Entering the Rāsa Dance with the Eye of Love
5/7/202655 min
Every love story ever told — the Song of Solomon, Layla and Majnun, the Bollywood heroine running toward her true love — is a shadow of this. The desire for intimacy with the divine is the deepest longing in the human heart. And after six and a half years of reading through the Srimad Bhagavatam, Raghunath and Kaustubha have arrived at its most sacred passage — the Rāsa Līlā. The essence of the essence of the essence. Five chapters describing Krishna's circle dance with the gopis, considered the pinnacle of all Vedic literature and the ultimate expression of divine love. But this...
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First 90 secondsKaustubha Das· Host0:00
The Bhagavatam itself is, is considered the, the essence of all of Vyasadeva's great Vedic literature. And, um, the 10th canto is, in a sense, the essence of that essence.
Raghunath· Host0:13
Mm.
Kaustubha Das· Host0:14
Um, and the five chapters that describe Krishna's Rasa-lila, the dance that he does with the gopis, uh, all that, all that builds up to that, and then the dance itself, are considered the essence of the essence of the e- This is the most sacred of, of all the Vedic literature. Um, this is what it all builds towards, and this is, i- in terms of its beauty, in terms of its, um, Rasa, the, the emotions that are expressed in it, in terms of the, the, the subject matter itself, you know, divine love at its, at its pinnacle, um, we read that in these chapters. So they're considered extremely sacred. Th- there's b- You know, Prabhupada would often critique, um, Bhagavatam speakers who were kinda materially motivated- Mm-hmm ... that would do, um, they called them Bhagavat saptahas, seven-day discussions on, uh, Bhagavatam, where they, they'd attract big crowds. [smacks lips] And, uh, but they would, he would always say, "They jump to the 10th canto, and especially to the Rasa-lila." Right? They,