The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 5.1. Swami Krishnananda

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Tuesday, June 02, 2020.

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

Chapter 5: The Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata-1.

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1.

There is a tremendous tension of enthusiasm, as we may call it, in the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata. When a function is to take place on a crucial occasion, important enough to attract the attention of the whole community, of all people, a kind of emotional tension rises to the surface: “Oh, the jubilee is coming!” Day and night great preparations are made, and it is seen that everything is done precisely, meticulously, to perfection. Such interesting, stirring and active descriptions we have in the Udyoga Parva of the jubilant, vigorous, virile preparations, raising our hair on end. The word udyoga means intense effort, preparation, toil, and making things ready with energetic motivation. All this is suggestive of the word udyoga.

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2.

This particular book, the Udyoga Parva, is a classic in a very important sense. There is high literary beauty in the style of writing, and the poet’s outlook rises to its pinnacle of perception, as it were, because it is the aim of a crucial action that is contemplated and is to take place. The mind is up in arms before the body is active. The mind has already started doing what the body has yet to do. That is the psychological background of the great battle to be narrated in several books which follow the Udyoga Parva.

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3.

The descriptions are breathtaking. Every kind of dramatis personae is brought into the picture of this description, God included. However, we shall not, in the light of what we are interested in considering, go into details of the literary aspect of the dramatic grandeur of presentation of this book of the Mahabharata.

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4.

Everything is ready. We have only to utter the words ‘one, two, three’, and one bursts into action. One is just in the field of activity, not merely preparing to do something. The field is displayed before our mind in the Bhishma Parva, which is the Sixth Book of the Mahabharata, in which the Bhagavadgita occurs.

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5.

It is difficult to fully appreciate the interesting and complicated background of the context of the Bhagavadgita gospel unless we know the whole background of the Mahabharata epic because, as I mentioned, it looks as if the whole Mahabharata is the body, of which the Bhagavadgita is the soul. The Bhagavadgita is the theory; the Mahabharata is the theory put into action. Being and doing seem to be the forte of the Bhagavadgita and the Mahabharata narration.

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To be continued ...

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