Comparing appearances of Krishna and Rama – Janmashtami special

Thank you Great Krishna On the occasion of Janmashtami let us discuss about the similarities and differences between the appearances of the different manifestations of the Lord especially we will focus on the manifestations of Krishna and compare them with Ram primarily and also with other incarnations to some extent So in the Bhagavad Gita 4.9 Krishna states janma karma cha me devyam evam yo vetti tattvata tattva devam ko narjanam maithi maa maithi so arjuna so he says that those who know the appearance and the transcendental divine nature of my appearance and activities they become attracted to me they don't come back to this world but rather they come to me so now and in fact in the last chapter of the 8th canto 6th chapter it's called the Matsya Upanishad of the Lord and there Parikshit Maharaj asked Shukadeva Goswami that the fish form is not considered particularly auspicious in fact it is considered inauspicious among the 8.4 million species the fish is considered to be the lowest lower even than the trees there are many reasons for this one of the main reasons is that the sun is considered to be the source of illumination and although in terms of activity the fish are more active than trees but often fish live far further away from the illumination of the sun than the trees so he asks why does the lord appear in such a form and then at that time Shukadeva Goswami reiterates the message that he had given earlier that the lord always remains transcendental no matter what form he appears in so now usually usually when the lord appears in non-human species or rather we could use sub-human species means species below the humans at that time his appearances the modes of his appearances are so extraordinary that it is difficult for us to even connect with them that somebody say for example Varahadev, how does he appear? he appears from the nostril of Brahma and usually what comes out of the nostril is nothing special if something comes out of our nostril, we just turn our face away and try to use a tissue paper or something to throw it away but here from that gateway from which usually valueless stuff comes out the lord comes from that who is the lord, who is the supremely valuable being so that is that means when Krishna is saying what he implies is that rather than focussing on the mode of the appearance which can be bewildering, which can be shocking, which can be intriguing which can be amazing that variety will be there but more important than that more important than the mode of the appearance is the purpose of the appearance how he appears is not as important as why he appears so his purpose is to attract us and thus even in ordinary activities he does extraordinary things he often gives some extraordinary twist to those extraordinary activities and he appears so for example we have Narasimhadev who is half man half lion who appears out of a pillar normally if we broke a wall of a house or something like that at the most we might find some wall termites if the house is made of wood, then some wooden termites some insects which eat into wood some ants which eat into wood might be there or some other insects might be there normally not many not many big things live inside a wall or inside a pillar I want to speak of a giant being like this so in whatever form the lord appears it's extraordinary but the real extraordinariness is not in the mode of appearance it's in the purpose of appearance so now among his various manifestations the most human like are the appearances of Ram and Krishna in fact Jiva Goswami or Rupa Goswami in the says that above all the various manifestations of the lord the intimate relationships are manifested most in the form of Krishna and second after that in the forms of Ram and Nalsimha so Nalsimha is the half human half lionine form half lionine form lionine is tiger or tiger in that family so when we look at the appearance of Ram and Krishna there are some similarities and there are some differences first similarity is that both are appearing in Kshatriya dynasty the lord usually appears in the Kshatriya or the Brahmin dynasties of course he appears even outside the human species but if we look at various incarnations that are described in the Bhagavatam many of those which appear in the human form appear in these two varanas so now both are appearing in the in the Kshatriya dynasties and as we know that Ram appears in the Surya Vamsha and Krishna appears in the Chandra Vamsha now normally speaking some people ask what do you mean by Surya Vamsha and Chandra Vamsha is it the idea that the dynasty descended from the sun or from the moon is it an intelligible idea sun and moon are celestial bodies and people how can the dynasty descend from them the problem with asking such a question is that there is a presumption over there where there is no right answer that you can give say for example if you ask a person so have you stopped beating your wife now the question itself is a trap if you say yes that means you are admitting that you are beating your wife earlier what a shameless person and if you say no that means you are still beating your wife so here when people ask how can there be a dynasty coming from the sun or the moon there is a presumption so such strict questions rather than being answered directly first we have to expose and counter the assumption underlying that question and the assumption there is that the sun and the moon are nothing more than just some celestial objects so nobody denies that the sun and moon are celestial objects but is that all that they are the vedic world you describe that above the that where modern science sees only the interactions of consciousness sorry interactions of material objects according to the laws of nature governed by impersonal forces there the vedic world you see the actions of consciousness so that means that there is something higher so there are celestial bodies celestial bodies themselves will not give rise to dynasties but celestial bodies are ruled by higher beings and there is a there is a pan cosmic connectedness within the vedic universal world view pan cosmic connectedness means that just like now a days we live in interconnected world and say today i go to the market and i have seen that the cost of subji is 25rs per kg say some vegetable and tomorrow i go and find the same vegetable is 45rs per kg and then somebody may ask what happened well and they ask why is the price just increased oh there was a war in the middle east there was a war in the middle east why did you have to increase prices for that but the point is in an interconnected world a war in one place which is the source of oil might mean that the oil prices increase oil prices increase means transportation prices increase and transportation prices increase means commodities prices increase so the point is one who understand the interconnectedness of things can appreciate can make sense of the changes that happen otherwise people will think the changes are unpredictable and senseless so like that just as a person who is educated in global economics can understand how one thing at one place can cause change at other place similarly one who is educated in philosophy can understand how the universal population is not a result of merely unguided change that there is a brahma bho naal loka punar avartin orjuna that there is a commonality of characteristics that underlies all of material existence and though for us it may seem that the sun and the earth are separated by a large distance but the vedic world view is such that yes there is a distance but undermining the separation of a distance there is a commonality of purpose and the commonality of purpose is that everywhere there are arrangements for the promotion for the establishment of dharma and the promotion the propagation of dharma so the same beings the same purpose that is there for living beings on earth is there for the purpose of living beings on higher planets in fact those beings who are more aware in consciousness than us they make arrangements for for creating similar systems on the earth just like now if we come to know that there is some calamity in some distant part of the world so if our country is relatively prosperous then our country may say America may send some food supplies, some relief or even some troops to try to create order over there so like that the predominating deities of sun and moon the sun, sun and moon are higher planets and they arrange for life to be similarly organised according to principles of dharma on earth and that's how they have their dynasties which continue not only on the sun but also on the earth so when we understand this significance of these dynasties then we will also understand why the lord appears in these dynasties essentially what he is doing is he is coming to fulfil the same purpose for which he has actually set up the world and he has set up the dynasties of the world leaders, of the universal so that is the lord appears in dynasties which are meant for establishing dharma so in 4.3 in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that the Rajavishis are actually establishing learning and sharing spiritual knowledge and that spiritual knowledge is actually meant to propagate dharma so now this one commonality is there but the difference is many Ram appears as the eldest son and Krishna appears as the youngest son in their respective families so of course after Krishna they have another younger sibling that is Subhadra but as far as sons are concerned Krishna is the youngest now at one level whether a son is the first or the there is the first and there is the rest that means the first will become the next successor after the king and the rest they will become assistants and that was one of the main reasons why Gandhari got very angry when her pregnancy got prolonged she had hoped that her son will become the successor but when she came to the truth they had already got sons when she was angry so the point is that Krishna is appearing not as the first son but as the last son meant that by the principle of primogeniture primogeniture means that in a royal succession the eldest son will become the next king so by his very appearance by the point when he chose to appear Krishna in one sense forfeited the right to rule whereas Ram he was destined to rule and that's why even today when we talk about Ram and Krishna we talk about Ram Rajya and we talk about Krishna Leela we don't talk about Krishna Rajya why? because Krishna never directly became a king of course Krishna was not a king but Krishna was the king maker king maker means he was the person by whose prowess and by whose skill others became kings so that is Krishna was not an insignificant person actually Krishna's king maker role can be seen in two primary ways one is that he enthroned Maharaja Upasena as the king and second is that he enthroned Yudhishthira as the king Yudhishthira patishthata barhi barhava tamasaka in the Krishna stotras it is stated that Krishna offered the throne of the whole world to offered the crown of the whole world to Yudhishthira and for himself he took the the simple crown of barhi barhava tamasaka of a peacock feather now so this is one factor that Krishna by appearing as the last son forfeited the right to rule now if we look further Dashrath Maharaj there is one characteristic of him is that his parents they went through a lot of austerity in terms of doing very severe sacrifices to get a child so the primary thing was that although Dashrath Maharaj had several queens still somehow he couldn't get a child and this can often be a heartbreaking thing for families where they just are not able to get children so it's a very legitimate and deep concern because it's a natural human urge to to extend to have someone to express our love to and especially for a king it also meant that he had to continue the succession and he had to make sure that the kingdom was passed on to a able heir so usually whether it is in India or in any traditional culture it is considered the responsibility of a father to beget a heir and then to beget a spare so the word spare might seem derogatory but the idea is that it's understood that life here is unpredictable so if there is a successor but if something happens and that person becomes disabled or that person dies then there has to be a someone else who can take the succession so that's a spare so now Dashrath Maharaj the austerity that he had to perform was he tried for a long time but did not get sons then finally he performed a very big sacrifice and that's the whole story in the Ramayan how that sacrifice also had to be performed with a particular person to be the priest, Rishikesh Shringa and getting the Rishikesh Shringa was complex so there was a different kind of trouble, it was a big amount of trouble with no certainty that there will be success at the end in terms of whether Rishikesh Shringa will come for the Yagya or not so that trouble was of one kind where Dashrath Maharaj had to perform a huge amount of, take a huge amount of anxiety to perform a sacrifice now when Krishna appeared at that time also his parents had to go through a big amount of austerity now in this particular analysis we will focus on Bhagavatam's version of how Krishna appears in terms of Krishna as a son of Vasudev and Devaki later we will also discuss about how if Krishna is the son of Nanda and Nanda and Rishoda then we will see how this analysis extends further so here we come to, so the austerity that Nanda and Vasudev had to Vasudev and Devaki had to perform was of entirely different kind in fact it was much more terrifying they had to both live in the prison they lived under constant fear of their own death or the death of their sons and in that way there is no guarantee that they will be able to have a son or that that son will be actually live live safely so now we know that the appearance of Krishna if we go in the back you know often there is a whenever there is a story there is a back story back story means suppose if we start a novel with a particular point of action or there is a movie in which the story starts with a particular point and now to make sense of the story suppose a movie starts with say two people fighting with each other and they are furious at each other and they are about to kill each other and suddenly someone comes in between and tells them oh the two of you are brothers now as soon as they thought they are brothers now at such a point what is required is to make sense how are you brothers then you have to go back and tell the story there is a what is called a flashback or back story so now there is a back story with the appearance of both Krishna and Ram and in the back story the important thing is that both are descending to the world for divine purposes both are descending to fulfil the prophecies of gods so like earlier I talked about the connectedness of the universe so just like if one part of a country is say hit by terrorist attacks so then at one point there seems to be ordinary life and then suddenly there are terrorists who are wreaking havoc and then suddenly after sometime you may say that oh there is CRPF and there are there is army and there are many policemen who are coming from various parts so what has happened at a superficial level if you see there was no one here how suddenly police are coming that is because that particular part of the country where terrorists have attacked that part of the country is not disconnected from the rest of the country so if the news goes to the central authorities that there is a terrorist attack over there central authorities will send forces from various places so similarly on earth if there are demoniac forces who grab power then they may think now we have routed everyone else and we are in power but earth is one part of the whole universe and so the just as there may be some policeman who is wounded at a particular place or who is just escaped from the terrorist area that person may send SOS to the police headquarters so like that Bhoomi Devi when she sees the earth is overrun by demoniac forces she goes and gives SOS signal save our soul signal to the devatas and devatas and along with Brahma and Bhoomi Devi they try to deal with the problem at their level but when they can't then they what is called nowadays escalate the problem escalate the problem means that if the problem cannot be solved at this level of authority you take it to a higher level of authority so problem escalation is done so the word escalate can mean to make the problem more complicated or to take the problem to a higher level so that it can be given greater attention so Bhoomi Devi along with she goes to devatas and escalate the problem, oh the three rulers are not able to deal with it let's go to devatas, devatas they go to Brahma and then Brahma goes to Vishnu so taking something to Vishnu is the highest level of escalation it's like say we have a company we have a mobile which is not working so we go to the local showroom and local showroom people are not able to solve it then we tell escalate it to the technical staff and then we take it to the technical staff and they say that if they are not able to solve it take it to the supervisor and then sometimes we may get in contact if we are in India we may get in contact with some executive in America who is maybe a chief engineer officer or something like that this is the problem so now to escalate to higher and higher levels it's not easy to get to those higher levels and one needs to go through the right channels so we won't be able to if we call say apple showroom we can't reach the top apple engineer but if we go to the local apple showroom and they call and then the problem is escalated they can reach the highest level so now similarly so how is Krishna reached? Krishna is reached not directly by some people in the earth who are in trouble yes they can call but the authorised way of reaching them is through Brahma's prayers so now in the Bhagavatam the back story is shown right at the beginning how the Bhagavatam describes Krishna's appearance is in the last chapter of the 9th canto it's a summary of Krishna's pastimes full pastimes are described in brief in just one chapter and then Parishad Maharaj request please describe in detail and then Shuddha Goswami starts describing but in the Ramayana actually the back story is told at the end in Uttarkhand and there the terrorist activities of Ravana and others are described in the Ramayana the back story is told is hinted at in the Ramayana in the beginning when described over how Bhoomidevi she also goes up and he says how Ravana is terrorising so in that sense the problem escalation happens in both in both stories that in the case of Ravana terrorising the earth and in the case of Kamsa and others terrorising the earth now the difference is in these cases that Ram is there any direct prophecy that Ram is going to appear yes at one level Devatas say that Devatas appeal to Brahma and Brahma appeals to Vishnu the Lord says I will decide so in that sense it's similar but at the earthly level there is no direct prophecy at least no direct public prophecy later on when when when Vishwamitra wants to take Ram in the forest to kill Tataka and Maricha and Subahu at that time the Maharaja thinks Ram is just my 16 year old son how will he be able to fight against these demons so at that time Vashishta who is the family priest of the Raghuvamsha he says that I had heard long ago from the sage Sanak Sujath that actually in your dynasty on the performance of Ashwamedha yajna on the performance of a big sacrifice you will have the son who will be appearing who will be Vishnu so that prophecy is there but that prophecy is not prominently there it's not like something which is known to everyone in contrast when Krishna appears the prophecy is what actually drives the whole story not just drives the whole story it actually dramatically alters the whole story so how does that happen at one level if we see that in the Ramayana there is no direct relationship between Ram and Ram's family and Ravana's family they are not just two different dynasties they are two different species Manavas and Rakshasas are two different species now Kamsa may also sometimes be referred to as Rakshasa but he is more of an Asura in mentality than in physicality his body is not that of a demon, his body is like a human being only now in some stories later retellings of the Ramayana sometimes it is depicted as if Sita is the daughter of Ravana but this is not told in any of the authorised there is no hint of such a thing at all in the Valmiki Ramayana nor is it told in any of the authorised retellings of the Ramayana sometimes later people bring about some twists in the story just to try to titillate their readers so there is no relationship between the hero and the villain directly no biological relationship but in the case of the appearance of Krishna there is a direct relationship Kamsa who is one of the main villains he is the brother of Devaki now interestingly Vishwachit Pitakur explains in his Sarad Darshanitika that Kamsa and Devaki are not real brother sisters they are cousins but sometimes a joint family depending on nature depending on situation sometimes cousins may become closer to each other than even real brother sisters so although Kamsa and Devaki did not share the same father Kamsa's father was Ugrasi and Devaki's father was Devak they were brothers so they were related but still Kamsa and Devaki were very close to each other and Kamsa was even at that time considered to be like the unofficial leader of the family because he was so powerful he was such a powerful hero at that time he had not exhibited any demoniac skills demonic qualities he had not done anything demoniac but when he heard from his from the Akashvani that you fool the woman whom we are carrying is the person who is going to kill you so when he heard this at that time the result was so in the Ramdhila there is no public Akashvani that happens the way it happens in Krishna Leela Sanatan Goswami in his Vaishal Poshanithika explains that the Akashvani is actually Devavani it is actually the Devatas who are prompted by the lord to speak such a thing so that Kamsa sinful activities will be accelerated and thereafter he can be the lord will descend faster to punish him now in fact the Akashvani the way it comes is it is not just information sometimes information itself can be provocative say for example if you hear that there are communal riots in the city and the rioters are coming here that information itself is provocative because there is an imminent danger but if that information is presented in such a way that oh there are rioters who are coming and what are you doing you are wearing your bangles doing nothing you should do something to protect yourself so for Kamsa it is not just information the Ashtam Garbha the 8th child in the womb the 8th womb will kill you he says that Kamsa you are such a fool that you are like a donkey carrying or driving a chariot the same woman whose 8th son will kill you it's one thing to be killed by an enemy it's quite another thing to be killed by someone to whom we are doing good so Kamsa feels not only threatened in terms of his life but he feels threatened, he feels insulted in terms of his intelligence also that what is this I am serving menially a woman who is going to beget the child who is going to kill me so in the traditional culture the mother son bond is considered to be one of the most intimate bonds the idea is that not only the son comes from the body of the mother but the mother the mother not only nourishes the son when she is inside when the son is inside the womb but also she is offering him milk after he comes out and afterwards also she is the primary caregiver of the son so now often in general parents and specifically the mother it is parents also feel it subjectively also that their son becomes a great person then that they feel yes with the son's greatness I have become great and other people also judge if a son does something bad then that reflects bad on the entire family so now when Kamsa hears this Akashvani it's not just that he wants to protect himself by and that's why he wants to kill Devaki, that is true but more than that the tone of the Akashvani is such that Kamsa feels as if Devaki, the person whom I was surveying she has betrayed me now she has she is hosting my enemy in her womb or she will be hosting my enemy in her womb and she is going to, in that sense she has already colluded with the gods who want to kill me and thus she has become my enemy so his anger is not just for what is going to come out of Devaki's womb later but also what that coming out represents that Devaki has become his enemy so when he tries to kill Devaki as we know and Vasudev has to go into an emergency diplomatic rescue mission he cannot use weapons against Vasudev against Kamsa because at one level Kamsa is a far more formidable hero than Vasudev at another level there are already many other family members including the family ladies who are there in the vicinity and Vasudev doesn't want the bloodshed to spread in the family and further especially for any of the other family ladies to be hurt so he goes on a he uses his expert diplomatic skills to persuade Kamsa and Kamsa finally relents Vasudev says that I will give all my eight sons to you so in this case we see that Kamsa doesn't have to Kamsa doesn't have to actually kill Devaki but he wants to that's a reflex action which reflects his innate nature his nature is you know others matter when they matter to me one level of self-centredness is I only matter another level of self-centredness is others matter as long as they matter to me that means if they are of any help to me then I will protect them but if they are going to harm me anyway then I will finish them so we see Vasudev and Devaki they have to go through seeing six of their sons killed and then even the seventh son who they think is who they think gets a miscarriage so basically for parents to lose even one child is extremely distressing especially for a mother after she has carried the child in her womb for so many months even if the mother has not seen the child even after that if there is a miscarriage there is so much pain and nowadays there is this whole propaganda that abortion is just tissue removal even the mothers actually come to know that what that it was not a tissue it was a child and afterwards often they go through severe regrets and they get psychological problems apart from biological issues that come up because of abortion these are not talked about much in the media but the point is that from the moment of conception a bond of affection is formed between the parents and their still unborn child and especially between the mother and the child and that bond grows stronger and stronger as the conception progresses towards delivery so for a woman to carry a child through the full term of pregnancy and then after delivering to be helpless while the child is killed to see the child die even because of a natural disease is painful but to see the child killed in front of one's own eyes Kamsa is so brutal that he doesn't just kill Devaki's sons but he kills them in front of her eyes to make a mother see the brutal death of her own son it requires a terrible level of barbarousness in a person to inflict that kind of suffering on a mother but Kamsa does that so six times Devaki has to see, then seven times she has to undergo the agony of feeling that her son has she has had a miscarriage and all along there is also the fear that the eighth child how will this eighth child escape so both Dashrath and Dashrath and his wives on one side and Vasudev and Devaki on the other both have to go through different kinds of sacrifices in order to get a son but for getting Krishna for Krishna Vasudev and Devaki have to go through a huge level of privation privation means great amount of misery they are imprisoned they are tormented they are humiliated now one of the often in stories in any good play there is something called foreshadowing foreshadowing means suppose at the beginning of a story its told there was a revolver in the drawer in the place where the meeting is going to be so then that indicates if a good novelist that novelist tells that there is a revolver then that revolver should be used sometime later otherwise that revolver should be mentioned makes no point constructively sometimes the mention of a revolver right at the beginning it foreshadows the events that are going to happen later so now in the case of Krishna there is a foreshadowing that happens and what is the foreshadowing that that Ram Ram actually is he is Dharmaraj he is Dharmabhik in the Ramayana there is one verse which uses the word Dharma and describes Ram in terms of Dharma using six different epithets for him so that is especially when Ram when Kaushalya's mother is telling him that you should not you should not go to the forest because your mother's order is that you should not go to the forest and the mother's order is more important than the father's order so at that time there is Valmiki she uses this multiple epithets to describe Ram and he says that he knows Dharma so now of course the lord always knows Dharma whether in the form of Ram or Krishna but Ram is characterised usually by upright behaviour no matter what happens Ram will always honour his word and that's why he when his father says that Bharat will become the king and Ram will go to the forest Ram immediately goes to the forest so in the case of Krishna Krishna is also upright Kshatriya but he is not just upright he is actually right in a way that takes people up that means he sometimes may speak things which are right beyond right which may not seem right to our mundane vision but they are right from the point of view of ultimate benediction that those things bring and that Krishna's right beyond right Krishna's transcending worldly morality for the purpose of ultimate morality that is foreshadowed in his birth and how is that that is Krishna will later speak one thing which seems to be true but which it turns out is not exactly true just like Krishna says I will never raise weapons and then he raises a wheel to attack Bhishma and protect Arjuna so like that we see that sort of things which are repeatedly depicted in the Mahabharata wars especially they are foreshadowed by in Vasudev's transcending his promise to Kamsa so after the first sons are born and they die in whatever way when the 8th child appears now or today he sees the child there is a whole long story over there when he appears first he appears in a 400 form and in the 400 form both Vasudev and Devaki offer their fervent prayers to Krishna and thereafter Vasudev and Devaki especially Devaki requests Krishna to change to a 200 form so she might be able to hide him now at one level it might seem that if Devaki understands that Krishna is God and the way she has just offered prayers to Krishna she does understand he is God that if he is God he is truly Vishnu Vishnu is the protector of all the worlds and why should Devaki at that time be fearful if she knows Krishna is the protector of all the three worlds Krishna will be her protector also and yet she feels fearful and significantly she feels fearful not for herself but for her baby and she says if you are like an ordinary child I might be able to hide you but if you are in this extraordinary 400 form I will not be able to hide you actually even if she is in 200 form they are in a prison and there is no way that she will be able to hide even a child in two hands so her request doesn't seem to make sense either way firstly if she understands Krishna's position then there is no need for her to think that I have to protect Krishna he is going to be the protector of the whole world of the whole universe and if at all she wants to protect Krishna whether the child has four hands or two hands what difference is it going to make because if you say that somebody says that oh she has four hands if the child has four hands then surely people will Kamsa will know that this child is really Vishnu and Kamsa will kill but if he has two hands then maybe Kamsa will not kill but then we see that the earlier child had two hands all the earlier children had two hands and still Kamsa killed them so in that sense there is no guarantee that Kamsa will protect or Kamsa will not protect Kamsa will spare so what happens here is that there is a conflict between the Aishwarya and the Madhuri although with the word Madhuri sometimes we use it for the sake of Rasa as a topmost conjugal affection which is true but Madhuri also means basically intimacy so there is the awe-inspiring knowledge-centred conception of Vishnu as the supreme protector and there is the intimacy-inducing conception of Krishna as my child so when she is in the mood of offering prayers at that time the Aishwarya Bhava is prevalent but as soon as the prayers get over then the Yogmaya comes into the picture Yogmaya comes in and she says Oh Krishna please appear please come in a two-handed form so that I might be able to conceal you there we see a glimpse of the affection of Yashoda affection that Yashoda has for Krishna we see a glimpse of that in the way in the way Devaki is caring for and calling for Krishna to conceal his extraordinary form then after that Krishna himself says Vasudev that you take me to to Nanda Maharaj's place it's interesting that Krishna Krishna he tests Vasudev's faith in one sense Vasudev is known as a very truthful person in fact he has such a reputation for truthfulness that even Kamsa agrees to his words when Kamsa says I'll give all the sons that I get to you so Kamsa accepts that and now Vasudev could have said that oh I have given my word to Kamsa, how can I allow this, how can I let you go so Kamsa could have said like that sorry Vasudev could have said like that but Vasudev doesn't say like that why is that? because Vasudev understands that there is a principle higher than morality and that is spirituality that is spiritual morality so yes in our normal dealings we do need to be moral but when ultimately comes to the pleasure of the lord when it comes to carrying out the will of the lord, if we get explicit instruction which is for ultimate good and which is transcending the principles of morality then for the sake of the lord we need to give up morality also and that surrender so one of the most challenging instructions challenging not just in terms of difficulty to execute but challenging in terms of even difficulty to understand to comprehend, one of the most challenging instructions Krishna has used in the Bhagavad Gita is Sarva Dharmaan Parittaji Mamey Kamsharanam Rajam it's one level to say that we should give up adharma for the sake of god but it's another level to say that we should give up dharma for the sake of god so ultimate religion means pure law means to give up everything else for the sake of god pure adharma and dharma so that theme which Krishna demonstrates is the culmination of love whether it is in the case of Arjuna's being willing to shoot the arrow towards Jaidrath even when the sun seems to have already set or whether it is Yudhishthir's telling Drona that Ashwathama is dead or whether it is the Gopis coming out late at night to respond to Krishna's flute song so all these are incidences where the devotees are giving up not just adharma for the sake of coming to Krishna, for the sake of pleasing Krishna but they are giving up dharma and this is the summit of love so that summit of love where it's said that we should give up the bad for the sake of the good that is important but sometimes the good can become the worst enemy of the best the good can become the worst enemy of the best means that we become so attached to the good that we close our mind and close our eyes to the prospect of the best so this is said that sometimes people do important things and they get so caught in the important things that they forget the most important things so for example we may have many important worldly responsibilities and they are good they are important it's much much better to be responsible material than to be irresponsible material but even more important is to be also spiritually responsible to act in our relationship with Krishna but when we don't act that way and we let the good come in the way of the best then we cheat ourselves so one of the most dramatic messages that Krishna is going to teach is that we should be willing to give up the bad for the sake of God and we should be willing to give up the good for the sake of God because God is the best and that willingness to give up the good for the sake of the best which is going to be consistent teaching of Krishna and a consistent example demonstrated by Krishna's devotees that is demonstrated at the time of his appearance by Krishna's asking Vasudev and Vasudev's agreeing to put aside his word to Kamsa so that Krishna is able to go to Vrindavan so in this way Lord Ram he demonstrates dharma in a very standard upright way and that is important but real life situations are often much more convoluted convoluted means they are complex, they are intricate and it's not easy to know what is to be done we can't have a pat formula we can't have pat answers we can't have straight formulas and that's why ultimately the intention to serve, the intention to please that is extremely important for our understanding what is to be done ultimately and Krishna says if we have the devotional disposition then Krishna will give us the intelligence for what is to be done so that point is demonstrated in Krishna's appearance by his asking Vasudev and Devaki to give up their son Vasudev especially to give up his truthfulness for the sake of his devotion and in our life also at one level when we follow the four agreed principles we are giving up the bad for the sake of Krishna but along with that we also have to give up the good that means sometimes our family members, our friends they may oppose our bhakti and sometimes we may have to displease them and sometimes we may have to alienate them of course we shouldn't be insensitive with them and we can try to explain as nicely as possible why we are doing what we are doing but beyond that sometimes we have to hurt them and certainly we should be as sensitive as possible still sometimes we may have to give up the good for the sake of the best so if we are in bad association and we give that up for the sake of Krishna that is good but if sometimes there is good association which may be sattvic but which may not be spiritual then we may think what is wrong with this yes there is nothing directly wrong with it the wrong is that it is replacing the best with the good so sattva guna cannot liberate us from material existence it is bhakti alone that can liberate us from material existence so truthfulness is a good virtue but truthfulness is no substitute for pure love and Krishna descends to this world to demonstrate his pastimes of pure love pure love that is beyond worldly distinctions of good and bad and when the Bhagavad Gita states that by knowing Krishna we will not come back to by understanding the appearance and activities of Krishna we will not come back to this world what that essentially means is that when we truly understand the selfless love that underlies the lord's descent to this world this selfless love for all of us which makes him come to this world this selfless love which inspires him which animates loving reciprocation of his devotees then we will also feel inspired to enter into that world of selfless love and by entering into that world of selfless love we can get the supreme happiness so it is that it is to give us a glimpse of that sublime world of selfless love that the lord descends to this world and when we understand that then when we understand it through the Vedas then now we will return back to Krishna Thank you very much Krishnanmahashtam Mahamahotsav ki Jai.