Harvard Prof. Diana Eck on land of Krishna and relationship of love (bhakti) between young Krishna and devotee-villagers
Given below are short extracts from, and comments on, Harvard Prof. Diana Eck's book India: A Sacred Geography, Chapter 8, The land and story of Krishna:
And they (village folk of Braj) were saved-as are those who love Krishna even today-not by the wisdom of the scriptures, not by the asceticism of the renouncers, not even by the ritual ministrations of priests, but simply by their unwitting and unconditional love for Krishna, by the relationships of love called bhakti. This word bhakti and all it represents in expressing human relatedness to God is surely one of the most important words in the Hindu vocabulary. The stories of the love of Krishna and Krishna's reciprocating love explore and expand the meanings of bhakti. The villagers of Braj, like Devaki and Vasudeva on the night of Krishna's birth, recognize, in one sense, that Krishna who lives among them is extraordinary. They glimpse his divinity in a religious world in which divine "incarnation" is not so uncommon. They even glimpse the full majesty of Krishna as Supreme, creator and sustainer of the whole universe. But such glimpses cannot be sustained; for the whole point of the love of Krishna is to expand the spontaneous and natural love of the heart.
[Ravi: What a superb and enlightened understanding of the love of gopis and others who came in contact with Krishna and loved him! I find the last sentences in the above paragraph to be very, very insightful - not possible to sustain glimpsing/viewing Krishna as the Supreme, creator and sustainer of the universe. I don't know about the expanding of spontaneous and natural love of the heart but what was possible to sustain which the gopis (and some other Krishna contemporary-devotees) achieved and are revered for, and sought to be emulated in this regard, is "their unwitting and unconditional love for Krishna, by the relationships of love called bhakti". Of course, "Krishna's reciprocating love" would have helped the gopis (and some other Krishna contemporary-devotees) to deepen and solidify their bhakti towards Krishna.]
...
The lives of Jesus, the Buddha, and Krishna were larger than life, to be sure, and yet these lives are mapped on a landscape that lends itself to the memory and the pilgrimage of ordinary people.
[Ravi: The paragraph having the above sentence has a lovely and concise expression of the commonality between the devotion/worship of the "holy land" associated with Krishna, Jesus and Buddha! The above sentence is an insightful gem of spiritual understanding of pilgrimage - lives of the divine figueres being larger than life yet their human form lives were associated with a holy land that ordinary devotees can relate to.]
...
Gokul calls to mind and heart one of the strongest forms of devotional love: the unconditional love of parents for their children. Perhaps pilgrims to Gokul will tell one of the traditional accounts of Mother Yashoda and her love of Krishna that remind them that the baby was the Supreme Lord, and yet a baby nonetheless.
[Ravi: While I am no expert in the study of devotional life, the fair bit of devotion to various forms of God by many devotee friends & family that I have been privileged to witness and be deeply touched by, leads me to tend to agree that the unconditional love of parents for their children is one of the strongest forms of devotional love. But then some of the famous tests of devotion to God by God in scripture of some religion(s) have involved testing the willingness of the parents to give up even their child(ren) for God!]
...
In the love of baby Krishna, the utterly spontaneous, selfless, joyful love of parents for their children becomes a paradigm for the kind of love we might have for God. It is called vatsalya, a term our Braj pilgrims certainly know. It means, literally, the mothering love of a cow for her calf, her vatsa. The mother cow's milk flows spontaneously in the presence of her calf. Vatsalya is that kind of love. Although Yashoda glimpses Krishna in his fullness, she is mercifully enabled to forget the cosmic vision so that she can simply love Krishna, naughty and playful, with the full force of a mother's love. So it is that those who come to Gokul might buy for their home altar the most popular of all images of Krishna, the crawling baby with a ball of butter in his fist. This is the mischievous child, the butter thief, who constantly steals Yashoda's freshly churned butter, and, of course, her heart.
[Ravi: The butter thief baby Krishna is an image that I have seen so very often in Hindu homes. It certainly is a very popular image of Krishna.]
And they (village folk of Braj) were saved-as are those who love Krishna even today-not by the wisdom of the scriptures, not by the asceticism of the renouncers, not even by the ritual ministrations of priests, but simply by their unwitting and unconditional love for Krishna, by the relationships of love called bhakti. This word bhakti and all it represents in expressing human relatedness to God is surely one of the most important words in the Hindu vocabulary. The stories of the love of Krishna and Krishna's reciprocating love explore and expand the meanings of bhakti. The villagers of Braj, like Devaki and Vasudeva on the night of Krishna's birth, recognize, in one sense, that Krishna who lives among them is extraordinary. They glimpse his divinity in a religious world in which divine "incarnation" is not so uncommon. They even glimpse the full majesty of Krishna as Supreme, creator and sustainer of the whole universe. But such glimpses cannot be sustained; for the whole point of the love of Krishna is to expand the spontaneous and natural love of the heart.
[Ravi: What a superb and enlightened understanding of the love of gopis and others who came in contact with Krishna and loved him! I find the last sentences in the above paragraph to be very, very insightful - not possible to sustain glimpsing/viewing Krishna as the Supreme, creator and sustainer of the universe. I don't know about the expanding of spontaneous and natural love of the heart but what was possible to sustain which the gopis (and some other Krishna contemporary-devotees) achieved and are revered for, and sought to be emulated in this regard, is "their unwitting and unconditional love for Krishna, by the relationships of love called bhakti". Of course, "Krishna's reciprocating love" would have helped the gopis (and some other Krishna contemporary-devotees) to deepen and solidify their bhakti towards Krishna.]
...
The lives of Jesus, the Buddha, and Krishna were larger than life, to be sure, and yet these lives are mapped on a landscape that lends itself to the memory and the pilgrimage of ordinary people.
[Ravi: The paragraph having the above sentence has a lovely and concise expression of the commonality between the devotion/worship of the "holy land" associated with Krishna, Jesus and Buddha! The above sentence is an insightful gem of spiritual understanding of pilgrimage - lives of the divine figueres being larger than life yet their human form lives were associated with a holy land that ordinary devotees can relate to.]
...
Gokul calls to mind and heart one of the strongest forms of devotional love: the unconditional love of parents for their children. Perhaps pilgrims to Gokul will tell one of the traditional accounts of Mother Yashoda and her love of Krishna that remind them that the baby was the Supreme Lord, and yet a baby nonetheless.
[Ravi: While I am no expert in the study of devotional life, the fair bit of devotion to various forms of God by many devotee friends & family that I have been privileged to witness and be deeply touched by, leads me to tend to agree that the unconditional love of parents for their children is one of the strongest forms of devotional love. But then some of the famous tests of devotion to God by God in scripture of some religion(s) have involved testing the willingness of the parents to give up even their child(ren) for God!]
...
In the love of baby Krishna, the utterly spontaneous, selfless, joyful love of parents for their children becomes a paradigm for the kind of love we might have for God. It is called vatsalya, a term our Braj pilgrims certainly know. It means, literally, the mothering love of a cow for her calf, her vatsa. The mother cow's milk flows spontaneously in the presence of her calf. Vatsalya is that kind of love. Although Yashoda glimpses Krishna in his fullness, she is mercifully enabled to forget the cosmic vision so that she can simply love Krishna, naughty and playful, with the full force of a mother's love. So it is that those who come to Gokul might buy for their home altar the most popular of all images of Krishna, the crawling baby with a ball of butter in his fist. This is the mischievous child, the butter thief, who constantly steals Yashoda's freshly churned butter, and, of course, her heart.
[Ravi: The butter thief baby Krishna is an image that I have seen so very often in Hindu homes. It certainly is a very popular image of Krishna.]
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