Sri Krishna belongs to the dimension of the unlimited

Sri Krishna belongs to the dimension of the unlimited

The magnificent marvel that was Krishna stirs Swami Vivekananda into offering a full-throated tribute: “He was the most wonderful Sannyasin and the most wonderful householder in one; He had the most wonderful among the Rajas, power and was at the same time living in the midst of the most wonderful renunciation. Krishna, the preacher of the Geeta was all His life the embodiment of the Geeta; He was the great illustration of non-attachment; a great landmark in the history of religion, the ideal of love for love’s sake, work for work’s sake, duty for duty’s sake, and it is for the first time fell from His lips of the greatest Incarnation, Krishna, and for the first time in the history of humanity, on the soil of India. He was the first heart large enough to see truth in all. In Krishna we find two ideas supreme; the first is the harmony of different ideas, and the second is non-attachment. He does not need anything; He does not want anything. He works for work’s sake. He is the most rounded man I know of, wonderfully developed equally in brain and heart and hand. Every moment of His is alive with activity. Five thousand years have passed and He has influenced millions and millions. My regard for Him is for His perfect sanity. No cobwebs in His brain, no superstition. He knows the use of everything”.

Limited, finite persons and themes are easy to grasp and delineate. But Sri Krishna belongs to the dimension of the unlimited, beyond the understanding of the ordinary minds, and measure of ordinary standards. In him all contradictions meet and become harmonized. He is the confluence of the highest expression of knowledge, love and action, heroism and tenderness, strength and grace, might and humility, splendor and renunciation. In short, he has emerged as the composite ideal of various human aspirations, the fulfillment of the quest for perfection—ethical, aesthetic, spiritual, altruistic—of various hearts and mind. It is because of this that he often becomes the central theme of not only religion and philosophy, but of art and sculpture, music and poetry, a phenomenon that defies all delimiting definition or classification. Krishna stands out and stays on eternally as the ideal and inspirer for the classes and the savior and refuge for the masses.

“Krishna appeared like a thunderbolt to the warriors, superhuman to man, God of love incarnate to His devotees, their own to the cowherd Gopis, a child to His parents, as death itself to Kamsa, the vast cosmos to the gross, Ultimate reality to the Yogis, and Supreme Deity to His worshippers”. (Bhagavatam 10. 43, 17)