Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Bhishma's Dharma ? Plato's Symposium ??

I finally stole my 'Dialogues of Plato' back from Spruha :) It's been lying around since two years, so now I have to read some of it before I start working :
I'm thinking of reading the Symposium which consists of a series of speeches Socrates and others make at a drinking party for Eros, the God of love. Must have been a fun time ;)
But seriously .... In my initial parse, I see a lot of parallels between the traditional Indian concepts of Dharma and what these guys talk about here. With my head half full of Mahabharata and the various thoughts it provokes, questions it raises I now will try to fill the other half with these guys' opinions on Eros and let's see what happens !
So here I go, on a pure and white and beautiful snowy evening, my new Google blanket on my knee, my hot cuppa coffee next to me .... but beware, all knowledge that comes from the mind is imperfect and flawed. Only the knowledge of the Soul is true and eternal.
Bhishma was one of the really really few people of his time to come close to the truth about Narayana ... Yet he fought on the side of the Kaurava's ... His heart was with the Pandava's and not just that, he knew that Truth was on the side of the Pandava's, the Lord was on the side of the Pandava's, and Hastinapur would be safer under the reign of the Pandava's ... So, in spirit all his vow's would be better fulfilled if the Pandava's won and he openly acknowledged it. Yet he fought on the side of the Kaurava's.

What paradox is this ?

2 comments:

SG said...

Damn ! So,you stole the book ??..lemme come home.

but hey, its a grt combination- Philisophy and ethos- to think and brood over

Read and give a gist to me..

S said...

some oath that he took i think...