Shri Krishna the butter thief

||Sri Ramakrishna Sharanam||

Aum Namo Narayanaya

To all readers

What an eventful weekend this has been. Starting off with woman’s Wimbledon final, the Vodacom July handicap, the wedding of Prince of Monaco to a South African and the men’s final of Wimbledon. However for me the most exciting and colourful event to grace the city of Durban is undoubtedly the Ramakrishna children’s festival which took place at the University of KwaZulu Natal Westville Campus today. Not one to actually miss such an amazing event, I am terribly disappointed that I could not attend this year due to work commitments. There is however no question that the festival would have provided performances to mesmerise the attendees.



Krishna stealing butter



As a little boy Shree Krishna used to enact a lot of leelas (divine plays) much to the delight of the gods and residents of Gokul. The learned sages and the gods used to watch in total delight how the all pervading lord, infinite in nature could for the love of humanity take birth in a finite body and enact his play. For those wanting to have a greater understanding of these divine plays the Srimad Bhagavatam is a must read as the lords divine plays are described in the most beautiful poetic  language that would at once dispatch tears to a dry eye or make ones hair stand on its ends.

Of particular interest though is the lord’s mischief making of stealing butter from the households of Gokul. Mother Yashoda could never understand this as her house had some of the finest butter in Gokul. What was the need for Krishna to sneak into other houses to steal butter, thus being branded as Makan Chor(butter chief) . Mother Yashoda was definitely not pleased. 

But what a divine message Shri Krishna had given through this divine play. We must understand that butter is made from churning the milk until the butter emerges separated from the butter milk. Butter is regarded as the nectar of the milk.

The purpose of life is god realisation or going back to god. So as Shree Krishna went to the different households to steal butter, we need him to steal our hearts and receive our atman (soul). Shree Krishna does not want milk, he wants butter.

So how do we prepare ourselves to be taken by the lord? We need to simply churn out all the negativity, lust, greed, anger, hatred, selfishness, deceit, lies and ego and then the butter of love and devotion will emerge. This will then be ready to be taken by Shri Krishna.

As Swami Vivekananda said we are all beings inherent with divinity. We are not sinners. Yes indeed we are like milk, pure but inherent with divinity that must be brought out through processes of devotion, sadhana(spiritual practices), prayer, satsangh , mediation , selfless service and study of scriptures.

That is why today, I bow and offer pranams to revered Swami Nischalanandaji  Maharaj the first president of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa who had the divine foresight to start the children’s festival. In doing so he has started the process of churning the youth and ensuring that they develop and grow in discipline and devotion to god, becoming lions to face any adversity in life and most importantly on the right track to god realisation.

I pray that we all start the process of churning our lives to bring out our true divine nature, share our love and help each other in the journey of life and god realisation.

This is my sincere prayer.