The Bhagavata Podcast

1.9 How Do You Want to Die? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das

Jun 20, 2025 · 1 hr 12 min · Season 1 · Episode 9 · 52.5 MB
0:00-1:12:52

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Bhishmadeva has lain on a bed of arrows for fifty-eight days, waiting. He has the rare gift of choosing his own moment of death. What he does with that time is one of the Bhagavatam's most extraordinary scenes.

In Canto 1, Chapter 9, the greatest warrior of the Mahabharata composes a hymn to Krishna in his final moments, watched by kings, sages, and the Pandavas themselves. Radhika Raman Das (Dr. Ravi Gupta) and host Bhrigupada Dasa examine what the text reveals about conscious dying, the relationship between a warrior's vision of God and a devotee's vision, and why the Bhagavatam treats death not as an ending but as the most concentrated moment of spiritual life.

This episode asks directly: can we prepare for the quality of our own death? And what does the Bhagavatam actually recommend?

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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.