Sri Janmashtami at Sarvatma’s

Giriraj Swami: We shall read one verse from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto Ten, Chapter Thirty-three, Text Thirty-six, which explains the purpose of the descent of Lord Krishna:

anugrahāya bhaktānāṁ
mānuṣaṁ deham āsthitaḥ
bhajate tādṛśīḥ krīḍa
yāḥ śrutvā tat-paro bhavet

“When the Lord assumes a humanlike body to show mercy to His devotees, He engages in such pastimes as will attract those who hear about them to become dedicated to Him.”

Here Srila Śukadeva Gosvami explains the purpose of the Lord’s descent specifically in the form of Krishna. Although the Lord appears in many forms, the form of Krishna is especially important because it is humanlike; human beings who hear about the humanlike pastimes of Krishna can easily become attracted to Him and thus be inspired to dedicate their lives to His service.

In Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja Gosvami explains Lord Krishna’s thoughts before He appeared. Lord Krishna considered, “I have appeared in so many different forms, and in My various forms devotees worship Me with awe and reverence.” Devotees worship the forms of Vishnu or Lakshmi-Narayana especially with great awe and reverence, with great appreciation for the Lord’s grandeur and opulence. So Krishna considered, “I have not yet descended in such a way as to inspire them to serve Me without awe and reverence. Thus I shall come as Krishna in a humanlike form and display such pastimes as will inspire them to serve Me with complete intimacy, an intimacy possible only when one forgets the Lord’s grandeur and opulences.” 

Krishna thought, “I will descend, and I will play with My cowherd boyfriends. We will engage in sports, and when the other party defeats Me in a sport or game, I will carry the winner on My shoulders as a reward for his victory. Similarly, I will engage in pastimes with My parents, Nanda Maharaja and Yaśodāmāyī, such that when Yaśodāmāyī shows the stick to punish Me I will become very much afraid. And I will engage in pastimes with My beloveds such that when they show their jealous anger toward Me I will regret My misbehavior and appeal to them to give up their anger (mana). Thus, I will engage in such intimate relationships with My confidential devotees that people will be attracted to give up their material attachments and dedicate themselves exclusively to My service.”

Sometimes Srila Prabhupada paraphrased the purport to the verse here—or to the series of verses in Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta—about the Lord’s descent as Krishna. The idea is that everyone in the material world wants love. Everyone wants some loving relationship that will please and satisfy him or her, but whatever relationships we have in the material world are bound to end, because the relationships exist as long as the body exists and as soon as the body ceases to exist, which is bound to happen, the relationships will be finished. And apart from the temporary nature of bodily relationships, they are also filled with many other complexities. Thus Srila Prabhupada says, “If you want a master to serve, then Krishna is ready. He will become your perfect master, and your relationship with Him will never end and you will never be disappointed.” Similarly, if you are looking for a relationship with a friend, Krishna will become your best friend. Although in the material world we have friends, sometimes our friends misunderstand us. Sometimes they disappoint us. But Krishna will always understand us perfectly, and He will never fail us in any circumstance. In the material world we may want to have a child, a relationship with a child, and generally children are very docile and charming and enchanting when they are young. But when they grow older they start to manifest their own desires, which may be different from their parents’ desires or expectations. Their bodies go through changes, their minds go through changes, and in the end they may turn out very different from what we had hoped and expected. Sometimes they leave home. I don’t expect that to happen in any of the families here, but sometimes the children leave home and neglect the parents, or they may actually resent the parents for one reason or another and rebel against them. And sometimes they die. But Krishna will never neglect us, nor will He ever die. He will be the perfect child. Similarly, someone may want a relationship with a lover, and we all know how many complications there are in material relationships between lovers and between husbands and wives, but Krishna will be your perfect lover and never disappoint you. He will never leave you. He will never die.

So by hearing about the pastimes of Krishna in His intimate relationships in Vrindavan, we will be attracted: “Yes, I want to be a servant of Krishna like Raktaka and Patraka,” or “I want to be a friend of Krishna like Subala,” or “I want to have a parental relationship with Krishna like Nanda and Yasoda or the other elderly gopas and gopīs,” or “I want to be a beloved of Krishna like Srimati Radharani and Her girlfriends and Her maidservants.” By hearing about Krishna in His humanlike pastimes, in His most intimate relationships with His most exalted devotees, we can become attracted, and when we become attracted to Krishna in those pastimes and in those relationships, we may want to develop a similar relationship with Him and thus want to dedicate our hearts and souls to His service. So this is the specific purpose of the special incarnation of Krishna in the humanlike form. 

In the Bhagavad-gītā (4.7–8), Lord Krishna speaks about other purposes for His descent:

yadā yadā hi dharmasya
glānir bhavati bhārata
abhyutthānam adharmasya
tadātmānaṁ sṛjāmy aham

“Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion – at that time I descend Myself.” 

paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ
vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām
dharma-saṁsthāpanārthāya
sambhavāmi yuge yuge

“To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.”

Paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām: to deliver the devotees and to punish the miscreants, I descend.

But Krishna can fulfill the purposes mentioned in these two verses from the Gītā in His other forms as well. For example, when He descends as Lord Nṛsiṁha He fulfills the same functions. And similarly, when He descends in the form of Lord Ramachandra He also fulfills the same functions. Only when He descends in His humanlike form as Krishna does He manifest the special pastimes that He enjoys with His devotees in Vrindavan, the humanlike pastimes, and it is specifically those humanlike pastimes that attract the conditioned souls to dedicate themselves to Him. And by displaying His humanlike pastimes, His nara-līlā, He creates a subject matter that will interest us to hear about Him, and by hearing about His humanlike pastimes in Vrindavan our hearts become purified and we become attracted to Him and want to dedicate our lives to His service, knowing that our hearts’ desires can only be fully satisfied in relation to Him.

Krishna Janmashtami is a most auspicious occasion because Krishna appeared on Janmashtami. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes the appearance of Lord Krishna in the prison house of Kamsa as the son of Vasudeva and Devaki. He appeared first in His four-armed form as Vishnu, and when Vasudeva and Devaki feared for His safety because of Kamsa’s policy of killing their children, Vasudeva and Devaki requested Him to conceal His four-handed form as Narayana and assume the form of a human baby. Then, by the arrangement of yoga-māyā, all the prison guards fell asleep, the shackles that were binding Vasudeva released him, and the doors of the prison opened. Thus Vasudeva was able to carry baby Krishna across the river Yamuna to Gokula and exchange the baby boy Krishna for the baby daughter of Yaśodāmāyī. And so Krishna grew up in Vraja. 

Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura has analyzed the verses of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam very carefully and has suggested that Yasoda actually gave birth to twins, one a son and one a daughter. The son was the original form of Krishna, and the daughter was yoga-māyā. When Vasudeva carried baby Krishna from Mathura to Gokula, that Krishna was absorbed into the original Krishna of Vrindavan and His twin sister, yoga-māyā, was taken by Vasudeva back to Mathura.

I will not discuss in detail all the verses that Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura cites in support of his thesis that Yaśodāmāyī had a twin son and daughter and that the original Krishna was born of Yasoda in Gokula while the Vasudeva Krishna, the expansion of the original Krishna of Vrindavan, appeared in the prison house of Kamsa in Mathura to Vasudeva and Devaki. There are various verses that support Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura’s thesis, and here I will mention one or two. Kamsa had been living in fear of the eighth son of Devaki, because he had heard a voice from the sky (ākāśa-vani) that said he would be killed by Devaki’s eighth son. So when he heard that Devaki had given birth for the eighth time, he went to seize the baby to dash the baby against the rock, as he had killed her first seven children. But when he tried to do so, the girl flew up in the sky and manifested her divine form. Then she chastised Kamsa:

kiṁ mayā hatayā manda
jātaḥ khalu tavānta-kṛt
yatra kva vā pūrva-śatrur
mā hiṁsīḥ kṛpaṇān vṛthā

“O Kaṁsa, you fool, what will be the use of killing me? The Supreme Personality of Godhead, who has been your enemy from the very beginning and who will certainly kill you, has already taken His birth somewhere else. Therefore, do not unnecessarily kill other children.” (SB 10.4.12)

She said in effect, “You are trying to kill me, but you do not know that the person who is destined to kill you has already taken birth somewhere else.” In other words, He did not take birth in Mathura, but He took birth somewhere else—in Vrindavan. Similarly, yoga-māyā is described as adṛśyatānujā viṣṇoḥ, “the younger sister of Lord Vishnu.” (SB 10.4.9) Because both Krishna and yoga-māyā were born of Yasoda, yoga-māyā was called Krishna’s sister. And there are other verses that support the idea that the original Krishna took birth of Nanda and Yasoda in Vraja.

Of course, Krishna doesn’t take birth as an ordinary human child does, by the combination of the mother and father, where the father injects the seed into the womb of the mother, and so on. Actually, Krishna is never born. He always exists, eternally. As an example, it is said that the sun always exists but that at a certain time the sun rises—sunrise. From our point of view we see that the sun is rising, but from the point of view of the sun there is no rising or setting. The sun is always there. In the same way, Krishna is always there, but at a certain time He appears before our vision as the son of Vasudeva and Devaki, or in His original form as the son of Nanda and Yasoda, and displays His humanlike pastimes, as we discussed. So we should never misunderstand and think that Krishna is an ordinary human being with a physical body made of flesh and blood or that He was born by the biological process of conception in which the seed fertilizes the egg. Not at all. Rather, He appeared like the sun appears over the horizon at sunrise. Thus, the Bhāgavatam describes that Krishna appeared in the heart of Vasudeva and from the heart of Vasudeva was transferred to the heart of Devaki, just as the sun transfers its rays to the rising moon in the east. 

So we pray that Krishna will attract us by His pastimes. Although both Krishna and His pastimes are all-attractive, because our minds and our senses are contaminated, we are not spontaneously attracted. Still, we have faith that by the process of hearing the pastimes of Krishna and chanting the holy name of Krishna, our minds and senses will be purified so that eventually we can be spontaneously attracted to Him and His pastimes with His wonderful devotees in Vrindavan. Hare Krishna!

Are there any questions or comments?

Krishna Kirtan dasa: Earlier I was speaking with Kandarpa-manjari, and we happened to mention the time when Krishna appeared—something to do with midnight. I was just trying to confirm whether that is correct, whether the fact that throughout the world we observe certain ceremonies on Krishnashtami at midnight, ceremonies such as ārati, has anything to do with when Krishna appeared.

Giriraj Swami: I heard that Krishna appeared twenty minutes after midnight and so we receive Him by offering ārati at midnight. Sometimes devotees actually offer the ārati at twenty after midnight, but generally they do it at midnight.

Devotee: Krishna’s appearing in a humanlike form that is His original form—we are attracted because we can relate Him to the types of relationships that we have in the material world. How is it that. . .There is Krishna in His original form, and we are so many levels down, because below Krishna are the viṣṇu-tattva and below them are the demigods. None of them have forms similar to ours. So in one sense it seems inconceivable that we are made in the image that’s so close to the highest form of Godhead. It just seems inconceivable.

Giriraj Swami: Well, the earth planet is very special. Lord Krishna comes here in His original form and displays His pastimes to attract us, and His pastimes here most closely resemble our own activities. Although the forms of the demigods are also humanlike, because of their exalted positions on the higher planets they don’t have the same routines that we have here, and therefore Krishna’s pastimes do resemble our activities more than the activities of the demigods. For example, here we plough fields, we keep cows, we take them to pasture, we milk them, we churn butter—jobs the demigods don’t have to do. So it is our good fortune that we have taken birth as human beings on earth. Therefore, the Bhāgavatam says that the demigods actually aspire to take birth on earth in Kali-yuga because of the special facilities we have here for worshiping Krishna, especially through the saṅkīrtana movement of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Or, as Srila Prabhupada paraphrased the statement of the Bhāgavatam, “The demigods are standing in queue to take birth in ISKCON.” 

Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura has given a nice example to illustrate how we who are so fallen can receive such special mercy, specifically through Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. (Even though Krishna appeared on earth and manifested humanlike pastimes, it was not really until Lord Sri Krishna Chaitanya that devotees fully appreciated the different types of relationships one can have with Krishna—especially the conjugal relationship, mādhurya-rasa, and specifically parakīyā-rasa.) How can we who are so fallen, especially in the age of Kali, be given such a wonderful gift or opportunity?

Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura compares Lord Chaitanya to a king. He says that the king may become intoxicated and go into his treasury and take out his most valuable jewels and then go on the street and give them away to the most common people there, even the lowest beggars. Because he is the king and the jewels are his property, he is free to do with them what he wants. Nobody can say, “You can’t give these precious jewels to the beggars.” Similarly, Lord Chaitanya, being intoxicated with love of Godhead, is freely distributing His most valuable jewels of kṛṣṇa-prema to whomever He wants, regardless of their positions. But still, we have to accept that precious gift.

Devotee: Maharaja, when we chant, should we try to visualize Krishna’s form? 

Giriraj Swami: Well, the primary process is hearing. We shouldn’t obstruct our hearing because of efforts to visualize a picture of Krishna, but if our senses and minds are engaged in Krishna—looking at the Deity of Krishna, looking at pictures of Krishna, hearing the pastimes of Krishna, and so on—then when we do hear the holy names, if we are fortunate enough we will naturally see the image of Krishna, envision the pastimes of Krishna, remember the pastimes of Krishna. So that is desired. It is desired that when we hear the holy name we think of the form and qualities and pastimes, but it shouldn’t be a separate endeavor that distracts us from hearing.