Mirabai Immersed in Gopi-Bhava

Mirabai was the supreme bhakta. When she danced, in her legs revealed her surrender to her Lord; when she sang, in her words revealed her yearning to unite with Him. Neither a dancer, nor singer, Mira was ‘bhakti’ incarnate – surrender in love, a surrender beyond questions, calculations, fear, and all thoughts of profit or loss, something that Chaitanya called Gopi-bhava – single-pointed submission as Gopis had for Krishna. It is said that once sage Narad saw Narayana tormented by acute headache. A bewildered Narad asked him if he could do anything that would relieve him of pain. Narayana told him that the dust of someone’s feet alone could do it. Narad could give the dust of his own feet but how could he, an humble devotee of Narayana, do it? He went to Narayana’s spouses but considering it a sin they too declined. Narad thought he could find someone in Brij who could give his or her feet’s dust. He went to Brij, met Gopis and told them all about Narayana’s pain and the remedy he sought. Not a moment of hesitation, Gopis collected a basketful dust of their feet and gave it to Narad. A sin or virtue, beyond all calculations of profit and loss the concern of Gopis was their Lord’s relief – the Chaitanya’s Gopi-bhava. This was the form of Mira’s ‘bhakti’, and in this Mira discovered her ultimate strength to face whatever came her way : ‘Koyi nindau koyi bindau main chalungi chal aputhi’ –whether condemned or lauded Mira would go the way not treaded ever before.

To Mira, the ties between her Lord and her were those of love, the love that looked like this world’s. Not an inhabitant of this world, Mira discovers in it the frame for her Lord’s picture, in the world’s sensuous ways, her Lord’s ways, and in its idiom, the diction to communicate with Him. Not a symbolic or elemental merger, Mira desired, with her body, soul and all faculties, that her Lord, when He met her, rushed to her, smiled and embraced her – ‘Uthi hans kantha lagao’. In love, her form of devotion and its essence, Mira sought release from the cycle of birth and death : ‘Jana Mira Kun Girdhara milaya, dukha metan sukha bheri, Ruma ruma sata bhayi ura mein, miti gayi phera pheri’ – the moment Mira met Girdhara, sorrows vanished and happiness emerged, all agitations of mind and body extinguished, and the cycle of birth and death is destroyed.

This white marble sculpture from Jaipur shows Mirabai dressed in the simple yellow sari of a yogi, playing on a stringed instrument with her right hand and cymbals with the left. There is a pleasant, inward looking serenity on her face, representing her continuous immersion in the Gopi-bhava.