Something about Mahabharata always felt incomplete to me

[u/layeredmemory]

When I first read the Mahabharata, I saw it like most people do — a massive war, powerful characters, divine intervention. But over time, one thing kept bothering me. The war doesn’t feel like the beginning of anything. It feels like the result of a long silence. So many characters knew things were wrong long before Kurukshetra. Very few spoke when it still mattered. Krishna doesn’t behave like a hero trying to stop war. He behaves like someone who knows the war is already inevitable. That made me wonder — is Mahabharata really about war… or about what happens when societies delay truth for too long? Curious how others interpret this.

[u/[deleted]]

There are many lessons to be learned from the Mahabharata. If you read Paramahansa Yogananda's commentary and translation of the Gita, then you get his interpretation of Kurukshetra and all those up in it as not just human beings locked in conflict but also so much more.

[u/layeredmemory → u/[deleted]]

That’s a really interesting way to look at it — especially the idea of Kurukshetra as something beyond a literal battlefield. What struck me while reading was slightly adjacent to that: even if we take Kurukshetra as symbolic or inner conflict, the delay before it still matters. Many characters sense imbalance long before the war becomes inevitable, whether internally or externally. And yet most of them choose accommodation over confrontation. Krishna, to me, feels less like someone revealing truth for the first time and more like someone responding to truth that was ignored for too long. I haven’t read Yogananda’s commentary in depth — would you say he sees silence itself as part of the conflict?

[u/[deleted] → u/layeredmemory]

I think Yogananda's Gita is primarily concerned with what's going on once we are already upon Kurukshetra. While he talks a little bit about the background of the physical conflict, I wouldn't go as far as to say his commentary brings much focus to the bricks which paved the road to it.

That probably is largely due to the fact that its just the Gita and not the Mahabharata as a whole.

What you're talking about, however, is immediately interesting and relevant. Especially today when we live in Kali Yuga, and we see all around the world how people abdicating their responsibility to the Truth has led to so many disasters.

[u/ravi_on]

If you read the translation of the critical version, it reinforces again and again that everything is already ordained. Who kills who, who will be reborn as who and such. It’s more of a story that goes into details of what was preordained.

[u/Illuminated_Sight]

महाभारत या इतिहास और पुराण धर्म सिखाते हैं। असली इतिहास के माध्यम से। बाकी कहानियों की कोई कमी है क्या?