective, there's not that big of a difference in this in terms of actual I mean, like, I'm an atheist, right?

00:31:32:18 - 00:31:51:10
Unknown
So yeah. Yeah. But from my perspective, it's like, you know, because when you'll talk to Christians that they'll have embodiments of it like it's the body of the Christ, the Holy Spirit and the son or whatever, and but they really mean it. And when they talk about it, it's in the same kind of way where it's like he's in everybody, he's in everything.

00:31:51:10 - 00:32:12:03
Unknown
It's in every, you know, God is everywhere, as is any use and means, and the carpet is and the grass, it's all one universe out of his cosmic consciousness. And it's so it's really like it's from a perspective of metaphysics. My view is it's they're very similar and what they're basically advocating for, which is a oneness of everything.

00:32:12:03 - 00:32:42:08
Unknown
And, you know, you'll even see Christians sometimes move into a more that. Yeah. And I think there's an I my assumption is there has to have been a lot of eastern influences, like I think platonic views. Plato is, is getting like there's a lot of evidence that he probably got a lot of influence from, you know, eastern influences, which kind of made this idea of, you know, moving up the philosophical ladder to the oneness of concepts, which was the platonic theory.

00:32:42:10 - 00:33:09:20
Unknown
And, you know, I just always like building. Right? So all this stuff goes back to like, family, you know, all of these humans, early humans moving up and down the Fertile Crescent and, you know, coming something goes back. Yeah, yeah. Telling all these stories and there's no, you know, there's no, it's no coincidence that, like, simultaneously you have this, this, Vedic knowledge about, like, meditation and understanding cosmic order and cosmic law.

00:33:09:20 - 00:33:31:18
Unknown
That's not that. It is atheistic. I mean, you have like, in that you have the weight and other way that the way is an atheistic like, Hindu way of light, but so it's it's totally atheistic and you also have this like platonic thinking. You have, you know, philosophers and I'm blanking on the name of it, but they would even preach, like go out of the cities, go meditate, go away.

00:33:31:18 - 00:33:53:00
Unknown
Yeah. You know, I'm blanking on the word of it. What, what this like group of folks. Well, they do it in Christianity called ascetics. Yes, essentially. I mean, there's a whole variety of those, but these were in like the Greeks, away before Christianity, you had this idea of go away and experience, be silent, experience what it is to have your senses experience all of these things.

00:33:53:00 - 00:34:08:18
Unknown
And there I think you have all of this. Like I think that's a human thing. Oh, it's right. It's just like you get so overwhelmed with like all the people around you and there's corruption and the city has. And then it's like, go out into nature and just be one with nature for a little bit. Like, just chill out, turn your cell phone off.

00:34:08:18 - 00:34:32:17
Unknown
But very, very different from an organized religion. That's the thing. So temples and churches are are like industry. And if you're talking about like Roman Catholicism, that became like almost industrial. I mean, that's when the Roman Empire fell. Yeah, it's all amazing. In the church. There's a distinction I think, you can make between the the belief system and ideas and the organized church.

00:34:32:17 - 00:34:56:18
Unknown
I always do like like belief in church. And because the church is a as a physical, it's building. You pay for it, people live within it, you give up tithes to it or whatever, and it has all kinds of machinations and its own kind of systematic desires and control. You can believe without it. Right? Yeah. That's I mean, like, that was like what Jesus kind of preached was, you know, like like God is in you.

00:34:56:21 - 00:35:29:16
Unknown
You don't need to go here to get God type thing. And Christians have always battled over that. Right. And like Catholics and Protestants, that's what they're protesting against. And so it's yeah, it's the same kind of same. So again, it's like very human. And in the kind of battle between your ideas that you hold your deepest metaphysical, epistemological beliefs systems and the, you know, the ways in which in the, in our lives, we kind of, by necessity, have to build structures to help teach and facilitate and understand them.

00:35:29:18 - 00:35:49:19
Unknown
And then how those get corrupted over time are they can be corrupted. And so then, then there's a backlash often of romanticism. And so it's like a definitely an up and down. And what you're explaining, that is exactly what the exposition between Krishna and Arjun is, is trying to deal with. Because like, it's because the laboratory is about this Dharma.

00:35:49:22 - 00:36:11:16
Unknown
Yeah. Which is the disorder that's happening because they're not being dutiful and like, you know, righteous in a cosmic sense and, you know, they're trying to think of themselves like, I think one of the, the. So I haven't read the book for you to I do want to read it at some point I'll read. But but, but but exactly what you were explaining about this sort of like you need the hierarchy and you need you have to reach people where they are.

00:36:11:22 - 00:36:30:05
Unknown
Yeah. Some people in in. But with you that talks about that, some people are really they, they, they need to be understanding the intellectual side of it. They they're atheist. They don't they don't that need to experience faith. Some people are completely faith oriented. They're these. Right. They just they want to believe and they need that system. And and it's nothing wrong about it.

00:36:30:08 - 00:36:57:19
Unknown
They come to the same conclusion. Whether you're saying like the philosophical point of what God is or God is an entity, that I have to worship it. It translates in the same, you know what I mean? Translate. Yeah. That's what the dharma that's what Dharma talks about. Yeah. So in the Geeta Krishna goes through all of this. He says he gives like detail to philosophy on this sort of atheistic, non-personal, just concrete philosophy.

00:36:57:21 - 00:37:16:08
Unknown
And then Arjuna says, I don't understand. And then he says, okay, I'm going to give you more about like just how to do your how do you live with karma? Yeah. Krishna says, I, Arjun says I still don't understand. And at the very, very end then Krishna says, okay, if you don't understand, then happen, then believe in me.

00:37:16:22 - 00:37:38:08
Unknown
And then he shows like his god for. Yeah. So it's like if like. And this is transcendence. Exactly like so concrete belief that that's unmoving and so faith. But the is in one part of the Geeta. Yeah. And that's where it's quoted. Oppenheimer recorded that, behold, I've become death. Destroyer of world death is mistranslated. Mistranslated. Chalo means time.

00:37:38:14 - 00:37:58:09
Unknown
Yeah, that's even more scary than death, because it's like it's it's forever. And so the that's a tattoo there actually. So that's what that line is. So but that's where Krishna is saying that I am become time. If you don't if you can't believe in your duty, can't believe in the logic. If you can't believe in all of these other things, then I got something else for you.

00:37:58:13 - 00:38:23:09
Unknown
Yeah, try this. Which is faith. And so it covers this atheist and non atheist views. And so it's that's where some of this, some of some of the, the broader. And I think that's why that story of the book that has been so broadly adopted and been so broadly applied because it you can, you can translate it and you can get the philosophy and you can get great life lessons.

00:38:24:14 - 00:38:47:03
Unknown
And it's then ultimately a discourse in the broader Mahabharata, also a discourse on, what, you know, what it means to be living virtuous, what it means to be, you know, one of the main dilemmas of our thing is, is honesty synonymous with truth. That's a that's a, debate. Yeah. Right. And so that's the one of the broader themes.

00:38:47:03 - 00:39:05:05
Unknown
Yeah. But honesty is one of the virtues that Dharma says, if you're going to live in the world and you have to at least have an understanding of honesty. Now, what we want honesty is the rest of the Maha bar, then all these other things can debate it. Yeah, but so it's I think it's endured because it has such broad application.

00:39:05:05 - 00:39:28:23
Unknown
Well so what, what do we have an idea of when it becomes, like either written or told or the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita in particular, like, do we have an era, any kind of dates? I know it's we can look it up. I think it's five, 500 years, maybe B.C.. Okay. For Christ. So. Okay. And then the that the Ramayan is even older than that.

00:39:28:23 - 00:40:01:04
Unknown
Let's look it up. Yeah. So that's interesting. So it's many hundred years BCE. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's like 200 years before classical Greece. Yeah. That's after Homer though. So Homer, Gilgamesh, these are all before because my understanding is that the, you know, one of the. Oh, wow. I was way off. Yeah. The date of the mind out of the war is estimated to be, well, between, 1197 BCE and 3137 is the reign data.

00:40:01:06 - 00:40:20:06
Unknown
But what about the like? Was the Bhagavad-gita a part of it original? Yes. Yes yes. Sure. Absolutely, absolutely. He looked at it for me. Yeah. I want to make sure. Like they're all, they're all they're all it's from that. It's like we're talking about an oral tradition. That's what I'm saying. So like when you talk about Homer, Homer is in.

00:40:20:06 - 00:40:47:18
Unknown
He's writing in 800 BC, like. Right. But he is writing about a, a story that happened 300 1100 BC. But there's hundreds of years of the story being told, in terms of oral, orally told, right, passed on generation after generation, but it's not told in the way that Homer does it until Homer, obviously. And then it's kind of, you know, so this is the interesting thing about oral traditions is they they change over time.

00:40:47:18 - 00:41:05:23
Unknown
They get additions. Things are adapted to it. So I'm just wondering if the bhagavad-gita, that's that's what they're saying. The estimates are about 500 BC for the Bhagavad Gita. Yeah. See, that makes sense to me. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, it's the time of the core. The time of the Kuru dynasty. So that's, I was saying is like thousands of years.

00:41:05:23 - 00:41:27:23
Unknown
Yeah. So this is like this ancient story that kind of discusses the, the like. Because what I'm seeing and it is there's like, it's a man's relationship to the gods. Right. And it has changed with the Bhagavad Gita. And that to me is one of the additions that must have come later. So the stories were there for thousands of years, right, of Bhima and Beastman.

00:41:27:23 - 00:41:53:22
Unknown
The core was on the Pandavas and they're battling and you know the exposition. But the internal struggle of Arjuna and then the Bhagavad-gita that comes later. That's. Someone added that in a time. This is what I find fascinating about this. So it's like. In other words, there's thousands of years in India where there were influenced by this story and they were living this life of, you know, praying to this, praying to that, fighting here, fighting that everyone's battling.

00:41:54:00 - 00:42:16:23
Unknown
But then somebody came up with a literary construct that's which is an internal conflict of a character. And they put this together in the Bhagavad Gita. Yeah. You know, I don't know if that's what he called her right away or whatever, but he put it together in this like several hundred pages of a discourse between Krishna, who's actually gonna blow your mind.

00:42:16:23 - 00:42:38:23
Unknown
I'm going to add something to this. Just don't sound like that. You're absolutely right. That was 100 of nine, right? You are not only 100% right, but it's even more complex. Well, it's because complex. We have a character called Vyasa. Yes. Yeah. Vyasa is is generally accepted to be one of the authors, one of the great authors of of the opening shows he's written about in the Vedas.

00:42:39:01 - 00:42:56:09
Unknown
And so that's over. Those are other story books, right? Those are the Vedas is not a story. Those are the those are just a compilation of all this oral history of like other stories, is the basis of Hinduism. It's not stories, it's actually it's how ignorant. So that's what learning. But that's why I'm saying, like Vyasa is not even one person.

00:42:56:11 - 00:43:16:07
Unknown
It's hundreds of different realities. Like same with Patanjali for yoga. Patanjali is not considered to be one guy, so no one sat down. We have the story that Vyasa and Ganesh are sitting there writing, but the reality is these stories were told over thousands of years and the stories about the Geetha, just like you're saying, probably came up in it.

00:43:16:07 - 00:43:35:22
Unknown
Like, how do you explain all this knowledge? Well, let's write a story of Arjuna. You guys know the story of Arjuna? Yes. That's like. That's exactly how their stories about Daniel Boone. There's stories about Davy Crockett. I grew up with stories about Davy Crockett, but I don't know if they're real or not. Unlike, like, modern Marvel stories are different than 70s, and they virtue.

00:43:35:22 - 00:43:55:18
Unknown
They don't sound like they change. It's like the culture changed a little bit. So, you know, Superman today is different than Superman in 1950. And they're different authors writing about the same, but it's the same cat. So they're taking us. Yeah. So that that is what I'm saying. And so the Bhagavad-gita was an addition by some philosopher in India, basically.

00:43:55:20 - 00:44:13:04
Unknown
But I don't know, I want to say the word addition or not, because I but like you said, it is of this giant oral. Now whether whether the bug would be there was like a central part of that story from the beginning or not. I'm. Well, I thought that's what you found out is that when was the bhagavad-gita when when it was codified was in that range.

00:44:13:04 - 00:44:33:12
Unknown
But what I'm telling you is there was no I there's for sure we know that it was not just one person sitting down and say, I'm not. I understand that. Oh, like even that idea of Vyasa being the author. You think that with the bag of because it feels like it's an addition is what I'm saying. So it feels like it's chapter in an epic?

00:44:33:12 - 00:45:01:14
Unknown
Yeah, but it's dude. Like there's like so okay, this is an interesting challenge about the Mahabharata and just me beginning studies of this is it seems like the East in general, and particularly India, which I don't know as much about China yet. I'd like to learn more, but authorship is not in terms of external author. It's not as big of a deal like in the West, starting with Homer, who wrote, it is a big deal, right?

00:45:01:16 - 00:45:19:13
Unknown
And they make a big deal out of it. Like people today are like, Is Homer even exist? Back then it was like a big it's like he was the author. Aeschylus is the author is the creator of these things. It comes from his mind in a sense. Now they had a view of like, you know, it's in a relation to the gods.

00:45:19:13 - 00:45:39:11
Unknown
Sing to me all muses of the rage of a Kelly. So he's like praying to this God. But it's through him. But also, like I'm noticing that nested within Indian stories is the they like they use it as a framework, but the external author's not that and critical. So like who actually wrote it down is not that critical.

00:45:39:17 - 00:46:03:21
Unknown
So I imagine studying it becomes challenging because like, you know, we can study ancient Greeks who wrote about the 800 BCE, you know, guy named. But this is what I'm telling you, Kirk, is that the oldest copies of the Mahabharat that were written down, that were written down on Sanskrit and some script is this 500 BCE? Yeah. And when you have the oldest copies of Written down Mahabharat.

00:46:03:23 - 00:46:26:10
Unknown
Yeah. The bug with get this in there and it's just a several like so essentially those chapters. So there's no copies of the Mahabharat that exist that don't have the bug with Geetha in it. So that's I'm just correcting that. Okay. So so the story, by the time it was written down and like carried on, there's, there's the central part of telling that story is not that people are fighting.

00:46:26:10 - 00:46:44:09
Unknown
I'm really the central part of telling that story is the knowledge of the Geetha, all the characters around it from somewhere. Of course it had to come from somewhere, but I don't think that there were characters named Riordan on or they there might not have been, but there was a kingdom name has done a poor. There was a king named Bharat that existed way, way, way before.

00:46:44:11 - 00:47:10:22
Unknown
Oh, you're talking about history. Yeah. So what I'm saying is, from a literary standpoint, the oldest versions of the bug with like the oldest versions of the Mahabharat. Yeah, have have that knowledge in it. It's not like they say, well, I'm going to republish this thing. Hundreds of you. It's not like the like, for example, the the Christian Bible, where they have these councils where they know, I know, and they say I'm totally insane and I'm going to take things out.

00:47:11:00 - 00:47:32:02
Unknown
Yeah. So I'm just correcting that. There's this there that's a Western concept. It's a Western culture, but it doesn't apply to the Mahabharat that there is a story that Mahabharat, a section of that is the bug with Geeta. So, yeah, I mean, they're not two separate stories. There's this the section of that story is the book with Geeta now.

00:47:32:02 - 00:47:53:19
Unknown
But I can understand that the as it's a recorded down, we know that that Vyasa is not the same Vyasa. That could have been a lie. How can someone be alive thousands of years and recording things in the Vedas? Same with the like. So this is an oral tradition that existed before some script was written. I mean, I want to learn more about this.

00:47:54:07 - 00:48:15:06
Unknown
What I'm seeing quickly is in modern scholars are it's a major debate of what you're talking about of like what I'm saying is, so is that the debate on Wikipedia? Yeah. It's like it's so I don't know if it's true. Okay. So I'm just saying it's a Wikipedia. No, no, it's not Wikipedia. It's it's I did two different searches.

00:48:15:06 - 00:48:31:04
Unknown
I want to look into it more. What I'm saying, what they're debating is that there were aspects of it added later of the Bhagavad-gita I would have I don't know what those aspects are, because I'd have to say I want to spend some more time reading and study. Yeah, but all I'm saying is, I understand what you're saying.

00:48:31:04 - 00:48:54:03
Unknown
I understand where you're coming from. You're saying this is long traditions, thousands of years, that the characters in it were always that that there's it's not like there's like, oh, let's just put a new character in there. Let's put some. Yeah. And you're in, you're also like, you're also conflating like the, the, the translations of it and the expositions of it because yeah, they're like Paramahansa Yogananda biggest in America.

00:48:54:03 - 00:49:12:03
Unknown
I think the most common one is people would abide like Paramahansa Yogananda Gita. Or there's a, there's a Harikrishna. Oh, that's a have a person. Yeah. Those are people that. Yeah. Because this is a poem. It's written in verse. It's just like that's one line that describes like a whole bunch of it. And then after this verse is there, then you debate, well, what is this mean?

00:49:12:03 - 00:49:35:11
Unknown
Sure. And then like Tilak wrote one. Yeah. Yogananda Ramakrishna and wrote one. These are all great sages in hundreds and thousands of different years who have who've written about this subject. So man, that is where all the religious stuff comes from. Yeah. So if you want to talk about, like the literary poem versus all of the philosophy that's written about it, yeah, those are different conversation.

00:49:35:11 - 00:49:52:20
Unknown
The literary poem has been home has been a literary poem for. And that in that there are these sections in the poem because you can't rewrite them. It has this many stands, it has this kind of a meter. It's a giant song. Yeah. It's meant to be sung. When we do it in India, they have Lilas. They just sing it.

00:49:52:22 - 00:50:13:23
Unknown
The Ramayana is just sung and then they act it out. The question is, when does when does language come involved in that written language? I mean, when does that part? That's the 500, right? Murrell. All I'm saying is that the earliest copies of of that poem that is written. Yeah, called the Mahabharata. Oh, that's the thousands. Okay, that a section of that.

00:50:14:00 - 00:50:31:23
Unknown
Yeah, the middle of chapters is always been included. So it's not like that has been come up something that now all of the debate. What do you mean always been included that so for the 3000 years. Yeah. So if you go back and you find the oldest dated, let's just look at it. What's the oldest dated? My hard copy.

00:50:32:01 - 00:50:50:04
Unknown
Oldest dated. I really I'm going to look like I want to buy a book and study this. This is. And there's thousands of books on it. Yeah, because, well, I don't want to read thousands, but I just want to read what I'm saying. There's so many in it. Yeah. Because it seems like it's a debate. Like it's like it does seem like there's a debate going on.

00:50:50:04 - 00:51:10:12
Unknown
So the but I'm. Yeah. And it's, there's, there's periods of it too, like so you have like you have periods like what we know of like the surviving either or whether they're surviving like Mahabharat, some of it the Gupta dynasty like saved some of it was saved here. And then there was this there's thousands of years of invasion.

00:51:10:13 - 00:51:30:16
Unknown
Yeah. Of like that's going to fuze that. So like what we have are all these fragments. That's what that's what I can understand that okay fine. That there's how we how we reassemble it. That's why, you know, again, we don't know if there's one author because you have this, these this old dynasty or the the fragments we have here say, well, this was this is how this kind of writing is.

00:51:30:16 - 00:51:51:23
Unknown
And then you have fragments here with the different man. Right? So you have between like the third and fifth century, all of these different reassembly of the information. And you compiled a big story now. So that's the same thing, Greek mythology. You know, I get I get the process. I'm just but I do know that there's there's always a shift that happens when it goes into writing.

00:51:52:00 - 00:52:15:08
Unknown
Exactly. You know, and so the issue to me is, the issue to me is like, you know, before it was written, it was passed down. Yeah. And it when, whenever something is passed down orally, we know this by tracing modern or oral it things. It's like people can embellish things. They could change things. You know, they're basically going on a model.

00:52:15:14 - 00:52:32:17
Unknown
Heads of types of things that things are changed, you know, but once it's written, then you can kind of analyze it. You can criticize it, you can add to it, you could translate it in different ways. You can interpret it in all kinds of different ways. You know, there's modern feminists who are, you know, reinterpreting Helen of Troy and.

00:52:32:17 - 00:52:49:22
Unknown
Yeah. And it's like then that and these tales too. Yeah. It was 100%, you know, drop it and all that. Yeah. So that that happens. But what I'm saying is, and we could just end and move on to, you know, the other stuff because this is a philosophical debate that would go on forever. And I want to learn more before I go into it more, because I just don't know.

00:52:49:22 - 00:53:16:23
Unknown
I mean, I'm just like I said, I'm just exploring and kind of from what I know. And I think we're certainly arguing the same sort of well, I think this is yeah, I think there's similarities, but it's just I do like my contention is that from what I've understood in the little bit that I have been reading, is that there had there was something unique that was added at a certain point or, added in the sense of retranslated that became influential, however you want to think of it, in the same way as like, that's what Homer did.

00:53:17:01 - 00:53:47:23
Unknown
So Homer's taking, all these stories and, you know, codifying it and just taking a few days, at the end. And he's creating a theme around that, and he's so he's doing something very unique that writing allows for and, oral tales told in a variety of different ways from a variety of different priests. And he does a lot for so that that's just an interesting thing, that writing changes the whole, like the medium is the form or the medium is the way type thing.

00:53:47:23 - 00:54:09:06
Unknown
Absolutely. And that's, all of these things have been interpreted so many different ways, like, you know, they, they there's such a it's even the history that's so ancient, like they're, there's ancient history, recorded history of someone named Krishna. Yeah. Now, how do we know that he's done all these things? Because there's these mythologies built around them, just like you're saying.

00:54:09:08 - 00:54:31:01
Unknown
Who wrote each of the mythologies? I don't know, like, I know, I know the stories of Davy Crockett. Sure. So I don't know. And if he did any of that stuff and I don't know, I know stories of Achilles. I don't know if he did any of this, and I don't know who really embellished some of that stuff, but what I can say is that it's not generally debated what the, what the miracles of Christ are.

00:54:31:03 - 00:54:49:01
Unknown
Everyone says like they can interpret it a different way. It's not generally debated what were the different challenges of Hercules, and it's not generally debated what the different unique things that Arjuna did. Like what you see them saying. So like there's this second thing. Yeah, there's certain core elements that need to change. Yes. And the like I said, the philosophy is there.

00:54:49:01 - 00:55:08:11
Unknown
But again, like we even like the oldest dated, even the oldest dated marbles that they can catch are not complete. They've been like, you know what I mean? So no, that's you have to take like this one and then you have to take there's something that existed the thousand years earlier and say, okay, well, but that's the nature of mythology.

00:55:08:11 - 00:55:36:15
Unknown
It's mythology is just a couple of it's some concretized abstractions that passed on for thousands of years and that people then can take and reinterpret. So there's one of my favorite examples is, Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, where he's and you could see this in, like, Edith Hamilton and other people who are writing later, both Fincher's mythology, which I like, but like, you know, in, in Nathaniel Hawthorne, he was writing a kid's book, essentially.

00:55:36:23 - 00:56:05:03
Unknown
That is about the mythology, about these Greek mythologies. But he's, kind of he's changing it a little bit is he's making it more. You know, romantic. He's making more about flowers and, you know, like things like that which are which are there in the Greeks, too. But he's emphasizing that a little bit more. And I imagine that's how, how they had all of these, like, you know, a poem I always think of as like an economy of lines, economy of words, because you have to tell a lot with.

00:56:05:04 - 00:56:24:00
Unknown
But that's why we have verse like, there's rules to be able to like tell a lot in the story. Right. And especially these kind of poems which, which you know, say something like you this year said I killed, I killed a man, I should damn if it was an elephant or a man, I can't tell. And that was that a lie or not?

00:56:24:02 - 00:56:40:23
Unknown
So the line in the poem is just that line. And then all the philosophy is written about. Is that a lie or not? Well, but the like. What I'm saying is what I'm saying. Even that story of how should we, how should you tell it? How should it? That's that must have been hundreds of years. I'm I'm just putting a number to it.

00:56:40:23 - 00:57:11:23
Unknown
But that would have been generations of holy people saying, you know, I tried to try it this line. And every time I gave a sermon, no one understood it. So let's rewrite that. So I'm saying, like all of these authors just say it's Vyasa. It, to your point, sir, like it? If because it is an oral tradition and it is a story, it would have been refined and grown and grown and grown to be to be ultimately what an aphorism is a boiled down.

00:57:12:01 - 00:57:38:04
Unknown
Well, and then they can, you know, different aphorisms over time. I mean, one thing I found interesting was, it's been discovered for a lot like a philologist studying this, that many of the Grimms stories, that they were kind of gathering, you know, because Grimms Brothers, they're philologists, they went out, they took all these, like, German folktales and, kind of compiled them and wrote them in the German vernacular.

00:57:38:06 - 00:58:14:20
Unknown
But what they discovered and what has been discovered since, it's like almost 50% of them are Indian in origin. Yeah. Like there's a lot of tales that come out of and that. But the idea is like, as it transmitted into different cultures, that culture is going to grasp it and different ways. Right. And so the issue of mythology is it's just these broad ideas in embodied forms or concrete forms that are then interpreted and like you're saying, in a million different ways, I can interpret in a, you know, whatever way that I want to and accumulated over time, like a concept and, you know, the Hindu philosophy like it, it, it itself like tries to

00:58:14:20 - 00:58:34:15
Unknown
explain this. It says like, this is like the concept of a sutra. It's just a thread in a rope. Because, you know, because it's an oral tradition, you're going to get it translated through me. Like, I can tell you what my version of this is, because I've had all my gurus explain this to me. But someone with different gurus are going to have a different interpretation.

00:58:34:15 - 00:58:52:15
Unknown
Yeah. So you take that's the same thing with Christianity. Yeah. But even with the story, this is you take both of these things and you wrap it together and that becomes eventually a cable. And to now it's now when you talk about the Geetha now it's irrefutable. Yeah. Now this is exactly what the Geetha is. The gift is this chapter.

00:58:52:20 - 00:59:11:19
Unknown
It's exactly this verse. That's what it is. Yeah. There's a, there's a affirm understanding. Yeah. That took that. That's a combination of so many thousands of threads. So there is that come together. And then they say this is the best way to do it, which is why you have this weird concept of Vyasa. This is a interesting versus just the author.

00:59:11:22 - 00:59:28:20
Unknown
Yeah, well, he's the author, but he's in the story. He's in the story. He's not. He's not the author in the way that Homer's the author. Yeah. I mean, Homer puts himself in the story a little bit as the narrator, but it's that's I mean, it seems that's something I'd like to explore as well at some point is like authorship and east versus east and west and differences.

00:59:28:20 - 00:59:47:23
Unknown
Envious of the characters. Not he's human, but he's like transcended. He's also transcended. So so he can kind of like a narrator. Yeah. And he is the narrator. But it's it's. Yeah, it's a nesting that they do of stories within stories sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes I think it's kind of like often in a modern interpretation, just kind of like lazy writing because you're like, oh, just make it.

00:59:47:23 - 01:00:03:05
Unknown
Vyasa. I don't think I'm just. I'm just a joke. It's a very bad thing. But it's sort of like, well, Vyasa, you assign attributes to me. You could say that about, like the god of the machine and Greek myth and Greek players, right? But this is a sex machine. And it's like. Well, I'm just saying, like Euripides would do that where he would like.

01:00:03:08 - 01:00:28:19
Unknown
Yeah, you know, put in, oh, let me just fix this with a god coming down and fixing. That's lazy writing. Yeah. Now, I think back then it wasn't like it meant something. Yeah. And it's more like probably title. It's more like probably writing in the name of Vyasa. But it's accepted even in philosophy. Like, like like I said, in yoga and in multiple different philosophies that come from Hinduism, like the Yoga Sutras, it's Patanjali Yoga Sutras.

01:00:28:21 - 01:00:47:06
Unknown
But exactly to your point, it was not one guy, Patanjali, who said, I'm going to write down all everything that I know from all the oral traditions of my lifetime. I'm going to write a memoir, and it's going to be called Patanjali Yoga Soothers. And everyone's going to take this and go, yeah, what we recognized is that that was accumulated over a long, long time.

01:00:47:06 - 01:01:06:02
Unknown
And, you know, that's where I said Old Testament or something. Yeah, but maybe it was in service. Maybe it was someone was saying, I'm not going to write my name on it. We're just going to say Patanjali. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Unless, unless it is, unless there really is was one guy named if you're going to choose to believe that there was a guy named Vyasa who was transcended and he alone could exist.

01:01:06:02 - 01:01:20:16
Unknown
Well, sure, like over those thousand, once you get into theology, it's different. Yeah. So people are studying it in it. And when I come in from it's like an atheistic view, like you and I'm like, there's not one guy that this is really like there's yeah, there's I mean, there's just too much evidence, like, if you want to, I don't know.

01:01:20:18 - 01:01:42:02
Unknown
Well, if you want to believe and whatever, I don't want to tell you not to believe in something, but there's just a lot of evidence that the way that these stories transmit, there's a there's a science to it. There's there's literally a science of investigating the actual ways that they move through societies. They move through cultures and, you know, the oral traditions and things like that.

01:01:42:02 - 01:02:07:08
Unknown
So I think it's pretty clear that, you know, you you would an imaginative writer would create a character like Vyasa as a narrator, as one technique. I mean, I think war and peace like has like it's to is it war and peace like it's like there's you know, it's the Russians did this sometimes where they would have like, I know, I know Dostoyevsky would sometimes do this, I think and like basically be story told by two characters in a town.

01:02:07:08 - 01:02:27:14
Unknown
Right. And they're telling the story of something that happened, like, and that's just a common technique that he's using. We know that this is a technique used in writing fiction and literature, whatever you want to call it. So it's clearly that that's what's going on. And my people and even with the Bible, even with, you know, yeah, that one had more of a structure once the New Testament comes.

01:02:27:14 - 01:02:52:05
Unknown
And when you're talking about, like all the authors of these like religious texts or these like spiritual texts, you also have this like, added layer of confusion that these folks are often born into in order. Right? So you're born as a human. Your name is is Kirk. And then you say, well, I'm going to join this Hindu temple so that I can sort of work on this.

01:02:52:05 - 01:03:17:17
Unknown
And I'm reborn as a Hindu. What, what what's your chosen name? Now I choose Vyasa. Yeah, right. Sure, I, you know. So then how many times people get confirmed and how many Michael's, how many, you know. And a Catholic confirmation. So you choose the name, you give it a name. So that's, you know, that's the added another added layer that have, you know, how many people were just born into an order and took the name, you know.

01:03:17:22 - 01:03:41:12
Unknown
Yeah. And how random was that was over. So many saints. So it's it's it's a very, very strange thing but it's, it's it's interesting like it's, it's how stories. Because to me that's why I'm interested in this, like I said at the beginning. But it's a different aspect of this is like, I'm very interested in how stories and literature in particular, not only shape, but they coalesce a society.

01:03:41:12 - 01:04:00:21
Unknown
So like there's a pre Homeric Greece, there's a post Homeric Greece. And I think part of what made Greece, Greece and Augustus during his reign in like the first century or, you know, whatever ad what is it like 50 A.D. or something when he's like, dies? I mean, it's not I remember his exact it's but somewhere around that anyway.

01:04:00:21 - 01:04:24:23
Unknown
Like what what Homer did was you have all these Greek city states, and then eventually, it's like they're all people who have read and of the late and they're coalesced by the language in particular, because they all speak the same language. They all tell the same stories. So that's the Greeks now. So now you know that those 100 city states are now Greece, and that becomes a thing.

01:04:25:01 - 01:04:49:00
Unknown
They're unified because of that. And I think the same type of thing must happen in India, happened with the Tang dynasty, with the poetry. That's so like there's just a variety of that kind of, you know, thing. So that that to me is really interesting of how it coalesces. And Mahabharat times obviously critical for that. And it's still shaping India today, which like like Homer's not I mean, he's in a sense, we're all Greek.

01:04:49:00 - 01:05:12:23
Unknown
And, you know, there's the the ideas of individualism as passed down. We're all Roman because the ideas of duty and civic duty and things like that, from an external source that passed down for thousands of years through the European dynasties and things like that, those about so that he's alive in that sense, but he's not alive in the in quite the robust way that I think Mahabharata tales are in India today.

01:05:13:01 - 01:05:29:03
Unknown
Like I had to more rubbing off on who played who plays best man art story. And he was just telling me about, you know, all the little anecdotes and, and, and the language, how they call each other like a I don't remember all of them, but it's like, oh, if you're having a, like a family feud, everyone's fighting.

01:05:29:03 - 01:05:43:07
Unknown
It's like, x it's like this, like you're saying, oh, he's in a heart attack or something. I don't know what the. Yeah. You know, so and it's like it's so embedded in the story in the language. I mean, I guess that's true of Greek. Like, we still have so much Greek language. So it's the same kind of thing in the West actually.

01:05:43:07 - 01:06:03:15
Unknown
But and then there's all these other stories. Right. So each character, there's so many different stories about like Bhima, for example, so many stories. And again, we don't know like over. Yeah. Irrefutable that there is a, there is a Bhima in this story. Yeah. But you know, depending on which like versions or which, which are surviving stories. Yeah.

01:06:03:15 - 01:06:25:11
Unknown
Then you accumulate all these crazy stories about it. It's a writer that's just such a robust, intimate with just like my favorite example for Hercules is Seneca. So Seneca the Stoic, he wrote a Hercules play. And it's it's such an interesting story for people to understand what stoicism is all about. If you if you read it. Yeah.

01:06:25:12 - 01:06:46:11
Unknown
Yeah. So it's like, basically what's going on is Hercules is beating everything, and every time he beats everything, he becomes more and more powerful. And, Zeus's wife, or Jupiter's wife. What's the Roman? So it's Hera or what's the Roman version said? No. No, I can't remember her name. I'm blanking. It's too many names.

01:06:46:16 - 01:07:04:09
Unknown
But anyway, like, so Hara, the wife of Zeus, I thought it was her, but. No, that's the Greek. That's the Greek. Yeah, that's the Greek version. So there's, It might actually. Sometimes it's both. Sometimes I think it's the same in both. And I forget era and Athena. Now, Athena is Athena. She's a different god. Okay, so she was the daughter of Zeus.

01:07:04:09 - 01:07:20:00
Unknown
She comes out of his head. She's. Yeah, actually, the wife is Hera. But anyway. So. So how are the. What she hates Hercules is the son of a from a different wife. And anyway, so she's always trying to give him the labors and kill them and all the stuff, and he keeps winning, and he gets more and more powerful.

01:07:20:05 - 01:07:47:19
Unknown
And then at the end, basically, she contrives an incident where he kills someone he loves, and then he destroys himself. Which? Which is the whole stoic philosophy in a nutshell, basically. So you have a stoic philosopher taking a myth that everybody knows, telling it in a story in a way that conveys stoicism. Yeah. And that's and that has to happen in Mahabharata with all these different, you know, sucks that are kind of taking them and manipulating them in their own ways.

01:07:48:00 - 01:08:04:19
Unknown
Yeah. Here's a new story. It's a it's an old story. But, you know, I'm going to tell it to you differently. And that we do know about in like modern times because like, you can see the versions and like, you know, you can see things, particularly in Hinduism like Ganesha, that one I know another character I play is Ganesha.

01:08:04:21 - 01:08:30:02
Unknown
You can see that like the, the tales and the stories about him grow when there's like a need for renewed stories in religion because all of a sudden you were occupied for two, 3000 years by foreign kings that don't allow you to have temples anymore. But you can study that stuff in your house, you know. So then you need like how do you translate?

01:08:30:06 - 01:08:45:19
Unknown
You can't go to the mountains. You can't like, talk. So how do you translate it? No. Let's write all these stories about Shiva. The Peruvians, we call it the Pranic period. So then you have all the stories about Ganesha. You know, he cut his. You know, all those stories that we talked about in the story, like, go check out the Mahabharata, check out the mob art.

01:08:45:19 - 01:09:12:22
Unknown
This is you talk about the origins of the the elephant headed god Ganesh, but these are all born of like, necessity and thousands of years of like, well, how do you how do you repackage this? How do you repackage virtue? And I also wonder about like, well, what you know, what social changes were happening, what were the social movements that suddenly were like, oh, now we have to write about this, you know, because there has to be and there's still is a great deal of like, propagation to in there.

01:09:12:22 - 01:09:31:01
Unknown
I mean, I know that, when Kumar was on like one of the things you talked about was like the role of the property, which is controversial. Yeah. I wanted to bring up property. Yeah. You is a drop it, drop property. You know, I think we say that out the in this. But it's okay. It's the Hindu Hindi pronunciation we drop at the drop.

01:09:31:02 - 01:09:52:05
Unknown
Yeah okay. I'll try. Yeah. I don't take that. But that's my, the way I was. Yeah. Yeah I mean there's, it's the same thing with like Greek myths again like pronunciation. I've heard multiple ways of doing it. So. Yeah. So anyway so yeah. So drop it. Dropping he she to me feels a lot like, either Medea sometimes or

01:09:52:07 - 01:10:12:23
Unknown
Yeah it's a little bit of Helen, but not. But Helen has so much less agency. Oh. Antigone. And taking him is the other one. And this one. My favorite characters. I love Antigone's, I think because, like, they're both so defiant. Yeah. So, like, drop it. He is very defiant. She, you know, and again, supernatural. This is kind of supernatural.

01:10:13:04 - 01:10:36:22
Unknown
It she's a supernaturally boy that's not want to fire. That's not in the I'm taking the I'm talking about but the but so there's a difference there obviously but but well she's anyway. But I'm talking about like characteristics right. Like Draupadi she fights back. She what. She, she's she is loyal to the people she loves, but she is willing to.

01:10:36:23 - 01:10:58:16
Unknown
It seems like she's willing to buck the patriarchal conventions, to kind of act on her own, and to censor, or at least advocate for herself in a way that, like Gandhari, doesn't. Again, die seems much more passive to me. And what I'm 120 years. Yeah. And it's like, then you have this fiery woman who has five husbands and she's like, don't you know that she loves her husband?

01:10:58:16 - 01:11:18:07
Unknown
She saves them at one point, you know, you're like, or is it Tushar? Sarna says something like, they know Karna. They were drowning. And, you know, she saved them. You know, she, you know, she she loves her husbands, but she also wants to, I think, use like or kind of encourage them to go out and kill these people because of all of this.

01:11:18:09 - 01:11:37:18
Unknown
Right. Because she was wronged and she wants revenge. That's what makes me think of Medea. Where? Medea? Yeah. Like, do you know the story? Medea and Jason? AMA where he, like, marries her. The revenge. Sort of like. Like it's a Jason shed. But you're drawing the conclusion that you're drawing the similarity in that. Yeah, I think it's just.

01:11:37:22 - 01:12:02:18
Unknown
Yeah, like. But they marry and then, you know, he takes her or takes her away. The. So the Greek takes her away and then they get married or they, you know, having sex and all that fun stuff. And then he but he has to get a Greek woman. So he marries a Greek woman. And revenge, she kills her own kids with him and, his wife, his new wife, and then, like, flies off, basically.

01:12:02:20 - 01:12:28:15
Unknown
And so she gets like she has real agency. It's like, that's what the play, the Medea is. So anyway, so it's feels very drop at the end. Yeah. It's like getting that revenge for the injustice that was done to you by this evil patriarchy. Yeah. And she's also viewed and so I, you know, I grew up with lots of strong, very educated women from a generation that was very male chauvinist like also very that was male chauvinist male.

01:12:28:15 - 01:12:50:09
Unknown
So, yeah, I mean, the culture, the perspective has, has been shaped unfortunately by that, you know, well, most cultures I think I takes a while to get out of that, of course, but there are still remnants of that, you know. But yeah, I think the modern interpretation is that the main reason of the war was that nobody, nobody laughing or the property being assaulted.

01:12:50:09 - 01:13:18:09
Unknown
And so there's a lot of debate over that. But again, one of the interesting things about the property is that she's born of fire and she purely represents Martha. Martha, meaning mother, the mother divine, because she's she's not born of human flesh. In fact, the rupa that the king, her father was older. He had one son, Shakuni, and she knew that she was reincarnated as.

01:13:18:11 - 01:13:35:18
Unknown
But you know, it was almost incarnate. I knew, and so he knew. And he said, I'm not going to give you an heir. I'm not going to be able to give you an heir. And so this older king was like, well, what? I have to have this feud with Drona. I got to get my revenge on the throne, and I need to have an heir to help me do that.

01:13:35:20 - 01:13:57:07
Unknown
How are we going to do that? So he goes to the fire and he has a young Anna. He has a prayer with this, holy man, a fire ceremony. And from the fire comes Drishti Dume, this fire warrior. And then unexpectedly comes the blessing of a daughter. A woman there already. It's a daughter of the Druid. Yeah.

01:13:57:09 - 01:14:23:13
Unknown
And so these were born of a prayer of. I want something to fight for revenge. They were born with the explicit conjuring of mantras. We have that scene. Where could these conjuring with mothers explicit things to have babies? Yes. Right. So they were conjuring in this fire the Rabbids revenge and understood Dune was born and the doom, actually in the war will kill Drona down the line.

01:14:23:14 - 01:14:41:09
Unknown
We don't. We don't have that character. We we we've we again, one of the snapshots, we've sort of. We got 21 actors and so we can't you have to limit some of the. There's lots of characters in this thing. But they're all but the again was, was it's a divine woman. Yeah. So how is that different than from the other characters?

01:14:41:09 - 01:15:14:07
Unknown
Well, there's a lot of other characters that are so like you said, different umber again is wronged and then represents something that's not human anymore because she that's the example of the yogic principle of chiap ravish where you you can attain a certain amount of cosmic understanding that you can your body can leave one person and go into another body, your soul actually, and your whole reality, which is what I'm by the essence of Umba came into this new child in the womb and was born and grown into candy.

01:15:15:08 - 01:15:36:15
Unknown
Like any of those reincarnations. Right. There was a movie like birth. There's a lot of these like reincarnation stories where someone is reborn. Yeah. And like maintains all of that knowledge. So again she's, she represents something that's metaphysical not human. And so some of the, some of this is interesting that you have a differentiation between who are human and who are not.

01:15:36:21 - 01:16:06:03
Unknown
Yeah. Who are what even what that means. Yeah. Because that to me, that's one of the interesting things is what do they mean by that. What do they mean the story. Because in the again taking back to Greek, what that means essentially is the immortality is that the mortals are the powerful, the strong, and at some points they even challenge the gods and strength, like you said earlier, but they are mortal, whereas the that's that's the major differentiation, I think, in Homer in particular.

01:16:06:04 - 01:16:23:04
Unknown
Yeah, the mortality and the that you're going to die and they're the deathless ones. Like that's another way of translating. You know, some of the Greek words referring to the gods, I think. Yeah. But it's the same kind of thing of like. So I mean, it's the question is like, so Draupadi, she's fire, she has these things.

01:16:23:04 - 01:16:49:10
Unknown
But what else does like, what is that? What is that? What is it that differentiates the human from the god? Like, what is the fundamental thing? Right. Well, I guess this was like an immaculate, immaculate conception here. Okay. So it was there was no there was no there was nothing. She just appeared out of fire. Both of these beings, there was no.

01:16:49:12 - 01:17:09:23
Unknown
So that's one is immaculate conception. They were just born of fire. Purely born of fire. Yeah. It's not like Bhishma. Bhishma was a human with the goddess Ganga. Yeah. Indra. So, Arjun, what about the characteristics of these characters though? Is it? Well, I mean, so they have all kinds of things like Bhishma is can choose a little girl.

01:17:09:23 - 01:17:30:12
Unknown
We have a so cute. Yeah, we have a little girl is an actor and she's adorable. You could choose the time of his own death. She's the best. And that's a blessing. Maybe. Yeah, but that is like an interesting, you know, thing that is, not a normal thing a human has. But, like, humans don't have. The Achilles has a kind of a version of that.

01:17:30:12 - 01:17:49:10
Unknown
He has a choice. And the sense of he's given a prophecy by his mother that as of if he stays in Troy, he'll die, but live on forever in a name. Or if he goes home, he'll live a long time, but his name will die after him. So that's a prophecy. But it's. It's not like an innate physical trait that, like Bhishma, has Bhishma literally.

01:17:49:10 - 01:18:06:03
Unknown
Like, if you hit him with a sword, I assume he can't be hit, right? No, no, I mean, he can. You can like, he can, he can be subdued. Like he know it's like a thousand arrows. Yeah, yeah. Him up. Arjuna kills him up with a bunch of Arjuna as the subscript is, the pronunciation fills them up with a bunch of arrows.

01:18:06:03 - 01:18:24:12
Unknown
Yeah. And he lays there just doesn't die. He just doesn't die off. So he's able to. Yeah, he's able to endure a lot. Yeah. Which is a big. But he chooses when he gets to die. And that's another thing I'm interested to hear your perspective. But there's a, there's there's a recurring theme that all these characters endure a lot.

01:18:24:12 - 01:18:47:07
Unknown
That's another another thing that's unique about that over the years that she has to endure so much. Well, I think the emphasis seems to be more on duty in Mahabharata tales in general, like what is your duty? Whereas Homer and I think the Greeks, especially Homer, are really like the the motivations, the desires are internal and they're selfish in a sense.

01:18:47:07 - 01:19:14:15
Unknown
Right? It's about it's individualistic. It's about like, in a sense, Achilles gives up these, values of his system, class and teammate, which is duty, you know, glory and honor, glory as represented by stuff and honors, represented by how people talk about you like the best. Because and when he has a slight from Agamemnon on the leader of the Greek, you know, war, then he just kind of abandons them and they all go die and things like that.

01:19:14:15 - 01:19:39:01
Unknown
So because he's he's slighted in this abstract idea of honor, he's not he doesn't have the honor that he wants and the glory that he was the whole motivation for him fighting. That's why they all fight in the Iliad. Right? Is that that if you go out and fight and you make a name for yourself, you know, will, you'll have an let's call an era star and you'll, you'll kind of be living on forever in that era.

01:19:39:01 - 01:19:56:10
Unknown
Stahr. And that that chlorophyl glorious moment of, you know, you know, was, just out there with the sword. Oh, I remember that, mom. And I'll tell stories about it from generation to generation. And you'll live forever in that way. And then the greater you are, the greater your story. The stories will be embellished, you know, and other people will add to it.

01:19:56:10 - 01:20:08:09
Unknown
But if you don't do anything, if you like, like there's a line in the movie Troy, but I like the movie Troy. People like, for some reason don't like it today. And I don't love Brad Pitt. That's why no one will remember your name. Is that? Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's why I know. And remember your name. It's like.

01:20:08:09 - 01:20:37:08
Unknown
That's the idea. If you don't do anything worthwhile, you're not. You know, if you're not doing anything, I wouldn't want to fight him. Yeah. That's why no one would remember your name. Yeah. Thanks to shield and Rides and he stabs that dude. That's a great Brad Pitt. Great Brad Pitt. Oh, yeah. Your impression was a good one. No, but but I'm just saying, like, so it seems to me in the Mahabharata tales that the characters are like, like Bhima is in a sense of perfect character because he doesn't question anything.

01:20:37:10 - 01:20:56:10
Unknown
He just is always perfect Dharma or whatever. He perfect loyalty. Like he just is just the embodiment of pure strength, holding together all the things that he can and fighting everybody off. There's even a moment when you guys say that he would make the best king and things like that. He doesn't have the inner conflict is what I mean in our story.

01:20:56:10 - 01:21:13:01
Unknown
But he. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Yes. For example, like the way he eats himself to death. So like, there's a lot of, like, conflict. Like there's a lot of he's considerate. He's got a lot of rage. Yeah. He has a lot of a lot of rage. Yeah. And that's not considered very noble. I mean, I mean, remember, these are princes and kings.

01:21:13:01 - 01:21:39:19
Unknown
Yeah. These aren't regular brute like, marauding soldiers. So. So he's got. That's his flaw, in a sense. Absolutely. Like a flaw of his that he does not. And that's why the story of him is that he goes and he takes a wife of the Rakshasa, the righteous of, of like, these sort of death worshipers and the Shiva worshipers that eat meat, and they do human sacrifice and stuff because he has this almost like barbarism about and he does terrible deeds.

01:21:39:21 - 01:21:55:08
Unknown
And there's a distinction between him, the son of the wind and Hanuman, who's the son of the wind, who's his eldest brother. And they have an encounter again, a story that must have been added to like, link them. Someone must have been like, oh, we can link them. We can link. Yeah, propaganda. I didn't mean to swear on him.

01:21:55:09 - 01:22:23:23
Unknown
Sorry, but like, you know, you didn't want to, like, link that you could swear. I don't think, man. But, you know, you have like, you have, Hanuman. That's this, like, character of devotion and love. And he would be a perfect character. And in distinction, you have Bhima, who's very angry and very, very. Yeah. Foolhardy and very, confident himself, but so confident himself that he doesn't see themselves.

01:22:24:00 - 01:22:41:18
Unknown
Limitations. Should you ever know someone who, no. Doesn't know enough about something, that they know that they're wrong? Oh, like everybody that's including me. We all do that because he will tell you what's right. But he also. But he also he doesn't have the conflict when it comes to the dude. So this is where when it comes to the duty.

01:22:41:23 - 01:23:04:11
Unknown
But this is where this is where this is where the translation of dharma comes complicated because it really doesn't mean duty. It's just a way. Dharma, your dharma is not duty. Your dharma is. How do you best in most economically and most efficiently, with your karma as currency? How do you efficiently engage in the reality? That's what dharma is.

01:23:04:13 - 01:23:23:16
Unknown
So your dharma is different from mine, even if we're like observing nonviolence. So you could look at it and say, I did not do a lie. I killed a short. But Bhima, your character Bhima, Bhima and say, I, I killed, I killed an elephant. Yeah, yeah. I didn't kill Usha. So don't tell him that. But just tell him I killed us with Dharma.

01:23:23:20 - 01:23:55:09
Unknown
Yeah, and Arjun says. But that's equivocation. You're trying to trick them. That's a lie. So for Arjun, his moral compass says, well, what's the outcome? Your moral compass is. Well, what's on me? We have like a quadrant in, like, behavioral health of like, grandiosity and and no one. Everyone is all over this like thing, right? Right. So you have all these different elements of your mind and elements of your moral compass and the beautiful thing about this is you have characters that represent different things, you know, and our tale is like no shortage of that.

01:23:55:09 - 01:24:15:19
Unknown
But like Bhima there tries to run and he tries to fight, but there there's a scene there which is. And Krishna has to stop you because you would die. Because that's a power. That's a magical weapons. That's a that's Shiva's magical weapon. The destroyer weapon. That's like, you know, that's the god of destroyer. The the God of Destructions weapon.

01:24:15:19 - 01:24:33:01
Unknown
So it's not something that's like trying to. Trying to take a swing on a nuclear weapon or. Yeah. So it's like that's that's exploded. So let's explode. I'm going to hit the nuclear weapon with my club or something. But tell your story about glory. You know, this concept of like, like honor and glory. Yeah. So he must know about that.

01:24:33:01 - 01:24:50:22
Unknown
All about that? Yeah. You know, you will live. And this is one of the beautiful things about that is again, his story has been embellished. Duryodhan and his feud with the real Bhima was, as a child, just a very loving guy. Everyone loved him. He was peaceful. He was. He would rub his back on trees like you would.

01:24:50:22 - 01:25:13:01
Unknown
He would run like the wind. He was just a happy, happy boy. They lived in the woods. Then after Pandu died, Kunti had these kids moderato through them. And so now she's got three sons and two stepsons she's got to take care of. So she goes back to the kingdom and says, well, these are Kuru dynasty kids. They can't be living in the woods, so we're going to live in the Kingdom.

01:25:13:03 - 01:25:30:15
Unknown
So as children now the feud starts because they're asking the question, well, now we have a we're going to have to foresee in 18 years when these two dirty old and a new dish are grown, we're going to have to figure out who's better to be king because barter set this example of you has to have a merit system also, not just by birth.

01:25:30:15 - 01:25:54:09
Unknown
You have to have a meritocracy. So that feud started. That's the thing now in that you have the strong, muscular mace wielder Duryodhan, and then the strong, muscular waist leader Bhima that are have a right on your beam. Yeah. These a pond of a guy and the core of a guy. They have a rivalry. Yeah, and again, I told you this is about like the adults manipulating because Gandhi, ordinary Shakuni, the king or the king?

01:25:54:09 - 01:26:19:06
Unknown
Shakuni felt angry. That man. You married my sister to this blind guy and she put this. But I. You slighted Gondor. He moved the host and the poor. He left his kingdom with his son. And he lived in modern day India. Right. And he told his his nephew Duryodhana. When there are little boys, this, this, this guy Bhima likes to eat.

01:26:19:08 - 01:26:35:18
Unknown
So befriend him, give him this rice pudding and we're going to poison it. And when he's passed out, throw him in the river. Yeah, I actually just listen to that. Yeah. So they tried to kill part of the story. Yeah, right. And then he goes down, and then who does he find you, like, fight something at the bottom of the river somewhere that he doesn't fight.

01:26:35:20 - 01:26:52:15
Unknown
He goes down there and he. Yeah. He fights these two little guards like these, these guards of the sea. And then they're like, who is this strong? Who is this kid that came here? Yeah. And the king of the serpents, Nagaraj, comes, flows out in the river and he examines the boy, says, who are you? You're not like something's different.

01:26:52:15 - 01:27:15:11
Unknown
He said, I'm the son of. I'm Kunti, son, son of the wind. And I'm bound to Kunti. I am these great grand grandson. Yes. Okay. And so he says, come to my court. He gives him an elixir. And the elixir has the strength of 100 men. Like, when did this story written? It's so beautiful. But the strength of 100, 100, 100 elephants, not even hundred men.

01:27:15:13 - 01:27:31:18
Unknown
So now you come to the earth, come back to the surface. Pretty strong. You realize that someone tried to assassinate you? Yeah. You realize. Then you go back to the kingdom. Everyone's crying because you've been gone for, like, a week. Yeah. And you're like this. This little kid befriended me. You tried to kill me. He's going to kill my family next.

01:27:31:19 - 01:27:51:22
Unknown
Yeah. So it starts becoming suspicious of everybody. He's just down right after that moment. There's a mission of, like, I'm. I don't like this guy. This guy tried to kill me. And Bheem has got now. And after that moment, the other knows that. Oh, I messed up. I didn't kill him. And now this dude's 100 elephant strong, like, so what?

01:27:52:04 - 01:28:09:23
Unknown
So it's even stronger. Yeah, yeah. And then that's only before drop in the game. There's so many different. There's an assassination attempt on. Yeah, there's all kinds of. There's all kinds of. It's a long story and they just they hate it. And it's constantly like over here you have people that are. That's why I like saying it's drought as the cause.

01:28:09:23 - 01:28:40:20
Unknown
It's more complicated. It's much more because there's it's always happening. But she was probably like part of the final not her as her actions. But you know her that that situation was probably a catalyst for the specific war that happened. Yeah. But but there was obviously the enmity that was enmeshed for that whole their whole lives. Yeah. Of the core of us and the, the part of us, what I would think would be fun at some point, it was just occurring to me like, I remember there's, I remember his name.

01:28:40:20 - 01:29:04:06
Unknown
There's a professor who, you know, literature that I liked, and he had this idea that you that as an assignment, people should, create, characters and have them converse or, you know, meet each other, basically. And I think it'd be really interesting to have, like, Achilles and Arjuna have a conversation about something, right? Like the real ones.

01:29:04:06 - 01:29:22:05
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Like, why just be like two actors, obviously, but like, as a sign, man. Yeah. Just like as an assignment. Like it'd be interesting, you know, like a podcast or like, just writing out something of, like, what would they talk about? Like, what would they be interested in? What would and how would they be different? And, you know, try to fight each other maybe.

01:29:22:05 - 01:29:44:10
Unknown
I mean, you know, that's that's what's interesting. And it would be a, you know, same thing with like what would like if you got like, but antigone's dropping in a and, you know, around dinner and they were just having conversation about men like, and if you're just talking about men would be so interesting and it'd be like, what is, you know, what is this or what add Helen in there.

01:29:44:10 - 01:30:01:05
Unknown
It's like when it's what would they offer be? Hilarious. Yeah. It'd be I mean, would have I mean, that'd be a fun little thing. But anyways, you know, Arjuna, you know, talk about Bhima. You know, be smart, I just. And maybe we can end with this because, you know, there's a lot to talk about. You can always come back on.

01:30:01:11 - 01:30:21:17
Unknown
But, So go ahead. I was going to say one thing that's kind of cool is like, there's a relationship between Bhima and Arjuna that. That there's a interesting relationship there. Yeah. How do you interpret that? Because I'm interpreting in one way, but yeah. Well there's, there's they're both considered middle brothers. Bheem is really considered like the middle brother they call it.

01:30:21:18 - 01:30:49:08
Unknown
His nickname is my middle boy. Middle brother. But he again into this like single mindedness. Part of Bheem is nobility. And part of this single mind is this is just acceptance and acceptance of what he has to do. So like there was just by existence, just by example. He's he's Arjun. His favorite brother is Bheema. Everyone's favorite is Nicole, the youngest.

01:30:49:10 - 01:31:08:04
Unknown
But Arjuna really loves Bheema. Yeah, Arjuna will look because you guys are both warriors. You're the one that conquered everything. You're the one that like collected the kingdom. Yeah. And you? This year was ruling it because you serve your brother. Sure you don't have a dad? But like when you guys. When you were little kids like this, one of them, one of, Arjun's ten names is.

01:31:08:04 - 01:31:30:10
Unknown
Is the one who conquered sleep. That idea came from Bhima. Bhima never got enough to eat because he's so loved. He's so well loved. Drona, his wife would make little extra food. And he would wake up at night all in the dark. He would make the food, eat the food, eat the food. And one day Arjun catches them.

01:31:30:12 - 01:31:50:09
Unknown
So what are you doing? You're making all this food, eating it. And he's like, yes, because I don't get enough to eat, you know. Well, how do you. How are you able to do this? He says his practice, obviously. He says it's practice. You're all your body can be seeing you. You know, he says you can see with all parts of your body, your hands, your mind, everything.

01:31:50:12 - 01:32:09:10
Unknown
Because the practice that and since that day forward Arjun takes that as like you know the moral, the moral, decision that Bhima had to come through was we have little food. We're living here. Should I stay up and eat extra food at night? And he comes to the conclusion. Yeah. I don't get enough food. I'm going to do it.

01:32:09:10 - 01:32:26:17
Unknown
Well, how am I going to do it as a warrior? He as a child worried. He says, well, I'm going to practice doing this at night. So there's no trace like a ninja. No one even knows that I was there eating. Everything's clean and it's silent. I mean, he's like, I don't think he did. Yeah, yeah. And Arjun watches this.

01:32:26:17 - 01:32:44:01
Unknown
Now he's not doing it because you need to be an expert thief. He's just doing it because that's what his dharma is. He relates the to his hunger. Bye. I'm a I'm a warrior. If I'm hungry, how do I fix it? I know I'll I get in trouble. His quandary is not should I eat the food? That is before tomorrow's quandary is I want to eat it.

01:32:44:01 - 01:33:00:08
Unknown
I don't want to get caught. Yeah, I made that decision. I'm at peace with it. I'm going to go do it and do it really well. And he was never. He just can do it. Arjuna sees that. Yeah. And he is it. He loves his brother so much. So he's like, well, what is what's best in this? What's best in this?

01:33:00:10 - 01:33:20:20
Unknown
He he's practiced so much that I can he can see without seeing. I have to go do that as a, as a, as a archer. I'm not going to sleep. I'm just so you see, like there's this constant. Yeah. So he's like learning from or like admiring him on some characteristic. And so he wants to go out and get that character for himself.

01:33:20:22 - 01:33:41:16
Unknown
Yeah. Emulate it or something. But then there's also like just stark stark moments of like distinction BMI is okay, BMI is okay. Saying we can equivocate. Yeah. And we just he just wants to and the job done is actually. Yeah, Arjuna is the one that's like, I want the name. If you let me do it my way, I can kill Drona.

01:33:41:16 - 01:34:01:01
Unknown
You don't have to lie. Don't take my name. Yeah. And trust me, guys, you know that I'm like anointed by God. I have the God weapons. You let me go do that. And so there's that quandary with him. Like that's when he's frozen with Kani. He's has this, like, nobility moment. That's why I think, like, in terms of the embodiment of certain deep values.

01:34:01:01 - 01:34:22:19
Unknown
And from what I know of the Mahabharata so far, Bhima seems like the more perfect character, not just in the sense of he's not conflicted that much about stuff like he just does. And it's Arjuna. Now, Arjun is the more interesting one from a literary standpoint, because he has conflict and drama, and that because he's trying to think like I shouldn't kill my cousins and why should I do that?

01:34:22:19 - 01:34:41:15
Unknown
And you know, and that's what the Bhagavad Gita is. So I mean, that's why I but I wouldn't say he's morally he's, I wouldn't say he's morally perfect though, because he is he does he does like, you know, I'm not saying morally perfect in our story, what happens when Gandhari asks him when gone there? He asks him, how could you eat my guts?

01:34:41:15 - 01:35:03:13
Unknown
What does he say? Yeah, he lives and I never truly, I could not. Yeah, I truly, I could not like. He's. He's not perfect in the sense that he's not. I don't mean perfect in the sense of he does. He has does nothing wrong from outside like certain perspectives on him. You can have perspectives on him, obviously. I mean, if you're a pacifist, you would think that he was obviously wrong because he's going out killing lots of people.

01:35:03:13 - 01:35:25:11
Unknown
But I mean, it seems like conflicted and telling him. Yeah, about like about like what he like his actions are forward moving trying to come up, you know, and he's like a just like that's his dharma or whatever. I'm the concept. I'm still need to learn more about the concept. But but that's Arjuna is always the one trying to evolve in a different way.

01:35:25:13 - 01:35:44:08
Unknown
And that makes him a more interesting literary character. But he's not a full, fully fleshed out ideal. Like like, you know what I'm saying? So there's like Jesus before he goes out on the, you know, 30 I at 33 when he goes away for a couple years or whatever and comes back. But he's a perfectly idealized hero when he comes back.

01:35:44:11 - 01:36:00:20
Unknown
That's an excellent point, Kirk. Yeah, and this is why it's been so great to work with you on this. First of all, you're like, you're phenomenally knowledgeable and just phenomenal person. But that's an interesting perspective. So who would you in the literary canon of the Western literary canon compare Bhima to? Is that more of a Hercules? Well, that's right, that's unsaid.

01:36:01:01 - 01:36:22:06
Unknown
So Hercules has the same kind of thing where he is that kind of a character? He's he's so Hercules is interesting, but doesn't he lamented. Not that he has moments of doubt. Well, it depends who's telling the story, okay. But he doesn't like in most stories, I don't think. I don't think of him as having much doubt in the sense of his actions.

01:36:22:08 - 01:36:49:06
Unknown
He just takes action, makes it happen. But what's interesting from a cultural standpoint, from him and I don't know about Arjuna, that's what I'd like to know more about at some point, is Hercules is the pan Hellenic, hero even more than Achilles, and he is the all like the all Greek, like every Greek city had, like stories about Hercules that were, you know, about the strongest man.

01:36:49:06 - 01:37:06:11
Unknown
And he did all these things he, like, tricked Atlas and things like that to like, you know, go get him something or some golden fleece or whatever it was. Yeah. And, and so he there's all these stories about Hercules doing that. I don't know too many about his inner conflict. I mean, there's the there's the one I told you about with,

01:37:06:13 - 01:37:25:18
Unknown
Seneca. But that's a that's a later Roman Stoic and in the ad, you know, just telling about, like, how do you destroy it? It's a kind of a question, like, how do you kill Superman? Right? And they have it, and we have a killing of Superman, you know, Superman versus, which is him. He chooses sacrifice in a sense.

01:37:25:18 - 01:37:45:18
Unknown
Right. But in this case, in the Stoics philosophy, it was he. It's through his own machinations, right? Like that's the only way you can harm yourself as a stoic, in a sense, is that the world can't really do anything to you. There's a stoic kind of belief in the sense of, you know, you just react like it's about your reactions.

01:37:45:20 - 01:38:01:23
Unknown
So I can think like they have on. I get like, fart in this room and you could be all pissed off about it, or you can just be there like that. That's literally, Marcus Aurelius writes about that, like so many of your. Yeah, in the meditations, like someone actually just farts in your presence and like, what do you do about what do you do?

01:38:02:02 - 01:38:17:07
Unknown
Yeah. You can, like, banish them. You can hate them. You can be mad at them a lot, but that really just does more to you than to them. And, and so, you know, you should just, like, let it go. And so the idea is that as you do that more and more the what's the only thing that can destroy you?

01:38:17:07 - 01:38:39:15
Unknown
And I think it's the stoic, refrain that's moral. It's lesson is that the only thing that can hurt you is yourself in a sense. Yeah. And that's kind of what is so. So I guess that would be my anger. But that's that's Seneca's version. Yeah. So Bhima has the anger. Anger? Anger is an a hunger because doesn't he, like, eat himself to death is not one version.

01:38:39:17 - 01:38:58:05
Unknown
One version is like they say. That's how he succumbs to eating too much. Yeah. So it's like, But that would be like the sin. But he's he's, I guess, defect in character as as it plays out in the story would be does the anger so here's the question then does the anger. It's like does the anger of Achilles.

01:38:58:09 - 01:39:19:02
Unknown
Right. And that gets a lot of problems. Is there an anger of Bhima that causes problems for him or for others like asthma? For him in particular? Is that I'm saying so like, is the anger like a righteous anger? That's good. So so the question to me in literature is always like, how does the culture view it? Yeah.

01:39:19:02 - 01:39:40:09
Unknown
So if the culture is like directing, it is like this is a righteous anger. He's loyal, he's dutiful, he does his he has a dharma that brings order to the society because he's willing to jump into the, you know, nuclear weapon to save everybody if that's what it takes. So that's what the culture is kind of advocating for and putting all their values and saying that this is the I mean, that's what Jesus is.

01:39:40:09 - 01:39:59:06
Unknown
Jesus is the he has the he has anger. He has what it's like wagering. He has anger and character flaws that that demonstrate. He has lots of lots of examples of righteous anger. Sure. All of his, like, violent acts of killing people, they're all violent acts. So all of his, like, labors would be. They know those are good.

01:39:59:06 - 01:40:23:08
Unknown
Yeah. Because the character itself then has like, has like, arrogance and anger that's displayed. Okay. So arrogance I would imagine is not that. And and there is that good in it. And the anger that he has oftentimes like for example, that's one of the main encounters that he has with Hanuman is he gets angry, he runs out of the house and he gets angry at everyone.

01:40:23:13 - 01:40:39:18
Unknown
Yeah, anger gets him in trouble. And he's running through the forest and he encounters this ape sitting on the ground with this long tail. He comes up for the ape. He says, move your tail. It says the apes and said, I'm eating a banana. Just walk over it. I'm not going to walk over your tail, you stupid ape!

01:40:39:20 - 01:41:01:01
Unknown
Move your tail! I'm telling you, I'm the son of being. I'm some of the wind. Move your tail. You know you move the tail. And so beam tries to pick it up. Can't do it. And this guy is just eating the banana sitting there. He can't move the tail. And he says, wow, you must be something sacred. I don't know who you are, but you must be something sacred because I can't beat you.

01:41:01:03 - 01:41:19:14
Unknown
And he shows himself. I'm on Honeyman. You have such an ego. You have such a an anger problem. You were about ready to beat me up. You had no idea who I was. Yeah, again, all of us, all of us. Go and we drink from the water. As this in the Mahabharata. It's in the Muhammad. No, no. That story of Honeyman is not in the Marvel tales, but the story of drinking in the water.

01:41:19:16 - 01:41:37:14
Unknown
Yeah. The voice tells us, don't drink the water and we say we're going to drink. What are you going to do? And then we didn't have a choice in that, in the sense like they were being forced to drink the story. The story is that it's not interpreting it in. Yeah, but there's a story of like the story is that the voice warns them.

01:41:37:16 - 01:41:56:14
Unknown
Yes. And there's a lot of like. But I thought there was like a power in, in, in forcing them to drink right against their will. They, they get they're getting thirsty around it. But the is the thirst natural is what I'm saying. Like they just been walking around and they're the story is not like it's it's like some mind control that they have to drink.

01:41:56:14 - 01:42:10:17
Unknown
They just feel thirsty and they want to drink. And then the voice says, this is my water. You can't drink from it. And they said, well, I'm going to drink from Bhima. In fact, says the voice, I'm going to drink. What are you going to do? Up and drinks the water? Stop! What are you going to do?

01:42:10:20 - 01:42:31:08
Unknown
So I'm running that way differently. But that's the strategy. But our story is open to. That's what the beautiful thing about, what we're doing is that we're bringing our own interpretations to it. Yeah. And again, we're doing exactly what we were talking about, bringing a flavor to it. Now, if you if you've never seen the Mahabharata, you've never heard of the Geeta.

01:42:31:10 - 01:43:04:21
Unknown
This is going to be your starting point. Yeah. And it's our version of it. So there is a Geeta in it because it's an essential part of it. But we've determined it. That's and and Srini is the interpretation and that their interpretation is based off of Peter Brook's. Peter Brook's was based off. So sir it's, it's, it's an it because that when I saw the Peter Brook version, of that scene of the drinking water, it felt like the voice, you know, like it felt like they were like there was a God character, you know, pushing them down to drink.

01:43:04:23 - 01:43:23:23
Unknown
I don't know why. That's the impression I got. Maybe that was just me interpreting it in a weird way and that sense. But they're more like defiant. It's more their defiance is what's relevant in that is in that instance. But defiance of their defiance is born of because it's born of like their arrogance. That's what they're trying to show.

01:43:24:02 - 01:43:55:01
Unknown
That's what they're saying. Arjuna does the same thing, Arjuna says. And this is where you destroy, actually prevails because he says he has enough wisdom. And again, yeah, he's the son of Yama. He's again not a he's a half human, half god. And his god is Yama, the god of Dharma. So the god that so you dishonor is is a is a innately a person who thinks about how do I relate to the world virtuously, and what is virtue and how do you relate to it with virtue.

01:43:55:03 - 01:44:18:11
Unknown
And that's why he's able to answer all these questions. And, and and it's interesting, one of the questions he does talk about the equivocating of lie and truth, which is why later on he ultimately equivocate son lie in truth with Drona. Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff that but he's able to prove his nobility through. Understand King of Dharma and application of Dharam.

01:44:18:11 - 01:44:42:16
Unknown
In fact, one of his names is He who? Who does? In fact, we have a line of yours at the end said in the end, says you are. You are the purest. Yeah. His name was Dharam Raj. Dharam Roger Jr. He who has virtuous engagement in the world because he technically doesn't lie. In a sense, he has all the virtues.

01:44:42:16 - 01:45:04:13
Unknown
He's not too arrogant because of the virtues. Very flawed. He's. And he doesn't. That he has all the virtues. It's that he's concerned with all the virtues. Yeah. Bhima doesn't have certain concerns. Arjun doesn't have certain concerns. Arjun has certain. Arjuna has a certain. And the same with Achilles has certain grand grandiosity. And that is what makes them heroic, is that they are willing to

01:45:04:15 - 01:45:22:05
Unknown
Yeah. Charge into like they're willing to do this like these insane things, you know, and, but part of them is that I, Arjuna leaves and says for the next 12 years, I'm going to wage war against the gods to get the weapons and now he says that, and he doesn't say that exact line, but that's in this plot.

01:45:22:05 - 01:45:40:06
Unknown
Yeah. He doesn't isn't say that's what he's going off to. He's going to accumulate them. Yeah. Who has the audacity? I mean, that's the character. That's that's, you know, again, that's a beautiful literary device to make someone that heroic. Yeah. You know. And how do you make them that heroic? They have to be part god, you know. Yeah.

01:45:40:09 - 01:46:02:07
Unknown
How how can you explain this level of, like, whatever. Well, we should probably start wrapping up. Okay. But and we can always come back and have more conversations. I'd love, but it's, you know, and to me, it's it's such an interesting, you know, like, world like. Because to me, it's like opening up a whole world that I didn't know anything about.

01:46:02:08 - 01:46:25:08
Unknown
Very little about. That's always to me, what is so great about art and literature is, you know, be nice to travel to India one day. But even if you travel to India like you're going to get mostly, I mean, you'll get a sense of the culture you'll get. You'll meet people, you'll see how they act, how they interact, how they talk, how fast they walk, how slow they walk, who's walking where doing what?

01:46:25:08 - 01:46:46:08
Unknown
How do they communicate to you? All kinds of really important things. But I think you can never understand it if you don't read Maha Hata. Right. If you don't experience on some level, you'll never like, you need this. You in a sense can. I am traveling to India by reading and exploring this now. I still want to travel there one day.

01:46:46:08 - 01:47:03:12
Unknown
That'll be great. But that you you get such a sense of the same thing with like Greece or Italy or, you know, you know, 15th century Venice or something like that. Yeah. And so you could do that through literature and art. That's what I love about art is it's like, there's a line from, John Keats the poet.

01:47:03:12 - 01:47:20:16
Unknown
It says, travel through the realms of gold and that, you know, like the realms of imagination, like that. That, to me is such a fascinating thing. And what I hope more people who listen to the show will. Yeah, do more of that of travel to these different worlds, especially worlds that are different than yours once in a while.

01:47:20:16 - 01:47:36:20
Unknown
Like, you don't have to spend your life studying Mahabharata tales. I mean, we live in a robust world where you can listen to podcasts like this, you can watch TV shows, you could read a little bit of the Bhagavad Gita, and that's enough, and then you can explore it again at some other point or something. You'll have to become an expert.

01:47:36:22 - 01:47:56:00
Unknown
Yeah, to really enjoy it. I think, you know, I'll end by saying, I think one of the things I'm discovering, something I've always known in the romantic, the English Romantics talked about this in the West, and this happens in the West, where there's like, there's a scholastics, there's this classical movement, and then there's like a reaction against it.

01:47:56:00 - 01:48:34:20
Unknown
Yeah. Where? And in the West we really have this, over, I would call it like PhD itis today, like where we, I really respect people get PhDs, but we think of that as the equivalent of wisdom. And one thing I'm learning about Mahabharata and in India and other stories that I've been hearing about, I'm just barely learning about, is they seems like and you can say what you want to hear and finish or whatever, but it seems like in India the, the, idea of wisdom is more storytelling based.

01:48:34:20 - 01:48:53:01
Unknown
Like, can you tell good stories? Is there, you know, and that's how you convey, wisdom. That's how people are. And, you know, get wisdom is they have lots of stories to tell. The wise man is the man with lots of stories. Whereas today in the West, the wise man's the guy with the right, you know, letters at the end of his name.

01:48:53:03 - 01:49:20:13
Unknown
Even though there's been lots of studies of like Nobel laureates that are brilliant in some very, you know, esoteric thing and they are morons and everything else. Yeah. And there's literal like, I don't know, very deep and not very broad. Yeah, yeah. And and it's like such an interest like the, Wordsworth put it as we murder to dissect and, and there's an interesting thing that, again, I do not want to denigrate experts or PhDs.

01:49:20:13 - 01:49:43:18
Unknown
I have a lot of respect to being an expert in some field, but I think it's an interesting like because the point of that should be wisdom, the spread of wisdom, the, you know, the adulation and rising of wisdom. And we don't, you know, I think in the West, we might forget that if we don't remember that wisdom is so heavily embodied in great stories.

01:49:43:20 - 01:50:08:18
Unknown
And I think in the, you know, my like I said, my experience with India so far has been a they have a reverence for that. The story. Yeah. So it's a huge population. You know, it's a it's a and like I said there's there's Indian you know it's people they're very very into the stories. Like they're very, very very good storytellers.

01:50:08:18 - 01:50:44:02
Unknown
You know everything becomes a story. And histories are that way. And a lot of that has to do with massive population. Yeah. And access to education and things like that. And again, like, you know, what that culture and what those philosophies do is allow for like real time interpretation, like the I'm learning again, I can't thank you enough for like, these and all the actors that were in it that are not from Indian background, that allowing us to have like completely new interpretations of it.

01:50:44:08 - 01:51:07:08
Unknown
Yeah. Like how is it applied to like this modern time? And with that there's facets forever. Meet everyone where they're at, you know? And so there are stories that people are going to take like every other culture, very, very, very like seriously and true. You know, there was a guy named Bhima who was able to open a guy's chest, the literal truth of it.

01:51:07:08 - 01:51:27:02
Unknown
And I'm sure there's other people who are going to just take it as beautiful, you know, metaphors. And then there's still other people who are going to interpret those metaphors and change it. So I think that that, I think that's one of the reasons why the Mahabharat has endured, and that's why all the epic poems endures. Because you can something universal, something universal to say about that.

01:51:27:04 - 01:51:58:15
Unknown
And, not just universal to see, but it's. You're you're bringing more than just so like when we had modern adaptations of Shakespeare, right? Where you do Shakespeare in modern clothing or you like, you do Coriolanus set in like, East European or, you know, like, yeah. So I mean, girls or any of these, like, but seem clueless or mean or like I'm talking like repackaging.

01:51:58:16 - 01:52:15:02
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, I know just that, like, you have the story of, like, Patrick Stewart doing all like you guys did Romeo and Juliet last year with Austin Shakespeare, and that was in modern clothing and modern times, or aka what was it like 2020 or 50 something like that? Yeah, it was y'all and stuff. There you go. Peaky blinders type thing.

01:52:15:02 - 01:52:35:02
Unknown
Right. But what we're doing piece suit in the summer outside. Yeah. But what we're doing here is, is this is like a slightly different thing is because, like, what Peter Brook did and what Anne's doing and what we're involved in is in particularly the Peter Brook thing in ours is that you're bringing all these different cultures.

01:52:35:04 - 01:52:58:17
Unknown
So our interpretation of Peter Brook's interpretation of Drona was, was, was portrayed by a Japanese actor who portrayed it as a salmon who did it internationally. Yes. Yeah. So that was really interesting. And that's so cool, is that now you have anyone who sees that is going to walk away with a very with, you know, maybe some of the morals and some of like the, the principals are going to be in it.

01:52:58:17 - 01:53:22:20
Unknown
But you have like a very different understanding and different connotation. Yeah. You know, so that's one of the things that I think, the West offers quite a bit of, of opportunity there for the home, a lot of these stories, because again, it's we grow up with these stories like, you know, I mean, when we grow up with them and we know we have one fixed way of interpreting it.

01:53:22:20 - 01:53:40:16
Unknown
Well, even having the conversation with our ancestors of like, that conversation with my dad of being like, you know, we say as multiple people or conversation with people in his generation, he's the one that taught me that. But like people in my generation, his generation, there's a lot of them on different levels that this is the gospel thing.

01:53:40:18 - 01:53:57:23
Unknown
And to understand that, well, that's the way it's an oral history and that, you know, it changes over time. Yeah, it changes over time. Right. You might have a chapter, but how do we know that that chapter was interpreted the same way? Or how do we know that what we have recorded is not like, well, we have four lines.

01:53:57:23 - 01:54:26:06
Unknown
We do that in our script all the time. Bhima has four lines essentially saying the same thing. Let's compress it to one. Yeah. And that's the one that endures. And that version. Yeah. So. That's appealing to the Arjuna, you know, that's appealing to the ones that are like finding how they relate dynamically to the world. And then if you're like Bhima, who engages it in a different way, Dharma has a different view for you.

01:54:26:06 - 01:55:03:00
Unknown
So that's, I think, one of the very cool things about how folks interpret these stories and how you have, like, interpretations from the perspective of Draupadi, the whole story told from this perspective. Now the players are the same. But this is why I like I think it's beautiful that we're having much more. And again, that perspective shift gets into all the philosophical debate that have these books and books and books written about, well, is, you know, you know, Gandhari says one line, whether it whether the man and woman when they're married or one.

01:55:03:00 - 01:55:24:19
Unknown
So who cares if one was lost before the other? If one's lost, they're both lost. Well, schools of philosophy are written about. Is that true? What is marriage? What are relationships? We're living in those modern times of reconsidering that, you know, in this story has things like the trans and transgender characters, like country. So we have there's all these different.

01:55:24:23 - 01:55:45:19
Unknown
It's it's such fertile ground for so many different perspectives. Yeah. You know, like Kurt, Kurt, Kurt Russell did a movie called soldier. Do you remember that soldier? Yeah. Or like like if you think of, like, Terminator or like any of these movies where you have all these stories that have, like, this unyielding force of a character. Yeah.

01:55:45:21 - 01:56:06:08
Unknown
Which is Bhima. What if we told the entire Mahabharata from Varma's perspective and how he's looking at like, Arjuna here is worried about Karna? Karna did x, y and Z. You should have di. Like what is the perspective like? We know it from Krishna's perspective or businessman's perspective. But.

01:56:06:10 - 01:56:35:23
Unknown
This is fertile ground to tell all of those interesting stories. Yes. Not just repackage it. Yeah, sometimes the repackaging you butt up against a lot of traditions and a lot of there's a lot of like there's a lot of sociopolitical and, and, financial things mixed up in this where, you know, there are, there are temples that have like, they feel like this is this is how we were supposed to represent Krishna.

01:56:35:23 - 01:57:02:12
Unknown
This is how we're supposed to. Just like in Egypt, they have, you know, museums where we're only going to tell you this history. We will endorse this history. Yeah. No, you're I open up a whole, whole thing. We're going to talk for another two hours. Okay? So, like, that's the way I know what you're talking about. Like reinterpreting in certain ways to to, you know, get across an ideology that's pop or, you know, popular you're interested in.

01:57:02:12 - 01:57:24:14
Unknown
Yeah. Like, what are the what are the things? And that's happening like that. One of the current cultural trends in India is like most places is to go much more conservative. And so you have like a populist movement that is adopting more conservative. And so they are interpreting I think you're you. That's correct. Or you're saying it's across the whole world, across the world right now that's happening.

01:57:24:16 - 01:57:44:09
Unknown
But in India, in the context of this story, there you have like a modern interpretations of these characters in certain ways. Yeah. You know, like, yeah. So it's it's like it's very relevant. And so there's so much of that and at least, you know, it depends on the era in terms of how realistic they're going to be. How abstract.

01:57:44:09 - 01:58:02:00
Unknown
Like, yeah, there's so much you can look at. And that's why I'm saying it's really interesting to study these things. Yeah. Because you learn so much about that era. Yeah. Like I think it's one of the missing ingredients of education is that we, we teach education as like a series of facts and on a, you know, Wikipedia facts.

01:58:02:02 - 01:58:32:10
Unknown
But we don't embody them. And the stories that were popular and why they're popular at the time and, and I think integrate like my vision of a great education. K-through-12 is like for the humanities. It's like an integrated history literature, arts program where there's not really I mean, you can study them slightly separately, but it's really one thing you're you're basically studying, you know, the literature of the 15th century, the history of the 15th century, and the paintings and art so that you can actually understand the 15th century.

01:58:32:11 - 01:58:49:20
Unknown
Yeah, right. Or the 12th or the 11th, you know, century when England was invaded by what we call France. Right? Yeah. So that like to understand that you need to know the literature you need you can't just understand a couple kings and hear a couple stories about wars. And then like that, you need to have all of that.

01:58:50:05 - 01:59:18:07
Unknown
So. Yeah. And I think that's what you're kind of saying in the sense of how it's different throughout ages. And that's super important to the, to the story. Yeah. And currently, you know, and then that it's like it's, you know, it's Udall I mean ultimately these are stories and it's what we're doing that's cool is we're engaging with the story and trying to bring it to life, which is a different experience than being taught it and imagining it as a story.

01:59:18:10 - 01:59:38:22
Unknown
You know, being Arjuna and reading about Arjuna are very different things also. So that's another thing. That's another thing for reading Shakespeare. Yeah. Or should you watch it? Yeah. So it's a you know, you have to explore it the way you want to. Yeah. But I do hope that people will. Again, if you're seen this before the 14th of 2025, I hope you'll see.

01:59:38:22 - 02:00:10:23
Unknown
Come see Arjun. Bheema Naquela Rao. Odile, Duryodhana, Bhishma of and all the characters of the Mahabharata. And of course, Krishnan. You do. And there's a bunch of other characters. There's lots of characters. So come learn more about it. Hopefully you found this interesting. Yeah. Of like the deeper meaning and philosophical, which, you know, just the robustness of the story that nobody, very few people in the West have ever in get encountered, really.

02:00:11:01 - 02:00:21:23
Unknown
And it's just such a robust story. So thank you. Thank you man. Thanks for having me man. Thanks for doing this. And it's been fun. It's been great. I learned a lot I appreciate likewise.