Krishna Trishna

Thirst for Krishna, for seeing Him, hearing Him, His flute, for installing Him in the heart, in the mind, for grasping His Reality through the intellect—this thirst is the healthiest, the most conducive to peace. Devotion to Krishna is the chain by which the monkey mind can be fastened and subdued. Transmute all the desire with which the senses torment you into the thirst for Krishna and you are saved.

Krish means attract, draw, as in akarshana. Even a confirmed protagonist of adwaita, (the contemplation of the Universal Absolute without name and form), like Madhusudana Saraswati confesses that the attraction for the playful child on the Yamuna sands is irresistible. Leelashuka declares that though the shastras taught him the truth of the Nameless Absolute, his heart taught him to revere the Cowherd Boy with the flute. He prays that, when he draws his last breath, the Fair Child of Brindavan with the feather, flute, and flower might smile on him and bless him.

Krishna draws the mind away from sensory desires; that is another way in which the draw operates. He pulls the mind towards him and so, they are pulled away from everything else, for everything else is inferior, less valuable. He satisfies the deepest thirst of man, for peace, joy, and wisdom. That is why He is Meghashyama—dark-blue as the rain cloud. The very sight of the rain-laden cloud is so refreshing. He is lotus-eyed, lotus-palmed, lotus-soled; the lotus is reminiscent of cool, calm, deep lakes of limpid water, the water that quenches thirst. When _Krishna_-trishna is quenched, the highest ananda is attained; there is no more need, no more want, defect or decline. The urge to drink inferior drinks, that only feed the thirst, disappears when once the sweetness of Krishna nama and Krishna bhava (name and thought of Krishna) are tasted. Sense objects are like sea water that can never allay thirst. Radha, Goda, Mira, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna, Surdas—they knew the nectarine taste of that Name.

Significance of Krishna’s Birth and Growth

The Radha tatwam, the real nature of Radha can be understood only by those who have acquired that deep ‘distressing’ thirst for the ‘formful’ Aspect of the Lord, and for the Divine Call that resonates in the heart as the entrancing tune of the flute.

Krishna is said to have been born in Gokula, He grew up in Brindhavan, He proceeded to Mathura and He established His home finally at Dwaraka. The significance of this to the sadhaka is, “Let Krishna be born in the Gokula of your Mind; let Him grow and play prankishly in the Brindhavan of your Heart; let Him then be fixed in the chitta of Mathura; and, finally, let Him rule over the agitationless Consciousness as the Lord and Master of Dwaraka.” The nirvikalpa anandam is the final result of His Kingdom established at Dwaraka, in the centre of the waves.

Krishna will get born in the mind of man only when three prerequisites are attended to. Make the mind (manas), bhakti maya (saturated with bhakti). Make the intellect (buddhi), full of jnana deepti (illumination of His glory). Make the body (deha), the instrument for sat dharmacharana (practice of moral virtues). Bhakti is the Raja; jnana and vairagya are the two aides-de-camp of this monarch. They are the guards that ensure safety. Unaccompanied by these two, the Raja is not quite secure.

Steps to Cultivate Thirst for Krishna

The thirst for Krishna is a sign of health in the spiritual field. Not to have it is a sign of bhava roga—the fell disease that afflicts worldly persons, the symptoms being grief, discontent, pain and worry, even when wealth and health are endowed. That thirst can be cultivated by the reading of scriptures, the cultivation of congenial company, lessons from a kind and considerate guru and regular practice of japam. Once it is acquired, the thirst itself will lead you on to places and persons able to quench it. That is the advantage of spiritual quest; the first step makes the second easy.

The bane of modern times is the value attached to a cynical destructive type of judgement, by fickle, feeble intellects. A doctor’s prescription can be judged only by an equally qualified or a more qualified doctor, not by a patient suffering from the same or a different illness. No person afflicted with lust or envy or greed or attachment or egoism can pronounce judgment on the ethereal, formless, nameless principle that concretised as Krishna. Krishna is described as blue in physical colour, for He is as deep and inscrutable as the sky; the blue is the colour which the eye comprehends, though the sky has no colour at all. So too, Krishna has no colour or attributes but, in order to comprehend Him, the mental eye attributes a colour.

Grace of Krishna can be won only by the good. The rakshasas (demons) did not get amrita (nectar); for they would have misused it. Knowledge in the wicked is power misused for the stratagems of hate and greed. Grace too is power and it has to be endowed on the deserving only. Therefore, character has to be sublimated into saturated piety and devotion. Then only can Grace be secured. Mere repetition of name, Krishna, will be of no use, unless the contemplation of the Glory of Krishna starts purifying the character at the same time. Thus, manava (human) becomes Madhava (divine). Mrityu (death) is changed into amrita (immortality). Through tanmaya, (saturated with Divinity), this mrinmaya (mud-filled body) becomes Chinmaya (saturated with Divine consciousness)—through saturation, this clod becomes God. That is the consummation of Krishna-trishna, the thirst after God, which wells up in one’s own heart.

Discourse at Madras