Just like Krishna expands into a multitude of Vishnu and Narayana forms, Radha expands into complimentary forms of Lakshmi. In addition, the 16,108 queens of Krishna in Dwarka and the host of gopis of Vrindavana are also expansions of Radha. The Chaitanya Charitamrita (Adi-lila 4.74–77) substantiates this.
Kṛṣṇa-kāntā-gaṇa dekhi tri-vidha prakāra
eka lakṣmī-gaṇa, pure mahiṣī-gaṇa āra
vrajāṅganā-rūpa, āra kāntā-gaṇa-sāra
śrī-rādhikā haite kāntā-gaṇera vistāra
avatārī kṛṣṇa yaiche kare avatāra
aṁśinī rādhā haite tina gaṇera vistāra
vaibhava-gaṇa yena tāṅra aṅga-vibhūti
bimba-pratibimba-rūpa mahiṣīra tati
‘The beloved consorts of Lord Krishna are of three kinds: the goddesses of fortune, the queens and, foremost of all, the milkmaids of Vraja. These consorts all proceed from Radhika. Just as the fountainhead, Lord Krishna, is the cause of all incarnations, Shri Radha is the cause of all these consorts. The goddesses of fortune are partial manifestations of Shrimati Radhika, and the queens are reflections of her image.’
Krishnadas Kaviraja Goswami, the author OF THE CHAITANYA CHARITAMRITA, uses a remarkable metaphor to illustrate the relationship between Radha and the gopis of Vrindavana (Madhya-lila 8.209).
Rādhāra svarūpa – kṛṣṇa-prema-kalpalatā
sakhī-gaṇa haya tāra pallava-puṣpa-pātā
‘By nature, Shrimati Radharani is just like a creeper of love of Krishna, and the gopis are the twigs, flowers and leaves of that creeper.’
Rādhā kṛṣṇa-praṇaya-vikṛtir hlādinī śaktir asmād
ekātmānāv api bhuvi purā deha-bhedaṁ gatau tau
‘Radha is a transformation of Krishna’s love and his internal pleasure-giving potency.’
Radha is considered the highest devotee of Krishna and derives the greatest pleasure in serving Him. In fact, her name itself means ‘one who is the greatest worshipper’. She is the origin of all the gopis and all the Goddesses of Fortune who are engaged in the service of the Lord. She is the mainstay, the ideal inspiration of all devotees embarking on the path of devotional service to Krishna. Her mood is that of sacrifice. She puts herself last and puts everyone else who can serve Krishna better than her ahead. She puts the needs of Krishna ahead of her own needs. Radha is an embodiment of love that sustains, surrounds and embellishes Krishna in every way.
Radha has many names according to her qualities and characteristics. Each name reaffirms another way she connects with Krishna. One name is Govinda-anandini, which means ‘one who gives pleasure to Govinda’. Govinda-mohini means ‘one who mystifies Govinda’. Krishnamayi means ‘one who sees Krishna both within and without’. Of all the various names of Radha, one name that stands out is Veda-gopya, which means ‘one who is hidden even in the Vedas’. This is because the subject matter of Radha is very confidential—so confidential that even the Vedas don’t dare to talk about her openly. Radha tattva cannot—and should not—be discussed superficially and frivolously. A subject that even the Vedas hesitate to talk about openly should be considered with great care and precaution. Just as Radha is the confidential associate of the Lord, her glories remain confidential in the pages of the Vedas.
It is generally understood that God is male. In fact, one need only browse the various revealed scriptures of the world to note that God is always addressed as being male. Gaudiya Vaishnava literature, however, makes it clear that in the ultimate sense God is both male and female. It is Krishna who represents the male aspect of Godhood and Radha the female aspect. However, the two are not in the strictest sense, considered to be separate. Rather, Radha and Krishna are one, but have separated to enjoy each other’s company.
Radha and Krishna are not two different personalities but one, having taken different forms to reveal to the world the eternal principles of divine love. Krishna represents the masculine aspect of divinity and Radha the feminine. Without understanding the feminine aspect one cannot claim to know God in his entirety.
Krishna is the energetic and Radha is the energy. Without the energy the energetic would have no meaning and completion. Without Radha there is no meaning to Krishna and without Krishna there is no meaning to Radha.
In traditional Vaishnava literature, Krishna is compared to the sun and Radha to sunshine. Both exist simultaneously and yet one is emanating from the other. Still, it is a misconception to say that the sun came prior to the sunshine. As soon as there exists a sun, there has to be sunshine too. More importantly, the sun itself has no significance without the sunshine, heat and light. And conversely, heat and light do not exist without the sun. Thus, the sun and the sunshine coexist, each equally important for the existence of the other. It may thus be concluded that they are simultaneously one and different. Krishna, therefore, is described as the shaktiman—the energetic source, whereas Radha is the shakti, or the energy. The shaktiman is never addressed separately but rather along with shakti. For instance, Krishna is always addressed as Radha–Krishna. The calling of the shakti first is significant; it signifies that to approach the Lord in any of his forms, we must first go through their energies or, more appropriately, their consorts.
Radha exhibits such a vast variety of emotions that sometimes Krishna is mystified. He is at times lost in finding the appropriate way to reciprocate aptly with her. He then takes the help of Lalita, another principal gopi who is again an expansion of Radha, to find out the best way to reciprocate the current mood Radha is exhibiting.
Krishna is a balance of law and love. But Radha is filled to the brim with only love. Therefore, in the bhakti tradition it is recommended we approach Krishna through the agency of Radha. Connecting to Krishna directly could be risky, as he may choose to look at you through the eye of law and your flaws may be focused on. But Radha is a divine mother who never focuses on the flaws but on the desire to serve and connect with Krishna. Thus, she aptly assists in kindling that connection with Krishna.
The Vedic culture extends respect and reverence to women for the simple reason that they represent the feminine energy of God. There is a Vedic saying, ‘Where women are worshipped, there the gods dwell.’
One of Radha’s many names is Janagati, which qualifies her as the goddess of all goddesses. She portrays the divine feminine love and beauty. Thus, in the material world, we can see her divine reflection mirrored in all that is feminine, elegant and pure. Just by being aware of her qualities, we can experience the spiritual dimension flowing in the material world.
Radha embodies the quintessence of all the feminine qualities in completeness, each of which has a story. Rhythm, flow, creativity, inspiration, intuition, sensuality, beauty, receptivity, mystery, magic and wonder, bewilderment, attractiveness, magnetizing, flexibility, compassion, understanding, expansive, complex, multitasking (multidimensional), detail-oriented, caring, attentive to everyone’s needs, visionary, nurturing, nourishing, creative, innovative, connected to a purpose, healing, sweet, charming, comforting, exciting, passionate, soft, warm, stress-relieving, tranquilizing, delightful, humorous, organized, creating a beautiful environment, communicative, sensitive, unconditionally loving, having parenting instincts, responsibility for parents, the ability to bear stress, humility, emotional intelligence, nursing, non-violent, expressive, honest, kind, forgiving, elegant and confident. This is just a fragment of the plethora of feminine qualities Radha epitomizes.
This is also why spiritual advancement is known to balance the female and male energies within oneself. When there’s harmony within, peace and joy prevail.
There is a story which goes thus—once Radha confided in her sakhis about Krishna’s love for her. When they asked her how she knew this, she explained, ‘Whatever I want him to do, he does. Whenever I want him to do it, he does. From this I guess he loves me a lot.’ The gopis asked for an example, at which Radha remained quiet. The gopis were surprised and requested one example, at le
ast. Radharani said, ‘That’s a big dilemma actually. The problem is whatever he does is to my liking. I’m not sure if he does what I like, or I like what he does! My mind thinks what he has done is what I want.’ Radha’s heart poignantly reveals the non-difference between her and Krishna.
11
THE HEART-THROB OF CHAITANYA
HARSHA V. DEHEJIA
IN A PERSONAL letter to me, Edward Dimock on 15 April 1998 wrote:
The proposal of a relationship between religious and aesthetic experience, the use of aesthetic theory to gain understanding of the nature of God and worship, is an extraordinary contribution by the Vaishnavas to religious thought. It seems to me a unique contribution . . . that the poet must be in an exalted state before the creation of poetry is possible, and that when poetry is created in that exalted state, it is by definition true. Rupa Goswami and others of the Vaishnava tradition who gave shape to this understanding have been, I think, too little appreciated for the creative nature of what they did.
I have pondered about this cryptic, personal but pregnant statement of Dimock for many years. He was referring to Gaudiya—or Bengal—Vaishnavism, which, while following much of the basic tenets of orthodox Vaishnavism, departs from it in two fundamental areas. One is the insistence that Krishna and not Vishnu is the ultimate Godhead and, second, that Krishna is an androgyne and Radha is an essential part of Him. We will be mostly concerned with the second assertion in this essay and explore the presence of Radha in Gaudiya Vaishnavism.
While taking his stand on aesthetic experience Dimock was pointing to another experience which he called true. He firmly believed that to the Vaishnavas of Bengal shringara rasa, or celebrating Krishna as the paragon of love, is dual: it is pure aesthetic experience and enjoyment on the one hand as well as pure devotion at the same time—one leads to the other. It is in his evocation of shringara rasa that the Bengali poet becomes the spokesman of truth. It becomes clear that Rupa Goswami, the foremost of the Gaudiya philosophers, takes rasa out of the literary context and gives it a religious texture. Rupa takes the rasa doctrine a significant step further than Abhinavagupta. Until now rasa was the cornerstone of aesthetic experience, arising from the arts, and even though transient, it was capable of leading the rasika to rasananda, the bliss of rasa, a state that was described as the twin brother of brahmananda. In a little more than 500 years, the Vaishnavas of Bengal had brought Krishna at the centre of rasa. He was Raseshwar, the ashraya and repository of rasa, nay, He was rasa itself. Rupa Goswami asserts: ‘Devadi vishayaa ratihi bhaktihi’—that when it came to Krishna, shringara rasa became shringara bhakti. This was a major contribution of the Gaudiyas but we will not visit this issue in this essay.
The contribution of Jayadeva in the creation of Radha cannot be overemphasized as it was foundational. However, there were important political factors in medieval India that must also be considered in the transformation of Radha from a gopi to a consort, especially in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The concept of kingship asserts that the king is the earthly representation of divinity and this automatically brings in the idea of the king’s consort, or queen. The Vishnu Purana, dated the 4th century AD, regards Lakshmi as the consort of Vishnu. Regal Vaishnava dynasties of ancient India regarded the king as the terrestrial reflection of Vishnu and, by the same token, his queen as the earthly representation of Lakshmi. When in and after the Bhagavata Purana Krishna replaces Vishnu as the central Godhead of Vaishnavism it was but natural that once Radha came into being in the post-Bhagavata period and was romantically connected with Krishna that she came to be accepted as Krishna’s consort. The concept of Radha as a consort thus was to a certain extent the direct result of the Vaishnava royal dynasties.
Wherever she came from, Radha is crucial to the development of the Vaishnavism of Bengal. To poets, she is a warm, touchingly sincere woman in love. To all Vaishnavas, she is the symbol of true love, or prema. To the Sahajiya Vaishnavas in particular, her presence on earth and in all human beings gives mankind a way to experience the divine.
However, the greatest contribution in the making of Radha not only as a consort but even more as a goddess is the Shakta tradition of Bengal and Odisha. It was around the 8th century that the conception of Shakti comes into prominence in the Vaishnava tradition, and it moves significantly away from Shankara’s concept of maya. The Shaktas believe that the universe comes into being because of the association of the male and the female principles and that at the end of the cosmic cycle the created universe returns to its source when Shakti comes to repose in the male. The Lakshmi Tantra, which is a Pancharatra text compiled between the 9th and the 12th centuries, asserts the primacy of Lakshmi in the veneration of Vishnu; it is she who possesses kriyashakti. At about the same time dualistic Vedanta philosophers like Nimbarka were moving the tradition away from Shankara’s Advaita, and because of Dvaitic formulations the concept of Shakti was gaining ground. The stage was now set for Chaitanya to take his stand on the Gita Govinda, accept Radha as a consort and formulate Gaudiya Vaishnavism and exalt Radha from a gopi to a consort.
It is significant that after the initial formulation of shringara bhakti within the framework of Advaita in the Bhagavata, the only Vaishnava tradition to uphold the Advaitic standpoint was Vallabha and the Pushtimarg sampradaya, where initially there is no Radha and even when she enters the tradition it is because of the influence of the Gaudiyas. All other traditions that followed the Gita Govinda, whether it was the Gaudiya Vaishnavism of Bengal, the Ritikavya tradition of courtly poetry of Keshav Das and the Ritikal poets or the Warkari tradition at Pandharpur, all of these uphold only the Dvaitic tradition, where Radha or Rukmini become consorts and cease to remain gopis. The shringara in the Dvaitic traditions has a different tone and texture. This is entirely due to the presence and persona of Radha and her love for Krishna.
Chaitanya was born in Nabadwip, a centre of learning, on the amavasya of Phalgun in 1486. Chaitanya’s childhood name was Vishvambhara, which he later changed to Krishna Chaitanya, to which his followers added the honorific Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. His family were pious Vaishnavas, and Vishvambhara was educated in the traditional Brahmin fashion. He passed away in 1533.
Chaitanya was an enigmatic person and the details of his life are sketchy. He was neither a theologian nor an organizer, he was a god-intoxicated person and wanted to experience Krishna here and now. The immediacy of realizing Krishna was his mantra. What is more important is that he did not leave anything behind in writing and, therefore, what we know of him is from anecdotal evidence and the writings of his disciples, especially the Chaitanya Charitamrita. What is even more significant is that Chaitanya remained a controversial figure even in his lifetime, and his brand of Vaishnavism was considered socially deviant by the orthodoxy. It is said that one day a kirtan was taking place in the house of Srivasa, a neighbour of Chaitanya’s, and people in the neighbourhood gathered and were burning with rage as they did not like the whole ethos of the kirtans. Chaitanya did not accept caste hierarchy, and the orthodox Brahmins of the day felt that he was changing the social control of society and this was another factor that invited displeasure. There are many anecdotal accounts of Chaitanya’s life but these are not as important as his own persona. Chaitanya was considered not just an avatar of Krishna but Krishna himself, not the Krishna of the Bhagavata or the Gita Govinda, but he was the coming together of Radha and Krishna, Radha externally and Krishna internally. ‘In the body of Chaitanya the two are one, undivided’ (Chaitanya Charitamrita 7.111).
As Dimock puts it:
He was Krishna internally, Radha externally, his golden colour was that of Radha; his deep love and longing for Krishna were those of Radha; yet within he had the full divinity of Krishna. When Radha and Krishna were two, neither could experience love to the full . . . When they became one in Chaitanya their joy was doubled. 1
Chaitanya very often dressed as Radha, he would sing and dance, go into a trance and ecstasy. For Chaitanya, bhakti to Krishna was the def
ining feature of his brand of Vaishnavism and not social norms and practices, or rites and rituals. He said, ‘Things are pure because they are sacred to Krishna, not because they are thought to be pure by men’ (Chaitanya Charitamrita 7.74). Sin, according to Chaitanya, is the denial of Krishna as the highest god (Chaitanya Charitamrita 6.72). Chaitanya’s Vaishnavism was, therefore, quite distinct even from the orthodox Vaishnavism of Bengal and Assam, which was based on the Bhagavata and Sahajiya Vaishnavism, which took its stand on the tantric tradition. This does not rule out that there was intersection and cross-fertilization of the three types, but despite this Chaitanya’s Gaudiya Vaishnavism remains unique.
The story is told among the devotees of Chaitanya that once the devas came to Krishna and complained that the Kali Yuga was an age of wickedness and that mankind was in trouble. On hearing this Krishna told Radha they must go down to earth together and become avatars. Radha refused, for she said that all she required for her happiness was the company of Krishna in the eternal Vrindavana, as she could not bear another separation from him, reminding Krishna that he had left her in Vrindavana. Krishna assured her that there would be no viraha this time. In their previous incarnation on the earthly Vrindavana, Krishna said we were one soul in two bodies, but in the present avatar in Chaitanya’s Vrindavana, we will be in one body—Krishna internally and Radha externally. This is the unique formulation of the Bengal Vaishnava androgyne nature of the Godhead and differs significantly from the ardhanarishvara concept of Kashmir Shaivism. Radha, in the Chaitanya system, is the hlādinī shakti of Krishna and is engaged with him emotionally and not intellectually; she loves Krishna and does not just venerate Krishna.
Finding Radha Page 12