Cowherd Picnic
By Swāmī Śrī Bhaktivedānta Tripurāri Mahārāja, excerpted from Circle of Friends.
Typically the cowherds consume a hearty breakfast in the presence of Nanda Bābā prior to their day of herding. But Nanda and Yaśodā were not present to oversee the cowherds’ picnic luncheon on their first of many extended days in the forest, which further facilitated the cowherd sakhas’ intimate dealings with one another. While the sakhas celebrated the prowess of Kṛṣṇa in dealing with Aghāsura, comparing it to their own abilities, Hari suggested they all sit along the banks of a placid pool within the Yamunā that was pleasing to the mind and picnic there together.
O friends! This place is possessed of a wealth of all things suitable for the occasion. Here we find plenty of room for sitting in rows on soft, clean sand, and the setting is filled with fragrance from the Yamunā’s blossoming lotuses, while the celebrated bees hum as if singing to us, and the clear, cool water and the shade of trees provide relief from the heat of the sun. Come, gather lotus leaves to use as plates, and let the calves drink and graze freely!1
Thus, the gopas watered their calves and pastured them on green grasses, feeling confident that the grasses would keep them in reach while the boys themselves lunched. Then, exercising their extraordinary creative sensibilities, some gathered leaves, others flowers, fruits, tree bark, or rocks and made them into an artistic variety of plates suitable for assorted dishes. They did this after first retrieving their lunch baskets from the trees they had hung them on to facilitate their previous play, ensuring that it would in no way be impeded. Lunches in hand and plates arranged, they sat in rows of concentric circles around Gopāla-deva, appearing much like the many petals of a lotus, the whorl of which was wonderful Kṛṣṇa. Then, by the force of overwhelming sakhya-prema for each and every gopa, Kṛṣṇa expanded into unlimited, identical forms of himself such that each gopa experienced Gopāla-deva sitting directly in front of him alone, drawing his undivided attention! Each boy felt that Kṛṣṇa loved him the most, and each boy was correct.2
As they unpacked their lunches, they began to taste each and every item like accomplished connoisseurs and determine relative to their own palate which of the innumerable preparations were most tasteful. Upon arriving at such a conclusion concerning any particular dish, each boy immediately removed that preparation from his own mouth before swallowing and placed it instead in Kṛṣṇa’s mouth. Those preparations that were considered second best were immediately passed on to one of their friends, and those taking third place in each individual cowherd’s mind they ate themselves. Because each cowherd boy arrived at a different opinion in his grading of the delicious items, each boy ended up eating every dish. Furthermore, items that any gopa previously considered suitable only for his own consumption—being less tasty than others—when passed on to him from a friend of different opinion, tasted best, as did and more so the items Kṛṣṇa took from his mouth and pressed into theirs. Thus, every preparation was best!
Although all of this feasting among very hungry boys left little time for joking, they nonetheless laughed heartily at their own eating antics and the various faces they made at one another in pretense. They joked and made merry mischief in ways that would never have been tolerated at Nanda’s breakfast table. Thus, they also tasted hāsya-rasa, the whole affair intensely pleasing to the center of this scene, Kānāi Kṛṣṇa, who in other circles is seen as the enjoyer of all sacrifice, the stomach of the body of Vedic ritual. Oh! How different he appears as the object of fraternal love to the vision perfected by lifetimes of service and sacrifice—kṛta-puṇya-puñjāḥ! And this is precisely how the scene struck the spiritually curious four-headed Brahmā.
- Based on Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.13.5-6. [↩]
- In Caitanya-caritāmṛta 2.11.233, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja makes a comparison between this scene and Śrī Caitanya’s appearing simultaneously in four different saṅkīrtana groups during his madhya-līlā in Purī, at which time each group thought that Mahāprabhu was present only in their group and each member of each group experienced his undivided attention. [↩]
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