As I am gathering my wits and regaining my composure after two hectic days of computer problems I’m also getting back my proclivity to speculation. The first thing I found is that there’s something amiss in the Damodara lila.
When you are busy or overwhelmed then simply remembering the Damodara form of Krishna could be considered a success, I think, like a drowning man who would grasp at any straw, but when you have time to analyze your remembrance of the Lord a little deeper you have to raise you standards, too.
I don’t know how I didn’t see it before – in Damodara lila there’s no service to devotees!
Earlier I said that if we imagine Krishna Damodara with our material vision we see a little boy that needs help and care, a perfect opportunity to selflessly serve His needs and wishes. Well, that’s not what we are supposed to do, are we?
We are servants of the servants of the servants, let Mother Yashoda and other senior gopis take care of baby Krishna, we should never consider ourselves qualified to do that. In a way it would be like looking at someone’s wife – Krishna Damodara is not ours to serve, He is mother Yashoda’s baby.
Afaik the only outsider who got close to baby Krishna was Putana, we don’t want to follow her footsteps, do we?
I don’t think there’s a need to explain how trying to serve Krishna directly could turn harmful to our spiritual lives. If He wants it then it’s okay but from our side we should never consider approaching Him by sidestepping lotus feet of our spiritual master and the entire parampara.
My point is – if we imagine Krishna and that image doesn’t include service to our guru then we are doing it wrong.
In case of Damodara lila it’s hard to fit anyone else but mother Yashoda and, perhaps, some monkeys. Something is amiss in that pastime – the chance to serve Krishna’s devotees. I guess we could supply rope but that would be even worse – we can’t just imagine inserting ourselves literally into Krishna’s pastimes.
In fact the only way we can legitimately insert ourselves into Krishna’s pastimes is by joining the sankirtana movement of Lord Chaitanya. Every other lila is just for appreciating the nature of the Lord and His loving relationships with His devotees, nothing to do with us personally.
You want to chip in – go on sankirtana, otherwise just step back and marvel at other people’s service. With that understanding nothing is really amiss, just another day on Goloka Vrindavana, we, as conditioned living beings, are not meant to be there, so how can we and our service be missing?
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