Krishna's Final Teaching

(Krishna's voice carries an unusual finality.)

Krishna: "Uddhava, I have shared with you the essence of all that needs to be known. Now let me distill it further, for the time approaches when you must carry this light forward."

Uddhava: "(his heart trembling) Speak, Lord. I will hold every word."

Krishna: "First principle: You are not the body. You have never been born. You will never die. What changes is not you. What you are is the unchanging witness of all change."

Uddhava: "I understand, Krishna."

Krishna: "Second principle: The mind is not your master but your instrument. Train it through meditation. Purify it through devotion. Direct it toward Me. An undisciplined mind is the cause of all bondage; a disciplined mind is the path to liberation."

Uddhava: "How shall I train it in Your absence?"

Krishna: "That is the third principle: I am never absent. I dwell in every heart as the Supersoul. I am the light of consciousness itself. Where you are, there I am. When you think of Me, I am thinking through you. There is no separation except in the imagination of the bound."

Uddhava: "(his eyes glistening) Yet I will miss Your visible form, Krishna."

Krishna: "Feel this moment, dear one. This love between us — it is eternal. It does not depend on physical presence. The gopis of Vrindavan felt greater union in separation than in meeting. They found Me in every tree, every breeze, every flute's echo. So too will you find Me everywhere when you look with love's eyes."

Uddhava: "What shall I teach others?"

Krishna: "Fourth principle: Teach them to see Me in all beings. The saint and the sinner, the human and the animal, the learned and the ignorant — all are My portions. One who sees Me everywhere and everywhere in Me never loses sight of Me, and I never lose sight of them."

Uddhava: "And if they ask about dharma, about duty?"

Krishna: "Dharma flows from love, Uddhava. Tell them to act without selfish motive. To serve without expectation. To give without counting. To love without conditions. This is dharma's heart. All the rules and regulations are training wheels; love is the destination."

Uddhava: "Will there be a time when Your teaching is forgotten?"

Krishna: "Truths get buried under rituals and disputes. Yet in every age, the essence is preserved by the few who truly understand. You are now among those few. Through you and those like you, the flame passes on."

(Krishna pauses, and the silence seems to hold eternity)

Krishna: "My final teaching, Uddhava: Remember that all of this — the world, the teaching, the teacher, the student — is My play. Do not take it too seriously, yet do not take it too lightly. Dance with the drama, yet know yourself as the stage on which it unfolds."

(Uddhava prostrates at Krishna's feet)

Uddhava: "I am forever Yours. In this life and all lives, in remembrance and in forgetting, in union and in separation — I am Yours."

Krishna: "And I am yours, Uddhava. This friendship is eternal. Go now, and share what you have received. The teaching finds its completion not in the one who learns but in the one who teaches others."

(The words echo in Uddhava's heart like temple bells, ringing forever.)