Do We Need Salvation?

Naughty Krishna holding a piece of candy

“You’re doing it wrong,” said Joan,  a Christian neighbor.

I  took a deep breath and rolled my eyes upwards. “Not again,” I thought. I  had heard this from Christians a million times before.

“Offering incense and ghee lamps to Krishna,” she went on. “You’re trying to earn your salvation. But Jesus has done it for you.”

I couldn’t argue with her. Not that she was right. She wasn’t. But Krishna Consciousness follows a different concept. I have tried to explain it to these people, but well, maybe I should try to explain the French conception of the subjunctive to my neighbor’s cat.

Now I don’t mean to criticize the teachings of Jesus. They are faultless. But I find this blind spot in many of his followers, like Joan.

Tell me Joan,  Don’t you sing “Amazing Grace”? Don’t you kneel and take the  wine-dipped wafer between your lips? Fine. But then you go and  commit the very fault that you accuse me of. You stick your hand out for payment.You say, of course, that Jesus has already paid the price. So why should I work to earn what has already been paid?

Let me tell you about something better, Joan.   We call it pure love, and it only wants one reward: the love itself.

Yes, I offer incense to Krishna. And my payment? “Dear Lord Krishna, please let me offer more incense tomorrow.”

I’ll explain more. But first, let’s jump into my time machine and go back some years, to 1966.

The hot summer sun  beats  down on Manhattan’s Lower East Side as I stroll past where a store used to sell candles and ashtrays and handkerchiefs. “Matchless Gifts” says the sign painted over the door.

Now something new has moved in. “Lectures on the Bhagavad-Gita” says the  signboard in the streetside display window. I also see two pictures.

In the picture on the left, Krishna’s mother Yasoda Devi holds her little son in her lap and smiles as she puts a sweetmeat in his mouth. In his left hand Krishna holds a string attached to a toy horse on wheels.

Yasoda sees Krishna not as God but  as the baby she gave birth to.  She has never found out that the babies were switched while she slept after the birth. So she feeds Krishna, she bathes him and dresses him and hugs him and gives him toys.

But she never asks for a reward, not even salvation. How can a little boy offer salvation?

As Krishna says,

Mother sometimes binds Me as her son. She nourishes and protects Me, thinking Me utterly helpless. (Sri Chaitanya Charitamrta Adi 4.24)

All well and good,” you say. “Krishna is Yasoda’s son, so she takes care of him.  But Krishna is not my son.”

But you can think of him as your son if you want.  You don’t have to think of him as your father as some do.

“Our father which art in Heaven,” pray the Christians, “give us this day our daily bread.”

But why not follow Yasoda and think of God as your son? “If I don’t give God his daily bread, he’ll starve.”

Srila Prabhupada elaborates:

And again:

So in the Hare Krishna temples, instead of asking for our bread, we give the  bread to Krishna. We start by waking him in the morning with  sweetmeats and fruit drinks, then through the day with vegetables and soups and flatbreads and rice and desserts, and then to bedtime with a snack of sweetened milk and cake.

Empty ritual, you say. How do we know Krishna really eats it?

Because he says so:

If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water, I will accept it. (Bhagavad-Gita  9.26)

You can do it too. You can feed Krishna. Maybe you don’t know how to fry an eggplant in ghee or how to roll a whole-wheat flatbread or how to  soak fermented dough twists in heavy syrup.

But  that’s all right. Krishna says a leaf, a fruit,  a flower, or water. So then offer Krishna an apple and a glass of water. But don’t forget the love and devotion.

But another question comes up. If we don’t ask for anything back, does that mean we don‘t get any pleasure?

And this brings us back to the display window on the Lower East Side, to the other picture. It shows people dancing.

Who? What?

Well, sometimes Krishna wonders if his devotees might not feel more pleasure in cooking candies and  fudge for him than he himself feels in eating it.  So  he comes into this world as Lord Chaitanya.

And he lives the life of a Hare Krishna devotee. He chants Hare Krishna and dances.  That’s what’s happening in the picture.

Of course, when Krishna lives as a devotee, he does it perfectly. Remember my friend Joan, who thinks salvation is the ultimate goal? Here is what Lord Chaitanya says:

Oh almighty Lord, I have no desire to accumulate wealth, nor do I desire beautiful women, nor do I want any number of followers. I only want Your causeless devotional service, birth after birth. (Siksastaka 4)

“Wait,” you say.  “This quotation says nothing about salvation.”

Oh no?  What about “birth after birth”? Lord Chaitanya will be  happy to take birth in the material world again and again as long as he can serve Krishna. He thus waves away the idea of salvation. Yes.  “Birth after birth” means staying in the material world, as birth does not happen in the Kingdom of God.

Salvation? Lord Chaitanya does not ask for any reward at all:

I know no one but Krishna as my Lord, and He shall remain so even if He handles me roughly by His embrace or makes me broken-hearted by not being present before me. He is completely free to do anything and everything, for He is always my worshipful Lord, unconditionally. (Siksastaka 8)

Christians could also learn  something about loving God from those words.

“All right,” you say, “but this is Krishna. He doesn’t need salvation. But what about someone like me or you?”

The great devotee Satyavratya Muni answers this question in his poem “Damodar” about Krishna’s childhood in a place called Gokula Vrndavana.

Srila Prabhupada sums it up:

When we attain that stage of love of God, we will find that everything is full of pleasure; God is full of pleasure, and we also are full of pleasure. (Path of Perfection 3)

Well? Still worried about salvation?

⁓Umapati Swami, January 11, 2024

Eternally touching my head to the floor at the lotus feet of my spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, for showing me this.

Write to me: hoswami@yahoo.com

© Umapati Swami 2023

Srila Prabhupada

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is the teacher who brought Krishna Consciousness from India to the West and then to the rest of the world. He is the founder of the worldwide Hare Krishna Movement as well as the author and compiler of many works of Vedic knowledge. He left this world in 1977.

Umapati Swami

One of the first American devotees of the Hare Krishna Movement, he became Srila Prabhupada’s disciple in 1966. Since then, he has preached Krishna Consciousness in many countries and is the author of “My Days with Prabhupada,” available from Amazon. Now 86 years old, he has started this blog to share what he has learned.