Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Srimad Bhagavatam 10.31 Summary

This chapter relates how the gopis, overwhelmed by feelings of separation from Krsna, sat down on the bank of the Yamuna and began praying for His audience and singing His glories.

Because the gopis had dedicated their minds and very lives to Krsna, they were beside themselves with the transcendental pain of separation. But their crying, which appears like evidence of misery, actually shows their exalted state of transcendental bliss. As it is said, yata dekha vaisnaver vyavahara duhkh/ niscaya janiha sei paramananda sukh: "Whenever one sees a Vaisnava acting unhappy, one should know it for sure that he is actually experiencing the highest spiritual bliss." Thus each of the gopis began addressing Lord Sri Krsna according to her individual mode of ecstasy, and they all prayed for Him for His mercy.

As the pastimes of Krsna spontaneously arose in the minds of the gopis, they sang their song, which relieves the agony of those suffering from the burning pain of separation from Krsna and which bestows supreme auspiciousness. They sang, "O Lord, O lover, O cheater, when we remember Your smile, Your loving glances and Your pastimes with Your boyhood friends, we become extremely agitated. Remembering Your lotus face, adorned with locks of blackish hair smeared with the dust of the cows, we become irrevocably attached to You. And when we remember how You followed the cows from forest to forest with Your tender feet, we feel great pain."

In their separation from Krsna the gopis considered a single moment an entire age. Even when they had previously seen Him they had found the blinking of their eyelids intolerable, for it blocked their vision of Him for a fraction of a second.

The ecstatic sentiments for Lord Krsna that the gopis expressed may appear like symptoms of lust, but in reality they are manifestations of their pure desire to satisfy the Supreme Lord's spiritual senses. There is not even the slightest trace of lust in these moods of the gopis.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
His Holiness Hrdayananda dasa Goswami
Gopiparanadhana dasa Adhikari
Dravida dasa Brahmacari