“Lord Krishna saw 16,100 young princesses, who had been kidnapped and held captive there. When the princesses saw the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna, enter the palace, they immediately became captivated by the beauty of the Lord and prayed for His causeless mercy. Within their minds, they decided to accept Lord Krishna as their husband without any hesitation.” (Krishna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Volume 2, Chapter 4)

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In our story today, you are on the cusp of tying the knot. You will leave the bachelor days behind. No more partying the night away, travelling to any place on a whim, or living in a tiny apartment devoid of furniture. The refrigerator will now actually require food and beverage inside of it. You will have to ask for permission prior to going anywhere, even for maintaining the household, such as in visiting the supermarket for vital supplies.

But prior to the blissful married life commencing, you have to actually get married. As in go through with a ceremony. There is hardly an opportunity for cold feet, as they like to call it, because you are heavily involved in the planning. You barely skated by in feigning interest in the color of the tablecloths and the size of the flower arrangements, but there is no way getting around the logistics of the affair. It is an event, after all. An event requires orchestration, planning, and delivery.

There are actual professionals who handle such things. You were prepared to hire one, but that was when a glimpse of the future decided to show its ugly head. Your soon-to-be wife squashed that idea. She could not tolerate the thought of a total stranger managing essentials like the guest list, contact sheets, and the relationship with the caterer, the wedding hall, and the reception venue. Nope. Instead, she was kind enough to volunteer your services to handle those particulars.

Somehow, you managed. You got through around ninety-percent of the planning without issue. You are a stickler for detail, in general. You never lose your keys, phone, or wallet precisely because you are afraid of the consequences to such absent-mindedness. It is like the worry keeps you honest. The problem here is that there is something serious to worry over, and it is entirely out of your control.

You see, there is a large contingent arriving. It is a surprise visit. They did not RSVP when the invitations were sent out. You cannot deny them in a cold-hearted way. You have to make it work; these people are important to you. You try your best in negotiating with the venue. They simply cannot add more seats. Something about fire codes and local ordinances.

There is a glimmer of hope when they suggest an alternate, but related venue. You reach out, but your hopes are quickly dashed when you learn that the new venue is completely booked. If you can move the wedding up by a mere two days, they could squeeze everyone in. The problem here is that people have their flights booked. If you change the date, many guests will arrive after the wedding is over. That would be a disaster.

In this case, there is really nothing that can be done. It is a limitation based on matter. The dimensions are fixed. Elasticity is lacking. You are not one of these cloud-hosting providers, who provision servers based on the needs of an application. A sudden burst can be met with increased CPU power, more memory, and a larger hard drive. When the intensity slows down, the specs for the machine seamlessly return to normal. Elasticity is a feature of the infrastructure.

The culture of bhakti-yoga has appreciation at the foundation. Not only should we appreciate everything that we have in life, provided by a higher power, but we are encouraged to continue in that appreciation, from morning until night, from birth until death, if we are so inspired. If we are looking for inspiration, we can remember the incident of Shri Krishna accepting over sixteen-thousand distressed princesses at once.

In our story, we had a difficult time simply expanding the size of the wedding location to accommodate unexpected guests, but what if we were already married? What if we took it upon ourselves to deal with a dreaded foe, who happened to be terrorizing innocent people? What if we emerged victorious and found innocent people stranded? They were now orphaned, though they weren’t necessarily living it up before. They were held in captivity, after all.

This begins to explain the predicament faced by Krishna, the king of Dvaraka, after defeating the demon known as Bhaumasura. Krishna was already married. He had queens in the kingdom. The difference here is that since Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the feature of elasticity is permanently set. Krishna does not have to ask permission. He does not have to worry about violating dharma, since He is the object of dharma. If there are any negative consequences to giving shelter to the shelter-less, He will absorb everything, in the manner that He once devoured an entire forest fire to avert danger for His closest friends.

“Since it was almost night, and all the inhabitants of Vrindavana, including the cows and calves, were very tired, they decided to take their rest on the river bank. In the middle of the night, while they were taking rest, there was suddenly a great forest fire, and it quickly appeared that the fire would soon devour all the inhabitants of Vrindavana. As soon as they felt the warmth of the fire, they immediately took shelter of Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, although He was playing just like their child.” (Krishna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Volume 1, Chapter 17)

This elasticity attribute helps to explain the infinite expansion of the party of devoted souls, in the chance that more and more people take to the eternal practice of devotional service. There are nitya-siddhas already engaged in glorifying the Supreme Lord. They never deviate. They will never be in maya since they know nothing but God. Still, there is room for more devotees, who can return to the eternal situation of connection to the Supreme Consciousness. We can chant all we want, paving the path towards liberation, because Shri Krishna will make more room, as needed.

In Closing:

Made this moment to take,
Gladly more room to make.

If life of devotion to choose,
And our ignorance to lose.

Like one time princesses to accept,
Though thousands in captivity kept.

Many queens already despite,
Krishna erasing distressful plight.

Categories: bhagavan

Tags: dailyprompt, hare krishna, krishna lila, marriage, poem, poems, poetry