SAINT MIRA

 
Have you all heard of Saint Mira? In India everyone knows her. People sing the bhajans sung by Mira in praise of Krishna. Mira was a very beautiful girl. She was the wife of a royal prince of a wealthy family in North India, who later became king. She loved Krishna with all her heart, but did not live at the time of Krishna, about 5,000 years ago. Mira lived 200 or 300 years ago.

Her husband did not like the way she was going about on the streets for she was the queen and queens did not mix with the crowd. She would enter the huts of the poor, the name of Krishna on her lips as she sang. She suffered many trials and threats to test her love for Krishna: she was locked up in a room, her food was poisoned, a cobra was concealed in a bouquet of flowers; she accepted all as a gift of her Lord Krishna and nothing happened, he protected her. She refused to have anything to do with anyone but her Lord Krishna.

Finally the king drove her away. She said, "If the king drives me out I have a place, but if the Lord of the Universe is displeased, I have no place." The people turned against her. As years passed, she looked radiant in her rags. Then the king came and fell at her feet. For a man in India to bow down to a woman is a sin, and to his wife, unforgivable. Yet he fell at her feet because she was sincere. When she died all revered her, and now people repeat her bhajans.

I am Krishna, I want all of you to love me as Mira loved me.