Sri Krishna Jayanti Fri 23 August – The Advent of an Avatar

This week, on Friday 23 August, it is one of the biggest holy days in India for the year, namely Sri Krishna Janmastami, or the birthday of Krishna. It’s like Christmas in the west. Curiously India has many such festival days, so it’s not as exclusive as Christmas, but this particular celebration is definitely one of the very top events of the Indian calendar year.

Preparations go on all day, while some aspirants even fast until the main event at midnight, said to be the very hour of the birth five thousand years ago or so. Astrologers have a more exact time point, and even a horoscope for the birth hour, under the star constellation of Rohini. The ancient Vedic Sanskrit texts tell of a time on earth’s history 5000 years ago, when civilization was apparently already more sophisticated on more metaphysical levels.

For example, although military prowess and dominance were still fought over among warring nations, there was no combustion weaponry. There was horseback, chariot and archery, but the archers knew mantras that released a different type of explosive weaponry. It was mantra-powered weaponry. The Sanskrit word for this is “brahmastra”, from “brahma” meaning spiritual and “astra” meaning weapon or bolt. A mystic weapon technology was available to the fighters of the day, where mantras were recited with each arrow with the ability to hit one person in a crowd, or a crowd with one arrow. And battles went on sometimes. So it was quite a different and apparently mythic age.

Yet still some things were perennial. With such power there were still enemies and tyrants and power-hungry leaders who were badly behaved toward their citizens and any opposition. The actual texts describe it as a time when “the world became overburdened by the unnecessary defense force of different kings who were actually demons.”

So our current socio-political circumstances today are nothing new. Empires have come and gone throughout history for a lot longer than some historians are willing to believe or have any knowledge of because knowledge is limited, and archaeology is speculative.

Nevertheless the Vedas tell of a time when a solution to the burdensome military build up was for an incarnation of a god from another realm, known by many names, to appear. Bhagavad Gita has Krishna tell of his own incarnations in this way:

परित्राणाय साधुनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् ।
धर्मसंस्थानार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥ ८ ॥

paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ
vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām
dharma-saṁsthāpanārthāya
sambhavāmi yuge yuge

“To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.”
Bhagavad Gita as it is ch 4:8 translated by Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta

And this Friday 23 August is the annual date of the incarnation of the Krishna avatar, one of ten primary avatars over the millennia. The day in the lunar calender is called Krishna Janmashtami, “janma” meaning birth and “ashta” meaning eight. It is the eighth day of this particular lunar month in the waning moon cycle. Every year on this lunar day the celebrations bring great joy to millions of families all over India.

Krishna is said to appear in order to destroy the tyrannical oppressors, protect the pious and thirdly establish religion. Now this word religion may be misunderstood here. If we look at the actual Sanskrit text, we can see the first word in the third line is “dharma”. This is the original word, which can sometimes be translated as “religion” but it is not the full translation. The deeper understanding of dharma is more like duty, calling or most specifically “inherent constitutional nature”.

For example the inherent nature of sugar is to be sweet and of fire to burn. It is something like being in harmony with the Way or the Tao/Dao. In other words the religion or duty of something is for it to be in its original nature. So the idea is that the earth can be returned to The Way, or its natural constitutional position of harmony in alignment with the source, with heaven and earth.

So on Friday we can spend the day celebrating the advent of a liberator of humanity in the fight against the demonic military overburden on the Earth’s surface. They may be posing as royalty of people of high rank, but even they will fall, if not to an avatar, then ultimately to Time, another incarnation of the source who awaits us all in the form of death. Therefore, while alive we can celebrate, while meditating on realigning with our original dharma, or nature, as being in quality one with, but in quantity small parts and parcels of the vast original cause of all causes.