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Skandha 10, adhyayas 29-33 · Saptah day 6
On an autumn night the flute calls and the gopis leave everything; then Krishna vanishes, and their song of longing is the Gopi Gita.
The Rasa chapters open carefully. Seeing the autumn nights, with the jasmine in flower, the Lord, too, turned his mind to play, taking his own power of yogamaya as his support. The moon rose full over Vrindavan, and Krishna played his flute.
The gopis heard it in the middle of their evening work, and the text lists what they left. One walked away from the cow she was milking. One left milk on the fire, another a dish of wheat cakes cooking. Others left children half-fed and meals half-eaten. Their families tried to stop them, and they did not turn back. Some who were shut in at home fixed their minds on him, and the text says that the pain of that separation burned away all their karma, and they reached him. Asked how women who knew Krishna only as a beloved could be freed, Shuka says that any feeling held constantly on Hari, even hatred, absorbs one in him.
When the gopis reached him, Krishna greeted them politely and then told them to go back. The night was dangerous, their families were searching for them, their children and calves were crying. A woman's dharma was to serve her husband and family, and love for him grew by hearing of him, seeing him and singing of him, not by coming close like this.
The gopis stood with heads bowed, tears washing the kohl from their eyes. Do not speak so harshly, they said; we have given up everything to come to your feet. You speak of dharma towards husbands and children, but you are the self within all of them, the dearest of all. Our feet will not take one step away from you.
Krishna, master of the masters of yoga, smiled and let them stay, and wandered with them on the sandy bank of the Yamuna. Then the gopis grew proud, each thinking herself the most fortunate woman in the world. Seeing their pride, and wanting both to remove it and to show them grace, Krishna vanished.
They searched the forest, asking the trees and the deer whether he had passed. Then they found his footprints, and next to them a woman's. Surely, they said, she must have worshipped the Lord perfectly, that he should leave us and take her away. The text gives her no name; later tradition identifies her as Radha, hearing the name in the word the gopis use for that worship. She too grew proud and asked to be carried, and when he told her to climb onto his shoulder, he disappeared from her as well. The others found her weeping, and searched together until the moonlight ran out.
Then they went back to the riverbank and sang. That song is the Gopi Gita, nineteen verses of longing. Vraja is glorious because you were born here, they sing; show yourself to us. You are not only the son of a gopi, you are the witness within every embodied being. Your stories are nectar that gives life to the suffering. When you go to the forest by day, a moment is an age to us, and when you walk there we fear the stones hurt your feet.
Krishna appeared among them, smiling. They asked him about the kinds of love. He answered that he himself sometimes does not return the love of those who love him, so that their minds keep dwelling on him, as a poor man who loses a treasure can think of nothing else. That was why he had hidden. And he told them that even with a lifetime of the gods he could not repay them, who had cut the chains of home for him. Let their own goodness be their reward.
Then the Rasa began. The gopis joined hands in a circle, and Krishna, by his yoga, stood between every two of them, so that each felt him beside her. The text says he played with them as a child plays with its own reflection.
Parikshit then asked the question every reader carries. Krishna came to protect dharma; how could he, its guardian, keep company with other men's wives? Shuka gave the text's answer. The very powerful are not stained by what looks like transgression, as fire is not stained by what it burns; but no one else should imitate it even in thought, or he destroys himself, like a man who is not Shiva drinking the ocean's poison. Follow the words of such beings, not every deed. The Lord dwells within the gopis, their husbands and all creatures as their witness. The men of Vraja felt no resentment, for each thought his wife had been at his side all night. Before dawn, at Krishna's word, the gopis went home.
The last verse says why the story is kept. Whoever hears or tells it with faith gains devotion, and is quickly freed from the heart's disease, which is desire. The tenth book sets a story of longing at its centre, and promises that hearing it cures the very thing a careless reader would bring to it.
जयति तेऽधिकं जन्मना व्रजः श्रयत इन्दिरा शश्वदत्र हि । दयित दृश्यतां दिक्षु तावकास्त्वयि धृतासवस्त्वां विचिन्वते ॥Because you were born here, Vraja is glorious above all, and Lakshmi lives here always. Beloved, show yourself: we who hold on to life only for you are searching for you in every direction.
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