Reading Diary B: The Mahabharata

I really loved reading the story of The Afterlife at the end of the Mahabharata.  Something about the journey the soul might take after one dies is really fascinating to me so I am always intrigued to read anything having to do with that sort of thing.  I just imagined putting myself into Yudhishthira's perspective of having the choice to pick between eternal bliss or to stay in the depths of hell with the ones he loved.  That would be a very intense situation and it would be very hard for me to choose what to do, but Yudhishthira chose to stay in misery with his loved ones instantly without even hesitating for a second.  This would be very hard for a normal person to do and it takes lots of courage.  I thought it was very clever though that this was just a test to see if he was worthy of staying in heaven.  That would truly be a good test to see if someone is worthy of achieving eternal bliss because that is probably the hardest decision anyone would ever have to make.  I also find this section of the Mahabharata interesting because it is interesting to see how the idea of heaven and hell is viewed between all different cultures and time periods.  No matter how different two cultures might be from one another, it seems that they still generally have a very similar version of their descriptions of heaven and hell.

Yudhishthira

Reading Diary A: The Mahabharata

I really enjoyed the part of this week's readings where Arjuna is living as a hermit in the Himalayas and has an encounter with the great god Shiva. I absolutely love the image that is set up of Arjuna spending his days in peace, worshiping and gaining mental strength while in the midst of the serenity of the mountains.  I also loved reading this part of the story because I have a strong fascination with the god Shiva.  I think Shiva is one of the most interesting gods to read about for me because of his power and strength and because of his magical weapons.  I once played a video game where one of the weapons was "The bow of Shiva", but it was actually a special type of round able to be shot be a tank and it was so powerful that it would destroy everything in the game, including the one who used it. I think that's another reason I liked this story so much because it makes me feel like that must be where the creators of that video game got the idea of that weapon from, since in the story Shiva even says to never use this magical weapon unless everything else fails as it is so powerful it could destroy the whole universe.  That was really exciting to read because I was finally able to see where Shiva's mythical universe-destroying weapon came from.

Vyasa telling Arjuna of Shiva's powers

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