11

Picture the high hour of noon in Vṛndāvana, when the sun climbs to the crown of the sky and unrolls a canopy of fire across the whole forest. The sand of the path glows, the heat spreads like a burning awning overhead. And yet, down that scorching road, a slender figure is walking, hurrying, half-afraid and wholly eager, toward a bowerhouse where Her Beloved waits. Her body is soft as fresh butter, Her two feet tender as opening lotuses, and still the burning earth means nothing to Her. O the unstoppable course of love, premaka gati anivāra! She gives up every caution, every thought of who might see, every care for Her own comfort, because one longing has swallowed all the rest: to be touched by Śyāma, to be near Him, to serve Him. By Śrīmatī's own grace Śrīpāda is shown this picture, and beholding it even the tradition that adores Her stands astonished, murmuring that love has a tender taste and an amazing power, that its road cannot be reasoned with and cannot be turned back. Her desire to serve Him is so strong that She conquers every obstacle, and so She comes easily to the trysting-bower.

She reaches the kuñja. And now look at Kṛṣṇa. The instant eager Śyāma sees Her moon-bright face appear among the leaves, His whole being floods with happiness. For Kṛṣṇa is Himself the ocean of rasa, the very form of all nectarean spiritual flavours, the One of whom the Upaniṣads sing, raso vai saḥ, God is the taste itself, and ānandaṁ brahma, God is bliss without a floor. And Rādhā's face is the moon that draws the tides of that ocean upward. When She comes near, waves of beauty swell across the matchless sea of sweetness that is Kṛṣṇa, and His very limbs heave and shimmer like cresting waters. Behold it now, held open before you: a devotee relishes Kṛṣṇa's sweetness in the measure of his love, and because Rādhā loves Him most of all, She relishes His sweetness to the very utmost. Seeing His sweet smile and His playful brows, She is agitated with love. Her glances are restless not from idleness but from love; they swim like quick bright fishes in the waves of the ocean of Nāgara-rāja's beauty. Her eyes do not merely look. With them She paints picture after picture upon the canvas of His heart; with them She pours an oblation of love into the fire of His longing.

Notice the one word the tradition lingers over like a seed hidden in sweet fruit. It would have been natural to say Her eyes sway with prema, with love. But here the word is praṇaya, and there is a reason. Praṇaya is love grown so great that the lover no longer feels the beloved's body, mind and heart to be anything separate from her own; this is the very definition the tradition gives, the love of mutual self-surrender that Rūpa Gosvāmī's school names in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi as paraspara-vaśībhāva, each falling under the sway of the other. There is no longer a wall of two. His joy is Her joy, His breath Her breath, what touches Him touches Her first. So when Her eyes sway with praṇaya, they sway because His delight is moving through Her like a tide through a bay. And today, the tradition tells us, Nāgarī-maṇi, the jewel of all lady-loves, is generous beyond Her custom. She lays down Her usual proud, unsubmissive mood, the sweet māna that so often guards Her, and She lets Her gallant hold sway over Her. Her eyes grow restless with surrender. How many tender amorous moods She lets play across that fickleness! How beautifully She walks, how beautifully She sits, how beautifully She turns Her face and eyes, until amorous longing wakes and rises in the heart of Her Beloved.

And there is one who watches, blessed beyond telling. The maidservant of the bower understands that the love-play of the Divine Couple is imminent, and so, with the perfect tact of a true servant, she slips out of the kuñja. She does not intrude upon what is most private. Yet she is not exiled from joy, for through the latticed windows of the bowerhouse she may behold the yugala-vilāsa, the play of the Two, and her eyes drink what no austerity could ever earn. When the love-play is done she returns within, and there she finds Śrīmatī seated upon the love-bed, and it is as though streams of sweetness are gushing from every limb of Her body, flooding the bower with light. Nāgara sits enchanted, unable to look away, insatiably relishing the sweetness of Her form without ever reaching the bottom of His thirst. And through the very eyes of Śyāmasundara the maidservant sees what Rādhā truly is: the young presiding goddess of the kuñja, whose limbs do not merely shine but light the whole grove from within, vṛndāṭavī-nava-nikuñja-gṛhādhidevyāḥ, the adhidevī of the fresh bower-cottages of Vṛndāvana. This is the name the prayer closes upon, and the Hindi reading of the Rādhāvallabha tradition rests on the same threefold sight: Her eyes restless with the rasa of praṇaya, Her limbs like the waves of a blossoming ocean of rasa, and the prayer for the pure glance, the pavitra dṛṣṭi, of the adhiṣṭhātrī devī of Vṛndāvana's new nikuñjas.

Now the seer of all this comes down from the vision into his own small self. Having beheld the ocean and the moon and the play and the gushing sweetness, Śrīpāda folds his hands in his sādhaka-heart and prays the question that is the whole of his cry: kadā nu, when, O when, will Her glance fall on me? He begs the puṇya-dṛṣṭi, and the tradition turns the word over gently in three lights. Puṇya can mean Her beautiful glance, the loveliness of those love-restless eyes. It can mean Her favorable glance, the look of one who is pleased. And it can mean Her auspicious, redeeming glance, the look that lifts the wretched out of their wretchedness and carries them into Her auspicious kingdom of transcendental pastimes. He asks all three at once. O Rādhe, kuñjeśvarī, queen of the bowers, Kṛṣṇa's own priyatamā, You who are by nature full of compassion, when will You cast toward me a glance that is itself like a single wave upon the ocean of rasa? When will I be made qualified for Your loving service as a maidservant, with body, mind and senses given wholly into Your hands, fit at last for the lowly, longed-for dāsī-pada at Your feet? This alone is the desire he confesses upon his mind, and he lays it down at Her lotus-feet with empty hands. The tradition gives his closing cry in Prabodhānanda's own voice: O moon of King Vṛṣabhānu's dynasty, bhānu-kula-canda, hear my prayer at Your beautiful feet, for without Your mercy there is no path, no way, no shelter anywhere, kṛpā vinu gati nāhi āna. There is no second door he holds in reserve. He has staked everything on one glance from Rādhā, and he waits.