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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Shaunaka Rishi Das, Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Good morning.

Today is Janmashtami, the festival celebrating Krishna’s birth. Temples all over the UK prepared for weeks, even months, for this most jolly of Hindu celebrations. Even though Diwali is trumpeted as the Hindu festival, if we look under the hood, Janmashtami is the one that attracts the crowds. One UK temple expects to attract more than 60,000 devotees today.

The reason they come is because Krishna is the most popular of the many Hindu deities. When I first heard of Hinduism, I heard that they worship many Gods. When I first encountered Hinduism, I found that they worship one God in many different ways – which, for me, was very different, and it was a different way of appreciating God. In that way we look for the aspect of God that attracts our heart, and devote ourselves to him, or her. It seems God’s a bit woke.

Krishna is very attractive. He’s a child, full of beauty, and love, and fun. He’s also a rascal. Once, the story goes, he stole the butter the dairymaids made, and when they caught him, with butter smeared over his chubby little face, he denied it. What a scallywag. The dairymaids, the Gopis, brought him to his mother but as they did, they fell in love with him again, and when they reached his mother, Yashoda, she wanted to chastise him, but could only smile at her adorable boy, with tears of love in her eyes. That never happened to me when I was caught stealing.

I think that’s the appeal of Krishna. He reminds us that love is the heart of religion.
It seems strange to think of God as being young, and in the stories, no one realises he is God, they just love him, and he just loves them. And we go to the temple to share in that love.

Dear Lord, please feel free to make my heart soft like the Gopi’s butter, and then steal it.

Hare Krishna.