There’s no curse, I’m just making it up.
The problem with my mind is that it can’t really get around some of the characters in Lord’s lilas. Take Kaikeyi, for example, second wife of King Dasarath, father of Lord Rama. She was corrupted by her maid Manthara into asking Kind Dasarath to banish Lord Rama to the forest.
I mean there is this person who was accepted as a mother by Bharatha, an expansion of the Lord himself, and then she gets overwhelmed by envy and destroys the family. Ok, it’s easy to understand how her actions could have been “hijacked” by the Lord himself for the sake of the good story line, but what I don’t understand is why she had to suffer like that.
The entire Kingdom, including her own son, turned against her and blamed her for what she did to Lord Rama and for bringing death to her husband, she was left completely alone, without any sign of mercy from anyone.
Or was she really overcome by material modes of nature and suffered for succumbing to poisonous words of her maid? If a devotee who Lord accepts as His own mother can fall like that, what hope is there for the rest of us?
I tend to think she knew all along what was coming to her and she accepted such horrible, horrible role in order to please the Lord Rama and all his other devotees.
Now that would have been the ultimate selfless sacrifice. Imagine being called to participate in Lord’s lilas and then being told that the role is to inflict greatest suffering on all other devotees and two of Lord’s expansions and being blamed and cursed for that.
Or maybe it’s the selfishness of “I will be with the Lord and I don’t care how I have to make all others feel”.
Again, I tend to think she took the sacrifice knowingly and waited for the story to unfold patiently, without expecting anyone’s recognition for her effort. There would have been no story without her, someone had to do it.
Another character, or rather characters, that my mind can’t get around, are husbands of the gopis. I don’t even want to speculate how they must feel about Krishna and how he treats them. The traditional explanation is that they don’t know where their wives spend their nights, but, again, I tend to think they actually do, but they take it for the sake of Krishna’s pleasure. I know we must accept what shastras tell about them but wouldn’t it be much much cooler if they knew what they were giving to Krishna rather than being fooled by Him?
Maybe they just learned not to think about it to keep their minds at peace, I have no idea, but if they are kept clueless – how does Krishna look them in the eyes? Why can’t/don’t they accept their actual roles in Krishna’s pastimes?
It’s tribulations like this that make me think that occasionally some of the jivas in spiritual world might decide “I’ve had enough” and turn to the illusion of the material universe instead.
So far all these mental concoctions are probably just nonsense, but the side effect is quite serious – we chose to turn away from Krishna ourselves, and now we are begging to take us back, but where do we get strength and devotion to resume our duties there, the same ones we’ve rejected before and have no idea what they were and how difficult they were but still looking forward with utmost confidence? Where does this confidence come from? What part of it just our own bravado rather than Krishna’s inspiration from within?
How can I be sure I will stand the same test again and not fail? I can’t, and probably that’s why a real devotee feels completely unworthy and unprepared and begs the Lord to just give him a chance at ANY service, life after life after life, and learns to treasure and cherish this opportunity, however small.
I admit, I take it for granted, means I’m a stupid, ignorant ingrate who loudly asks for a lot more than he could ever chew.
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