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The Bhagavata Podcast
The Bhagavata Podcast invites listeners on an engaging journey through the Bhagavata Purana, more commonly known as the Srimad Bhagavatam. Each episode features conversations between scholars, many of whom are also practitioners, as they reflect on and analyze a chapter of this text together. The podcast offers a unique blend of academic rigor and personal insight, providing fresh perspectives that illuminate the beauty and uniqueness of the Bhagavatam.
In each episode, host Dr. MÃ¥ns Broo, an esteemed scholar and Gaudiya Vaishnava practitioner, invites expert guests to reflect on a chapter of the Bhagavata Purana. Following a linear progression through the text, the discussions explore the philosophical, theological, and literary dimensions of the Bhagavatam, offering both traditional insights and modern academic interpretations. This thoughtful approach enables listeners to journey through the Bhagavata Purana chapter by chapter, uncovering the intricate teachings of this work.
The Bhagavata Podcast is an initiative supported by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, furthering the mission of connecting living traditions with academic exploration.
The Bhagavata Podcast
Who Created the Creator? | The Bhagavata Podcast with Sri Prahlada Dasa
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There are dozens of gods in the Vedic scriptures, and the texts seem to glorify some of them just as highly as Vishnu. For anyone raised in a tradition that insists Narayana is supreme, that is not an abstract problem. Sri Prahlada Dasa carried that question from his teenage years until a single line from the Bhagavad Gita answered it.
Canto 2, Chapter 5 is built around exactly this kind of correction. Narada approaches Brahma as the independent creator, using the image of a spider spinning its web from within itself. Brahma's response is precise: he creates within a certain range, but there is a power behind him, and before he says another word, he offers obeisances. Sri Prahlada Dasa, visiting professor of management at Manhattan University and a kirtan musician known across the Vaishnava world, reads that gesture as the chapter's thesis stated before the argument begins: everything proceeds from Narayana.
The chapter then runs through two accounts of creation. The first draws on Sankhya, time, action, and innate nature disturbing the equilibrium of unmanifest matter until the elements and sense organs unfold in sequence. Sri Prahlada Dasa notes that yogis in the later cantos reverse this process exactly, dissolving the layers back until the self is extracted from matter. What the Bhagavatam adds to Sankhya is a name for who initiates the disturbance. The second account tracks the Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda almost verbatim, with one addition the Vedic hymn does not have: Bhagavan. The cosmic man becomes a personal God. Brahma then offers several meditations on this form, the 14 planetary systems mapped onto the Lord's body, and the Gayatri's bhur bhuvah svah as a condensed version of the same vision.
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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.