Longing and Love (a story from Srimad Bhagwatam, shared by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)

It happened 5000 yrs ago, when Lord Krishna sent Uddhava, who was his close associate and a very wise man with so much of wisdom of many techniques and meditation to the place of gopis and gopas, who were full of devotion, always singing and dancing. So, he went to give them some wisdom, to talk about liberation, but none of them were interested in listening to that. They all said, “no, tell us some story about Lord Krishna, tell us what is happening in Dwarka, where he is. We don’t want to hear all this wisdom, etc. you can keep that to yourself. But tell us what news you have of Lord Krishna? Come let’s sing and dance. We have heard enough of wisdom, now is the celebration time.

We have longing and love, and nothing else. We don’t care for the wisdom, we are happy with longing and we are happy with love. The gopis were being offered the highest wisdom by Uddhava, but all they wanted to do was to sing and dance in their love for Lord Krishna.

See how love makes you crazy! But it is good to be crazy, at least sometimes in life. That’s when all the boundaries drop; you feel one with everyone around, and one with the whole universe-and that’s called- ‘Guru tattva’.