Is the Mahabharata that occurred in another age even relevant today?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
in this world thank you question when the Mahabharata occurred at an entirely different time in a different yuga, with circumstances very different is it even relevant now answer the Mahabharata actually embodies timeless values every book has a driving question and the driving question of the Mahabharata is kah dharma what is dharma that is the question whose answer all the characters in the Mahabharata are seeking and this is a universal question the specifics of the situations may vary as compared to today’s terms, today’s times there may be no mystic weapons available, there may not be the gods and the demons whom we see today but the essential human decisions that we all have to take what is the right thing to do, what is the wrong thing to do what is it that we are meant to live for if you look at the whole Mahabharata we can easily relate with the situations and we can see there is virtue, there is greed, there is envy there is commitment there is betrayal there is faithfulness, so the whole panorama of human emotions and human interaction that we see in today’s world they are present at that time also so the Mahabharata’s relevance is because it discuss it’s focus is on understanding the right course of action what is it that we are meant to do what is the right thing to do and for this this is the question which everybody all time has and that driving question of the Mahabharata is what makes it universal so even if you feel that some circumstances are different those circumstances they alone don’t determine the decisions of the characters the decisions the characters take they are based on sound ethical considerations which are universal and we see that Duryodhana has envy for his cousins and we see that even today there are families in which one set of siblings is envious of another set of siblings and we see that sometimes some people despite being having differences they stay united, the five Pandavas stay united despite their differences because they had a common purpose, they were all devoted to Krishna so we can see that also a higher cause uniting some group of diverse people the essential values that drive the characters be they good or be they bad they are something which you can see across time, place circumstance so although the Mahabharata is spoken in a distant age but as far as the essential driving decisions that the characters take and the values that drive those decisions those are something which are similar to what we face and that’s how we can learn from the Mahabharata and more importantly this is from the ethical perspective, from the spiritual perspective the Mahabharata is not just a set of stories it is a set of stories where God himself the omnipotent all purifying supreme Krishna manifests in this world and when he manifests and when he performs his Gila at that time just hearing about him purifies us so because Krishna is present and because everybody in this world at all times needs to become purified, needs to become uplifted in their consciousness and hearing about Krishna is a fundamental way to become purified so therefore both from the ethical perspective and the spiritual perspective the Mahabharata has perennial relevance