19/11/2024
Hare Krishan Radhe Radhe......................................................................
In 3228 BCE in Mathura, India, a child was born who was destined to reshape the spiritual and temporal destiny of mankind—Sri Krishna. In his 125 years of life, Sri Krishna made an indelible impression upon mankind’s collective consciousness—re-educating the world about devotion and dharma as well as the ultimate reality. His life was a model for people in days past, the modern world and surely for those in ages to come. Seeing Krishna as a perfect personification of divinity, to this day hundreds of millions of people pray to him, chant his names, meditate on his form and try to put his teachings into practice. His life has inspired a treasure house of poetry, music, painting, sculpture and other fine arts. As Amma says, “His glory is unsurpassable. His story is a source of joy and inspiration for people from all walks of life.”
A child, a brother, a charioteer, a warrior, a disciple, a guru, a cowherd, a messenger, the beloved of the gopis… Throughout his life, Krishna enacted so many roles—the whole time never forgetting that they were just that, roles and that his true nature was eternal, ever blissful consciousness. In this way, he was able to remain detached and thus perform flawlessly, never allowing the smile to fall from his face. This, Amma says, is perhaps his greatest teaching.
“There have been very few who have been able to rejoice both in victory and in defeat,” Amma says. “Sri Krishna is one who celebrated both life and death. That is why he was always able to give a big smile. He took birth with a smile on his face, lived with a smile, and left his body with a smile. The message that he conveyed through his life is that we should make life full of laughter.”
Krishna’s life was so full, it would be impossible to recount it all here. It is told primarily through Srimad Bhagavatam, Garga Samhita, Visnu Purana, Brahmavaivarta Purana, Mahabharata, Harivamsa and several other puranas. However, here are some of the broad strokes.
Krishna, in fact, took birth in a prison cell. A sage had told his egoistic uncle, King Kamsa, that he would be killed by his sister Devaki’s child. So Kamsa imprisoned Devaki and had each child she bore murdered. However, Devaki, and her husband, Vasudeva, finally were able to sneak one child off to safety. This was Sri Krishna. They sent Krishna off to Vraja, where he was raised by a foster mother, Yasoda. It was in Vrindavan, one of the villages of Vraja, that Krishna won the hearts of the gopis, the cowherds of the village. “By spending all his time with the gopis of Vrindavan—playing with them, joking with them, stealing their butter and milk, etc—what he actually was doing was stealing their hearts,” Amma says. It is from this that Krishna was given the name “Chitta Chora” [one who steals the mind].
Kamsa sent many assassins to kill Krishna, but none of them were able to do so. And in the end, Krishna returned to Mathura and killed Kamsa, restoring dharma to the land.
In fact, Krishna never returned to Vrindavan. The pain of separation was unbearable for the gopis. It drove their minds into a fever pitch, wherein their every thought was of Krishna. Through this, their minds were purified and they slowly became able to see their Beloved in all things: in the trees, in the rivers, in the mountains, in the sky, in all people, and animals—even in their own selves. This was the realization that Krishna had intended to bring about within them from the very beginning.
