Salutation to the Krishna who is the Universal Guru. Inspite of making all these mistakes, Krishna is a universal guru, who started to tell people even from his childhood days and few events which are generally considered as mischief as most of people. But these events contains a lot of meanings which can be understood in different levels.

Theft of Curd and Butter:

Let us consider a small event and try to understand its meaning in few ways. In childhood days, Sri Krishna used to steal curd and butter from houses of neighbors. They would chase Krishna and try to catch Him, saying, “Here is Krishna stealing butter,” but Krishna would flee and enter another house, where He would again devise some means to steal butter. Then the cowherd men would again try to capture Krishna, saying, “Here is the butter thief.” And they would be angry. But Krishna would simply smile, and they would forget everything.

Sometimes Krishna would enter the house of a neighbor, and if He found no one there, He would release the calves before the time for the cows to be milked. The calves are actually supposed to be released when their mothers are milked, but Krishna would release them before that time, and naturally the calves would drink all the milk from their mothers. When the cowherd men saw this, they would chase Krishna and try to catch Him, saying, “Here is Krishna doing mischief,” but Krishna would runaway and enters another house, where he would again devise some means to steal butter and curd.

One day Sri Krishna set out for playing with His friends and went into the house of a Gopika. Baala Krishna saw that the daughter-in-law of the house was sleeping. Seeing that, Shri Krishna ate away all the curd in their house and he put little curd on the Gopika’s mouth, who was sleeping, and ran away. Thinking that the daughter-in-law herself ate all the curd, the mother-in-law punished her. Not able to understand the Mahopadesham of the Lord, a gopika complained this to Yashoda as an act of mischief.

Sometimes, in their presence, Krishna would begin eating the curd and butter. There was no need for Krishna to eat butter, since His belly was always full, but He would try to eat it, or else He would break the pots and distribute the contents to the monkeys. In this way, Krishna was always engaged in mischief-making. If in any house Krishna could not find any butter or curd to steal, Krishna would go into a room and agitate the small children sleeping there by pinching them, and when they cried Krishna would go away.

Lord Krishna started testing Gopikas in his childhood itself by stealing their wealth, milk curd and butter only. By selling these items, their livelihood was earned. It is the fruit of their hard work because they do hard work in serving the cows. The butter is the essence of their wealth. They do not have other forms of currency as we have today. All their currency was only milk, curd and butter, which were stored in the pots. Those pots were their banks. The Lord straightly attacked their wealth, which was their basic livelihood. Most of the Gopikas were angry with the Lord. Their anger was reinforced because the Lord is having sufficient milk, curd and butter in his house.

A small event of taking butter and breaking pots which should be understood in different levels. Let us consider few levels of the truth

From a point of view, one can tolerate to some extent if a poor man steals in your house. But, if a person richer than yourself by many times steals in your house, your anger will touch the climax. Only a few Gopikas were happy about the theft of the Lord in their houses. Only such Gopikas passed the test and were blessed by the Lord. They loved the Lord more than their lives and hence, they were not angry when their livelihood was stolen. In fact, this point was proved further by their jump into fire on hearing the end of the Lord.

Milk and buttermilk in general represents anything which is supposed to be shared. Through this event, Jagadguru Shri Krishna wanted to teach us that never should a thing which is of use to everybody, and hence which is supposed to be shared, should be stored for personal use with selfishness. That is why the Lord shared the milk stored by the Gopika among all and later broke the pots so that the Gopika should no longer store for them. Sharing the good things with others is the main point here. One should not be greedy. That is a sin, since this stored asset, is neither useful to the person who stores it nor to anyone else.
Thinking about the work of releasing calves before feeding children or taking milk does contain a great inner meaning. Here master want to people realize Cow also have feelings, If it can’t feed its calf it will suffer a lot because of the starvation of its calves. People should consider feeding calf is as important as feeding their own children and more important than taking milk to store. Through this small thing, Krishna wants to teach people, to be compassionate not only to humans but also towards animals.

The shabdam Ghatam represents ashaashvata bandhams — by getting detached to which only enables one to realize the Paramaatma in everyone and thus forget difference of you and me. To let people know about oneness. Taking butter and breaking of pot can be considered with other meaning: Leave all the unnecessary things (body) and its relations to mind about the only thing (Atman).

An important point to be observed in this connection is that the childish leaning of stealing is there even in Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and therefore this leaning is not artificial. However, in the spiritual relationship there is no inebriety to this stealing, as there is in the material world.

From Yasodha’s point of view, In enjoying Krishna's attitude of stealing butter very secretly, Mother Yasoda experienced the ecstasy of maternal love by smelling His head, sometimes patting His body with her hand, sometimes offering blessings, sometimes ordering Him, sometimes gazing at Him, sometimes maintaining Him and sometimes giving Him good instructions not to become a thief. Such activities are in maternal ecstatic love.

Here with only these small incidents that were common in those days, Krishna used to say different truths at different levels. These are only small aspects which came across through me in several places.

Atma Namasthe