mid-term journal musing

and, journal-musing: this term has been so fruitful, despite working completely from home! i haven’t spent so much time at home since high school and, to an extent, i’ve felt like i was transported back to that time – minus the insecurities !

anyway, Mahābhārata’s been living in my head rent-free, and i’ve dedicated my time & research to writing about violence & religious conflict as they transpire in my beloved Kṛṣṇa’s actions and speech in the Kurukṣetra war & in the Bhagavad-gītā. additionally, i’m excited to be completing my first independent study, an exploration of issues of purity & impurity in non-dual philosophy, and to be undertaking a small research project into consumer spirituality and the relentless commodification that comes with it.

all in all, i am deeply grateful to be offered the opportunity to explore the marvellous Mahābhārata once more. its poetic teachings and ample cosmological symbolism have permeated through me and i often wish its universe would swallow me whole nonetheless, i’m certain that one needs to dedicate ten lifetimes to one parva, and i am not exaggerating ! as Vyāsa himself states in Ādi Parva: ~ what is found here, may be found elsewhere. what is not found here, will not be found elsewhere ~

i’ve never had so much workload crammed into such a short timespan, but i’ve been trying to savour the flavour of busyness. it’s alien to be doing all of this in my childhood home. it’s a fun parallel, though – whilst musing on the Bhagavad-gītā (by the way, we are exploring the B-g in our monthly satsaṅgs at #sabdainstitute with our beloved teacher Dr. Kavitha Chinnaiyan!), it dawned on me that i was so hungry for this knowledge in my teens, but i didn’t know where or how to look. it came to me in the end, and what a great joy it is ~ to sip the honey of “the stainless lotus of the Mahābhārata, born on the waters of the words of Vyāsa, fully blossomed through the grace of Hari…” ~ {my vague attempt at translating a śloka}