Sharing a good read, (partially edited) on Lord Krishna. It signifies the importance of living in harmony with the many contradictions of life.
He can play the flute and he can dance, and with the same ease he can fight his enemy in the battlefield with his chakra, his wheel-like weapon. He can play pranks with the girls of his village, running away with their clothes when they are bathing in the river, and he can also make the most profound statements like in the Gita. He can be a thief and a perfect together. Krishna is one person in so many diverse roles — and that is his grandeur, his glory. And this is the uniqueness of Krishna, his individuality.
Krishna is a blending of contradiction, a beautiful synthesis of all contradictions. These contradictions aren’t really contradictory. In fact, all of life’s truth is a blending, a synthesis of contradictions. The whole of life is based on contradictions, and there is no discordance in those contradictions; rather, there is full accord, absolute harmony among them.
We think peace and ‘disturbancer’ are two different things. But are they really different? Where does peace end and disturbance begin? In the dictionary, peace and disturbance, happiness and suffering, life and death, have opposite meanings, but in real life it is peace that turns into disturbance, happiness that turns into suffering, life that turns into death. Again, in real life, disorder turns into order, suffering into happiness and death into life. In real life, light turns into darkness, morning turns into evening and day into night and vice versa.In real life plus and minus are not opposites. In real life, all seeming opposites are complementary, an interplay of one and the same energy. If we can see through this eternal harmony of life, its supreme, sublime music, its significance, then alone can we understand Krishna. That is why we call him the complete incarnation. He is a complete symbolisation of life; he represents life totally.
Whenever someone is fulfilled, after he attains full flowering of life and being, he will necessarily become multidimensional, he will be many persons rolled into one. Whenever someone attains the totality of life, there will be a consistency in his inconsistencies, there will be a harmony in his contradictions. Whenever someone achieves the peak of life, the extremes of life will meet in him with perfect cohesion and unity. We may not see that unity because of our poor vision, but it is there.
With all these contradictions, there is only one Krishna, and that is his greatness and glory. His significance, his greatness lies in the fact that he is all things together, all things rolled into one, all contradictions living hand in hand, and there is a great harmony in all his contradictions.
Excerpts edited from Krishna: The Man And His Philosophy, Osho Times International, courtesy Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com