Bhagavatham Stories

As Krishna matured through his teenage years in Vrindavan, completing the pastimes that had been designed from the beginning of time, a shift began to occur in the atmosphere of the village. For years, Krishna had protected Vrindavan from demonic attacks, had provided miraculous interventions and extraordinary teaching, had established a community centered on love and devotion. Yet the time was approaching when Krishna would need to depart from Vrindavan to fulfill his larger cosmic purpose. The Supreme Lord had come to the material world not merely to conduct pastimes in a single village but to establish principles and teachings that would guide all beings for ages to come.

The first indication that change was coming came when a powerful sage and spiritual master named Sandipani appeared in Vrindavan. Sandipani was a renowned teacher whose ashram (spiritual academy) was known throughout the land as a place where princes and important individuals went to receive training in all branches of knowledge and the martial arts. Nanda, recognizing that Krishna had already demonstrated unusual abilities and was approaching an age when formal training would be appropriate, decided that Krishna should go to study under Sandipani. This decision, though made by Nanda for what seemed like logical and reasonable reasons, was actually an expression of divine will—a way for Krishna to transition from his childhood pastimes in Vrindavan to the larger role he was destined to play in the world.

When Krishna learned that he was to depart from Vrindavan to study with Sandipani, a complex range of emotions arose in his heart. Krishna was not a mere child who had grown attached to his village through mechanical habit. He was the Supreme Personality of Godhead, fully aware of his cosmic status and purpose. Yet the form he had assumed was a human body, and a human heart naturally develops attachments and experiences affection for the place where it has grown up and for the relationships that have sustained it. For Krishna, leaving Vrindavan meant separating from his earthly parents, Nanda and Yashoda, with whom he had developed a bond that would last eternally. It meant separating from his brother Balarama. Most poignantly, it meant separating from the gopis, whose love had become a vehicle for his greatest teachings about divine love and the relationship between the soul and the Supreme.

The gopis, when they learned that Krishna was to leave Vrindavan, were devastated. For years, their entire lives had revolved around Krishna—organizing their time around the likelihood of seeing him, performing their duties with the thought of him in their hearts, experiencing their spiritual awakening through his presence. Now, suddenly, that presence would be removed. The gopis gathered together and wept openly, expressing their anguish at the coming separation. They had experienced a love so deep and so consuming that they could not imagine existing without it. Yet even in their grief, they understood that Krishna's departure was not a rejection of them but a stage in a larger cosmic play that transcended their individual desires and preferences.

Krishna, with a heart full of compassion for their suffering, spent his final days in Vrindavan engaging in extended pastimes with the gopis. These farewell pastimes were tinged with the bittersweet quality that comes when ultimate union must give way to temporary separation. Krishna played his flute for them one final time, the melody carrying within it all the love and affection he felt, all the gratitude for the role they had played in his pastimes, all the assurance that though he was leaving physically, the love between them was eternal and would never truly be severed. He danced with them in the moonlight, every gesture a communication of love and a promise of his eternal presence.

In his final conversations with Nanda and Yashoda, Krishna explained that though he must go to study and fulfill duties that extended beyond Vrindavan, his heart would always remain in the village and with those who loved him. Yashoda, who had served Krishna as a mother with complete devotion, heard these words and understood them at multiple levels simultaneously. She was sad at his departure, yet she was also beginning to realize the cosmic significance of her son and the vastness of his love that extended far beyond the boundaries of any single village or family. Nanda and Yashoda had been granted a privilege that no other beings in creation could claim—they had raised the Supreme Personality of Godhead as their own son, had witnessed his pastimes from intimate proximity, had received his love and his teachings directly.

As Krishna prepared to depart, he gathered the people of Vrindavan and spoke to them about the nature of the relationship that they shared. He told them that even though he was leaving physically, he would always remain in their hearts if they maintained their love and devotion toward him. He promised that in the future, whenever any of them remembered him, he would be present in that memory. He suggested that the separation was not truly a separation but a transformation of the relationship from physical proximity to mental and spiritual connection. He told them that those who could love him in his absence would achieve even greater spiritual realization than those who had known him in physical form.

The departure of Krishna from Vrindavan was a watershed moment in the cosmic history of the material world. It marked the end of one phase of his pastimes and the beginning of another. The cowherd children would grow up remembering the extraordinary being who had walked among them. The gopis would spend the rest of their lives in meditation on Krishna, their love for him becoming the basis of their spiritual realization. Nanda and Yashoda would be forever honored as the earthly parents of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Vrindavan would be forever consecrated as the place where the divine had engaged in pastimes of infinite love and beauty. And Krishna, departing with his heart full of affection for those he was leaving, would carry with him to his next phase of pastimes the memory of the love that had been generated in Vrindavan—a love that would serve as an eternal template for the relationship between the finite soul and the infinite consciousness.