Uddhava Gita: Song of the Bee (Part 6)

Bhramara Gita - Gopis' message

In a flashback, when Uddhava visited Vrindavan as Krishna's messenger, the Gopis responded to a bee (bhramara) as if speaking to Krishna. Their profound message of love-in-separation, the Bhramara Gita, reveals the highest reaches of devotion. Even Uddhava aspires to be dust at their feet.

The Song of the Bee

Before we move to Krishna's final departure, the Bhagavatam takes us back to a pivotal moment years earlier, when Uddhava, at Krishna's request, journeyed to Vrindavan as a messenger. What he encountered there transformed his understanding of devotion forever. The Bhramara Gita (Song of the Bee) that the Gopis sang is considered the highest expression of divine love in all of Vedic literature.

Uddhava's Mission to Vrindavan

After killing Kamsa and establishing Himself in Mathura, Krishna could not return to Vrindavan. The simple cowherd life was over; royal duties awaited. But His heart remained with the Gopis, those village women whose love for Him transcended all understanding.

Krishna sent His dearest friend Uddhava to console them. Uddhava was a jnani, a philosopher who understood the nature of the Self. Surely, Krishna thought, he could help the Gopis understand that the Lord was never truly absent, that He existed in their hearts always.

Uddhava arrived in Vrindavan at twilight, that magical hour when the Gopis' longing for Krishna was most acute. He found them not in mourning but in a strange state, simultaneously devastated and ecstatic, their minds so absorbed in Krishna that they could perceive nothing else.

The State of the Gopis

The Gopis were experiencing vipralambha, love in separation, which the devotional traditions consider higher even than love in union. When the beloved is present, love may become complacent. When absent, love becomes a fire that consumes everything else.

Every tree reminded them of Krishna. Every sound of the flute, whether real or imagined, made their hearts leap and then crash. They wandered the forests where they had danced with Him, touching the places where His feet had touched, speaking to plants that had sheltered His form.

They no longer cared for their homes, their families, their duties. Society called them mad. But they knew a truth society could not comprehend: that having tasted divine love, everything else was ashes.

Uddhava watched, utterly silenced. His philosophical knowledge suddenly seemed like dry leaves compared to the lush forest of their devotion.

The Bee Arrives

As Uddhava sat with the Gopis, a large black bee, a bhramara, buzzed around them, attracted perhaps by the flower garlands they wore. The bee landed at the feet of Radha, the foremost among the Gopis.

In her state of complete absorption in Krishna, Radha saw not a bee but a messenger from her beloved. The bee was dark like Krishna's complexion. It hummed like His flute. And like Krishna, it flitted from flower to flower, never staying with any single blossom.

What followed was not madness but the highest sanity, a love so intense that it perceived the beloved everywhere, in everything.

The Bhramara Gita

Radha began to speak to the bee, and through the bee, to Krishna Himself. Her words, known as the Bhramara Gita, oscillate between accusation and adoration, anger and devotion, the full spectrum of love's intensity.

"O bee, O messenger of the deceitful one!" she began. "Why do you touch my feet? I know you have been sent by Krishna. Do you think we are as fickle as He is, ready to receive any messenger?"

She continued with bitter sweetness: "We know your Master well. He promises love but gives pain. He speaks honeyed words while planning departure. Go back and tell Him, we village girls have learned our lesson. His artful speeches no longer move us."

But even as she spoke in anger, her love overflowed: "And yet... and yet... tell Him that we cannot forget Him. Our hearts are stubborn fools. He has stolen them and left us with nothing but memories."

"Does He remember us at all?" Radha asked the bee. "Does He recall the moonlit nights by the Yamuna? Does He ever think of the simple girls who gave Him everything and received in return only the privilege of remembering His smile?"

The other Gopis joined in, each pouring out her heart to the buzzing insect:

"We know His nature, He left His birthplace, Gokula; He left Vrindavan; He will leave Mathura too, and wherever He goes next. He is the all-attractive, and the all-abandoning."

"But what choice have we? Can the river choose not to flow toward the ocean? Can the moonlight choose not to reflect the moon? We are His, whether He claims us or not."

The Paradox of Divine Love

The Bhramara Gita reveals the paradox at the heart of devotion. The Gopis' words seem accusatory, but their tone is one of complete surrender. They complain of being abandoned, yet they wouldn't trade their pain for any other pleasure.

This is the mystery: separation from the Divine, when experienced as intense longing, becomes a form of union more intimate than physical presence. The Gopis, in their pain, were more connected to Krishna than those who saw Him daily in Mathura.

Their love asked for nothing, not even Krishna's presence. They loved Him because they could not do otherwise. They remembered Him because forgetting was impossible. Their devotion was purified of all self-interest, all expectation, all demand.

Uddhava's Transformation

Uddhava sat stunned. He had come to teach the Gopis about spiritual knowledge, to explain that the Self is ever-present, that separation is illusion, that the wise person remains undisturbed by presence or absence.

But what could he teach these women? They had transcended knowledge altogether. Their love was its own knowing, its own liberation. They didn't need to understand that Krishna was in their hearts, they felt it with every breath.

Uddhava, the great philosopher, fell at their feet. "I came to console you," he confessed, "but I find myself the one consoled. I came to teach you wisdom, but I am the student. Whatever knowledge I possess is worthless compared to the dust of your feet."

He continued: "I thought I understood devotion. I was Krishna's friend, His confidant, His companion in Mathura. But now I see I knew nothing. Your love in separation is greater than my love in presence."

The Prayer for the Gopis' Dust

Uddhava then uttered one of the most famous verses in the Bhagavatam, a verse that would echo through centuries of devotional poetry:

"Let me be born as grass, as a bush, as any low thing in Vrindavan, so that the dust raised by the Gopis' feet might fall upon my head. These women have abandoned everything, family, reputation, religious duty, for Krishna alone. No sage, no philosopher, no yogi has achieved what they have achieved."

This is the message Uddhava carried back to Mathura. This is what he remembered when, years later, he received his own final teaching from Krishna. The Uddhava Gita that Krishna spoke was profound, but the Bhramara Gita that the Gopis sang was profounder still.

The Bee's Final Departure

Eventually, the bee flew away, and Radha's expression changed. For a moment, alarm crossed her face, was Krishna leaving again? Then peace returned. Let the bee go where it would. Krishna was not in the bee, or in Mathura, or in any particular place. He was in her heart, and from there, He could never depart.

The Gopis' song to the bee became a teaching for all time: love that grasps destroys itself, but love that releases becomes infinite. The Gopis' willingness to let Krishna go, while never stopping to love Him, was the secret of their perfection.

Why This Flashback Now?

Why does the Bhagavatam interrupt the narrative of Krishna's departure to recall this earlier episode? Because Uddhava, about to practice in Badrinath the teachings Krishna gave him, needed to remember what he learned in Vrindavan.

Philosophy and knowledge are powerful tools. But without the love that the Gopis exemplified, even the highest wisdom remains incomplete. Uddhava would carry with him both the intellectual framework of the Uddhava Gita and the devotional fire of the Bhramara Gita.

In the Himalayas, as he meditated on the Self, he would remember dark-eyed village women speaking to a bee. And that memory would lift his practice from mere technique to genuine devotion, from the head to the heart, from knowing to loving.