Monday Morning Greetings 2026 #8 – Bhāgavatam: The Book of Revelations

For ten years I have been able to come up with a solid realization to write about every week. For the last six weeks it has been a struggle. By Thursday again also nothing. I knew the reasons why. It had something to do with a month of leading retreats throwing me off schedule, but I needed to do something about it immediately. I could just not tolerate offering another reprint Monday. In desperation a thought came.

Due to the retreats, I have also have not been steady in my study of the Bhāgavatam. Scripture arms one with jñāna-cakṣus, a vision of the world through the eyes of knowledge. Only one empowered in this way can see the world in a way that enables one to write something meaningful about it. I thought, if I read the Bhāgavatam maybe some realization will come.

I immediately picked up the Eighth Canto and started to read. I vowed to become steady in my daily reading again.

I began to hear verse after verse listing the Manus, the universal administrators. There was practically no commentary. I needed more philosophical content to be inspired, so after twenty such verses I skipped to Chapter Two, Gajendra Mokṣa. That should be interesting. That’s chock full of philosophical input. It begins, however, with verse after verse intricately describing the beauty of the heavenly Trikūṭa mountain. The verses were simply descriptive, but again not many teachings there. A question came to my mind.

The Bhāgavatam, and almost all Vaiṣṇava literature, is composed in verse form. It takes so much effort when the expression of one’s thoughts is confined to meter and rhythm and the other demands of writing in this way. Why did the writer expend that effort for composing the verses I was reading when they contain, little, if any philosophical or devotional content?

Voila! I have this week’s topic. Why is traditional Indian philosophy often or mostly expressed through verse?[1]

In verse individual Sanskrit words are impregnated with meaning and feeling.

The import of verse is especially highlighted by the selected words chosen, often impregnated with deep meaning and feeling in themselves. As you study and naturally become familiar with certain Sanskrit words your understanding of the feeling and philosophy of the text and the school’s teachings becomes significantly enhanced. Those words also give you an easy reference when they have been used elsewhere, further elucidating the meaning of the verse you are studying. In other words, verse is the best vehicle to reveal a school’s teachings by highlighting important words that are filled with special meaning.

Verse codifies philosophy and is a tool for learning.

A sūtra is a terse statement that codifies philosophy. When you study, or preferably memorize a verse, commentaries help unpack the meaning of each word. You can easily memorize a school’s teachings by just recalling each word of the sūtra and then unpacking its meaning. Verses in the Bhāgavatam are not necessarily sūtras, but the same mechanism is there; learning a key verse often gives one ownership of a whole tattva or philosophical truth.

Poetic verse has a special potency to involve the reader.

Marshall McLuhan was a prominent Canadian social philosopher focusing on media theory in the late 1960s. He is famous for coining the expression “The medium is the message.” He theorized that the effect of the medium itself is more important than the content it communicates. Mediums that have the maximum stimulating impact make you the most active in learning the messages they convey. There is not a better medium to make the reader actively involved than poetry, because the reader must search for meaning that is often indirect and hidden.

Poetic verse is the best medium to convey emotion.

The Bhāgavatam is rasa śāstra. That means it is meant to convey an intense emotion to the reader, which in this case is bhakti. In conveying emotion, it is always better to make the reader feel it rather than explaining it. Poetic verse seems the best medium to communicate emotion by encapsulating it in poetic verse in a way to make you feel it.

Poetic verse is the best way to reveal the meaning of śāstra.

Śrī Jīva describes the way the meaning of śāstra is revealed. “In śāstra the words (vācaka) themselves carry the inherent power to reveal what they signify (vācya).

If the words themselves have the power to reveal the meaning of śāstra, then what better way to present those words than with the methods of poetry where specific words are highlighted for their meaning and feeling?

I was stuck today in my writing. I took shelter of the Bhāgavatam and some realizations came.

The Bhāgavatam indeed is the book of revelations![2]

[1] We are using the word verse here to indicate verse with poetic skill, not just any simple often clumsy rhyme.

[2] After writing this a thought came up. The translations of the verses of the Bhāgavatam are not in verse form. How much is therefore lost in translation? Perhaps this is why Śrīla Prabhupāda in his translation and commentary insisted that the Sanskrit, transliteration and word for word are also published. In this way, those who cannot read it in the original Sanskrit can still enhance their own study by memorizing select Sanskrit verses and become aware of the powerful meanings of select words. I personally cannot imagine studying in any other way.