Why did Krishna close his eyes on seeing Putana?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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Thank you. Are there any, have Acharyas given any reasons why Krishna closed his eyes? See, there are, when we talk about the word Acharya, there are many spiritual teachers and for us, in our tradition, we have Vishwanath Kriyotakul, we have Jiva Goswami, Rupa Goswami and these are the prominent spiritual teachers who have been accepted as spiritual teachers by our prominent Acharyas, Siddh Prabhupada, Bhakts Chandraji Thakur, Bhaktivinoda Thakur. And as far as I have read, they have not gone extensively into analyzing a list.
Okay, these are eight reasons why Krishna closed his eyes or say seven reasons why Krishna ate mada or whatever like that. Now, this is not to say that such an analysis cannot be done. This is simply to say that that is not what our Acharyas have done.
So when we talk about Krishna closing his eyes, there are different explanations that are given, but it is not a, it is not an exhaustive list and it is not necessarily an exclusive list also. So there are different ways it is explained that Putana was, Putana, although she was a demoness, she came in a female form and Krishna did not want to, want to attack a female, but she had come to attack him. So he closed his eyes.
So similarly, we see Ram also had reservations with Tataka, who was the first demon that he had to fight and he did not want to kill her. But then Vishwamitra had to tell her that you cannot just look at the fact that she is female, you have to look at the fact that she is, she is a demoness. And so that is one reason.
And as I mentioned that Krishna wanted to focus, she focused on the fact that she had a devotional intention, although her actions were malevolent. And that is why to avoid looking at the externals and he closed his eyes. Another also the reason explained that, that although Putana had come to kill Krishna, she was also apprehensive about the power of Krishna.
And in order to, in order to lull her appreciations, apprehensions, Krishna just closed his eyes. So if she was thinking that Krishna is also a dangerous enemy, Krishna will fight and kill. And normally, if we anticipate somebody is going to come to attack us, at that time we won’t close our eyes.
The eyes will be wide open to fight the war at that time. So if somebody is closing the eyes, that means they, they don’t think there is much danger over there. And that means Putana would think, Krishna is not such a great person, Krishna has not even understood that I am an enemy.
So because Putana was on a rampage of killing children and Krishna wanted to stop her, stop her atrocities at that particular point. Krishna did not want Putana to go away in fear and kill some other children. So at that time, Krishna, he closed her eyes, by that Putana thought, oh, this is just an ordinary child, he has just gone to sleep, I can easily kill him.
And then, after she had lowered her guard and she took Krishna in her lap, then Krishna sucked her poison and sucked her poisonous mentality also. These are some of the