The Significance Of Rasakrida

By Staff

Friday, August 29, 2008, 12:01

When you dedicate yourselves to the glorification of the Lord, you will revere the body, the senses, the intelligence, the will, and all the instruments of knowledge, action and feeling as essential for His work. While others will get intoxicated with pride, the bhakta or devotee will be intoxicated with prema, unadulterated love. You have heard that when the divine cowherd boy played on the flute, the men, women and children and even the cattle of Vrindavana hurried to Him, as if drawn by the irresistible magic of His music, divine melody, that stills all the turbid waves which we name as joy and grief. They left the work they were engaged in; they had no other thought than the attainment of the Divine Presence; the cattle stopped grazing; the calves stopped guzzling milk.

The story of Krishna and the Gopis or cowherds has a deep inner meaning. Vrindavana is not a definite place on the map, it is the universe itself. All men are cowherds; all animals are cows. Every heart is filled with the longing for the Lord; the flute is the call of the Lord; the sport called Rasakrida (the sportive dance; the dance of Lord Krishna in His boyhood with the Gopis, in which Lord Krishna is described as dancing with the milkmaids in the moonlight every maid has a Boy-Krishna holding her hand in the dance is the symbol of the yearning and the travail, borne by those who aim at reaching His presence. The Lord manifests such grace, that each one of you has the Lord all for yourself; you need not be sad that you won't have Him, when the others get Him; nor need you be proud that you have Him and no one else can have Him at the same time! The Lord is installed in the altar of your heart.