SB 10.32.16–22 – Sarat Purnima and the First Night of Kartika

Giriraj Swami: It is also Sarat-purnima, the night of the Mahā-rāsa-līlā. On this night, Lord Krishna played on His flute under the vaṁśī vat tree near the Yamuna River to call the gopīs, His best devotees, to come to Him. And they left everything and came. And eventually, He sang with them, and danced with them, and treated each one in such a way that she thought that He was with her alone, and that therefore, she must be the best of all of His devotees or His favorite devotee.

Now, when the Lord appears, He enacts pastimes that are instructive on many different levels. So, although the gopīs were completely pure, they exhibited a sort of transcendental pride. And Krishna wanted to show that He does not like any devotee to become proud. So although their pride was transcendental, it was actually pride in Krishna, but the instruction for us is that we should not be proud, and if we become proud, then Krishna will leave us. So, that is what Krishna did, He left the gopīs, and they began to search for Him in the forest of Vrindavan, but they could not find Him. They were following His footprints, there are many details. And eventually, the forest became so dense that even though it was the full moon night, no moon rays were able to penetrate the thick foliage, and so, they couldn’t even see His footprints. And finally, they concluded that, “We cannot get Krishna by force, we can get Krishna only if He wants to come to us.”

And so, they decided that they should go back to the banks of the Yamuna where they had first met, and perform saṅkīrtana altogether, singing loudly the glories of Krishna, and especially His love for His devotees. So, they sang with great feelings of love for Krishna and separation from Krishna, and eventually, He did come, and He smiled at all of them and glanced at them, and they also reciprocated with their smiles and glances. But they harbored some anger, they felt that they had left everything for His sake, and then He had abandoned them. So, they felt that He had not reciprocated their love for Him, but they did not want to accuse Him directly. The gopīs are very intelligent and tactful, but they thought that by asking a clever series of questions, they would get Krishna to admit from His own mouth that He had not reciprocated. So, it is those questions and Krishna’s answers that I wish to read and discuss with you. This is Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto Ten, Chapter Thirty-Two, “The Reunion,”

TEXT 16

śrī-gopya ūcuḥ

bhajato ‘nubhajanty eka

eka etad-viparyayam

nobhayāṁś ca bhajanty eka

etan no brūhi sādhu bhoḥ

TRANSLATION

The gopīs said: Some people reciprocate the affection only of those who are affectionate toward them, while others show affection even to those who are indifferent or inimical. And yet others will not show affection toward anyone. Dear Kṛṣṇa, please properly explain this matter to us.

COMMENT

So, there are basically three categories. One is affectionate to those who are affectionate towards the person, the other is affectionate towards even those who are not affectionate, who are indifferent or even inimical. And the third category, they are not affectionate to anyone, whether they are affectionate towards you or indifferent towards you or inimical towards you. “So, please explain.”

TEXT 17

śrī-bhagavān uvāca

mitho bhajanti ye sakhyaḥ

svārthaikāntodyamā hi te

na tatra sauhṛdaṁ dharmaḥ

svārthārthaṁ tad dhi nānyathā

TRANSLATION

The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: So-called friends who show affection for each other only to benefit themselves are actually selfish. They have no true friendship, nor are they following the true principles of religion. Indeed, if they did not expect benefit for themselves, they would not reciprocate.

COMMENT

So, this is a quite common phenomenon, that people are actually selfish. But if they think they can get something from you, then they are nice to you. And if they think they can’t get anything from you, then they don’t reciprocate. So, Krishna says they are not real friends because they are actually selfish, and they are not following the true path of religion.

TEXT 18

My dear slender-waisted gopīs, some people are genuinely merciful or, like parents, naturally affectionate. Such persons, who devotedly serve even those who fail to reciprocate with them, are following the true, faultless path of religion, and they are true well-wishers.

COMMENT

So, in this verse, Lord Krishna praises two categories. Those who are like parents, parents are naturally affectionate towards their children even if their children don’t reciprocate, and that is the proper mood of a parent. And then there are those who are naturally merciful, like Srila Prabhupada or any pure devotee. They try to help people even if the people they are trying to help don’t reciprocate, don’t respond. So, Krishna says they are the best, and they are following the true faultless path of religion. Then, the third category.

TEXT 19

Then there are those individuals who are spiritually self-satisfied, materially fulfilled or by nature ungrateful or simply envious of superiors. Such persons will not love even those who love them, what to speak of those who are inimical.

COMMENT

So, in response to the gopīs’ third question, or third category, what about those who don’t reciprocate whether someone loves them or not. What to speak of if someone is inimical, they don’t even love the people who love them. So, He says that there are four categories, four subdivisions. First is ātmārāma. They are spiritually self-satisfied, so they don’t reciprocate because they are satisfied within themselves, and they don’t want to become entangled with people or relationships. So, they just relish their own spiritual happiness within. That is ātmārāma. Then there is āpta-kāmā. Āpta-kāmā means they have material desires, but at the moment, their material desires are satisfied. So, they also don’t reciprocate. If I am full, if I am not hungry, if I am satiated and someone offers me food, I won’t accept it because my hunger is satisfied. You could say it is a material desire, but it is satisfied, and so, I don’t reciprocate. “I am fine; I don’t need you or what you have to offer me. I am fine.” Then, the third category is people who are ungrateful. You love them, you do things for them, but they don’t care, they are just ungrateful. And then, the fourth category are those who are envious of superiors. So, the person may be affectionate to you, but because of envy, you don’t reciprocate. You might be envious of the person’s position, opulence, his wealth, his intelligence, his ability. So, that envy gets in the way of your reciprocating the person’s love. And there are even subcategories within those.

So, all right. Now, the gopīs asked this question thinking that Krishna had been ungrateful or something. And so, through this discussion, they wanted Krishna to admit that He had not reciprocated their love. And Krishna, of course, being most intelligent, He knew what was behind the gopīs’ questions. And so, He explained Himself to them, why He behaved with them as He did. So He says, “I might appear to be in the third category who don’t reciprocate the love even of those who love them,” but He explains why.

TEXT 20

The reason I do not immediately reciprocate the affection of living beings even when they worship Me, O gopīs, is that I want to intensify their loving devotion. They then become like a poor man who has gained some wealth and then lost it, and who thus becomes so anxious about it that he can think of nothing else.

COMMENT

It happens. We get something with great difficulty, and then we lose it, and then we are obsessed with the loss of it. Or even, we might take something for granted, and then when we lose it, then we appreciate what we had and lost.

TEXT 21

My dear girls, understanding that simply for My sake you had rejected the authority of worldly opinion, of the Vedas and of your relatives, I acted as I did only to increase your attachment to Me. Even when I removed Myself from your sight by suddenly disappearing, I never stopped loving you. Therefore, My beloved gopīs, please do not harbor any bad feelings toward Me, your beloved.

COMMENT

So, here, Krishna is saying that it is not true that He didn’t reciprocate their love, but He did it in a way as to increase their attachment for Him. And He was reciprocating because the gopīs’ or any pure devotees’ only desire is to love Krishna and serve Krishna and increase their love for Him, increase their service to Him. And so, by removing Himself from them, He was actually reciprocating with their hearts innermost desire, which was to always increase their love for Him. But some of our learned acharyas have commented that the nature of the gopīs’ love was that it was already at the highest position, and that it was naturally increasing. Whatever Krishna would have done or not done, their love for Him by nature at that level would always increase. So, they say that Krishna hid Himself from the gopīs to bring out their loving feelings, or intensify their loving mood, to show the world that the gopīs are the greatest lovers of Krishna—to call attention to the gopīs’ extraordinary love for Krishna, so that people would try to emulate them and follow their footsteps. And that love is so exalted and so pure and so sublime, that even Krishna wanted to experience it. And therefore, He came as Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, so He could experience that love of Radharani in particular. So then, His final statement.

TEXT 22

na pāraye ‘haṁ niravadya-saṁyujāṁ

sva-sādhu-kṛtyaṁ vibudhāyuṣāpi vaḥ

yā mābhajan durjara-geha-śṛṅkhalāḥ

saṁvṛścya tad vaḥ pratiyātu sādhunā

TRANSLATION

I am not able to repay My debt for your spotless service, even within a lifetime of Brahmā. Your connection with Me is beyond reproach. You have worshiped Me, cutting off all domestic ties, which are difficult to break. Therefore please let your own glorious deeds be your compensation.

COMMENT

So, after explaining that He was not indifferent to the gopīs or ungrateful but that He actually was reciprocating their love for Him, now, in the end, He says actually, He is not able to reciprocate their love because they gave up everything for Him, which He felt He was not able to do for them. When He played on His flute, they dropped everything and rushed to Him. The ones who were cooking, they left the milk on the fire and just rushed to Krishna, they didn’t care if the milk boiled over. Some were feeding the calves; they stopped feeding them in the middle and rushed. And some were feeding their family members, they left them. Some were feeding their babies, they left them. And their family members said, “Where are you going? It is the middle of the night.” They had no time to answer, they just left. So, they gave up all considerations of worldly morality and concerns with family ties for Krishna.

But Krishna was thinking, “I couldn’t do that. I pretend to go to sleep and then I sneak out in the middle of the night. My parents don’t know what I am doing. So, I am maintaining My relationship with My parents. And the gopīs, they have given up all other relationships for My sake, but I haven’t done that for them. And My relationships with My parents, My elders, My cowherd boyfriends, My servants, My cows and calves, and even aspiring devotees, sādhakas, My relationship with them.” So, He says, “Actually, I am not able to reciprocate your love. Let your own glorious deeds be your compensation.” And then, when the gopīs heard that, they thought, “Krishna has admitted that we defeated Him. We could never admit that He defeated us, but He admitted that we defeated Him. So He has defeated us.” [laughter]

And it is said that those words of Krishna’s forever remained in the gopīs’ hearts, and that when He left Vrindavan and went to Mathura and then later Dvaraka, they always remembered those words, and those words sustained their lives. So, we cannot really imagine how pure and exalted the love of the residents of Vrindavan is for Krishna. It is completely pure and spontaneous. But we can hear about it, and try to purify ourselves by hearing about it and learning from the instructions that come out of Krishna’s dealings with His pure devotees in Vrindavan and His discussions with them. And try, even in our own relationships, to be affectionate, and try to be genuine well-wishers to others without thinking of our personal benefit or future.

Devotee: One question please. Krishna is the greatest and the best, yet He seems to admit that it is not the greatest lover, from His own words. That is why he had to appear as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. How is that possible?

Giriraj Swami: Well, first I will give a technical answer. According to Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, in a loving relationship, there is the viṣaya, the object of the love, and the āśraya, or the shelter of the love. So, Krishna is the viṣaya, He is the object of love. And the devotee is the āśraya, he is the shelter of that love. And that is the natural constitutional position. And so, Krishna wanted to experience the position of the āśraya, not the viṣaya, and experience the happiness of the āśraya, and appreciate Krishna from the position of the āśraya. Now, in this science, Rādhā-kṛṣṇa- hlādinī. . . I am forgetting that verse at the beginning of Caitanya-caritāmṛta from Svarupa Damodara Gosvami. But the idea is that Krishna was one, and then to expand His pleasure, He became two, Radha and Krishna. And then the two, Radha and Krishna, again became one as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

So we can say that, “Krishna is the greatest, so how could Radharani’s love for Krishna be greater than Krishna’s love?” But from a certain point of view, Radharani is Krishna, She is that part of Krishna that became the āśraya of the love. He is in His form as Krishna remained the viṣaya. But even then, that Krishna, the viṣaya wanted to experience the love of Radharani. So, I guess I would have to say they are simultaneously one and different. But, when they were in that madness of separation, looking for Krishna in the forest of Vrindavan, they were also enacting Krishna’s pastimes. One gopī would take the part of Putana and one would take the part of Krishna. We don’t know exactly what their mood was but, yes, that is a good question.

I would just say in summary, that Krishna divides into the two – viṣaya and āśraya. And in the āśraya, that intensity of love is greater than as the viṣaya, but it is still Krishna, but in the form of Radha. And then, as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu He adopts that mood of the āśraya. The one then becomes two, and then the two become one.