Who is Vishnu – who is Krishna – what is their relationship?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Who is Vishnu and who is Krishna? Sometimes I get confused with these two.
Yes, Vishnu and Krishna are the same one Supreme God. They are one person, two personalities. It’s one person in two different moods, two different personalities.
Roughly speaking, we would say that Krishna is God at home. Vishnu is God in office. Krishna is God at home.
That is why Krishna is very relaxed. Sometimes you may see the Prime Minister in office or the Military General in office, you know, he is having a formal uniform, maybe having guns with him, and everybody is bowing down to him. But that same Military General may come back home and maybe has a son who makes him a horse and rides on top of him.
So like that, the Supreme Lord in the form of Vishnu is he has Shankha, Chakra, Gadha, Padma. He is very formal. And informally he is worshipped.
But that same Supreme Lord at home, he is Krishna. Sometimes he plays with his Gopas and the Gopas defeat him and they say you have to carry us now. And Krishna carries, Krishna carries others.
So it’s the same person in two different moods. And both of them are the same one Supreme Lord. Their moods may be different, but they are the same one Supreme Person.
And if we become devoted to that Supreme Person, we can become liberated from material existence. So there are subtle differences between the two, but those subtle differences need not become too important for us. We should focus on the principle that they are one person in different moods.
And because Krishna is God at home, so his personal intimate nature is revealed more. And the reciprocation of affection between him and his devotees is more easily evident in his form as Krishna. And that’s why we who want to develop affectionate love for Krishna we focus more on Krishna and the manifestation of God as Krishna.
But essentially they are the same person and we don’t have to make a big issue about the difference between the two. It’s just different moods.