 |
The Bhagavata PodcastAuthor: The Bhagavata Podcast Language: en-us Genres: Hinduism, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
1.19 What Would You Do If You Had Seven Days to Live? | Bhagavata Podcast with Sundar Gopal Das
Episode 19
Sunday, 29 March, 2026
What would you do if you learned you had seven days to live? Most of us would panic, bargain, or spend those days in dread. King Parikshit sat down by the river and prepared to die with complete clarity. This is the final chapter of the first book of the Srimad Bhagavatam, and it arrives like a carefully placed door: everything in Canto 1 has been building toward this moment. In this episode, Bhrigupada Dasa (Dr. Mans Broo) and Sundar Gopal Das (Dr. Simon Haas) explore Canto 1, Chapter 19 of the Srimad Bhagavatam, in which King Parikshit, cursed to die by snakebite within seven days, renounces his kingdom and fasts by the Ganga. The great sages of the age converge not out of ceremony but out of omniscient foreknowledge: the Bhagavatam itself is about to be spoken. Sundar Gopal Das, joining from Costa Rica, draws on the commentary of Baladeva Vidyabhushan throughout, uncovering details that move quickly past in the text: the sages who could not reach agreement on what Parikshit should do, the tears and embraces when Shukadeva Goswami finally arrives, and the king's quiet, anxious gratitude that this wandering sage has agreed to stay longer than it takes to milk a cow. The conversation ranges across the nature of the Bhagavatam as a literary structure (a text that ends every sequence on a cliffhanger), the contested identity of Shukadeva, the art of physiognomy by which the sages immediately recognise a great personality, and the Bhagavata Parampara: the lineage of instruction that does not pass through initiation but through teaching. The episode closes on a question the Srimad Bhagavatam poses in its first chapter and repeats here at the end of its first book: what is the duty of a human being, especially one who is about to die? The mortality rate, as Bhrigupada's teacher once reminded a Finnish audience, is 100 percent. This episode covers Canto 1, Chapter 19 of the Srimad Bhagavatam. The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.#Bhagavatam #BhaktiYoga #HinduPhilosophy #Parikshit #ShukadevaSend us Fan MailThe Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.
