I would like to begin by quoting
a line from the movie “Letters to Juliet”, “Dear Claire, "What" and
"If" are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them
together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your
life: What if? What if? What if? I don't know how your story ended but if what
you felt then was true love, then it's never too late. If it was true then, why
wouldn't it be true now? You need only the courage to follow your heart. I
don't know what a love like Juliet's feels like - love to leave loved ones for,
love to cross oceans for but I'd like to believe if I ever were to feel it,
that I will have the courage to seize it. And, Claire, if you didn't, I hope
one day that you will. All my love, Juliet”
How many times have we pondered
upon these two words? What if? What if I was in love with her? What if I
married her? What if I hadn’t stopped them? I many not understand what true
love is or what implications society has on them but it would be a crime not to
seize it when we find true love.
I spend so many days searching
for what Bhagwad Gita has said about love. Whether it is a crime to fall in
love or whether we should give in to marrying a complete stranger. What I don’t
understand is how is falling in love is a crime and marrying a stranger and
sharing a bed with him the very next day, acceptable in our society. Why do we
worship Radha-Krishna then? Most people would argue that the fact that they did
not get married proves that love marriage was not accepted by the Gods. However
to all my dear friends I would like to say that Krishna only wanted to prove
that Love and Marriage are two different things....love is a selfless emotion
and marriage is an agreement or an arrangement. He wanted to teach us the
essence of unconditional and eternal love, which is not bound by the material
rules of the society.
I found some beautiful
explanation by Mr. Varja Kishore, who writes "To understand Radha
correctly, you need to somewhat understand the mysteries of "rasa"
and "prema" – the ecstatic experience of spiritual love. Krishna and
Radharani playfully married once, as children sometimes do. They did not really
marry, however, because their love is more primal, profound, and unbounded than
what wedded love facilitates. Wedded love is a very elevated type of divine
union, yet in marriage, the intimacy and spontaneity is not limitless. Some
limitation is imposed by the sense of 'duty' that husband and wife naturally
acquire towards one another. This sense of duty is beautiful, but the highest
type of love is even more beautiful. It is so profound that it requires no
sense of duty – and flows absolutely spontaneously – breaking all things that
stand in its path. Thus, the pure transcendental love that Radha and Krishna
enjoy on the highest level of bliss (paramānanda), expresses itself in the form
of being paramours, not husband and wife...”
Although many of us take pride in
knowing what our religion teaches us, we fail to receive the message it is
designed to give us. We are so entwined in the material life that we forget to
taste the essence of the divinity that God imparts through all the spiritual
scriptures.
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| Radha and Krishna Walk in a Flowering Grove. 18th century |