Gopis' Prem — The Ideal of Selfless Divine Love
The love of Gopis is absolutely pure and exemplary. The sole goal of their love is to please their Beloved. It is devoid all desires of self-gratification.
The Gopis do not ever think about themselves, their choices, interests or happiness, even for a moment. They are constantly engaged in making arrangements for pastimes of Shri Radha Krishna, so that Their pleasure and love for each other may increase. The ideology of 100% selfless divine love holds three main qualities:
1. The attitude of constantly offering everything to The Divine Couple, with a pure feeling
2. They joyously engage in activities to please the divine couple. Their joy and engagement do not wax and wane based on the attention the Divine Couple gives to them. They don’t have an iota of desire to attain self-happiness. Gopis serve the Divine Couple to please them. They have no other goal in life.
3. To feel I am not worthy of rendering any service to my beloved Shri Krishna or Swamini (Ladyship) Shri Radha Rani. It is their generosity, kindness and grace that they are letting me do something for their pleasure. Thus, they feel extremely fortunate to serve them in any possible way. They are agnostic of whether they are in close proximity to the Divine Couple or far away from them.
A Gopi, says to Lord Krishna, “O my beloved Shyam Sundar! When you go to the forest to graze the cows, our hearts burn in the fire of separation all day long. Our hearts shudder at the thought of You walking bare feet on the thorns and stones in the forest. When you come back in the evening, we get a chance to bow down to your feet. To soothe our yearning, we earnestly want to embrace soles of your lotus feet. But we do not out of fear of hurting your extremely soft lotus feet.”
As we can see, although the gopis suffer from pangs of separation, yet they don't hug Him tightly to pacify their own yearning. They ignore their own pain. In addition to that gopis are miserable to see the cuts and bruises on His feet due to walking bare feet on stones and thorns. Who can reach the depth of this love? None other than a gopi can understand these sentiments.
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