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Monsters in Krishna lila

Yugalkishor - November 30, 2013 6:22 pm

  • I was going to try to ask this during the Swami call on sunday but didnt get a chance to reserve time for the question and had to leave the call early.

    But, anyway, I've been thinking of this stuff for sometime, and no little part of it has been influenced by reading Tolkien

     

    Question for Maharaja/SCS :


  • In Krishna lila we see all sorts of various demons and monsters. What are the significance of these creatures? Are they merely personifications of deviant human desires (lust, avarice, envy, etc) made manifest for Krishna's pleasure of destroying them? to be presented there so as to teach us here? but then again, if they are part of the nitya lila are they then not actually nitya-siddhas under the control of yoga-maya, whom then must have a place and a face as other divine personages of Krishna's company? Do their wicked semblances retain any eternal significations?


  • Some context to my thinking about these things should be considered: I am currently studying Paul Ricoeur's Symbolism of Evil where he discusses the tripartite symbolism (defilement-sin-guilt) of evil in light of the phenomenology of confession. In other words, we can only know the meaning of these symbols according to the recorded profession of the faithful through a 'sympathetic re-enactment' of confession... There, he makes use of a few myths, namely, the Babylonian cosmic-drama of wicked gods (world inherently evil), the Adamic myth (genesis 2 creation story), the tragic vision of existence (Greek tragedy), and the Orphic myth of the Exiled Soul (what I beleive stands closest to the "Hindu" (or, more accurately) Vedantic idea of matter-spirit substance dualism; body as the prison of the soul) - - all of which is highly interesting, but for these purposes I am most affected by the comparison and divergence of the biblical creation story and the orphic -- both contain an instant of "The Fall" (of man).

  • In Genesis 2, the character of the serpent is developed as the negative-force working as an external element of temptation and seduction.

    Ricoeur says that "the serpent is already there and already evil, a retention of the inherently evil cosmos of the babylonians which the Yahwist writer was attempting to repudiate" (paraphrased)

  • this made me think about all the monsters in our own mythology (please know that when I call Krishna lila mythological I mean to elevate it from a simply literalistic-pseudo-historical interpretation; mythology is that which REVEALS to us the nature of our existence and the specifically human condition, not an abuse of reason, an antiquated etiology nor a false legend).
    So back to the original question: It it simply for Krishna's pleasure and the acting out of the divine play that these beasts and demons gain entrance into Vraja-loka? What is their ontological statuses? Do they have eternal identities?
    You may be able to see how questions such as this especially when connected to the anthropological genesis of the biblical narrative beg an answer to theodicy, however I am not interested in this case about omnipotence, all-goodness and the origins of evil; rather, I am curious for an elucidation of the characters themselves , whether they have any back-stories, and what their significance may be in lieu of the greater schema and purposes of Krishna's life.
    Though, I think to interject here that Vishnu incarnates during periods of irreligion to vanquish the demons and liberate the devotees begs the question and makes the monster-identity that much more nebulous. We are talking about lila-avatar, though discussing a similar topic in connection to the concept of yuga-avatar would be interesting in its own right.
    Cheers! Hari bol!
    Yugal Kishor das

 

Brahma Dasa - November 30, 2013 7:05 pm

Here's Q & A on this from Sanga.

 

 

Liberating the demons

swamitripurari.com/2011/09/liberating-the-demons/

 

 

The demons within

swamitripurari.com/2004/09/the-demons-within/

 

lilas-avataras-and-demons

http://swamitripurari.com/2002/07/lilas-avataras-and-demons/

 

 

Demons in Krsna lila

swamitripurari.com/.../demons-in-krsna-lila-the-four-births-of-jaya-and- vijaya/

Swami - December 1, 2013 12:27 am

Previous identities of many of them are cited in Garga-samhita. For the most part they are depicted as jivas whose offenses resulted in their participation in the manifest lila. This manifest lila is a combination of the material and spiritual. It is often said that these monsters do not appear in the unmanifest lila. Although Sanatana Goswami seems to find some of them there, they do not appear in exactly the same sense that they do in the manifest lila. There they either appear in part or there are rumors about them appearing that serve to facilitate the expression of various emotions on the part of the Vrajavasis.

 

They also serve to help sadhakas think of Krsna lila in a manner that allows sadhakas to focus on removing anarthas. They are "real" within lila. Lila is in part a subjective reality appearing in the meditative mind influenced by bhava bhakti that fits within the parameters of God's play.