Bhagvat09- Was Krishna a flirtatious boy?

[Quick links]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the previous episode, we saw how Vyasa apparently portrayed Krishna as a flirtatious boy. 

More than getting into the historicity of the incident narrated in the previous episode, I am more curious as to why Vyasa included such an incident in the Bhagavata. Did Vyasa really want to portray Krishna as a flirtatious boy?

If we get back to the very beginning, we see the factors that motivated Vyasa to compose Bhagavata. Vyasa had a tough goal. He had to convey very high philosophical truths, but at the same time he had to reach the masses who are at a lower intellectual level

Instead of intellectual route, Vyasa chose the emotional route. Which was more in tune with his audience. If you observe throughout, Vyasa whips up emotions by narrating amazing stories which border on the edge of fantasy. May be, that is how he tries to capture the attention of people with low intellectual abilities.

But throughout, Vyasa keeps sprinkling philosophical ideas, which I have skipped. I did that since I felt that many of those ideas are alien to people who don’t have a grounding in ancient Indian philosophy. I also wanted to keep the discussions simple and easy to understand.

Vyasa often propounds a version of Advaita philosophy which is at the root of the Vedas and Upanishads. I am using the qualifier ‘version’ when I talk about this Advaita to differentiate it from the Advaita that is popularized by later Indian philosophers like Sankara.

Sankara made Advaita so popular that many believe that to be the central message of the Upanishads. As I have always held in my earlier talks on Brahmasutra or on the Vedas, Sankara’s Advaita is not exactly what is implied by the Upanishads. I say it by taking the risk of offending the majority of Advaita fans who see Advaita of Sankara as synonymous to the central theme of the Upanishads.

Sankara’s Advaita has a shade of world negation which is absent in the Upanishads. Sankara views the world to be an illusion or Maya or at best as a wrong perception of supreme reality. Many modern Advaitis carry forward this theory of Sankara and come up with their own new versions of Advaita, which in my view is far from what the Upanishads convey and in contradiction with general Indian way of thinking.

But what Vyasa propounds in his Brahmasutra or for that matter in Bhagavata, is closer to the Upanishads, at least in the essence. With this view of Vyasa, let me try to explain what Vyasa wanted to convey in the story of Krishna where Krishna steals the garments of the cowherd girls and humiliates them.

In the Upanishadic form of Advaita, the world is not unreal. But each entity in the world is a ‘form’ taken by the one and only God. And these entities, that are inert as they are, are livened up by the same God by entering these forms as infinitely many individual souls. So, each entity as well as the individual souls are ‘forms’ of the same God. In that respect, there exists one and only thing namely God. There is no multiplicity. That is the form of Advaita, that the Upanishads talk about. That is also the Advaita Vyasa talks about.

Unlike the Advaita of Sankara and his later followers, the world exists. But what exists is not something different from God. So, existence of each entity – living or nonliving is not negated. This poses a problem since in our space-time limited world, an entity cannot exist in more than one way at the same time. That probably compelled Advaitis like Sankara to ‘invent’ the concept of Maya. They said multiplicity is an illusion or Maya.

These people forget that one of the basic assertions of the Upanishads is that God is beyond space and time. He can exist in more than one form, in more than one place, all at once. There is no need to bring in the concept of illusion if one understands this. In fact, the Upanishads rarely talk about Maya or illusion.

I have discussed all these subtle ideas in my concluding talks on the Vedas. I have explained them in more detail in the second part of my book “Unraveling the hidden mysteries of the Vedas”. That is the core of the Upanishads as well as what Vyasa propounds whether it is through the Bhagavad Gita or for that matter the Bhagavata itself.

Keeping in view this form of Advaita, let me try to analyze the current topic of Krishna stealing the garments of cowherd girls.

We have to see the symbolism behind the narrated story. The cowherd girls were quite young and innocent. They were keen on obtaining Krishna as their husband. They performed some ritual such as worshiping Goddess Katyayani. And prayed Krishna in their mind that he should accept them.

But the cowherd girls were always thinking about themselves as ‘girls’ – a feminine body. They wanted a ‘male’ body as their mate. They imagined that male body as Krishna. Basically, they wanted to unite with Krishna.

But in terms of Upanishadic reality, this male and female is just an aspect of the body in which the individual soul resides. The attraction of the individual souls to God is but natural since they originated from the same God or are forms of the same God. But the individual souls are unaware of that fact.

What brought in that ignorance? It is their identifying themselves with the body. It is the body that separates them from God. It is that which makes them feel that they are not God in the real sense. This attachment to body needs to be overcome before one ‘realizes’ the oneness with God. This oneness is not the physical union of the female with the male, but involves coming out of the confusion about the identities.

How does one attain that? Rituals, worships and so on may be a starting point. Those definitely put one on the right track. But what ultimately helps is the complete surrender to God. Whole hearted surrender. Once that happens, the confusion of separation vanishes. One finds new meaning to the union – union not of two bodies but of two forms of the same entity namely God. This is what the Upanishads talk about. This is also what the Bhagavad Gita talks about. And needless to say, that this is what Vyasa wants to convey through Bhagavata. There is no need to negate the world for achieving that.

If things look a bit complicated, let me run through the story of the cowherd girls once again very briefly.

Their attraction to Krishna was nothing but a desire of the individual soul to come out of the separation from God. The cowherd girls innocently thought about physical union since they identified themselves with their body. For them Krishna was male and someone towards whom they were physically attracted. Their hesitation to come out of the waters was because of their shyness about their nudity. And that in turn was part of their association with the body.

Krishna wanted them to break that association. So, he forced them to come out of the waters as they were. To come out of the notion that they are some female bodies. Krishna also wanted them to surrender to the supreme reality whole heatedly. For that they had to break all associations with the bodily identity. That is suggested by making them raise both hands rather than still holding on to the body identity.

Though Vyasa does not explain all these ideas in that many words. I am only extrapolating based on what is Vyasa ’s well-known stand on these matters. Let me quote a verse in this context which probably summarizes these ideas.

na mayi aavEsita dhiyaam

kaamaḥ kaamaaya kalpate

bharjitaa kvathitaa dhaanaah  

praayo beejaaya na isyate

 

The burnt seeds would no longer sprout.

In the same way, anyone who is completely absorbed in God

would never turn to material desires.

 

-- Bhagavata 10.22.26

Let us continue our discussions in the next episode.

 

Start            Previous          Next

 

A series discussing story of Krishna, based on the Indian scripture Bhagavata Purana. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2022