1.15 What Remains When Everything Is Taken Away? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das
Arjuna's bow arm has failed. His powers are gone. The warriors who once fled before him now barely trouble him. The Bhagavatam in Canto 1, Chapter 15 asks what this means, not just for Arjuna but for the entire question of identity and spiritual life.
Radhika Raman Das (Dr. Ravi Gupta) and host Bhrigupada Dasa trace the Pandavas' decision to retire from kingship and set out on their final journey. The episode gives careful attention to Arjuna's grief and the startling moment when he realises that everything he was capable of, he was capable of only because of Krishna. Without that presence, the gifts simply withdraw.
The conversation also addresses Draupadi's departure (the Bhagavatam gives her genuine agency here), the reappearance of a key verse from the Bhagavad Gita in an entirely new context, and what it means for the Bhagavatam to succeed the Mahabharata as a literary and spiritual project.
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.
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