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Skandha 11, adhyayas 6; 10-29 · Saptah day 7
Krishna's last and longest teaching, given to a friend who asks only to go with him when he leaves the world.
The gods came to Dvaraka first. Brahma, with Shiva and the others, praised Krishna and reminded him, politely, that he had been on earth for a hundred and twenty-five years. The burden he came to lift had been lifted; if it pleased him, he might return to his own abode. Krishna answered that he had already decided. The Yadus, grown proud in their strength, could be overcome by no one else, so he would withdraw them himself, and a brahmana's curse had already begun the work. Then he would come.
Omens appeared in the city, and Krishna told the elders to leave for Prabhasa. Uddhava, who had heard all of it, came to Krishna alone. He did not ask for the clan to be spared, or for himself to be spared. He asked to go too. He could not bear to be apart from Krishna for half a moment, he said; take me with you. We who have worn the garlands you wore and eaten what you left, he said, will conquer your maya that way.
Krishna said no, gently and at length. The length is the Uddhava Gita, Krishna's longest teaching in the Bhagavatam, which runs through most of the eleventh book with the avadhuta's story near its start. It differs from the Bhagavad Gita in its setting before anything else. Arjuna was a warrior who did not want to fight; Uddhava is a friend who does not want to be left behind. Krishna himself draws the parallel. When Uddhava asks where the Lord's glory shows itself in the world, Krishna remarks that Arjuna asked him the same thing at Kurukshetra, on the eve of the war.
Some chapters stand out. In one, Krishna tells how the Sanaka brothers, sons born from Brahma's mind, once asked their father a hard question: the mind enters the objects of the senses, and the objects enter the mind, so how does a seeker pull the two apart? Brahma, absorbed in his work of creation, could not find the root of the question, and he turned to the Lord, who appeared before them as a swan. This is the Hamsa Gita. The sages asked the swan who he was. He answered by examining the question: if the self in you and in me is one, what is being asked by "who"? Then he taught them that waking, dream and deep sleep are states of the mind, and that the self is the witness of all three.
Elsewhere Krishna names the gate he trusts most. Neither yoga nor Sankhya, neither dharma nor study, neither austerity nor renunciation wins him as strong devotion does. He lists those who reached him simply through the company of the holy, among them demons, animals and birds, and the gopis of Vraja, who studied no scripture and found him by love alone. He sets out three paths: knowledge for those weary of action, action for those still full of desire, and devotion for those in between, neither weary nor attached, who have come to love hearing about him. He compares a human body to a sturdy boat, with the teacher at the helm and his own grace as the favourable wind.
Then Uddhava asks how a person can endure insults from the wicked. Krishna answers with the Bhikshu Gita, the mendicant's song. A brahmana of Avanti had been rich, miserly and harsh to his own family. He lost his wealth piece by piece, to kinsmen, thieves, fate and the king, and in the ruin he saw clearly what money had made of him. He became a wandering mendicant. People mocked him, took his staff and bowl, threw dirt on him, spat on him, called him a thief and tied him up. He bore it, and he sang: not these people, not the gods, not my body, not the planets, not karma, not time, is the cause of my joy and sorrow. The mind is the cause, and it turns the wheel of birth and death.
Near the end Uddhava admits that the yoga he has heard is hard for a mind that will not be tamed. Krishna gives it to him simply. Do everything for me, he says, remember me, see me in all beings, and bow down to all of them, even to a dog, a donkey or an outcaste. Then he sends Uddhava away to Badarikashrama, his own hermitage in the Himalaya. There Uddhava is to bathe in the sacred river, wear bark, live on forest food, bear heat and cold alike, and practise what he has learned, and in this way he will come to Krishna. Uddhava walked around him in reverence, placed Krishna's sandals on his head, and went.
That is the shape the Bhagavatam gives its last great teaching. The friend who asked to go with Krishna is given, instead, the means of reaching him, and an instruction to go somewhere else. Two chapters later Krishna leaves the world, and the teaching is what Uddhava carries north.
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