A section from the journey
Surdas and the Child-God
Surdas is remembered as a blind singer of the Braj region, the land of Krishna's childhood. He loved God not as a distant lord but as a child: the butter-thief, the mischief-maker, the little one in his mother's arms. This sweet, parental love is called vatsalya. His great song-ocean, the Sur Sagar, paints the baby Krishna so vividly that listeners feel they can see him.
Leave the great cities now, and come to a softer land. This is , a green country of riverbanks and cow-pastures, the land where, the tradition tells, Krishna spent his childhood. Here lived a poet the people remember as blind, and yet who saw the child-god more clearly than anyone. His name was Surdas.
We have met many ways of loving God on this journey. Surdas shows us a new and very tender one. He did not love God mainly as a mighty lord, or as the formless One beyond all shape. He loved God as a little child.
Think of how a parent looks at a small beloved child. That melting, watchful, delighted love has its own name in this tradition. It is called , the love that flows downward, from the elder to the little one. Surdas poured this love out upon the baby Krishna, and it is the sweetest thing.
And what a child he sang. His Krishna is no solemn idol. He is the butter-thief, who sneaks to the pot when his mother's back is turned, and then stands there with butter on his lips and swears, wide-eyed, that he never touched it. He is the little one who toddles in the dust, who cries for the moon, who charms the whole village of Braj. Surdas makes you laugh and ache at once.
His tenderest scenes are with Krishna's foster-mother, . We see her tie the restless child to a heavy mortar to keep him still, and watch him drag it away laughing. We see her gaze into his small mouth and glimpse, for a moment, the whole universe inside it. In Surdas, the highest God and the most ordinary mother's love become one thing.
He sang of grown-up longing too, the ache of the cowherd girls, the gopis, when Krishna leaves Braj and they are left to remember him. That is the love of the beloved for the lover. But it is the child-god, above all, who is Surdas's own. No poet of Braj loved that little one more.
All these songs were gathered into a great collection called the , which means the Ocean of Sur. It is rightly named, for it is vast, and one can swim in it for a lifetime. The tradition also links Surdas to the teacher Vallabha and to a fellowship of devoted poets. Historians are not sure that link is firm, but the songs themselves are sure, and they are treasure enough.
There is something deep hidden in Surdas's tenderness. He shows us that we do not only kneel before God in awe. We may also cradle God, fret over God, delight in God, the way we delight in a child. Love has many doors. Surdas opened the gentlest of them, and a blind man led us through it to see.
Surdas loved God the way a parent loves a small child — not with awe, but with melting tenderness. Think of someone or something you have cared for so gently. What does it teach you about a softer way of loving? Rest there a moment.
Surdas sang from the heart of the Braj country, the green riverside land where Krishna is said to have spent his childhood. The tradition remembers him as blind, yet no poet ever saw the child-god more clearly. For Surdas loved God in a special way. Not as a king on a throne, nor as a formless Absolute, but as a small child: the baby who steals butter, who smears his face and lies about it, who toddles in the dust of Braj and melts his mother Yashoda's heart. This tender love, the love a parent feels for a little one, is called vatsalya. He also sang the longing of the cowherd girls, the gopis, for their beloved. His vast collection of songs is called the Sur Sagar, the Ocean of Sur. In it the scenes of Krishna's childhood are painted with such warmth and detail that the listener seems to stand in the courtyard and watch the little one play.
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