SOURCE: Bahadur, Krishna P. “The Nature of Mira's Love.” In Mīrā Bāī and Her Padas, pp. 33-8. New Delhi, India: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1998.

Sensual love and spiritual love are worlds apart. One pampers to the body, the other is balm for the soul. Krishna says, ‘As rivers enter the sea and lose themselves in it, while the sea is ever the same, so too that man achieves peace in whom all desires are extinguished, not he who clings to his desires.’¹ The person who has reached the topmost height of spirituality, sees God everywhere. To him love becomes, in Shelley's words, a kind of worship.² He attains to a state of fine frenzy: ‘The rustling of the wind is taken as indicating the Lord's approach, the dark blue sky, the sea and the landscape become symbolic of the colour of the Divine figure. Every sound seems to convey to him a message from the Lord, every form a sense of the Divine presence, and every touch the warmth of the Divine contact.’³ Mīrā's love for Krishna was of this all-encompassing kind. Her Krishna was enshrined in her heart and her soul. She saw him as Shri Ramakrishna saw Mother Kali. He said to his disciple, Swami Vivekananda, ‘God can be seen and talked to. One can talk to him just as I am talking to you. But who cares to do so? People shed torrents of tears for their wife and children, but who does so for the sake of God? If one weeps sincerely for him, he will surely manifest himself.’ Mīrā wept for Krishna. She would spend sleepless nights tossing about in bed for a sight of him. Her heart ached for him and his image was ever in it. ‘How can I stay in my home without seeing Krishna?’ She wrote.⁴ Life without him was not possible, as she said in one of her verses, ‘Friend, I can't live without Krishna.’⁵ That indeed is the mark of true love, for:

‘Love is not love
When it is mingled with regards that stand
Aloof from the entire point.’(6)

Mīrā had indeed ‘sold’ herself Krishna, as she put it in many of her verses, meaning thereby that she had surrendered herself completely to him. Though she knew that tongues would be wagging and people would malign her—loga kahaim bigarī—her surrender was so complete that she never cared for what they said. The union of the lover and the beloved is the highest expression of love.

Love in which there's laughter and sobbing,
Moaning, throbbing and clasping in tight embrace,
That alone is liberation for me,
I care for no other.(7)

The Hindu attitude to love is often misunderstood in the West: ‘The worship of Shiva with its undisguised emphasis upon the generative organs of both sexes, the linga and the yoni, does not strike the Hindu, however young and innocent, as obscene: “obscenity” might rather be attributed to the tendency found almost universally in the Occident, namely to associate sexual operations with other purely automatic activities.’⁸ Many in Mīrā's own times and even afterwards, have looked on the expression of her love for Krishna—a kind of wife-husband relationship—as corrupt, when really the corruption is in their own minds. It is the heart's purity which gives one courage, as Sir Galahad, one of the Knights of the Round Table, said.⁹ So was it with Mīrā. It was her purity which gave her strength and the courage to boldly face villainy and withstand the cruel treatment of her brother-in-law and others, after her husband's death.

Maharshi Śānḍilya calls devotion ‘ardent love of God’. Mīrā's love for Krishna was much of that kind. It permeated each pore of her body and, as she says in one of her verses, it possessed her as intimately as a dye permeates a garment—maim giradhara ranga rātī|¹⁰ The Bhāgavata enumerates nine kinds of devotion, namely, listening to the praises of the Lord; kīrtana or community singing, in the style of Chaitanya; remembering God's name; adoration by prostrating oneself before him; ritual worship; complete dependence on him; serving him as a slave would serve his master; looking on him as a companion or friend; and complete self-surrender.¹¹ The navadhā-bhakti (nine forms of devotion) was also disclosed by Rama to Shabari: (1) Serving the saints; (2) Love for hearing the deeds of the Lord; (3) Sitting humbly at the feet of the guru; (4) Singing the Lord's praises with a simple heart; (5) Complete faith in God and in his name; (6) Going beyond the senses, having a noble nature, renunciation and the company of saints; (7) Seeing the whole world pervaded by the Divine, and holding saints in greater esteem than God himself; (8) Being content with what one has and not finding fault with others; and (9) Simplicity, behaving with everyone without dissimulation, complete dependence on God and being the same in joy and sorrow.’¹²

We find most of these elements of devotion in Mīrā. She would move in the company of saints and listen with reverence to religious discourses: ‘Lord Hari’ she says, ‘I have heard that you come to the rescue of the poor and the powerless and take them across the fearful ocean of birth and death.’¹³ While with holy men she would also sing and dance in the temples. ‘There is no joy’ she says, ‘for one who does not sing the praises of God.’¹⁴ ‘It is only by this that I have been able to escape this serpent-shaped existence.’¹⁵ All religions say that God is merciful to sinners. Krishna says in the Gītā, ‘Even though one may be greatly evil, he should be considered virtuous if he has rightly resolved.’¹⁶ The Holy Bible promises forgiveness for the wrongs one does, provided he turns to God: ‘In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us.’¹⁷ The Holy Quran says likewise, ‘Say: O My servants! who have acted extravagantly against their own souls, do not despair of the mercy of God; for God forgives the sins altogether; for He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.’¹⁸ The Ādi Granth says: ‘Even if a man is prey to passion, anger, attachment and greed and guilty of the four cardinal sins, yes even murder; even though he has not listened to the scriptures, to devotional music or sacred verse; if he contemplates the Supreme Being even for a moment (with faith) he shall be saved.’¹⁹ In the same way Mīrā, addressing Krishna in one of her verses, says that he comes to the relief of those who love him and pray to him even though they be hard-hearted and lacking sympathy. She gives the example of sinners who called upon his name on which he rushed to their aid, among them even a common prostitute.²⁰ ‘Friend, I remember Krishna alone’ she says. ‘I meditate on him, and wherever his steps fall, there will I dance.’²¹ She worshipped his feet with her mind, heart and soul: ‘O mind, surrender yourself to Krishna's feet, those feet tender as a lotus, which give calm and remove the burning sorrows of existence.’²² ‘Friend,’ she says, ‘my love is for the feet of Krishna. Without his presence I find no delight in this world, which then seems illusory like a dream. Dear Beloved mine (Krishna), I recoil from all worldly ties and seek my refuge in your holy feet.’ She would worship Krishna's image in the temples of Vrindavana, and at other places where she lived. In Hindu marriages a square is made in the courtyard, formed of precious pearls, sweets, or such things as the family can afford. This is the auspicious square (chauk) in which the bride and the bridegroom sit. Mīrā worshipped Krishna thus: ‘Dear Beloved, our love is from a previous existence, how can it ever cease to possess me? I am enraptured with your lovely form. O my neighbours and friends, Krishna is in my house. Come here and sing welcome songs for him. I have made the auspicious square for him with my tears and I have surrendered to him both my body and my mind. Beloved, I have taken refuge at your feet as your slave. I have taken the vow of remaining a maid, for I have none save you.’ She makes her Giradhara food-offerings (prasāda) as is customary with idol-worshippers: ‘O Krishna, I have brought many kinds of dishes for you. Accept my offering. I know you are the world's Preserver and have no need for anything. Yet I beseech you to eat what I have brought for you, and oblige me.’ In one of her verses Mīrā dwells upon the evanescence of human existence. As a leaf once broken and fallen from the branch cannot again come back, so is life when death ends it. Addressing Krishna she says, ‘You alone can release me from this existence, the end of which is certain. I am your slave. Lord, you alone can take me across this uncrossable ocean of births and deaths.’²³ In many of her verses she depicts her complete surrender to Krishna. She speaks of being his ‘servant and slave, life after life.’²⁴ It was her desire that she should minister to him as a servant lifelong: ‘O my Beloved Krishna, keep me as a servant. I will plant your garden and look after it. I will thus be able to see you every day. I will wander about the streets of Vrindavana singing your deeds. Your sight will be my wages, and the chanting of your name my earning. Devotion alone will be my property. O Beloved, my eyes are eager to see your form, with your crown of peacock feathers, clothed in your yellow silk garment and a garland of five colours round your neck—thus my Beloved goes grazing cows in Vrindavana. To please you I will grow many green arbours. I will wear a yellow sari and come to you. Beloved, I am restless for you, so meet me at midnight on the bank of Yamuna river.’

Mīrā's love for Krishna was many-faceted. She looked on him as the Lord and Creator, the Saviour, Preserver and the Supreme Being who absolved his devotees of all sins and freed them from the rounds of rebirths. More than this, however, she surrendered herself wholly to him, body, mind, heart and soul, addressing him as Dear, Darling, Lover, Beloved, Lord, Life-companion and so forth (pīya, piyā, prītama, swāmī, sājana, janama janama ke sāthī). She was, in the words of the Bible, ‘as a bride adorned for her husband.’²⁵ She says in one of her verses: ‘O Beloved, you are my life's companion through many existences and so I remember you night and day. I cannot find peace without seeing you. I go up on the roof and keep watching for your coming. My eyes have become red due to lack of sleep and because of continually weeping for you.’²⁶ She eagerly glances down the road expecting him each minute, weeping incessantly when she is separated from him and greeting him with tears of joy when he comes. She wishes to go with him as a girl would go to her lover or a wife to her husband's home: ‘I will go to Krishna's house for he is my true lover, and when I see his charming form I can't restrain myself any longer. As soon as it is nightfall I will go to him, and come back at dawn. I will sport with him and entice him in many ways. I will wear whatever garments he gives me and eat whatever he wants me to eat. I can't stay a moment without him for our love is very deep. I will sit where he ask me to sit, and if wants to sell me to someone I will place myself in his hands.’ That is the farthest surrender can go. It is this aspect of Mīrā's poetry which is predominant. She never thought herself as separate from Krishna. Though her symbolism is in places erotic, there is nothing in it of the obscene. Mīrā's love had the touch of the Divine. She had become merged in Krishna and was one with him. It was the pure kind of love the gopīs of Vrindavana had for him—selfless all-absorbing, immaculate and endless; love which knew no satiety. It was of the nature of which Donne wrote:

‘Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste except you ravish me.’(27)

Notes

1. Bhagavadgītā, 2.70.

2. P. B. Shelley, One Word is too Often Profaned.

3. D. C. Sen, Chaitanya and his Age (slightly amended).

4. Mīrā to giradhara bina dekhe kaise rahe ghara basike |

5. Helī mhāsūm hari bina rahyau na jāya |

6. Shakespeare, King Lear, act 1, scene 1, lines 239-41.

7. camaka tamaka hāmsī sasaka, masaka jhapaṭa lapaṭāni | ye jimhi rati so rati mukuti, aura mukuti ati hāni p—Bihārī, The Satasaī

8. E. W. F. Tomlin, Great Philosophies of the East, p. 229.

9. Lord Alfred Tennyson, Sir Galahad, ‘My strength is as the strength of ten / Because my heart is pure.’

10. Songs of Mīrā, pada 8.

11. Śrvanam kīrtanam viṣnoḥ smaranam pāda sevanam | arcanam vandanam dāsyam sakhyamātmanivedanam p—(Śrīmadbhāgavata, 7.5.23)

12. Rāmacaritmānasa, Aranya Kānḍa, 34.4 and 35.1-2.

13. Mhā sunyā hari adhama udhārana | adhama udhārana bhava-bhaya-tārana |

14. Bhajana binā nara phīkā |

15. Gāyam gāyam hariguna nisidina, kāla byāla rī bāmcī |

16. Bhagavadgītā, 9.30.

17. Ephesians, 1.7.8.

18. The Holy Quran, trans., Muhammad Ali, 39.53.

19. Ādi Granth, Shri Rāga.

20. The prostitute, Jivanti, had tamed a parrot whom she taught to say ‘Rama’, and in teaching it she had to often repeat that sacred name herself too. It so happened that when the messengers of the god of Death came to take her, both she and the parrot were chanting ‘Rama’. Lord Vishnu, whose incarnation Rama is believed to be, came and took her to heaven.

21. Sāmvaro umarana sāmvaro sumirana, sāmvaro dhyāna dharūmgī | jahām jahām carana dharanīdhara, tahām tahām nirata karūmgī |

22. Mana them parasa hari ke carana| subhaga sītala kamvala komala jagata jvālā harana |

23. Lāl giradhara tarana tārana, vega karasyo pāra | dāsī mīrā lāl giradhara, jīvanā dina cyāra |

24. Mīrā hari ke hātha bikānī, janama janama kī dāsī |

25. The Holy Bible, Revelations, XXI.i.

26. Mhāmro janama marana rī sāthī, thāne nahīm bisarūm dina rātī | tuma dekhyā bina kala na parata hai, jānati merī chātī | ūmcī carh carh pantha nihārūm, roya roya amkhiyā rātī |

27. John Donne, Holy Sonnets, XIV.

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