If you close your eyes, in the late afternoon as the golden color of fields around you starts to mellow, when the heaviest part of your work has been done and the broad tree trunks seem to whisper a promise of breezy freedom, if you close your eyes then and really listen, you might hear the sound of a flute.
Listen, listen with your other ear, the deeper one. Faint, at first, almost inseparable from the sounds of nature that surround you, but slowly a melody emerges, intricate yet perfectly simple, a melody, or a vibration, which fills you with desire to love and be loved.
This desire turns to longing, it replaces any other passing fancy you might have ever had, and you know somehow that this passionate yearning which is now filling your stricken heart is not for something of this world but for something beyond, and you know that from this day onward you will never be satisfied with anything less than direct union with that player of the flute.
Congratulations! You have fallen in love with Krishna, you are welcome to join the club, So many have done so before you, and so many more will before this dance of life and mystery comes to an end.
Of all manifestations of the divine, Krishna is the one that evokes wild love in the heart. He is the one that mothers tell of to their children, as they tuck them in and turn off the light.
Do they speak of the Lord Krishna in the darkness so as to hide the blush of their cheeks, the special curve of their lips as they recall his beautiful human form, his heroic adventures?
Could it be his deep wisdom, his ability to say in concentrated form what mere mortals cannot express in a lifetime that keeps the love of him alive?
As brave and skilled a warrior as he was, Krishna was equally mischievous. Even as a baby, stealing milk and cream from the clay milk pots not meant for him, playing tricks on the housemaids, he was most beloved, his name known far and wide. Krishna, true love in human male form. Mmm, hard to resist.
Five thousand years ago, things on earth had reached, once again, a state so pathetic, the demons were running so rampant, that it was decided that a very high soul, very evolved, way beyond human level, must take a human form and come to earth and sort things out.
It is a point of much contention among the mortals - was Krishna an evolved soul, a form and messenger of divinity (an Avatar), or was he G-d himself, the supreme being of the universe, appearing to us in human form? How can G-d, limitless and boundless, everything at once, become a man? But hasn't it been often said that we humans were created in the image of G-d? As in all other matters in Hinduism, worshippers are free to answer according to their own inner understanding.
Krishna came to earth as a little boy in the Indian city of Matura. The circumstances of his birth are dramatic, a mix of terrible tragedy and heroics and miracles. Although a prince by birth, he grew up with foster parents among the cowherds and milk maidens. How they loved him!
Yashoda, his adoptive mother, adored him, always worried about his adventures, not your normal little boy adventures, not snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, but rather putting out major forest fires, subduing Kaliya, the gigantic serpent monsters who had taken over the entire river, killing Narkasura and other demon kings, slaying his uncle the evil king who had killed his seven older brothers. Things like that.
And how Yashoda chided him to leave those jugs of milk alone! But she laughed like everyone at his white milk-moustache and his lovely, chubby form.
At first, it was the cowherds with whom he spent most of his time. Soon, he was driving the young ladies crazy! The young women of Vrindavan, where Krishna was living at that time, loved him with all of their heart, they all agreed with each other that he was the very best and so much better than the rest, and they all made plans together how to get him to marry them.
It is told that each one of them, while wanting Krishna for herself, was perfectly happy to help her friend to try and get Krishna as well. Something about him inspired selfless love, and service.
"My dear Lord Krishna," they are said to have said, "You may embrace me or trample me under your feet, or you may make me brokenhearted by never being present before me. Whatever You like, you can do, because you have complete freedom to act. But in spite of all your dealings, you are my Lord eternally, and I have no other worshipable object."
These women came to be called Gopis, the spiritaul wives of Krishna, and there are said to be 16,000 of them, and he visits each of them, every night.
Have you ever heard a story about an Avatar that was titled "How he came to steal the undergarments of the unmarried maidens?"
We will tell this story next time, and we will tell of the Bhagvad-Gita, The Love Song of God, the main holy book in Hinduism that was written by lord Krishna.