Krishna Bhakti

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Rasa-Lila: The Essence Of Krishna Bhakti

 

BY SWAMI B.V. TRIPURARI

 

 

EDITORIAL, Dec 20 (VNN) — Originally published in

Ascent magazine

 

People on the spiritual path know that God loves all

beings, and they know as well what would happen if all

beings loved God. Spiritual practitioners also know

what happens when a practitioner falls in love.

However, they may not know what happens when God falls

in love. As Krishna, he falls in love with Radha, and

this secret, esoteric information about the personal

love life of God is the essence of Krishna bhakti-the

heart of the Absolute. When God falls in love, he is

in his most vulnerable moment and thus most accessible

to those who tender to his inner necessity. Devotees

of Krsna sing, dance, celebrate, and live this love,

and Krishna is conquered by their bhakti.

 

Decorated with ornaments from the forest-its flowers,

leaves, and multicolored clays-and crowned with the

conjurer's peacock plume, Krishna, his only weapon the

flute, is God when God wants to be himself, relaxing

in the company of his intimate devotees, forgetful of

even his own Godhood in order to facilitate this

intimacy. Krishna is the connoisseur of love, yet

subjugated by his lover Radha. Radha's love thus

represents the most complete love. It is the essence

of bhakti that God himself worships.

 

The consummation of Krishna's love affair with Radha,

in which he himself bows to her love is found in five

chapters of the Bhagavata Purana's tenth canto (BP

29-33). Commonly known as the rasa-lila, this poem

appears in the midst of the Purana's description of

the mythic lila (divine play) of Krishna, just as the

flute bearing cowherd and his young love Radha reach

adolescence. As the autumn moon turns full, Krsna's

love for all of the milkmaidens (gopis) of the village

shines out in its maturity, and with the sound of his

magical flute's fifth note he calls the gopis and

Radha in particular to meet with him in the forest

bowers to dance and celebrate the secret their love.

 

The rasa-lila is considered by many to be the greatest

story ever told.

 

It has been recorded in the sacred literature of

India, retold by poets, depicted by artists, sung

about and celebrated in music, philosophized about,

and meditated upon for thousands of years. It is one

of the cultural and spiritual gems of the civilized

world. Had it not been for the rasa-lila of Radha and

Krishna, the rich religious tradition of Hinduism

might have been effaced from the world during the

Muslim domination of India. Although the Muslims cared

little for Hinduism, they could not ignore the love

story of Radha and Krishna. The Moguls in particular

commissioned their artisans to depict it in art, and

the Muslims were thus stopped short in their conquest

by the force of mystical beauty and love. Enduring,

charming, and profoundly mystical, the love story of

Radha and Krishna is capable of conquering kingdoms,

even one as fortified as the mythical empire of our

mind. This is so because it speaks deeply to the soul,

yet in a language most suited to our sensual and

mental preoccupations.

 

There is a fine line between myth and reality. A myth

can be a falsehood, or it may be the truth expressed

allegorically. Indeed, at least since the time of Carl

Jung it has become popular to find meaning in myth.

 

Yet even the best myth is only an allegorical reality.

It is not itself a true story. What is the true story?

For most of us, our reality is the world of our mind,

informed by data gathered through our senses. This may

be our reality, but how real is it? It certainly does

not endure. Our instruments of perception, our senses,

are imperfect to begin with, and thus the world of our

mind informed by them may be more false than real.

Hot, cold, happy, sad, good, and bad are mental

notions relative to our sense perception. The same day

is cold for one and hot for another, good for one, bad

for another.

 

We view the world though the glasses of our mental and

sensual experience, yet ultimately these get in the

way of truly experiencing. Vedanta tells us that which

we presently perceive to be reality is more akin to

myth, a falsehood, while we ourselves, the

experiencers, are units of reality-souls.

 

The phenomenal world may be real, but our perception

of it is false, so false that it causes us to lose

sight of our souls. The sense of the loss of our souls

that dominates our culture thus serves to underscore

the mythical nature of our perception of reality

arising out of misdirected sensual and mental

preoccupations. As for the true story, the myth that

leads us to our soul leads us to reality. Indeed, that

so-called myth may not be a myth at all, whereas our

mental and sensual perception of so-called reality may

be mythical. It is not altogether false, rather an

allegory for the absolute, a reflection of reality.

 

If we examine it closely, we will find that the

reflection of reality informs us indirectly about the

ultimate reality. The religious myth of the rasa-lila

represents ultimate reality. It is an ultimate

reality, however, that also confirms the value of

humanity, especially its sensual and emotional

aspects, for it informs us both that our sensuality

has its origins in the absolute and that the

absolute's expression of loving emotion is best

facilitated within humanity. In the rasa-lila, God

Krishna enters humanity to celebrate his sensuality,

thus confirming the sense in all of us that our drive

for the erotic is not something to be abolished. It is

to be redirected away from the world and toward the

absolute, appearing in its human-like expression of

Krishna-Radha and Krishna. In the rasa-lila we

discover divine humanism, where divinity validates the

essence of humanity and humanity speaks to us about

that which divinity must embody in its fullest

expression.

 

Although the love story of Radha and Krishna has been

analyzed on many levels-social, psychological,

political, and so on-it implies something more

profound: Our misdirected mental, sensual, and

intellectual lives are a myth, while Radha and

Krishna's love drama is ultimate reality. It is the

truth that many have reasoned is synonymous with

beauty, and it is the eternal drama in which the soul

can realize its highest potential, living in love. Any

attempt to establish a structured logical exegesis of

beauty is flawed. An exegesis of ultimate spiritual

beatitude is no exception. This is so because beauty,

and more so the spiritual experience itself, are

non-rational and transrational respectively. Spiritual

beauty is not unreasonable, rather it picks up where

reason leaves off. Because in this world we speak the

language of logic, we must try to speak about the

spiritual experience in our language. Should we broach

the spiritual, however, the language of logic will be

of little utility, for in the spiritual plane the

language is love. While we will certainly benefit from

the logical exercise of Vedanta in an effort to

demonstrate that Vedanta is pointing logically to the

love and beauty that Radha and Krishna personify,

expressions of the experience love of itself are often

more compelling. Thus if the logic falls short as it

must, the poetry of and about the experience of

rasa-lila speaks for itself. One poem expressing

spiritual experience can convey the spirit of that

experience more than volumes of tightly reasoned

argumentation.

 

In our times people look for a spiritual path that is

pragmatic. How will it help me in my day-to-day life?

How will it make the world a better place for me to

live and raise my children? These are good questions.

 

Indeed, the world is overburdened with strife, and our

individual lives are affected by it either directly or

indirectly, as no decent person can live peacefully

knowing of the suffering of others. Famine, disease,

political oppression, corporate exploitation, and

environmental disaster are but a few of the symptoms

indicating the diseased condition of the world. But

what is the disease itself? It is selfish desire, the

disease of the heart. In the least, it is this disease

that the rasa-lila seeks to address. The rasa-lila is

a tale of selflessness to the extreme hidden in an

exterior of apparent selfish love. That selfish love

in which we are all involved and about which we are

thus most eager to hear about is the context in which

the ultimate in selflessness is couched. Such is the

beauty and mystery of the rasa-lila, where Radha risks

all-family, society, and even religion, driven by her

love for Krishna. While she appears to act for her own

selfish interest without concern for others, in her

tryst with Krishna she teaches us how to give up

everything for God. If this were not the inner truth

of the rasa lila, how could her apparent selfishness

cause God to fall in love with her? No story speaks

more about that which we all need to hear to make the

world a better place-selflessness properly centered on

the perfect object of love.