Krishna's Hunger

Back in Hastināpura, Duryodhana performed a great sacrifice, and hosted the fearsome sage Durvāsā, famous for his terrible temper, together with his ten thousand disciples; and Durvāsā, pleased with Duryodhana's lavish hospitality, offered him a boon.

And Duryodhana, ever plotting the ruin of his cousins, asked a cruel thing: that Durvāsā should go and visit the Pāṇḍavas in the forest, and go at a time Duryodhana carefully chose, late in the day, after Draupadī would have finished serving the day's meals, so that there would be no food left to offer the sage and his ten thousand, and the irritable Durvāsā, finding no hospitality, would curse the Pāṇḍavas in his wrath.

And it fell out as Duryodhana had planned. Durvāsā arrived with his host just after Draupadī had eaten and cleaned the Akshayapātra, the miraculous vessel given by the Sun God, which supplied food each day until she took her own meal, whereupon its power ceased until the next day. Now the vessel was empty and spent for the day, and here were ten thousand hungry ascetics and their terrible master, and no food, and the certainty of a devastating curse.

And Draupadī, in her helplessness, did the one thing left to her: she prayed, fervently, to Krishna.

And Krishna appeared at once, and said: I am very hungry; bring me something to eat first. And Draupadī cried out in confusion, pointing to the empty vessel. But Krishna took up the pot and looked into it, and found clinging to its rim a single grain of rice and a scrap of vegetable, and he ate that one grain, with satisfaction, saying: may the Lord of the universe be pleased with this.

And in that instant, Durvāsā and his ten thousand disciples, bathing in the river before their meal, felt their stomachs grow full, wholly satisfied, as though they had eaten a great feast; and, unable to swallow another bite, and ashamed now to demand a meal they could not eat, they quietly departed, and the curse never came.

The meaning of this lovely episode is set in its heart: that when the Supreme Soul is satisfied, the whole universe is satisfied; for all beings are, at the deepest level, one in him, and to feed him is to feed all. Krishna ate one grain of rice, and ten thousand men were filled; because the many are joined in the One, and what satisfies the source satisfies all that flows from it.

It is a teaching of the deep unity of all things, that we are not the separate islands we seem, but branches of a single life; and Draupadī's simple, desperate turning to Krishna, when every other resource had failed, once again brought the grace that human effort could not.