No deity in Sanatan dharma wears as many faces as Krishna. The infant who steals butter. The boy who lifts a hill. The flute player of Vrindavan. The charioteer who speaks the Gita on a battlefield. The king of Dwarka. They seem like different beings. They are one. To understand Krishna is to hold these faces together and see what does not change behind them. ## The child The Bhagavata gives us the child first. He breaks the pots, eats the butter, ties himself in knots that his mother cannot untie. Yashoda binds him with a rope and the rope is always too short by two fingers, however much she adds. The lesson sits inside the play. The infinite allows itself to be bound by love, and even then cannot be fully contained. Krishna is caught by affection, not by force. This is the first thing he teaches, before he says a word. ## The flute In Vrindavan he plays, and the gopis leave their homes to come to the sound. The rasa lila is not a romance. It is an image of the soul drawn to the divine, leaving everything lesser behind when the call comes. The flute is hollow. That is why it can be played. The tradition keeps this image close. The one who empties himself becomes an instrument for a music that is not his own. ## The teacher Then the play ends and the field of Kurukshetra begins. Arjuna sets down his bow. He will not fight. Krishna, his charioteer, does not comfort him with easy words. He teaches him to act. Do your duty without grasping at the fruit. See the self as deathless. Offer the work, and the worry that travels with it, to the divine. The Gita is Krishna's longest teaching, and its centre is simple: live fully, hold nothing. ## The same one The butter thief and the Gita's teacher are not two. The same Krishna who let himself be bound by Yashoda asks Arjuna to bind himself to duty. The same one who emptied himself into a flute asks the seeker to empty himself of ego. This is the use of a deity with many faces. Each face is a door. The devotee who cannot reach the philosopher can reach the child. The one who tires of stories can sit with the Gita. All the doors open into the same room. ## How he is approached Some come to Krishna through bhakti, singing his names, keeping his image, weeping at his absence and laughing at his play. Some come through the Gita, treating it as a manual for a steady life. Both are right. He is reached by love and he is reached by understanding, and in the end the two meet. Krishna does not ask to be understood completely. He asks to be loved, and to be remembered in action. Hold the flute and the chariot in one thought, and you have begun. ## Related reading - [The Bhagavad Gita in Daily Life: Chapter 2 Explained](/sanatan-katha/bhagavad-gita-chapter-2-daily-life) - [Krishna Janmashtami: The Midnight Birth](/sanatan-katha/krishna-janmashtami) - [Dwarka: Krishna's Lost Kingdom](/sanatan-katha/dwarka-krishnas-kingdom)