Lessons from a Cow

Naughty Krishna holding a piece of candy

W

hen I lived on a Hare Krishna farm in central France some time in the ’70s, I had my own cow, a black-and-white holstein named Ganga Mata. Well, she wasn’t really mine. But the people in charge asked me to look after her.

Look after a  cow? I jumped at the chance. After all, Krishna does it too. He even likes to think of himself as a friend of the cows:

All My various forms are full with six opulences, but there is no comparison to My form as a cowherd boy. (Chaitanya Bhagavat Adi 2.177)

The Padma Purana has this to say:

The characteristics of Krishna are certainly wonderful, and His pastimes as a cowherd boy are most enchanting.

Srila Prabhupada elaborates:

Krishna personally showed us the example, He was personally taking care of cows, calves. When He was a child, He was taking care of the calves. When He was grown up, He was taking care of the cows, although He was a very rich man's son: Nanda Maharaj was the village king. (lecture)

So I made sure Ganga Mata always had enough to eat, and I milked her every morning and evening, always by hand.

We enjoyed each other’s company. I  would feel the sweetness of her personality when I milked her, and she would reach her her head over and kiss me.

Have you been kissed by a cow yet? Want to? But they don’t kiss everybody. They can tell whose friend you are—theirs or the butcher’s. Nor does the corporation farmer attaching a milking machine ever get a kiss.

But first things first. Before I could milk Ganga Mata I had to learn the technique. Number one: Don’t pull on the teat. Wrap your forefinger around the top of the teat and squeeze it to keep the milk from flowing upwards back into the udder. It doesn’t hurt the cow.

Then squeeze with the other three fingers, one after the other, to force the milk downward and out, into the bucket.

Want strong  fingers ? Milk a cow. When I began it took me half an hour to milk her. After two weeks I only needed ten minutes.

As you listen to the milk splash into the metal pail, there’s a place near the cow’s flank where you can rest your head. This is when she stops munching on the hay and gives you a kiss.

Did you know that besides kissing the milkman, cows spank their children?

We also had a brown Normandy cow, whose name I can’t remember. Every morning, as the dew was evaporating and the soft breezes were blowing,  the two cows would go for a stroll around the property. Well, who doesn’t enjoy a morning walk in the country?

Soon we acquired a calf, a white female charolais (sha-ro-LAY), a breed raised mainly for their meat. “She won’t give a lot of milk,” a neighbor told me, “but it will be rich and creamy.”

We named her Gauri. She stood about four feet high at the shoulder, and she was strong. She was also playful, sometimes too much so.

One spring morning, as the calls of the cuckoos echoed in the nearby forest—funny how the calls of the cuckoos seem to reverberate though there is nothing in a forest to cause an echo—Gauri trotted up to  me and started playfully butting me. I had to stop her.

Calves will grow into cows and bulls with long sharp horns, so you have to teach them early on not to butt people. Gauri was already big enough and strong enough to injure a person. She wouldn’t mean to, though. She was just a playful child.

I was holding her by the horns to stop her, but she must have thought I was joining in the fun. She kept trying to butt me. As I managed to hold her off, I thought of the old saying “When you hold a tiger by the ears, you can’t let go.”

Then the two cows came by on their morning hike. “It may look like I’m hurting the calf,” I thought. “How will they react? Will they attack me? I’d better start chanting Hare Krishna.”

The Normandy cow nudged Gauri, and Gauri joined them as they ambled on. Then Ganga Mata let Gauri get in front of her. Suddenly Ganga Mata  ran up and butted Gauri on the behind, a good hard smack. So Gauri got a spanking.

I guess Ganga Mata hadn’t seen the latest articles on raising children.

Gauri was a baby. She hadn’t seen much of life yet, but Ganga Mata and the Normandy cow had previously been owned by materialists, so they appreciated being owned now by people who wouldn’t kill them.

How could they tell? I don’t know, but they knew.

One winter morning the Normandy cow was resting on the ground among the snowdrifts. I was sitting next to her with my arm around her neck when a young devotee man happened by.

“How nice,” he said. “You know, a cow in the material world won’t let you put your arm around her neck. She’ll be afraid you might kill her.”

In the spring, someone discovered a large pile of sugar beets on the property. They are much larger than ordinary beets, and cows like them, but they are too hard for cows to bite into. You have to help.

Along with the beets was a hand-cranked machine for shredding them.  Now the cows could eat them. As I watched the cows happily chewing on their sugary snack, red juice dripping from their lips, I remembered Krishna’s words in the Bhagavad-Gita.

He is a perfect yogi who, by comparison to his own self, sees the true equality of all beings, in both their happiness and their distress, O Arjuna.(6.32)

I could see it. I enjoy a sweet treat and so does the cow. There must be something that’s the same in both of us. Later I would see something else that was the same.

Though I could put my arm around the cows’ necks,  I remember a day when they were afraid though there was no danger.

One morning the veterinarian came by and noticed that Ganga Mata had a small problem. Cows have split hooves, and on one of her front feet, the two halves of the hoof were slightly overlapping at the front. I hadn’t noticed it.

“I’ll come by this afternoon,” said the veterinarian, “and I’ll snip off the overlap. It won’t hurt her.”

He had treated the cows before, and they never showed any fear, but when he  came  that afternoon, they were obviously afraid from the moment they saw him. I scratched my head. What was the problem? Then it struck me.

The veterinarian was wearing a white lab coat. Apparently the sight of a man in a white lab coat struck fear in the cows. Who knew what pain they might have experienced from men in white lab coats?

I should have had the presence of mind to ask him to take off the coat. He would have understood.

The cows reluctantly followed me into the cowshed, and the veterinarian came in holding a large pair of snips like the kind you use to cut into a sheet of tin.

When Ganga Mata saw a man in a white coat standing in front of her with an instrument in his hand, she lifted her tail and passed a stream of watery diarrhea-like dung. The poor girl was terrified.

And again  Krishna’s words about the equality of all beings came into my mind:

He is a perfect yogi who, by comparison to his own self, sees the true equality of all beings, in both their happiness and their distress, O Arjuna.(6.32)

“Wouldn’t I be scared too,” I wondered, “if I thought the person standing before me was holding an instrument of pain?”

“What makes us equal?” I wondered.

“Of course,” I answered myself. “Krishna says it in the second chapter. Ganga Mata and I are both souls encased in material bodies.”

I looked over at the veterinarian. “So is the vet,” my thought continued. “And all souls are of the same nature. Makes no difference whether you carry a tin-snipper, an udder full of milk, or a string of beads.”

I petted Ganga Mata, trying to reassure her. The veterinarian trimmed her hoof and left. One minute and it was all over. And no pain.

I looked again at Ganga Mata. The doctor was gone, but I could sense she hadn’t gotten over the fear. I still get a hollow feeling in my chest when I remember her terror even though it was forty years ago.

I led the cows outside. I petted them and spoke reassuringly. All was back to normal. We were still friends. Life would go on.

Ganga Mata didn’t know about Krishna or the Bhagavad-Gita. But she knew we were her friends. And that’s why she spanked Gauri. “You don’t know how lucky you are to  be with these people. Don’t butt them.”

After a couple of years I left France and went back to the United States. And it was a few years more before I got any news about Ganga Mata.

But back to the topic, What lessons did I learn from cows?

When I saw Ganga Mata happily chomping down on sugar beets and later quaking in terror at the sight of  the doctor, I did learn something: Animals have feelings the same as humans.

Ganga Mata likes sugar beets, and I like Russian beet soup with sugar and sour cream. Same sweet taste. Ganga Mata was afraid of the doctor with the tin-cutters. I too get weak in the knees when I see the doctor coming at me with an instrument.

Equality, just as Krishna says.

All right. I can see you smirking.  Am I insinuating that an animal is a person like a human?

Well no. I am not insinuating that. I am saying it outright.

Every living being is a soul covered by a body. Human, cow, peacock, angel, devil–all the same. And the soul is always a complete person. Just as Krishna says.

Our problem is that we see only the layers of material energy, or lust that cover the soul. As Krishna says:

As fire is covered by smoke, as a mirror is covered by dust, or as the embryo is covered by the womb, the living entity is similarly covered by different degrees of this lust. (3.38)

Srila Prabhupada explains:

And Ganga Mata? Later I heard that she had gotten into a patch of sweet clover and feasted herself to death. An unfortunate mistake. If sweet clover is spoiled or moldy it can cause internal bleeding.

My dear Ganga Mata, cows can be born as humans in their next life, and bowls of your white creamy milk were set on Krishna’s altar many times, so I hope you are now enjoying life as Krishna’s devotee.

Goodbye my sweet friend. Godspeed. Till we meet again someday in Lord Krishna’s kingdom.

⁓Umapati Swami, December 15 2024

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ove it? Hate it? Got a question? Write to me: hoswami@yahoo.com

© Umapati Swami 2024

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 87 years old, he maintains this blog to share what he has learned.