The Butter Thief
Baby Krishna had a special fondness for the butter that the cowherd women stored in their homes. He would wait until they were distracted, slip inside, find the butter pots, eat his fill — and then, in great generosity, feed the rest to his friends and to the monkeys who sat waiting outside.
The women of Vrindavana complained to Yashoda: "Your son enters our homes uninvited! He eats our butter, breaks our pots, and laughs at us when we catch him!"
Yashoda pretended to be stern. Inside, she could only laugh.
One day, while she was churning curds, she heard a crash from the kitchen. She ran to find Krishna covered in butter, feeding curds to a monkey, surrounded by broken pots — looking entirely pleased with himself.
The Rope Too Short
Yashoda caught him by the hand. She decided to bind him to a large wooden mortar, to teach him a lesson.
She took a rope. The rope was two finger-widths too short.
She added another length of rope. Still two fingers short.
Again and again she tried — the rope was always exactly two finger-widths too short.
Then Krishna allowed himself to be bound.
The *Bhagavata* says this in the most beautiful theological language: the Lord of all worlds, who cannot be bound by the ropes of Vedic knowledge or the ropes of spiritual practice, allowed Himself to be bound by the rope of a mother's love. He who is free from all bonds accepted the bonds of her love — because love is the one thing that moves the unmovable.
Yashoda's Vision
Later, when Yashoda looked into Krishna's open mouth to check if he had eaten dirt, she saw — for one vertiginous moment — the entire cosmos: all the worlds, all the stars, all of time and space contained within the mouth of her small child.
She looked away. The vision faded. Krishna was just her baby again, smiling at her.