When the Lord’s pastimes are transcendental, should they be analyzed?

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Transcript

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Hare Krishna.
Question. When the Lord’s pastimes are transcendental, can they be analyzed? Shouldn’t they be treated as beyond analysis? Because many times people analyze them and come to speculative, offensive conclusions. Answer.
Yes. Krishna’s pastimes, the Lord’s pastimes, in His various manifestations, they are transcendental. And transcendental means not that they are entirely beyond the reach of human analysis, but rather we should not think them as entirely within the scope of human analysis.
God’s glory can be understood to some extent with human intelligence, but when we think of it as entirely fitting within the scope of human intelligence, then we are trying to catch God with our intelligence. We are trying to place our intelligence in a position higher than God’s. Higher than God.
Because we think that our intelligence can comprehend God, can catch God. That is a misunderstanding. But at the same time, in a mood of service to God, we can use our intelligence.
Just like we use, Krishna says, that when we use our intelligence to study His message, अधिश्यते च यइमं धर्म्यं सम्वादमावयो घ्यान यग्येन तेनाः इश्टिस्यामितिमेमति He says that we were worshipping Him with our intelligence when we study His message. 18.70 in the Gita states. So, certainly we are meant to use our intelligence and one function of intelligence is analysis.
So analyzing the Lord’s pastimes, it can very well be a means by which we use our intelligence to serve Krishna. To worship Krishna, in fact. Shri Madhvacharya explains that the epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which depict the Lord’s pastimes, they can be understood at three different levels.
He says the literal, the ethical and the transcendental or metaphorical. So the literal means that we just recite the pastimes, we hear the pastimes and that itself is purifying because we are connecting with sound vibration that is describing the Lord and His illustrious activities. Along with that, second level is ethical.
Ethical means that from the Lord’s pastimes, we can draw ethical lessons. And He, along with His associates, often demonstrates exemplary ethical conduct. And by observing such conduct, by learning from such conduct, we can improve our lives, we can draw ethical lessons from this.
And then the third, he says, is metaphorical. There are some places where the Lord acts in, there are certain things just symbolic within the Lord’s pastimes and we can understand it at that level also. But the metaphorical is never a replacement for the literal.
The metaphorical is supplementary to the literal. So that means, yes, the Kurukshetra war can also be seen as a metaphor for the battle between good and evil within our consciousness. But that does not mean that the Kurukshetra war is only internal and there was never a Kurukshetra battlefield where a war took place.
So, now, when we analyze the Lord’s pastimes, we often do it from an ethical perspective. So, for example, so and so character did like this and then so and so character did like this and this is how we should act. And there is a very deep tradition which goes into this.
So, for example, when we have Krishna performing pastimes in Vrindavan and Shodamayi ties Krishna, at that time the rope is two fingers short. Now, what the two finger means? This, the two fingers, they are seen here in a metaphorical way. They represent human endeavor and the Lord’s grace.
And now this is a metaphorical and this is the Lord’s pastime seen at a metaphorical level. Or for that matter, at an ethical level, we may see in the Ramayana that just as Ram was obedient to Dashrath, even when Dashrath’s instruction was very difficult to follow. Or Sita was committed, chased to Ram even when she had to leave the royal opulence to which she had been accustomed throughout her life and go to the forest.
She still did that. So, in this way, there are various lessons that can be drawn from the conduct of the Lord and his activities and Lord and his associates and their activities. So, we can draw these lessons.
Now, this is, so we can definitely enrich ourselves with ethical insight by analyzing the Lord’s pastimes. At the same time, we also need to know that everything that the Lord does may not be able, may not be able to see from the ethical prism and make sense alone because the Lord transcends ethics. Sometimes he demonstrates exemplary activities and sometimes he demonstrates his divine position.
And that demonstration of his divine position is not meant for us to imitate. So, for example, when Krishna lifts Govardhan Hill, that is not an activity which we can imitate. Similarly, when Krishna, say, dances with the Gopis in Rashtriya, that is not an activity that we should imitate.
So, there are activities which are just transcendental in the sense that they are not meant to teach us any ethical lesson. They are meant to primarily demonstrate his divinity, his absolute supremacy. So, sometimes there are, now we may say that the Lord’s pastimes are not to be analyzed.
At the same time, the Lord’s pastimes are going to be studied by people. There are in India many people who study the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and they analyze and they often see, for example, the Ram-Ravan conflict, they see it in Aryan-Dravidian terms and they give a whole irrational self-serving twist to the whole pastime. Similarly, people come up with all kinds of deviant interpretations.
And if we say that we will not analyze the Lord’s pastimes, people are interested in these stories and what they mean. They are looking for some analysis and if we don’t present analysis which glorifies the Lord, then there are going to be people who will analyze in a way that demonizes the Lord, that denigrates the Lord. So, using Guru-Sadhu Shastra, using the insights that we have got from the Bhakti tradition and using the intelligence that Krishna gives us as we study Shastra deeply, we can, as far as our intelligence goes, analyze the Lord’s pastimes so that we can understand His greatness, we can learn ethical insights and we can use our intelligence in His service.
At the same time, while analyzing the Lord’s pastimes, we also can and should convey the supreme position of the Lord and that ultimately He is not to be understood through any logic or analysis, but He is understood only through a devoted heart. And whatever analysis we do, it is in the mood of devotional service to enhance our devotion. And with that mood if we do that analysis, then that analysis can increase our absorption in the Lord’s pastimes, can increase our sense of connectedness with the characters in the Lord’s pastimes because we will see, oh, they are not just remote historical characters.
Now they face dilemmas similar to the dilemmas that I am facing. And in that sense of connectedness, our absorption in them can become stronger and our devotion in this way will be nourished and strengthened. Thank you.