Sri Krishna - An analysis!

Hello all,

Namaste! Today why not we discuss the great personality Sri Krishna and how we can get some pearls of wisdom from how he lived his life. In all religions, we keep the Gods whether it is Krishna, Jesus or Buddha in very high pedestals where we have absolutely no chance of reaching their levels. If we take them even though as historical personalities, but very much human with flaws and warts we can at least try to work towards reaching a level similar to theirs. Instead, we keep them at such a high level or pedestal that we have no chance of reaching any level near them.

So today in this post we are going to take Krishna as a simple human being with numerous great virtues like honesty, moral and mental strength, wisdom and the power to pursue one's own free will; but even after being a king had to lead the life of a Yadava (cowherd) and had to go through numerous trials and tribulations in his life. Even with all the tests and difficulties he had to go through, he maintained a life of "Being in this world, but not of this world'! Why not we try to pursue such a stature with our life. We are given only one life, why not take it to its ultimate potential?

So today let us discuss some scenarios where we can observe the life and behavior of Krishna and analyze what we can learn from him.

Birth: Krishna was born in the prison of Mathura, as the eighth son of Vasudeva, king of Yadavas and Devaki, the sister of the king of Mathura, Kamsa. As Kamsa was forewarned with a heavenly 'Akashvani', that Devaki's eighth son will kill Kamsa, Kamsa had thrown both his sister and her husband into the prison. So think even as being considered a form (Avatar) of God, what a terrible way to take birth. As soon as he was born he had to be taken away from Mathura to Gokul, on a basket on the head of Vasudeva crossing the Yamuna river, for fear of being killed by Kamsa. So as soon as he was born he lost both his birth parents as well. So he literally became an orphan the day he was born.

Did that affect him in any way? During his growing years did he sit idly in one corner cribbing about his misfortune of losing his birth parents? Or did he love his adopted parents Nandagopa (brother of Vasudeva and chief of Yadavas) and Yasoda with all his heart? He loved them so much so that he was a very playful and naughty kid who became the sweetheart of the whole Yadava village. He ate the butter from neighboring houses, stole the curd and milk from the storage and shared the whole stolen lot with the village Yadava kids as well as the local monkeys. He had a gala ball growing up.

Krishna stealing butter

What do we need to learn from this? Even with having a terrible birth and losing the birth parents, Krishna did not allow that to affect his mood or his behavior. So likewise if we can see the goodness in a situation or change our perspective to see the beauty in a situation, however terrible it may seem to us, we can lead a beautiful life being the part of a greater community and helping them to survive while thriving ourselves. What a beautiful way he has shown this through his life.

Killing of Kamsa: When Krishna was around 13-14 years of age, he was invited to Mathura to meet with his uncle Kamsa. In between this period from a young age of being a toddler to an adolescent he had to fight a lot of Asuras (demons) who were bent on destroying and killing the young lad. Instead of taking all these demons as literal physical beings, we can take them as tough and very difficult life experiences in a person's life. What did Krishna show here? He stood up to each and every one of the Asura and destroyed them totally. He didn't cower thinking that he will be defeated in front of these terrible demons. Instead, he had the self-confidence to stand up against them, challenge them and win and destroy them in a war. Likewise, he shows us to stand up with a steely spine in front of tough life experiences, never cower to tough situations, and win the war of life.

At the age of 14, Krishna along with his older brother Balarama went to see his Uncle Kamsa in Mathura. At the entrance to the city center, Kamsa had arranged for a big elephant, Kuvalayapeedam to crush Krishna and Balarama. Instead, the elephant gets crushed in the hands of the boys. Here if we take the elephant, Kuvalayapeedam as the arrogant ego of Kamsa instead of being just an elephant, we can infer that when we get near to the divine the first thing that gets totally decimated is our ego or the attitude we have that we are the sole persons responsible for our destiny. Instead, our ego gets destroyed and we realize that we are actually a smaller part of a larger story called the Divine and become humble and surrender totally to the divine.

Killing of Kamsa

Coming back to the story, after destroyed of his ego, did Kamsa become humble and surrender? No, even after that he tried to fight tooth and nail with Krishna who is considered as the God in a human form. This brought the total wrath of Krishna and ultimately Kamsa was killed. From this story what do we infer? We need to develop an attitude where we have to kill our ego (or the divine will make arrangements to get it killed J) and realize that we are a small but important part of the whole divine and need to develop an attitude of service and surrender.

Mahabharatha war: Finally we come to the major war in which Krishna gives the divine guidance to Arjuna, who seeing the might of the opposing army consisting of his great grandfather (Bhishma), teacher (Drona), cousins (Kauravas) and all the other relatives and friends, throws away his bow and arrows and sits on his chariot, despondent with his head in his hands. So at that time what did Krishna do? Did he leave Arjuna to tackle by himself his inner demons or did he guide Arjuna properly as a good friend and above all as a divine presence?
 

Bhagavad Gita (Divine guidance)

Krishna told Arjuna, whatever you are seeing is just a play of the Divine and many times we become so involved in the play we forget that we are a small but very important part of the Divine. He also tells Arjuna, the divine presence or the soul is untouched by all the woes, happiness, drama, or other emotions like greed, anger, jealousy or any other such sort. He teaches Arjuna that the soul changes the bodies with the ease of changing an attire and he asks Arjuna, why he is becoming sad for the bodies, which are just mortal?

Finally, after the upadesa or guidance of the divine (Bhagavath Gita), Arjuna realizes his true nature as the soul and decides to execute his duty of waging the war on the side of truth and justice. So what do we learn from this? Each one of us is a divine being having a soul who has come to this earth with a definite purpose. The Krishna or the divine soul, for us, is sitting inside us who is always guiding us towards our true destiny. Also, another lesson we learn from this is that when someone close to us is going through some hardship we don't leave them to their means, but we guide them and help them to find their way in life. That act of kindness makes us as divine as Krishna.

Finally, here Krishna also gives Arjuna as well as us a very firm, but fine lesson,
 
                              Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,
                              Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani

Meaning: You have only the right to work, but not to their fruits. Also, don't work because of an eye on the fruits of the work or don't become attached to non-action.

Krishna and Arjuna

This shows that all of us are called to do our proper duty with an eye towards right action, without laziness and surrender the fruits of our action to be delivered to us by the divine. A pretty tough but a very successful strategy indeed. Let us try it and see how our life transforms. So with all these and many other lessons, Krishna showed us the proper way to live.

I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday! 😉

Next week: Archetypes: What is it?

Note: All images were taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried".  

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