Once upon a time, as now, mother
earth was overburdened with the weight of millions of arrogant kings. Assuming
the form of a cow, her face overflowing with tears, she approached Brahma, the
god of creation for protection.
Realizing her piteous condition,
Brahma, accompanied by the earth and all the other gods, went to the ocean of
milk, the abode of the Supreme Lord Narayana. There, Brahma venerated the Lord
by chanting the Purusha Sukta from the Rig-Veda.
While he was thus contemplating,
Brahma heard a voice in the sky: "God already knows the affliction of the
earth. He will manifest Himself as Krishna and reduce the burden of the
earth."
Hence, saving the earth from the
clutches of evil kings was the part motive for Krishna's birth. Another primary
reason was to give blissful joy to the simple cowherds of Vrindavan, their
women, and cows. In Vrindavan, Krishna behaved much as a normal child of His
age would do. He teased the gopis, respected His elders and also picnicked with
His friends.
No sooner had Krishna also walked
in following His friends, than the serpent closed his mouth. Caught inside,
Krishna expanded Himself within the throat of the demon. Soon, the demon was
choking and struggling for breath.
His prana, restricted within the
body, finally burst out through his skull (brahmarandhra), and a bright and
strange light illuminating the directions emerged from him, and waited in the
sky. As soon as Krishna came out of the serpent's body, the light merged into
Him. Now, this is the kind of end only high-class yogis achieve. The Taittriya
Upanishad describes this
'The nerve called Sushumna passes
upwards from the heart to the mid-region between the two palates and also
through that flesh that hangs like a breast between these two palates. From
there it stretches up to the crown of the head where the roots of the hair
divide. Those whose prana pass out through this Sushumna nerve, breaking open
the skull in the middle, dividing it into two regions, they attain to the Supreme
God Brahman.'
In the meanwhile, Krishna had all
but finished with the Aghasura episode and was now picnicking merrily with His
friends. The Shrimad Bhagavatam gives a vivid picture of this outdoor lunch:
'The cowherds were seated on the
ground and Krishna was at the center. They opened the lunch boxes they had
brought from home. All the boys had their faces towards Krishna, who was at the
center of the concentric circles. Due to their intense love for Him, all the
cowherds boys wanted to face Krishna. He fulfilled their desire by making His
face and limbs appear in all the directions at once; i.e. every boy thought
that He was face-to-face with Krishna. Thus they were all eating their food and
also constantly tasting the bliss of seeing Krishna face to face. Krishna
looked like the whorl of a lotus flower and the boys surrounding Him appeared
to be its petals.'
This is in keeping with the
description of Krishna given in the Bhagavad Gita:
'He has hands and feet in all
directions. He has eyes, heads, mouths and ears everywhere.'
While thus enjoying with His
friends, Krishna was Himself picturesque enough to be meditated upon. His flute
was pushed within the belt of His silken cloth on the right side, and His bugle
and cane were tucked under His left armpit. He was holding a soft morsel of
rice mixed with curd and various pickles, which could be seen through His
petal-like fingers.
Meditating upon this Lila of the
Lord, sages complain to Him: "You play in the dusty courtyards of these
cowherds but are shy of coming to the yagyas (Vedic sacrifices) of pure
Brahmins? When the cows moo and burp, you talk to them, but you do not care to
speak the mantras of the Vedas.
Leaving aside all shame, You walk
behind these rustic gopis, but feel shy to come before saints and sages? Oh
Lord, now we understand. You are not bound by any laws which govern us. You
submit only to love. It is only by love that you are attained."
Brahma is the master of
intellect. That is why he is shown with a beard, which signifies his experience
in worldly matters and wisdom. His four heads represent the four Vedas.
Hence anything which seems even
slightly contrary to the scriptures disturbs him to no end. Here he could see
the five year old Krishna, merrily playing with his friends. What was more
disturbing to him was the fact that Krishna was engaging in informal
engagements with His friends, even as much as eating their leftover, or
offering them his own, without any consideration for the rules of purity
prescribed in the scriptures.
Thus arose in Brahma's mind a
doubt: "Is this little one truly the Supreme Lord? Or is He just an
imposter displaying His yogic powers?" Brahma's doubt is not surprising.
Throughout the Shrimad Bhagavatam we find male members of Krishna's inner circle
doubting His divinity. After the great war of Mahabharata, Yudhishtra was
inconsolable.
When Krishna tried to pacify Him,
it was of no avail. However, he was consoled when his great-grandfather Bhishma
preached to him. Similarly with Arjuna, who in the Bhagavad Gita doubts:
"O' Krishna, the sun was born before you. How is it possible for you to
have imparted knowledge to the sun?"
It is only the women who due to
their immense faith, having surrendered themselves completely to Krishna, could
see Him as He truly was.
Krishna's aunt Kunti, while
venerating Him, did not shy away from recognizing that even though His
delightful and playful childish antics could confuse some into not recognizing
His divinity, His Supreme and Absolute divinity remained undiminished. She says:
"Angry at your mischief,
mother Yashoda took out a rope to bind you. It bewilders me that even though
fear itself fears you; you stood in front of your mother like an ordinary child
with your head down.
Your face was displaying fear,
and tears blackened with the kohl in your eyes were rolling down your
cheeks." The women-folk never had
any doubt. What did the women of Hastinapur do when they saw Krishna leaving
their city? Desiring to lay their eyes on Him, they climbed on to the ceilings
of the buildings, and viewing their beloved Krishna with bashful loving smiles,
showered flowers on Him saying: "Krishna is the Primal Man, who is One
without a second.
He is the Supreme God. Lucky is
Vrindavana, which He has blessed with His childlike activities. Blessed are the
ladies who taste the sweet nectar of His lips, the mere memories of which made
the young gopis of Vrindavana faint with ecstasy."
Throughout we find women easily
accepting Krishna as the Supreme Lord because of their faith. Men, because of
their 'thinking nature' relying too much on logic and calculation, are often
seen holding ambivalent views on Krishna.
We have seen above Kunti
eulogizing Krishna when He was about to leave their city. What did her son
Yudhishtra do when Krishna finally left the city? He asked a large army to
accompany Krishna for protection on the way.
The Upanishads clearly say that
it because of the fear of the Supreme Lord that the sun rises and sets on time.
It is because of His fear that fire heats and it is due to His fear that the
wind blows. To this Supreme Ruler of the world did Yudhishtra offer his
protection! The same Krishna who plays joyful childish pranks with His friends
is the Supreme God ruling the universe.
The great Shankaracharya says in
his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita:
"Those who think that Krishna is not the Supreme God are
fools."
Hence it is not surprising that
Brahma, gifted with the most efficient brain in the cosmos, began to harbor
doubts regarding the divinity of Krishna. He decided to do what one should
never do; he decided to test God.
As the cowherd boys, their minds
absorbed in Krishna, were enjoying the feast, their calves ventured far off in
the search of greener pastures. When the boys saw that the calves had gone out
of sight, they were fearful for their safety. Seeing them worried and looking
up to Him for help, Krishna said: "Friends don't worry.
I will go and get the calves back. You
continue with your meals." Thus with His uneaten morsel of rice and yogurt
within His fingers, Krishna set out to search for the lost calves. That was the
start of troubles. We see this phenomenon explained throughout the life of Krishna.
Trouble comes whenever we shift
our attention away from Krishna. Putana too lifted up Krishna when mother
Yashoda began to look at her (Putana) rather than the Lord.
In another episode when mother Yashoda got
engrossed with her household chores a hurricane came and carried away Krishna.
The same thing happened here. Where had the calves gone? Brahma Ji had
kidnapped them.
When Krishna went to look for the
calves, Brahma promptly took away Krishna's cowherd friends also to his abode,
and held all of them there in suspended animation (yoga nidra). When Krishna
realized that neither the calves nor His friends were to be found, He
understood what had happened: "So this is Brahma's doing.
He wants to see my lila." But which lila
should Krishna show Brahma Ji? There is no use displaying one's mathematical
skills in front of a grammarian. It is proper to display one's skills in the
field of the other's specialty. What is Brahma's special talent? He is skilled
at creating the world. However, here we must remember that Brahma doesn't
create the five basic elements making up the material world. These five
elements are the sky (akasha), air, fire, water and earth.
When Brahma sets out to create
the physical world, he not only has at his disposal these five elements provided
by God, but also the residue of the karma performed by the beings during their
previous births. His job is to merely assemble the parts to create bodies based
on the previous karma. However, Krishna's ability is wonderful He is the
Ultimate Source of everything.
The Brahma Sutras clearly
establish that just as the making of a pot requires an efficient cause (the
potter) and a material cause (the clay); in the case of the manifested world,
the Supreme Lord is both the efficient and material cause.
So in order to display His lila,
Krishna decided to create a new world of His own. Without any matter to mould
or foundation to build upon, without any pen, canvas or color He created a
picture. He created out of Himself as many boys and calves as Brahma
had stolen. Each of these had
different facial features, bodies, clothes and ornaments. Each had different
tastes, activities and behavior. Krishna became all that had been stolen by
Brahma in all its diversity. Indeed, as the Bhagavad Gita says:
'Everything is Krishna. The
Chandogya Upanishad says: 'He becomes one, He becomes two, two, three, five,
seven, eleven, He becomes manifold.'
This episode in the life of Krishna is an awesome illustration of the
Vedic fact that 'everything is a form of Krishna' So did the Lord create,
merely by deciding to do so.
The residents of Vrindavan
meanwhile had no knowledge of what had happened. When this group of calves and
cowherds, which were not different from Krishna,
reached back, the mothers of the
boys heard the sweet melodies of flute and rushed out to embrace their
respective children. Overflowing with maternal affection, milk oozed out of
their breasts, and they immediately set out to feed
them this milk. Similarly the
cows, their udders overflowing with milk, licked their calves with their
tongues and fed them their milk. This practice continued for one year. The
cows' affections for their calves and the gopis affection for their children
increased day by day. Earlier on, before this episode had taken place, the cows
and women had greater affection for Krishna than they had for their own
offspring. Now however, they harbored for their children the same
amount of affection they had for
Krishna. One day, as Krishna and Balarama were tending to the calves, they saw some
cows grazing at the top of Govardhana hill. Suddenly on sighting the calves,
the cows began to run towards them. They leaped downhill so swiftly that it
seemed that front and rear legs had been joined together. Overflowing with
affection the cows approached the calves with their udders so full of milk that
they were almost touching the ground. Now what was surprising was that the
calves these cows so lovingly wanted to feed their milk were not their own
offspring. Even then they felt towards them the same affection they had for
their own.
What's more, many of them had
outgrown the age for their mother's milk and were now content eating grass.
Yet, the cows generously, and out of immense affection, granted them their own
milk; and the calves too eagerly began to suck milk from their udders. Here is
another lofty Upanishad philosophy rendered into earthly terms by the Shrimad
Bhagavatam. The Brihadaranayaka Upanishad puts it as follows: 'A husband is not
loved because of love for him.
A wife is not loved because of love for her. A
son is not loved because of love for the son. Everything in this world which we
love is not for the sake of that thing, but rather because they are pleasurable
to our own self, which is what we love most in this world' ; and Krishna is
none other than our very own self. Thus it is not at all surprising that the
gopis and cows of Vrindavana felt this surge of supreme emotion towards their
children, who as Krishna the Supreme Soul were none other than their own
selves.
After one year was over, Brahma thought of
going back to Vrindavan and checking out what had happened all this while.
There he was astonished to see all the cowherds and calves playing with Krishna
as if nothing had happened. Brahma began to think: "All the boys and calves
taken away by me are still sleeping under the spell of magical powers in my
palace. Who then are these playing with Krishna?"
No sooner had he started
meditating thus than he saw each of the cowherds and calves transformed into
exact Vishnu figures, each with four arms, holding a conch, discus, mace and
lotus. He saw that each figure was wearing a garland of Tulsi leaves, and
several other Brahmas like him, and all the other creatures in the world, were
singing, dancing and venerating these Vishnu forms.
Brahma realized that the
transformation of the cowherds and calves to these Vishnu forms was not the
result of the mystic powers of some yogi, but were actually the Supreme Lord
Himself. Brahma was dazzled by this spiritual effulgence of the Lord and closed
his eyes. Seeing the helplessness of Brahma, the compassionate Lord then
removed the curtain of His Maya, and Brahma, on opening his eyes, saw spread
before him the divine land of Vrindavana.
Thus even though Krishna is the Highest Deity,
He played the part of a child born in a 'low' family of cowherds. Even though
He is the One and Only One, He has many friends. Though He is endless, even
then He wanders here and there. He is Knowledge Incarnate, even then He
searches around for His friends and calves.
And lo! Brahma saw that same old Krishna he
had left behind one year back, holding a morsel of food in His hands, searching
around for His friends! Ecstatic beyond words, Brahma jumped down from his
royal chariot and rolled in the dust of Vrindavana, touching each of his four
Vedic crowns one by one at Krishna's feet. He then prostrated before Krishna
like a stick lying horizontal on the ground and said:
"Lord, I don't know whether
God is Nirguna (formless) or Saguna (with form). What I do know is that my
allin- all is in front me with a handful of curd and rice in His hands, and a
flute tucked into His waistband. Except the blue-colored son of the cowherd
Nanda, I know nothing about the Supreme God.
O'Lord I desire only your grace.
Fulfil my wish, make me some trifle object in Vrindavan." Krishna:
"Why become a trifling here? Let me make you a Brahma again."
Brahma: No Sir. I don't wish to be Brahma
again and commit the same mistake. Make me anything in Vrindavana over which
will fall the dust of the feet of its residents. Blessed are these inhabitants
of Vrindavan.
While elaborate Vedic Sacrifices
have failed to satisfy you since the dawn of creation, it is with relish that
you drink the milk of the gopis and their cows; and they in the process taste
transcendental bliss. You, who are here to destroy the evil demons plaguing
this earth, are venerable even for the sun and the moon. My wish is keep
saluting your glory throughout my life."
Conclusion:
When the young gopis and cows of
Vrindavan used to see mother Yashoda feeding Krishna her breast, or when the
older women saw Him dancing and playing pranks in her courtyard, they too
wanted to the taste the bliss of this kind of direct engagement with Krishna
that Yashoda was being blessed with. Krishna, the fulfiller of all
wishes of His devotees, then set out to display this lila, which not only
revealed the supreme Upanishadic truths in a vivid manner, but also ensured
that all in Vrindavan got a taste of the transcendental bliss which till now
had only been mother Yashoda's exclusive privilege.
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