​Why does Krishna perform pastimes that are misunderstandable?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Krishna is the vanquisher of all living beings And he descends to deliver them Then why does when he comes to this world Perform pastimes which Why not only those pastimes which actually Can elevate and enlighten people Yes Krishna Krishna descends to this world To elevate people That is definitely true At the same time Krishna Is reciprocal See love Can be unilateral But a loving relationship Cannot be unilateral Relationship has to be bilateral It has to be reciprocal I can love someone and they may not even care for me But then there cannot be much of a Relationship between us So when Krishna descends to this world He descends for Benefiting all living beings But there are living beings Who are opposed to him Their purpose in life Is to often defy God To deny God To go against God And at one level This world Is an arena for Experimentation And rectification Experimentation Means the soul wants to try out Should I do this? Should I do that? Maybe this will make me happy So the world offers The arena for experimentation And then once we understand All these things don’t make me happy It is only serving Krishna that makes me happy Then there is rectification And the world offers a facility for rectification Also So that experimentation That Exploring of multiple alternatives That is not only With respect to the things in this world That applies even to Krishna So the souls when they are in this world They will perceive Krishna in different ways So these multiple options Are given because The souls have a wide variety of desires Last year I was in Melbourne so at that time one devotee Asked a question We are told to do good and we are told to avoid bad But why is it that in the world there are so many bad options The bad options are so many And the good options are so few Why is that? So I answered that’s how it always is In any multiple choice exam Laughter Laughter Four wrong options One right option The student could make a case against the teacher He says You put four wrong options That’s why I failed Laughter Laughter But The teacher also gives knowledge Which he also gives knowledge And If the choosing of the answer was simply based on Guesswork Then you could make a case against the teacher But if the teacher has given knowledge And the student has had the opportunity to study that knowledge And then choose Then if the student doesn’t choose properly That’s because they have not studied well So similarly Just as there are multiple choice exams The wrong options are not meant to fail the student The wrong presence is the wrong options If the student knows there are going to be wrong options Then their presence Makes the student study carefully And by studying carefully The student can choose the right option And gain marks and move forward So like that there is a right understanding of Krishna And there is a wrong understanding of Krishna Less than correct right understanding of Krishna And all these understandings Are possible because the souls Approach with different desires Different mentalities Different dispositions Towards Krishna And Krishna says Will all people surrender to me I reciprocate accordingly So Krishna not only Descends to this world Krishna also gives us Philosophy By which you can understand his actions Krishna also gives us a bhakti tradition From which we can get A clearer understanding of his actions So he performs actions in a way That Is reciprocal of people’s desires Those who want to come close to him They will come closer to him Those who want to go further away from him They will use those very actions To go further away from him And that is simply his reciprocal nature Krishna Krishna does not discriminate Krishna reciprocates So he reciprocates according to our desires So for if we want to Now if you look at the world There is so much intricacy There is so much complexity There is so much coordination That all this cannot have come without an underlying Supreme Intelligence But people Can always find out something wrong in the world Now we all drink water None of us can drink water If there are no rains And the whole system of rains is so intricate and complex That is all Manifestation of Divine Intelligence But atheists can accuse That if God has provided rains For us To have water Then why are there rains on the ocean When there is no need for water Yes There is rains on water so that atheists can ask this question And doubt the existence of God To understand this point Suppose there is a house In which there are 100 rooms And 99 rooms Are spick and span clean And one room is disordered And then A wise person will say There must be a cleaner for this room There must be someone maintaining this room That is how the 99 rooms are clean And if that one room is unclean There must be some reason why this person Is not maintaining Why there is uncleanness in this room But if somebody takes that one unclean room And says that therefore Because this room is unclean There is nobody maintaining this house No that is an invalid understanding If somebody wants to actually accuse That this room is not maintained properly They might take that as evidence But no rational jury Will base Judgement only on that one room So like that In general when we look at Whether the world itself or Krishna’s actions in this world Whatever it is If we look at his overall actions They are not only understandable They are appealing They are transcendentally appealing Very beautiful But there are some actions which he performs Which Jiva Goswami explains In Bhagwat Sandarbha He calls them as Asura Mohanlila Asura Mohanlila These pastimes are performed For deluding the demons Why? Because that is what they want to do They don’t want to surrender to Krishna They don’t want Krishna to come in front of them In front of them they want to defy So Krishna allows them to do that So these pastimes For example Krishna was shot by an arrow And he died And then afterwards he left behind his body Therefore Krishna had a material body But if you look at the circumstances There is an arrow which hit the leg Now anyone with the basic knowledge Of the body Knows that wounds to the leg are not fatal They are not fatal And Krishna was not just some Sickly person who could be knocked down by a small wound Even a wound to the leg It has to spread, the infection has to go to the body Then after that it may become fatal But Krishna was just healthy Full health And an arrow hit his leg So how could he die at that time? It was his leela And that was evident from the fact that Krishna actually blessed the arrow If somebody kills you unfairly, you don’t bless that person Because of that person Krishna blessed that person So Krishna’s whole pastime Of departing from this world That is Asura Mohan Leela So when Krishna performs Ras Tilda Which is also another misunderstood pastime That is actually to demonstrate the beauty of the spiritual world That’s a whole different answer But I’ll just briefly describe this That is that Krishna performs Krishna’s three categories of activities are misunderstood One is like the activities where he seems to be defeated Or he seems to be destroyed Which is like I shall put this particular pastime of him The other is Where Krishna seems to perform activities which are In the Gopis, his pastime in the Gopis They seem to be immoral But actually Krishna is demonstrating The sublime beauty Of the spiritual world What all happens in the spiritual world So Krishna’s pastime in the Gopis Demonstrates the highest love That everything in this world can be given up For the sake of love Krishna’s pastime in the Gopis are not immoral When the Gopis leave their family for Krishna They are not being immoral They are being transmoral Immoral means One gives up morality for the sake of one’s selfish desires But transmoral means One gives up morality For a principle higher than morality That is selfish devotion So they demonstrate the Highest level of love with Krishna And his devotees And as far as Krishna’s pastimes In Kurukshetra Or the Kurukshetra war Krishna sometimes seems to act immorally In fighting with the Kauravas There is a morality behind that also But essentially Krishna demonstrates a principle Called Kshatoshatyam Kshatoshatyam means With the cunning, be cunning And that is also according to morality And Krishna tells Arjuna to shoot Karna When Karna is weaponless At that time is he being immoral? No Karna had done the same thing to Abhimanyu earlier Karna had done the same thing to Arjuna On that very day earlier When Arjuna’s chariot had sunk Also sunk into the ground And at the beginning of the war When Dhristadyumna and Bhishma had met At that time Duryodhana had come And Duryodhana had told Dhristadyumna that You should remember And follow the course of war The course of Kshatriya conduct So Dhristadyumna started thinking That why all along The Kauravas had acted so sinfully Now why are they following the course of morality? So then he said yes He said we will follow The course of Kshatriya conduct As long as you follow The course of Kshatriya conduct If you We won’t be the first to break this course of conduct But if you break them We won’t let the Kshatriya course of conduct Hold us back From hitting back at you So that was the agreement At that particular time And the Kauravas broke the course of conduct first The first major violation was Their killing of a woman And then they were paid back in kind So Krishna does not Advocate A utopian morality That means you know Just stick to morality no matter what happens Morality has a purpose And morality is not Categorical It is contextual Categorical means this is always right and this is always wrong Speaking truth is good Speaking false is wrong But suppose there are rioters who are rioting And our friend is being chased by those rioters And our friend comes to our house And he hides in our house And the rioters knock on our door Is he there? Should I speak the truth at that time? Speaking truth is good But at that time It will cause a death of a person So it is not that right is one category Wrong is one category No There may be categories of right and wrong But the decision of right and wrong is not Categorical It is contextual Something which may seem to be right in one situation May actually be wrong in another situation So what Mahabharata demonstrates is Not utopian morality But fragmenting morality Morality that is Based on context And that’s why Krishna If we look at Krishna’s actions Through the philosophical context Which the bhakti tradition gives us Then we will not misunderstand Then our attraction to Krishna Will increase by understanding his actions